Stock markets seem to be reacting to the Obamination, (even though the news says anything but a reaction to the election).
The cost to business of just the health care portion of the upcoming Federal budget are job wreckers. This added to the likely tax increases across the board, likely energy cost increases (due to an unrestrained EPA) and many US states (and cities) teetering on insolvency.
Unions have just caused 18,000 lost jobs with Hostess and I think we are looking at the tip of the iceberg because of the long slow non-recovery. Any business that has cash is holding it, any business that doesn’t have cash is stretching out their payables. To me, all this adds up to a significant crashing sound in the not to distant future.
For USA exporters it shouldn’t be so bad, but for the rest of you the writing is on the wall.
And it has nothing to do with Obama.
Large USD devaluation in 5 to 7 months’ time due to obsolete foreign USD reserves being sent back into the USA.
There’s enough mainstream news sources which support this, but this interview with Lindsey Williams starting 31:09 wraps it up pretty well.
The answer, for the currency anyway, is July 2013. That’s Lindsey Williams’ prediction.
Several other pundits call the collapse of the USA economy inevitable but won’t name a particular month.
The thing you have to remember about economic collapse is that it exhibits network effects. Nobody is directly connected to all of the sources of failure, they are only connected to the handful of debtors and creditors that they personally have contracts with. Therefore you will not know that collapse is happening in the economy until collapse happens to you. Because you can only see your direct links in the network, you can’t see the whole thing. Getting an early warning about this is difficult. You’ve already had as much warning as you’re ever going to get.
I wish I had helpful advice to give but I’m also flummoxed about what to do.
Interesting perspective there, on how (not if) the US Dollar is going to ‘realise’ its devaluation.
Is flight from the Euro going to get caught out as well.
Just think, what a co-ordinated takedown of both together could achieve.
The USD has lost 1/3rd. of its value against the Swiss Franc over 10 years.
Well Joe, isn’t it a very remarkable co-incidence that the southern EU states (plus Ireland) are in excess debt, the possible breakup of the Eurozone is talked about daily, and the UK reputedly is about to hit the Debt-to-GDP ratio of collapse proportions, all at the same time as the USA?
Just an unlucky co-incidence due the amount of trade between these countries?
Or possibly… planned all along by people who have a lot of capital and derivatives to move around. A “co-ordinated takedown” as you say.
The average person’s response to this in the short term does not depend on why it happened, just that a new Great Depression has begun.
In the medium term it matters as to how this happened. There’s plenty of factors. We have had a globalised economy for only 22 years. It’s like a new toy that we haven’t figured out how to use properly yet. Some have been quite adventurous with their use of the toy and used it in a way that threatens the whole system. The system has also been governed by Keynesian theory since the 1930s and Monetarist policy since the 1970s. The credit has been supplied by Fractional Reserve Banking for hundreds of years. The rules on derivatives trading in the USA were loosened only 10 years ago. Learning which of these rules (FRB, Keynesianism, Monetarism, Globalisation, Derivatives) most caused the failure is going to be an important step towards a more resilient world economy.
The other possibility is that the rules are OK and that this is all due to an individual behaviour of excessive savings, a hoarding of income instead of spending it on a mix of consumption and investment. Do you know anybody with more than 50 grand in the bank who doesn’t know what to do with it? Yeah, thought not. Do you know many people who have become Buddhist monks eschewing all materialist trinkets? No? Then it’s not hoarding it’s the rules.
The Austrian school is adamant about what NOT to do next. Don’t interfere with market adjustment!
But they’re not all negative Nancys:
There is one thing the government can do positively, however: it can drastically lower its relative role in the economy, slashing its own expenditures and taxes, particularly taxes that interfere with saving and investment.
– Rothbard
I watched an interview last week by Max Kaiser ( on the Kaiser Report) with a UK financial writer/blogger. They discussed the UK debt situation. They added up the public and private debt as a percentage of GDP and added a few minor things to it to show that the UK was approaching total debt of about 1000% of GDP. Then Kaiser said ” remind me what the corresponding figure for Iceland was when they hit the wall ? ”
( it was about 1000 % )
Then Kaiser asked when the other guy when thought it would hit the UK –answer = mid 2013.
So it is not the only the USA with issues , it is everywhere.
Even in Australia where someone else on here a few months ago said the mining boom Australia has had over the last 5-10 years has really been a construction boom. Well check out the major engineering / constructions companies and see how many projects have been delayed or planning stopped. I know of one major international company with a large presence in Australia who is laying off people quite rapidly now.
With regard the USA –in 6 – 12 months it might be turn out to be that the Republicans say the election of 2012 was a good one to lose.
I see a lot of casual debt:GDP numbers quoted around the place. One has to remember that there are a lot of different kinds of debt. The simplest breakdown is as public and private debt, to quote Wikipedia:
“…public debt is the money or credit owed by any level of government, from central to local, and the private debt the money or credit owed by private households or private corporations based in the country under consideration.”
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_external_debt
There’s also a lot of different ways of expressing debt number, gross or net, private household or private industry, etc… It all gets a tad overwhelming and the numbers are too big for the average person to properly comprehend. But here are some debt clocks to blow the average mind:
I would also go on to say there’s “good” debt and “bad” debt. To my mind good debt is that invested in productive assets which will generate a (profitable/productivity) return. An example of bad debt is that which is thrown at asset bubbles which can deflate quickly evaporating the value (e.g. US subprime crisis).
And I still see people running around saying the debt hawks are idiots … any sovereign can print its way out of debt yadda, yadda, yadda. Ignorance must be bliss, because they seem pretty happy. Sooner or later the party HAS to end. Someone has to pay the tab with real assets, and when you have deflated/debased your currency for years, your assets are a steal. Look at house prices in the US compared to Oz.
I daresay that you noted that the Rudd/Swan/Gillard stimulus package studiously avoided investment in anything that was capable of generating new production.
It also diverted resources from engaging in such production.
Much the same could be said of the NBN, where costs are of necessity at the top marginal rates to construct something that was already being constructed at normal market rates.
There should be no doubting that this is deliberate policy, intended to destroy our economic system.
Not convinced in the slightest in the Lindsey Williams statements. Here in WA we have the largest segment of trade with China of the entire country, and it is all based on resource exports. Guess what currency they are priced in? Yes US dollars. I have no idea what he is referring to, and not convinced he does either. He seems to be selling a message that he is somehow channeling the knowledge of the “elites”, but I shalln’t be rude and say what I think he is really channeling. Anyone have any of those references he spruiks?
The closest we came to seeing any serious Renminbi trade was when Twiggy mused out loud about doing trades in China’s currency. To the best of my knowledge that is not yet the case. Even if Twiggy were to receive payment in Renminbi, that currency it tied to the USD and the iron ore prices are quoted in reference to, you guessed it, the USD. By any measure that makes the USD still the reserve currency. Whether that changes in the not too distant future, who knows? One thing is for sure, this chap doesn’t. He seems to think that the US dolar is already dead, i.e. no longer the world’s reserve currency. That is demonstratably and laughably false.
Is China positioning itself to be a major player in the world economy, heck yes. Is it replacing the US any time soon? Hard to judge, but certainly not in the short term. Here’s the BBC article for example:
In March this year, it signed a swap deal with Australia worth up to A$30bn ($31bn; £20bn) to promote bi-lateral trade and investment.
WA alone exported over A$121 billion in resources in 2011 of which 43% was to China (source: http://www.dmp.wa.gov.au/1521.aspx). That’s over A$52 billion to China (mostly iron ore, then LNG). By comparison the A$30 billion currency swap is peanuts, when you consider the whole of the country.
The fact that Australia and other countries see China as a rising superpower and chose to diversify their reserve holdings with a few Renminbi doesn’t make the USD dead. It’s a shot across the bow is all. But to be clear, that doesn’t mean the role of the USD won’t diminish over the medium term.
*EDIT* WA exported A$121 of merchandise (i.e. goods, not services) in 2011, of which 92% was resources. Adjust the other related figures down by about 10% to reflect this … still the same picture. I sometimes forget we export a bit of agricultura produce as well, and a few other bits and bobs.
One thing I came across that no one seems to note is the cost of Unemployment insurance in the USA and who pays for it. If you are in business especially if you are a small businessman this has a direct impact on your bottomline
…employers pay federal unemployment taxes of 6.2 percent on the first $7,000 earned by each of their employees during a calendar year. These federal taxes are used to cover the costs of administering the UC programs in all states. In addition, the federal UC taxes pay one-half of the cost of extended unemployment benefits (during periods of high unemployment) and provide for a fund from which states may borrow, if necessary, to pay benefits.
State UC tax rates vary from state-to-state. State UC taxes may be used only to pay benefits to unemployed workers. The state UC tax rate paid by employers is based on the state’s current unemployment rate. As their unemployment rates go up, the states are required by federal law to raise the UC tax rate paid by employers.link
The go-to place for actual statistics used by business is Shadow Statistics. The Shadow Statistics Chart shows the real unemployment rate, not the fudged government numbers, has grown from around 21% to 23%. In other words the US economy is NOT recovering it is getting worse. Shadow Statisics is run by John Williams.
Shadow Government Statistics” is an electronic newsletter service that exposes and analyzes flaws in current U.S. government economic data and reporting, as well as in certain private-sector numbers, and provides an assessment of underlying economic and financial conditions, net of financial-market and political hype….
For 30 years, I have been a private consulting economist and, out of necessity, had to become a specialist in government economic reporting….
the quality of government reporting has deteriorated sharply in the last couple of decades. Reporting problems have included methodological changes to economic reporting that have pushed headline economic and inflation results out of the realm of real-world or common experience.
Over the decades, well in excess of 1,000 presentations have been given on the economic outlook, or on approaches to analyzing economic data, to clients—large and small—including talks with members of the business, banking, government, press, academic, brokerage and investment communities. I also have provided testimony before Congress… http://www.shadowstats.com/
In to this business environment you can then add Obamacare which includes an additional cost to an employer if they employ over 50 ‘full-time equivalent employees’ link not to mention the headache and expense of trying to figure out what the heck the government wants you to do.
For some businesses it will be simplest to just get rid of the extra employees and stay under the 50 person limit especially if you have a lot of part time employees who you provided with no health insurance.
In the USA small business produce 39% of the gross national product. They create more than half of the nonfarm private GDP.(That makes you wonder just how much the public sector “GNP” is doesn’t it?) Small business accounts for over half of all U.S. workers, and generated 65 percent of net new jobs over the past 17 years.
Unfortunately All this additional red tape hurts the small business person most. Some have decided to cut back and others have decided it just is not worth the hassle and are closing their doors before they lose what is left of their shirts.
With Obama’s Lets push more regulation mentality I really doubt you are going to see the US economy do anything but continue to sink, Federal Debt Spiral ever upwards and federal tax revenue plummet ( Laffer Curve and all that)
Interesting, Mark. They said the same thing would happen when the Yen and Gold carry trades ended. Demise of the greenback and rocketing interest rates. It never happnened. My guess is the role of the Fed and speculation. Once the greenbacks return home the speculators use it buy long term treasuries and sell their close to expiring short term treasuries to the Fed. They know the Fed has to enter the market to top up the money supply (monetize debt) and they know that the Fed cannot legally buy treasuries from the US treasury. The Fed has to indulge in open market transactions where the speculators can dump the treasuries at a profit and further depress interest rates over the entire curve and of course raise bond prices. This classic staddle is almost risk free as long as the yield curve does not invert. That’s the clue the party is over! The question is how long can this process carry on. The Fed may think it is in control but it is not. Nothing it does matters. Lower interst rates raise the burden of debt on leveraged companies as capital is transfered to speculators’ pcokets- expect more bankrupcies.
I’m here in California and there’s a storm moving in. I have $40.00 in my bank account and $200.00 worth of bills. My patio cover leaks and so does the camp trailer roof. I’m on disability which means a fixed income.
If Israel wipes Gaza off the map, the storm will still arrive and do its thing, my account balance will stay the same, the patio will still leak, etc, etc.
If, on the other hand, Gaza triumphs over Israel, the storm will still arrive and do its thing, the camp trailer will still leak, etc, etc,
So, do tell, what is the magnitude of the problem we face? How does anything on the other side of the world really pose a problem to us?
We have been played with crisis after crisis and emergency after emergency until I’m just fatigued by the whole thing. Aren’t you?
Well, the murder of a United States ambassador and three others just might be a problem. Our play it by ear, no-policy foreign policy is only serving those with a stated intent to kill Americans and destroy America. That bothers me. It bothers me a lot.
Roy it is not surprising there is not a lot of tv coverage from the Israeli side. When you mobilise your reserves and start moving heavy units around the last thing you want is some bozo with a sattelite link broadcasting to the world and by implication your intended target what you are doing and where. That lesson was learn’t back in the Falklsnds War when the Brits allowed tv news people in on the show and the Argentines were getting almost real time intelligence on what was happening. It cost lives and if you look closely at conflicts since there is little in tv coverage which is identifiable. Both Iraqi conflicts had journos “embedded” but if you look at the output it is very bland in respect to real battlefield intelligence. As for the Hamas side of things there is only so many times you can show pics of the same body and the ambulance with the perfectly round hole in the vehicle body. If/when the Israelis strike you can bet there will be lots of people talking about the poor Palestinians and the nasty Israelies [read Jews]. There are only so many times you can turn the other cheek and that is not a concept played out in the Old Testament/Torah and Israel has a legitimate right to defend itself and its citizens from naked aggression. It is a scenario that will be played out again and again. Golda Meir summed it up when she said “There will not be peace until the Arabs learn to love their children more than they hate us”.
Shouldn’t you people be at the Andrew Bolt website?
That is a compliment; thank you JMD.
Speaking of Bolt, I just saw Bishop on Bolt; 3 records of Gillard’s setting up of the slush fund for the crook Wilson have gone missing; they were all held in Federal court or equivalent secure locations.
Think about that; 3 seperate sources of documents to do with Gillard’s past activities have gone missing.
Isn’t that amazing?
Bishop was very circumspect; and this is the problem; the documents went missing in WA and QLD, both coalition states and Bishop is the personification of decorum.
Why aren’t those states now setting up Royal commissions to examine why evidence of a Federal court status has gone missing.
You do not have a legal system without secure storage of records and evidence; FOUR seperate sources holding evidence and information about Gillard have been compromised. Think about it.
There will not be peace until the Arabs learn to love their children more than they hate us.
Or until one side finally has an unequivocal victory over the other.
I understand your point. But that is the end goal of a war — and it is a war. Playing a game with it doesn’t seem very worthwhile and diplomacy is a complete failure.
Roy there is a basic distinction between Israel and Hammas. Israel is a civilized nation State which could do a lot more for its citizens and others elsewhere if it didn’t have to continually defend itself against aggression. Hammas is a terrorist organisation that does not really want peace and has a stated aim of driving the Jews into the ocean. Again it is worth quoting Golda Meir – “We Jews have a secret weapon in our struggle with the Arabs; we have no place to go”. Israel has gone to the peace table time and again seeking peace but despite the bleating of the fashionable intelligentsia who find a cause celebre in the Palestinians it is not Israel who are the aggressors. Eventually you get tired of people throwing things at you and you need to remind them that is decidedly bloody unhealthy to keep doing so. Eventually the Arabs may push Israel too far and will find the western concept of total war not to their liking. It is something no nation state wants to do unless there is no other option. War is not a fun pastime.
I completely agree with you. The problem is that with Hamas, as with Iran and others, the matter is simply religious fanaticism. The sacrifice is always worth it to these people. Total war? Good! World in chaos? Good! Hide behind the skirts of your women and children? Good! No barbarity is too much for them.
After all the fighting and all the diplomacy I think we all know Israel isn’t one bit better off today than they were in 1947 (hope I remember the right year). I’m simply marveling at the extraordinary forbearance Israel has shown to their Arab neighbors. I keep wondering how long it will last.
Word from my network is that two significant factors have emerged.
One is that forces in Gaza may now have local capability to manufacture long-range rockets. Some of the “relief ships” had component parts for long range rockets, that forces in Gaza could have copied. Those forces may found an alternate route. The new longer range rockets have the theoretical ability to strike Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, but may not have accurate guidance systems. Time will tell.
The other is that Israel has brought forward the deployment of its “Iron Dome” ground to air defence system, to provide a measure of protection. The first battery was to be deployed next January, so they are undergoing “live testing”, as they say.
Israel has mobilised its reserves, but there is no indication of a ground offensive being mounted against Gaza in the immediate future. Israel is keeping its options open.
Other than that, this is just another cycle of the on-again, off-again conflict. This particular round may have been sparked by the assignation, by Syrian rebels, of Adel Hasan, when he visited a refugee camp in Deraa, in southern Syria. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, of which Adel Hasan was the General Commander, is still seen in Syria as being closely aligned with Syrian President Bashar Al Assad,
The Middle East is not within my usual area of interest, so it has taken me a while to respond – time zones and all that.
Israel has mobilised its reserves, but there is no indication of a ground offensive being mounted against Gaza in the immediate future. Israel is keeping its options open.
They are poised right on the Gaza border and ready to go.
I’m tempted to ask three questions.
1. How sure are you about your sources?
2. What effect does anyone expect just from a show of force? Even after being invaded the last time around Hamas is still on a rampage.
3. How long does this festering boil go untreated?
1. The people I got in contact with, are people I have worked with in the past, and I trust them as I trust my Dentist.
But, the information they can share with me is summary level stuff which, by its nature, does not contain detailed nuance. Also, the information will be at least twenty four hours old, and probably more, and allowing for time zone differences, probably closer to forty eight hours old, by the time I get to see it. Information flows, but where it flows from, to get to where I am located, it must take the long way around. This is why the Middle East is not within my usual area of interest. It is too frustrating.
2. It is a psychological game that is being played out here. Whichever side started this current round of activity, is now immaterial. What Israel wants to do is make Hamas appear to be the aggressor, and one who has now acquired longer range weapons, capable of reaching major Israeli population centres. Israel will respond to each attack, but will try to target the Hamas leadership whenever they have a reasonable idea where they might be. Israel wants to appear to be moderate in the eyes of the western world, but they also do not want to be surprised. “Yes, we have moved troops close to the border, but see, we still have not made any move to attack, even though we are being fired upon”.
3. I do hope that is a rhetorical question, because I have no answer.
Your answer to question 2 tells me you think the fighting will go on forever. And that, my friend, is exactly what I’m afraid of. Or do you forsee some magical solution?
Obama was supposed to be the second coming of Christ to hear him and his worshipers tell it. But he has nothing to offer either.
With the fighting and violence having already gone on for literally most of my life I’m afraid question 3 is a lot more than rhetorical.
In the meantime, if I’m a citizen of Israel I want only one thing, a permanent end to attack from Gaza and the rest of my neighbors. And how do you think that can be achieved? Given past history I can think of only one way.
It might help if Obama had the good sense to stand for something and mean it. But he doesn’t. And there’s no one else but the U.S. and Israel.
Well, unfortunately I agree with you. The piece of dirt, currently known as Israel, has been fought over, in one way or another since the tenth century, and possibly before. It is a wicked problem, and therefore is social in nature, rather than political or military. In my view, there is just too much social history tied up in that area, for it ever to be resolved permanently by military or political means. But egos being what they are, neither the politicians nor the military will allow any other group to have a shot at trying to redefine the problem into something that can be solved by political means. So it will continue.
But egos being what they are, neither the politicians nor the military will allow any other group to have a shot at trying to redefine the problem into something that can be solved by political means.
So propose another group! But I think you and I both know there is no one else to try anything.
As I see it, there is a lot of history leading to multiple grievances, vendettas, and hatreds on both sides.
This blinds both sides from even thinking about any areas that they might have in common.
What would be needed is a team of skilled negotiators, facilitators, and researchers, drawn from multiple countries that are completely neutral in this conflict. Each individual team member would need to be vetted, and sanctioned by the military and the political establishment on both sides of the dispute.
The role of this team is to find the common ground between the parties – the basic things that they can agree to. They do that using General Morphological Analysis, as described in the paper I referenced in a previous comment.
The key, I think, is to have the members of this independent group, work with both sides alternately, or randomly. This will demonstrably inhibit them from “getting captured” by one side or the other. Their independence is key.
Once this group has established the common ground, and once both sides have agreed that it is common ground, the independent team can then move on to exploring each, or all of, the areas of difference using exactly the same techniques.
As each area of difference is clearly defined, it can be put to one side for future negotiation between the parties, using the more traditional linear techniques. But the difference here is that the negotiations can start from the base of the already acknowledged, common ground.
The costs of this exercise, which will not be trivial, will be born by the countries supplying the independent team members. These countries will periodically submit a combined bulk bill to the UN for payment. This will demonstrably reduce the possibility of the UN, as the funding organisation, having undue influence over the process and the outcomes.
Groups and factions are part of the problem. The solution is to finding ways to work around the groups and factions, and to prevent others from forming.
The negotiators, facilitators, and researchers are, of course, another group, in their own right. But in their case, it is a group with a limited shelf life, and a planned use-by date.
My first instinct was to tell you that you need to change what you’re smoking. But I know from reading you for years now that you’re a thoughtful and serious guy. So instead let me just tell you a lesson I’ve learned over the last maybe 5 years of my life as I’ve watched global warming become climate catastrophe and all the surrounding issues, great and small — no one is neutral or independent.
So there goes the outside help right down the drain.
Meanwhile the death and destruction goes on, gaining each side nothing — a hot cold-war going nowhere.
I’ll probably be slammed for this but I don’t understand why Israel doesn’t cook the Hamas goose once and for all. How could they possibly be worse off? Who will try to stop them? No one! There’ll be a lot of bluster and hand wringing but no one will commit troops to stop it.
And it’s a pitiful performance by the so-called United Nations of this world.
I’m glad I don’t have to make such decisions. I don’t want to play God. But those who accept the leadership of nations do have to make those decisions. Shame on them for not doing it.
Jo, be interested in a post on the 1 million women movement. Backers, claims etc. It’s got roughly the same number of members it had a few years ago. Seem to be pushing their activism again.
Just rechecked my copy of Lomborg’s “Cool It” to look at Gore and Hansen’s estimate for SLR until 2100.
The rise due to Greenland melt estimate from the IPCC until 2100 (using all the models I’ve linked to here) is just 3.5cm.
But Gore and Hansen’s estimate is 609cm or 174 times more than the IPCC best estimate. Yet these two idiots are feted by govts around the world, nearly every scientific institution on the planet ( even our CSIRO) and can win academy awards and even win the Nobel prize.
But Alan Jones after years of broadcasting makes a tiny mistake of the position of a decimal point and he is hung drawn and quartered.
He corrected his mistake as soon as he could yet he was lampooned just because he made this one innocent, tiny error.
For those interested see page 82 of “Cool It.”
12 Nov: Gulf Times: Bonnie James: Climate Change panel chief says ‘not invited to COP18’
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will not be attending the upcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP18/CMP8) in Doha, chairman Dr Rajendra K Pachauri has said.
“For the first time in the 18 years of COP, the IPCC will not be attending, because we have not been invited,” he told Gulf Times in Doha…
opening session of the International Conference on Food Security in Dry Lands (FSDL) on Wednesday at Qatar University.
Later, he told Gulf Times he did not know why the IPCC has not been invited to COP18, something that has happened never before.
“I don’t know what it is. The executive secretary of the climate change secretariat has to decide. I have attended every COP and the chairman of the IPCC addresses the COP in the opening session,” he explained… http://www.gulf-times.com/site/topics/article.asp?cu_no=2&item_no=544308&version=1&template_id=36&parent_id=16
hot potato #2
14 Nov: This is MoneyUK: Dan Hyde: Pensions savings left teetering on a cliff edge by Bank’s money-printing bond bubble
Bond prices have been soaring because the Bank has been buying them in huge volumes.
But after a halt was called to QE last week, the bubble may be about to burst — causing bond prices to plummet.
The situation is so desperate it has been compared to the Dotcom crash of the late Nineties, in which millions of investors lost money in over-priced technology shares.
And it will heap further misery on savers who are facing pension pay-out rates that have sunk by a fifth in three years.
‘No one knows exactly when or if this crash will strike, but the value of millions of pension pots could easily plunge by as much as 30 per cent,’ says Alan Morahan, of consultants Punter Southall…
However, experts believe fund prices could crash at the merest nudge — particularly if the Bank of England sells back its bonds to banks as it must do at some point…
Laith Khalaf, a pensions expert at Hargreaves Lansdown, says savers who are less than three years from retirement can protect themselves by moving their money into cash now. Though the returns are poor — often around 0.5 per cent a year in a pension — it guarantees your gains.
Anyone more than three years from retirement could consider a cautious managed fund as an alternative.
Mr Khalaf says: ‘By the time it becomes apparent that the bubble has been pricked, it may be too late.’…
AM I AT RISK?
Your pension is under threat if it is invested in bonds. This is most likely to be anyone nearing retirement who has a stock market-linked company pension, also known as defined contribution.
Here, a portion of your salary goes into a fund that invests in shares, company bonds and government gilts… http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/pensions/article-2232391/Is-QE-bond-bubble-wreck-pension.html
hot potato #3
16 Nov: Russia Today: VTB Capital to start issuing ‘golden bonds’
Investment arm of Russia’s second largest bank – VTB Capital – will start issuing bonds tied to gold price. The new instrument enters Russia just when global downturn makes gold increasingly attractive.
The new so–called ‘gold bonds’ provide for 3 fixed coupons – 0.1% each – with the yield to maturity depending on the gold price dynamics, Vedomosti daily reports. The Gold price on November 26 – the day when the placement is set to kick off – will be taken as the base to calculate gold growth. Overall, the new bonds can create up to annualized 21.3% yield for investors…
“Gold is beginning to re-establish itself as part of the fabric of the financial system,” commented Marcus Grubb, Managing Director, Investment at the World Gold Council.
“In the medium term, the quantitative easing initiatives in the West and the continuing growth story in the East, particularly in India and China, coupled with the seasonally strong quarter coming up in Asia, are excellent indicators for further growth in the gold market,” Grubb added.
“Such bonds will be interesting to those who expect both inflation and global risks to grow next year,” Timur Salikov, investment director at Promsvyaz asset management, told Vedomosti.
On Friday, gold-miner Nordgold provided more firm evidence of gold being an attractive asset. The company increased its IFRS net profit 32% year on year in 3Q 2012 to reach $58mn, while a consensus forecast had expected the bottom line to stand at $56nm.
Nordgold operates in Burkina Faso, Guinea, Kazakhstan and Russia. http://rt.com/business/news/gold-crisis-vtb-bonds-858/
I’m sorry but I’m sure JB, Silly nag and Matty etc will feel a bit miffed I didn’t include their hero GAIA brain Timmy Flannery in combination with the two celebrated big brains above. sarc, sarc, sarc.
Just to note that Timmy is Gillard’s Chief climate commissioner. He’s the top man appointed by Gillard to explain AGW etc to Aussie electorate.????
Best of luck with that, but this blokes has picked up gongs from universities all over the world and is paid huge sums to address meetings and has his own show and endless promotion on THEIR ABC.
This is priceless. Your side of the argument really needs to get a grip on reality. I notice Monckton is still banging this drum and yet your side defends him as a man of integrity. Go figure.
JFC,
I can only conclude you live on a completely different planet to the one I inhabit.
Since when did the extremist views from ANY side in ANY debate from ANY period of human history ever include INTEGRITY and/or attention to REALITY (aka truth) as part of the mix????
I also question your usage of ‘your side of the argument’????
What do you therefore assume we are we arguing about JFC?
What is your realistic ‘side’ ? As opposed to the side that you assume is not linked to reality????
What is your reality JFC?
Chuckle 🙂 🙂
Debbie, thanks for conceding on these points. At long last we have someone from the extremist side admitting that they have no integrity or attachment to reality.
Thanks also for asking about reality, it’s encouraging to see that you’re willing to learn. Let’s just say that reality in my world are things like evolution, gravity, you know stuff that’s supported by overwhelming empirical evidence and is yet to be falsified despite many lame attempts (in the case of evolution by creationists,you know,the guys on your side). AGW fits those reality parameters nicely here as well.
Planet la-la-land on the other hand is where people believe all sorts of stuff, like you know, faked moon landings, that Barack Obama was born in Kenya, that the earth is 6000 years old and flat, that Lord Monckton has a cure for AIDS, MS, blah, blah and that AGW is not overwhelmingly supported by the data. Unrealists have deep problems with data, the recent US election being a classic case in point.
PS; to those who accused me of being off topic, ummm, not sure how one can get off topic on an unthreaded weekend. Doh!
[But you are expected to be polite. I suggest you avoid creating labels by which you then pigeonhole people, it is a poor debating technique, and it is not polite – first warning] Fly
NO, CAGW belongs firmly in the faked moon landing side of issues….
Your moronic attempt to elevate it to the status of evolutionary theory, gravity etc shows just how little you know about science, how small your understanding, how empty your mind.
It is an UNPROVEN hypothesis at best, and that’s being highly generous.
Nearly all facets of it are scientific nonsense, based firmly in the la-la land which you apparently inhabit.
The same for evolution. Do you know enough about the workings of DNA to be able to explain how it works? No? I thought not.
And yet you believe that gravity exists, and you believe that DNA is the reason for evolution.
It comes down to belief systems. I happen to believe in those things too, because I have seen and understood the actual proof of the respective theories.
Where we differ is that you believe in CAGW, whereas I do not.
I do not, because CAGW is a theory (as are gravity, and evolution), but I have yet to see any proof of the theory that carbon dioxide, in and of itself, has any relevance to long term global climatic conditions, Or, if it does, that the miniscule amount of carbon dioxide released by the activities of man, when compared to natural causes like volcanic activity, for example, is significant in the wider scheme of things.
I believe in what I believe, because I understand. To believe without understanding moves into the realm of religion.
You therefore, believe in the CAGW religion, as you have every right to.
You adopt the position of “us and them” precisely because, either consciously or subliminally, you feel the need to mount a crusade against the “unbelievers” and “infidels”. And that is also your right.
But you will not get much traction on a blog as rational, and as scientifically, based at this one. But I wish you luck.
JFC – raise the standard please ! you’re sounding like an poorly educated schoolkid.
(if you actually are a schoolkid, I do apologise for my abruptness, but think of it as a life lesson about how when conversing with adults you need to learn to engage your brain and think about the subject before speaking/writing)
Conceding on what points JFC?
You seem to think that the ‘climate’ is interested in taking ‘sides’.????
I am not a fan of extremism in any form….I’m sorry to say that you are exhibiting the characteristics of extremism by interpreting my comment thus: At long last we have someone from the extremist side admitting that they have no integrity or attachment to reality.
I don’t belong to any side JFC…what a remarkably myopic comment on your part.
You seriously need to consider what you think these ‘sides’ are.
Under English Common Law, the prosecution presents their case, and and the defense is able to cross-examine or is question that evidence. The prosecution will also cross-examine the witnesses for the defense. There is always a dim view taken when either side make their case by attacking or knobbling the other side or preventing the other side being heard, or suppressing or tampering with the evidence. Yet in climate “science” this appears to be the main thrust of the case.
Like in the criminal law, all the efforts that pro-consensus people put into preventing cross-examination of the evidence, or preventing other voices being heard, would suggest a huge empty void at the center. It suggests an absence of the strong scientific case that can justify undermining the economic prosperity of future generations.
Your side of the argument really needs to get a grip on reality.
Let’s see:
You make a non-comment about nothing on an unthreaded post, throw in a slur about Monckton who hasn’t even been mentioned even in the comments, and finish up with a link to a court case involving Obama’s birth certificate on Jo’s blog which is about climate change.
.
And we’re the ones struggling for a grip on reality?
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Really?
I posted this in the other Thread in answer to a question about rooftop solar power and the batteries needed.
In case no one goes there to read it, this is something you all do need to read, so I’ll copy and Paste the Comment here as well.
This is that comment.
There’s the problem that no one wants to address about rooftop solar.
It’s sold not as an answer to residential power, but only as a money returning thing, because of the monstrously huge Feed In Tariff (FIT) for grid connected systems.
If rooftop solar was actually serious, then the idea should be for homes to be completely self sufficient, having all their power needs supplied by the rooftop panels.
Therein lies the problem.
After hours supply, which is two thirds of residential consumption.
To achieve that, the panels need to be connected to a large Inverter, naturally, and then part of the generated power needs to be sent through a battery charger to a dedicated battery bank, and here I’m not talking about a car battery, but enough battery power to supply those after hours needs.
Some people wimp out, mainly because of the horrendous cost of the batteries themselves, and get a cheap small scale battery bank.
Here you need to consider that Power In MUST equal Power Out. So, if the average home consumes 20KWH per day, then you need a bank capable of actually supplying that out of hours power, which is around 13KWH.
So, the small scale user with batteries gets the cheapest they can get, enough to cover just that 13KWH.
The real recommendation if you read all the literature is that for effective results, you need a battery bank actually capable of supplying power for three days, in case there is heavy overcast, or even any overcast, and keep in mind here that just one cloud flitting across the face of the Sun sees the panels reducing power by up to 60%, which then takes time to build back up after that one cloud passes.
Considering that even in Winter with heavy overcast, there will still be some light (around 10% in heavy overcast) getting to the panels, then some charge will be directed to the battery bank, but that three day supply is the recommendation, and keep in mind that this is the Minimum recommendation.
These following are from an Australian Company SolarOnline.
Now check this first link for a grid connected system only, (no batteries) and for that residential requirement of 20KWH, the system costs (from) $25,000.
Now check this second link for a stand alone system (Not grid connected and with the batteries) and that same 20KWH system costs (from) $72,000.
That extra is for the Batteries, and as you can see, that comes in at an extra $47,000 and keep in mind that because this is stand alone, there is no FIT to repay that investment. You stump up the whole cost.
This is for the cheapest system, and for a quality battery bank, you could pay an extra $10,000 and more.
Now, keep in mind that no matter how good the batteries, they can only accept so many charges over their life before they become well, useless. That comes in at anything from 4 to an absolute best 7 years.
So, for the life of the panels, and here again I quote the absolute best case scenario, 25 years, you are looking at the original battery bank and between 3 and 6 replacement battery banks at around 50K a time.
So now, your wonderful stand alone rooftop power system will end up costing the original outlay and say 4 new battery Banks (I always try and quote best case) at 50K a time, hence $270,000, a quarter of a million.
Had you just stayed connected to the grid, then in today’s dollars that same power will cost you around $45,000.
See now why the grid connected systems are pushed.
Also keep in mind here that the panels themselves are rated at 85% after 7 to 10 years, and lose around 5% a year from then on.
You can cheap out with the el cheapo grid connected systems and expect every other consumer to pay you for that system, or you can be fair dinkum and do it right.
Now can you see why I speak out so loudly against rooftop solar power. Grid connected people are still consuming two thirds of their power from the grid, still net consumers, and the useless tiny little no count power they return to the grid is so insignificant as to not even register, and we all pay for that in increased costs for electricity, so those people who do have them can point with green pride and say that they are doing their bit.
Well I say Bovine waste to you lot.
Be serious. If you want to do, then do it right, pay for it yourself, and THEN, and only then can you point with green pride.
I wrote before about how my next door neighbour had panels installed, only to see their efficiency drop virtually on a daily basis as grime built up on the surfaces (we live right on the waterfront on Bribie Island).
Well, last month – after the panels had pretty-much stopped working at all, he bit the bullet and had them cleaned. Cost for cleaning, $200.00.
It’s a two storey house. Cost for the hire, erection and dismantling of the scaffolding so the cleaners could do the job, $2,900.00.
These panels need to be kept clean at all times, and by clean, I don’t mean the occasional spray with a hose from ground level, but actual cleaning with a quality glass cleaner, preferably one with no ammonia, so that cancels out household glass cleaners like Windex, so here I’m talking quality glass cleaning products and the car care ones have no ammonia.
The slightest film, be it dust, salt etc is the equivalent of that proverbial cloud passing across the Sun.
No use relying on God to keep them clean, err, and before the PC crowd come out here, I mean regular showers.
That’s get up on the roof and polish the panels.
Then, also, there’s the longevity of the Inverter, considering it’s running 24/7/365, and again, you can go cheap here, as with the el cheapo solar systems that are now providing TV with an advertising bonanza, but good high quality Inverters. Find one of them with a 25 year life of the panels warranty. Good luck with that.
On a side light, with respect to panel cleanliness, one of the things worrying some people about the Moree Solar PV plant was water consumption, but hey, the plants proposers said that was not a problem as the panels would only be cleaned twice a year. ******* hilarious. I almost fell off my chair with laughter when I read that little gem.
There seems to be some sense developing even among politicians, eg dropping of feed-in tariffs to something like the normal cost of reticulated power. Trouble is, I guess they can’t touch those contracts that run until 2028, but this may be one area where some pollies are starting to see the writing on the wall. It amazes me that so few people realise that PV is the poor subsidising the rich. Political suicide.
In my daily task of advising customers on residential design, I continue to hold back on the subject of PV, and limit the advice to ” maybe just put in the conduits, and make sure there is a plan to show where they are”. Conduit doesn’t cost much and can serve a variety of uses.
I am starting to be asked about low-voltage private PV, which takes me back 30+ years ago, other side of the world, where I worked on a few projects involving restoring dwellings. Rule was, if there are 3 walls standing and evidence it was once a dwelling, you can restore it. (Keeping that 3rd wall up for the required time period was sometimes a drama.) Often, these premises were too far from the grid for reticulated power. So, a variety of options were used for generating a 12 – 24v supply to tractor batteries. If there was a convenient ridge line, vertical shaft air-scoops would work – hand made, balanced on an adapted tyre balancing device. Solar panels – a lot more inefficient then. On one occasion micro-hydro where there was a continuous flow, plus a ram pump to divert potable water from the point above where the cattle/sheep could get to it. More energy demanding electrical devices in those days, but away from smoke control areas so heating/cooking via Aga stove. Always a back-up petrol/diesel generator. Also involved in similar projects in PNG.
Given the much lower power demand of electronic devices, improvements in LED technology etc, maybe home-based dual installations could be viable? Anyone got any useful links that aren’t flim-flam?
It irks me that otherwise intelligent people knowingly sign up for household solar, and raise the power bills of everbody else, so they can feel good. The FIT is a regressive tax on the poorest amongst us. 🙁
Nope, raising the power bills of everyone else is a feature not a bug. Eventually the stupid bogans will vote out the green slime or they’ll continue to be reamed by their power bills.
No sympathy here for those who complain about power bills yet voted Labor/green and subscribe to the CAGW scam.
The rooftop PV isn’t as sensitive to dirt as you think Tony. Regular rain showers work fine, as do the cells. Yes it is a stupid waste of money for the country as a whole but at the installation price and return you couldn’t afford not to do it when I signed up. I did the numbers without basing them on a feed in tariff either. That’s just jam.
Yep, there are still problems to be solved. You need to remember that these are early days. When Thomas Edison started in power generation, he did DC, and at 110V. The transmission losses were so large that every city block would have needed its own power station. Luckily humans are a bit ingenious, and AC generation allowed transmission at higher voltages with far smaller losses.
But I do agree Tony – energy sources other than fossil fuel, hydro-electric and nuclear face significant hurdles.
Actually John, the transmission losses for DC are smaller for any given conductor and equivalent current than for AC. AC won the battle because a very simple device called a transformer doesn’t work with DC. There are others like the induction motor. But the transformer is the foundation for all practical power distribution systems.
However, DC for long distance transmission has been in use for a long time as I pointed out here.
If you’re interested in the subject the Wiki article I linked is very thorough.
Solar and wind power on the other hand, have problems I’m sure you’ve read about here. By far the worst is their availability — or lack of it. Given that the availability problem is completely outside of human control, which would you rather depend on: a) “green” energy; b) conventional generation?
You’re an educated man who can do straight forward analysis of alternatives (a complement). And my question is serious — no sarcasm, no putdown and no traps. So please, give me an honest answer.
Yep, there are still problems to be solved. You need to remember that these are early days….
HAHAHAHAHAHA – ROTFLMAO
Charles Fritts, an American inventor, created the first working solar cell. He produced the first photovoltaic cell in the world in 1882. The first silicon based solar cell was developed by Russell Ohl in 1941 and was mass produced in 1954.
Sorry dude, Solar cells are OLD technology. My boy friend was selling them when I first got out of college and I am now retirement age.
Solar cells are comparable to TV and computers except the last two are commercially viable where as Solar cells only have a niche market.
I first visited this Wiki page back in 2008, and it was less than one screen at the time, as can be seen with this link. At that time, it also mentioned the Archimedes legend, which is very tenuous, and I’m sure we all used this principle as children, focussing a magnifying glass to burn a hole in paper..
As you can see now, all types of urgers for green power have had their input in their efforts to make it seem like this really is the way of the future.
However, one thing I will direct you to with cohenite’s original link to the most recent page is this, where it says:
CSP is being widely commercialized and the CSP market has seen about 740 MW of generating capacity added between 2007 and the end of 2010. More than half of this (about 478 MW) was installed during 2010, bringing the global total to 1095 MW.
Widely Commercialized. Wow, I’m impressed. Note where it mentions that in the 3 years, 2007 to 2010 they added 740MW ….. and that’s on a Global basis. This is the equivalent of just one small to medium sized conventional power plant, and that to the end of 2010 this brings the total up to 1095MW. which is around the size of ONE medium sized conventional coal fired power plant.
There are plans for a further 1.5GW of power to maybe come on line in the coming years, again, still only the equivalent of ONE medium sized coal fired plant.
For context here, the total output from EVERY CS Plant currently in operation on the whole of Planet Earth is surpassed by just 2 of the 4 generators at Bayswater.
OMG, a Wikipedia entry about something related to Climate Change that contains actual MATH! The Post-modern science crowd ain’t gonna be happy, I can tell you.
It seems more like they aren’t batteries at all but something else. Could this be another a case of jumping to conclusions not supported by your data? 😉
A good post Tony.
In the UK solar panels were also being pushed extremely hard. Until the Government reduced the subsidy from £0.43 to £0.21 per Kwh. (compared with the domestic purchase price of electricity of around £0.14,
A comparison of the British situation (with Manchester in particular) can see if we are better placed for solar than in Australia.
There are two advantages in Britain compared with Australia.
1. >99% of households are connected to the national grid. No need to worry about batteries.
2. It rains a lot in Manchester. 1000mm a year, mostly as steady drizzle. So the panels are self-cleaning.
There are a number of disadvantages compared with Australia.
1. The sun is not as strong as in Australia.
2. There are greater seasonal variations both in the strength of the sun and the daylight hours. In December, the days in Manchester are just 7 to 8 hours. In the North of Scotland, this is less than 5 hours. The sun is always quite low in the sky during winter, and there is cloud cover for most of the hours.
3. Typical Winter day-time max is 5 to 10 Celsius, as against 15 to 22 Celsius mid-summer. Houses need heating for most of the year, but there are only about 10 to 20 nights when it is uncomfortably warm for sleeping. In Australia solar is more closely matched to when you need power for air conditioners.
As a result of these factors my household (a typical user, with gas-powered heating and water) has power consumption in January about 4 times the level in July, yet solar power generation is the reverse. Solar is literally worse than useless in Britain. It actually provides the most power at the times of year when least needed, reducing the efficiency and utilisation of fossil-fuelled power stations like coal and gas.
On the subject of local power, some local green types proposed to build a small hydro scheme on the River Mersey, near to where I live. It would have only generated the power of a small car, yet would generate revenue of £1.7m (A$2.5) over 25 years, or about 3.5 times the original investment. The subsidies come off people’s electric bills. Like with solar panels, it is a case of a transfer payment from the “have-nots to the haves”, the exact opposite of what the socialist profess to support.
There’s plenty hot potatoes in the air at the moment.
There’s also plenty heavy metals and other nano particles sprayed on us from above.
Breath deeply people and repeat: “Your government loves you”.
So that’s the standard on this thread is it? Totally free for all. Sonny posts unsubstantiated chemtrail scare stories and it gets 5 upvotes, not a single downvote.
I’ll agree the government, as an institution and as the present executive mob, does not love us.
But the downvote is from me and its for lack of evidence for heavy metal chemtrails. And please don’t tell me again that you believe your own eyes, because your eyes are not spectrometers or gas chromatographs.
Like, how is this chemtrail opinion more substantive than the Moon Hoax meme? That would be a start!
Well yes KK, I’d just prefer him to give a real historic reason for such conclusions.
Being cynical of government was a tried and true mantra hundreds of years before airplanes ever flew.
And now for a short poem.
No man escapes when freedom fails;
The best men rot in filthy jails.
And those that cried “Appease! Appease”!
Are hanged by those they tried to please.
Also, the leading cause of unnatural death in the 20th century was… government. Just add up the casualties of WW1,WW2,Vietnam,Soviet gulags and forced collectivisation, and Lysenkoism, and the figure is around 200 million people. Although malaria is a natural cause of death, at less than 1 million deaths per year even malaria could not have killed more than 100 million in the 20th century. As individuals nobody wants to fight massive wars or train wheat to grow in the snow, only governments made those events happen. So the claim is justified.
If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck the chances are it is a duck.
I don’t need DNA analysis to confirm it. Ask Jo to share with you the photograph I sent her via email showing a single “contrail” expand radially from the spray line and fill the sky over the course of 2 hours. I need no gas chromatograph to tell me that that shit ain’t normal.
Jo knows it too.
My not understanding it does not preclude it from being abnormal.
And I never said anything about it being “sinister”. It could simply be a GeoEngineering operation to combat global warming. It would have been nice to get public support before the process went live..
OK, toss the word sinister. The term doesn’t matter. I still see nothing abnormal in any picture of “chemtrails” I’ve ever seen. When the duck looks like the normal exhaust from a jet engine then that’s what I’ll call it.
I dont fly too often but when i do i see many planes on the tarmac and none of them have the equipment required to spray anything and i can say with a high level of confidence that not one military aircraft (in Oz) is equipped to perform such a task.
So i ask again how are they spraying the stuff?
Dont say that they put it in the fuel as jet engines wont appreciate crushed glass or any other foreign object circulating through them and i am sure that if CASA knew of anything being added to the AVTUR they would shut down that company down quicker than you could say carbon pollution.
I believe under the right humidity conditions it only takes a single nucleation point for a cloud to begin forming, and the edge of the cloud then forms nucleation points for the cloud to spread out further. That’s one of the tenets of the Svensmark hypothesis. Any aircraft exhaust contains small amounts of organic molecules, which are not as effective as silver iodide but still work as cloud seed material. The low pressure of the jet stream induces cloud formation even without any added organics.
These “chemtrails” are contrails, nothing more. I will be convinced to the contrary by mass spectrometer or gas chromatography analysis of air flask samples taken by investigatory aircraft whose results are independently replicated at other chemtrail sites by other teams. There is my skeptical standard of evidence.
From the pictures it would have to be released from within the engine exhaust.
Were it chemical I wonder how it would withstand the heat (typically 1,000 degrees F (538C) and up) and not something that living cells, viruses or most compounds that could be harmful can withstand.
Were it particles of something I wonder how you would manage to spray it from that position. Then there’s the heat consideration here also.
And in both cases I wonder why it would look like contrails.
Then there’s the engineering difficulty of releasing something from that position. So you put your spray apparatus under the wing somewhere away from the engine exhaust so you can control the spray pattern and use already known technology to do the job. If it was visible from the ground it would look quite different from anything I’ve seen offered as evidence of chemtrails.
ps. It should be obvious by now that I am not an expert in contrails.
Nor am I, KK. But I’m a pilot with some actual training in meteorology. I know the behavior of clouds and I also know that contrails are simply clouds that form under a unique set of circumstances. Once a contrail is formed it’s subject to the same forces that shape and mold any clouds, including the possibility that they encounter wind shear that tears them apart and spreads them out across a wide area and can disappear again shortly after formation. They are also influenced by the normal wake left by the airplane as it flies, which for big jets is more extreme than you may imagine.
Living where I do I can watch all this happen from my kitchen window as the daily onshore breeze blows against a mountain ridge, is pushed up and cooled, forming clouds at the top of the ridge, which then billow out in whatever direction the turbulence takes them and finally disappear again as they move inland. This is exactly what you see contrails do except that the cooling takes place because jet exhaust is cooled by being able to expand as it exits the engine rather than expanding because its altitude increases.
Whatever unusual contrail formations you see are normal. Now can we please put chemtrails to rest?
If the government of Australia is talking about seeding the atmosphere with something to prevent climate change, fight that, not some phantom called chemtrails.
Scientists and Greenies have long had the mantra that farm animals and farmers are environmental vandals. Thus large tracts of productive farmland have been bought by governments to save threatened bird, animal and fauna species. Over 11.000ha in north east Victoria and over 80,000ha in the south west riverina, not to mention locking up the Alpine national parks and the Barmah state forest.
The focus of the land buying was to save the Plains Wanderer, but now 20 years on, The Victorian Government expert on the Plains Wanderer, Dr. David Baker-Gabb, who is also an adviser to Trust for Nature, the Federal Government and a former director of Birds Australia, after a survey in October said “I couldn’t find one, they’re gone”.
Mr. Tony Varcoe, Manager for Conservation Research,Parks Victoria, has confirmed that no Plains Wanderers had been seen as part of their bi-monthly surveys since March 2011.
However, farmers and graziers adjoining the parks report regular sightings of Plains Wanderers, particularly on land that has been continually grazed by sheep. At the time of the buy-backs, farmers and graziers were telling the scientists that the birds needed open areas, but they were ignored.
Now, Mr Varcoe states ” Sheep grazing is a very effective environmental management tool to maintain suitable habitat for threatened flora and fauna”.
Mr. Baker-Gabb says; “Locking out livestock obviously doesn’t work for them”, and buying farms and closing the gate had not worked.
The Plains Wanderer is not extinct, it simply voted with its feet [and wings], away from the feel good, warm and fuzzie scientific natural environment to the degraded farming environment, where the bird is thriving.
So it took 20 years for the environmental scientists to have their light bulb moment over the Plains Wanderer. We are up to 16 years of no global warming detected………….how many scientists will it take to change the light bulb?
How correct you are, Greenies aren’t corcerned with the environment – they just like to think that they are.
The majority of Qld National Parks are the worst weed infested areas in the state. The native fauna & flora is being decimated by pest plants and animals. The north QLD parks are full of lantana, rubber vine, siam weed etc – nothing being done to control it.
They had a model as to how they [the scientists] thought the Plains Wanderer should live and behave. The bird had other ideas.
Now the scientists are completely dumping their opposition to livestock in the “Plains Wanderer Parks” even to the extent that they are calling for the Victorian government to purchase its own sheep to run in the parks!
Oh… and they have changed their tune on why the parks were bought…it isn’t as was stated at the time to get rid of the sheep and therefore grazing, to protect delicate biomass…..No, now they were bought to protect the grasslands from cropping.
Sound familiar?
If they will only listen to the Mountain Cattlemen about grazing in the Alpine parks and Barmah Forest, the Irrigation Farmers about the removal of water for the environment in the Murray Darling Basin we might be getting somewhere, and I completely agree about national Parks and their management.
I have always kept “in touch” with Glenrock over the years and the bush area has become unusable for passive recreation; walking.
While it is true that the modern basis for Glenrock was mining and that some restoration was in order there has been a very misinformed approach to the renewal.
The model that many modern eco enthusiasts use is the way they imagine the Aborigines would have managed the land.
They have devised a scheme that fits their ideas of what that may have been and implemented their own Euro Aboriginal Ecology of NSW.
The current overgrowth of material in the State Parks is Not how the Aborigines managed the areas they
lived in prior to 1788 when the first fleet arrived.
The Bill Gamage book, the Worlds Largest Estate is basically about the careful use of fire to make safe, liveable and productive areas to inhabit.
A fascinating book which is counter-intuitive, in that fire was regularly used to make the land safe and productive.
The current, “No Fire under any circumstances” Religion runs in parallel with the CAGW religion and leads
to decisions like that of “saving” the Plains Wanderer that Redress talks about.
All this goes to show that religious Enthusiasm for a cause is no substitute for careful examination, observation and analysis of problems.
This latter technique is sometimes known as that forgotten activity SCIENCE.
Walking the political tightrope and balancing off green activism and common sense has led to many deaths from fire in Victoria and extreme property damage in WA.
Time for a return to best Practice management of our natural resources and leave distorted politics out of it.
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I’ve often wondered about the logic of “minimum” catch sizes for fish and crustaceans.
Seems to me we “protect” the immature ones, 99% of which are destined to be part of the food chain anyway, before ever reaching maturity, and then allow people to take those lucky enough to survive, just as they reach breeding size.
Then we scratch our heads and wonder why fish stocks are diminishing.
Seems logical to me that we should allow the taking of the young, with bag limits, and protect the breeders by imposing a maximum catch size.
Conceptually MV it about giving all the members of a cohort that survive long enough the chance to breed at least once before they can be included in any human take.
The “99% of which are destined to be part of the food chain anyway” comment is a bit of a furphy as the bulk of that % of predation will generally happen in the very early stages of the life cycle. Cray’s are a good example. They will get to breed at least once, maybe twice before they can be legally caught, and then there are max size limits for females as the large females produce more eggs.
Then we scratch our heads and wonder why fish stocks are diminishing.
Nor really. Usually it comes down to catch effort being out of proportion to the stock.
I think Catamon that MV is likely comparing full grown highly fecund female fish with smaller naive and immature (or low fecundity) fish that fall within catch limits. These fish are subject to a much higher predation.
The comment about catch effort is true enough but the head scratching is because we think we know what we are doing but actually don’t. The gap between what we know about terrestrial vs marine species behaviour is vast and fisheries models used to set catch limits suffer from it. Add to this the regulation and monitoring of actual takes.
Actually MV, what really works are no take zones. The provide a great resource for the non-invasive users of an area, the people who go to look, not fish and the tourist operators who make a quid off them. The fish there will generally have less fear of people as well. The fish there get more numerous, but also bigger and so generally better breeders and help re-stock adjacent areas.
Needs more enforcement, and leaving the odd bogan without his boat standing on the beach with nothing after breaking the rules as a warning to others. 🙂
If you don’t know about marine biology then you have no frigging idea?
Ah, i occurs to me that you are making a joke with the NFI thing. Har Har, fell for that. However, i’m sure you’ll understand that i dont really care as the Oxycodone i’m on at the moment is pretty good stuff.
As to marine biology, yup, i do actually know a thing or two about that.
No take zones ruffle feathers but do work on a number of levels. One reason they work is partly answered by my comment above. No take zones are chosen with some knowledge of the breeding behaviour of the fish within but we still know very little in total. So setting aside an area is actually covering our ignorant arses. In a no take zone, the fish manage themselves, we actually do nothing.
If you really want to see no take zones “in action”, the northern part of Ningaloo reef in W.A. is the place to go. Jump in in a no take zone. Then jump in in a zone that can be fished and spot the difference in density and behaviour.
Abrholos has some interesting spots as well that have benefited. Coral Trout and Dhufish in localised no take areas particularly.
The difference, particularly in the “resident” species is enormous. Context is important as well. Pelagic’s don’t benefit as much of course unless the zone is very large.
In a no take zone, the fish manage themselves, we actually do nothing.
Except bust the bogans with boats as and when needed. 🙂
As you note, pelagics are a different kettle … no, even I wont sink to such a bad pun.
No catch zones do benefit pelagics though, as there are pelagics and then there are “pelagics”. Fish, squid etc that drop by a convenient rock ledge to dump eggs for instance, eels and others that even head up rivers.
It’s a sad day when the young scientists (Green) are ignoring the wealth of experience & knowledge on offer in pastoral, agricultural or fishery areas. The local cahp that told me about the Jacaranda flowering times was 89 years old – and said it would rain in SE QLD by mid November.
Luck? I don’t think so.
This alone is probably 90% of the problems today with our environment. The lure of the Green Grant money is taking away the drive for knowledge in the current CSIRO, DERM etc etc.
The Plains Wanderer is not extinct, it simply voted with its feet [and wings], away from the feel good, warm and fuzzie scientific natural environment to the degraded farming environment, where the bird is thriving.
Now if only the powers wanting to control us could recognize that we also vote with our feet, that is, with our money and our tires on the road, etc.
Now if only the powers wanting to control us could recognize that we also vote with our feet, that is, with our money and our tires on the road, etc….
____________________________________________________
Why the heck do you think there is a drive towards Agenda 21 and “sustainable cities”? (See video It is about the USA but coming to theaters cities near you.)
As Ms. Koire states thanks to the Foodshed idea, you will not be allowed to move from city to city because the city is “food self-suficient” and can only support a maxium number. (Someone must die before you have a kid too no doubt) “Sustainable cities” is just another term for the old soviet type Closed City or as they are now called – “closed administrative-territorial formations”
Do you ever wonder why the first two metres of the atmosphere in which we stand and in which we measure climate is always just a little below the temperature of the surface? There is no way that radiation alone could keep it that warm. It is all to do with conduction of energy from the surface into the oxygen and nitrogen molecules which collide with the surface. Click here to see a net energy budget diagram which clearly shows “Conduction and rising air 7%” and “Radiation absorbed by atmosphere 15%” so conduction is far from being negligible. And latent heat (23%) outstrips radiation by more than 50%.
Out of these, only conduction significantly affects those first 2 metres because the energy in the radiation and the latent heat is spread over most of the height of the troposphere, so only a very small portion is released in the first 2 metres.
Climatologists love to use those S-B equations, but have no understanding as to why they are not applicable to the surface. The main reason is that it is not an isolated body insulated from all surrounds and only able to lose energy by radiation.
Indeed the energy transferred by radiation may be determined after conduction and evaporation have played their part. The actual amount of radiation is in fact what we can all calculate using S-B. But by no means is all that radiation actually transferring thermal energy from the surface. More than 60% of such energy has already departed the surface by non-radiative processes. These processes, especially conduction, warm the nearby air, including some radiating molecules. The radiating molecules send backradiation to the surface which supplies EM energy and reduces the amount of thermal energy needed to be drawn from the surface. Hence the rate of cooling by radiation reduces so that the radiation only needs to transfer the remaining energy not already transferred by non-radiative processes.
Because of the huge, unimaginable amount of energy stored in the whole Earth system, oceans, crust, mantle and core, there is a very strong stabilising effect which I explained in detail on this page written last year. At some point in the annual seasonal cycle in each location on Earth, the surface temperature cools down on a cold winter’s night to something close to a “base temperature” supported by all this sub-surface energy. It has nothing to do with the slow net terrestrial heat flow – rather it has to do with the temperature that has been established over billions of years. And it could take perhaps hundreds of thousands of years to make much of a change in that temperature. So this is why I keep saying, the non-radiative cooling processes compensate for any slowing of the radiative cooling processes, so there is no net overall effect.
Only long-term changes in the mean Solar radiative flux reaching the surface can affect climate. These changes do happen naturally, and mankind has no control over such.
The total IN can be 100% on the energy budget diagram, no problem.
The OUT however will never match that 100%.
There are losses within the biosphere and some of these are linked to: wind turbulence/friction, energy required to enable the vast quantity of bio related chemical reactions to proceed, as examples.
I am not aware of the quantities involved in the enthalpy of Rx for all activity in the soil, sea and living, growing material on the surface but it must show up as a loss in the energy leaving Earth.
No, Martin. The process that takes place at the surface/atmosphere interface is due to molecular collisions, and this is conduction or diffusion. Convection is movement of molecules – that’s what starts to happen as soon as the molecules are warmed by conduction. The K-T energy budget is not a net energy budget. Only net energy budgets give a realistic indication of actual heat transfers. When they introduce backradiation they are showing a lot of extra radiation each way, none of it actually transferring energy to the surface. My paper discusses this, though you may find it better explained in an article I have written which is due for publication this week.
Just woke up and haven’t read much of the comment but later wanted to ask about fig 5 item c and how fig 6 relates to the overall energy balance.
Whatever the energy transfer mechanism in the first 10 cms of the air above ground is, I don’t know, conduction or radiation, but the main thing is to work out and measure How Much.
Martins diagrams are clear, simple and apparently very useful; hard to beat that regardless of the H/T mechanisms at work immediately over surface; it pretty soon becomes convection.
Hi Doug, yes your paper does explain it, and I’ll look out for the next one.
A characteristic of the lowest 2m up here on hot days is turbulence, stratification only evident at higher levels.
Notice there’s no massive “back radiation” element in images 1 and 3.
Yes it’s a mildly embarrassing oversight. In the 3rd image Figure 6 the back radiation is implicit in paths B and C. In the atmosphere I live in the molecules are completely politically unbiased and emit their thermal radiation isotropically. Therefore between 50% and 46% of it heads towards the earth, not up to space.
The diagram is incomplete.
When measured, the back radiation from clouds passing overhead is far higher than the back radiation from the clear atmosphere, so your clients are lucky the effect missing from the diagram is probably quite unimportant for building design.
Point taken about cloud. Evident last night as it happens. Cooling period extended by 2-3 hours, mild thunderstorm activity. More important in building design is “effective temperature”, eg 33°C and 30 RH% is more comfortable than say 29°C and 70 RH%.
Just wondering if you have any breakdown of the “back- radiation” process.
I would imagine ( not very scientific) that the path length of any returning IR would be very short and be diffused, perhaps increasing local air temps and increasing convection?
Well you can’t follow that Joule halfway and call it a victory.
By the 2LoTD, just below the back radiation source the now warmer air has less temperature difference with the warm air close to the surface, so convection and conduction from the surface is now marginally impeded.
You keep trying to dodge it, but the moment any part of that outgoing LWIR gets turned around the resulting reduction in surface cooling is inevitable, one way or another.
It doesn’t matter how you increase the low altitude energy density, it’s gonna stay warmer for longer because of BR.
Now really, where is the mistake in that argument?
Or … is there none? 🙂
Neither you nor I have any experimental evidence to tell us what portion of IR BR will reach the ground, but just by Beer’s Law some of it must, even if only 0.1%. The argument above is not to my knowledge a paraphrase of anything you have said – and if it turns out to be then I will accuse you of sinister subliminal messaging techniques. 😉
I just wanted to make sure you understood that 1) Back radiation is real, 2) it slows surface cooling regardless of what mix of heat processes it causes, and 3) it’s older than the hills.
in Christopher Booker’s article above –
“The BBC’s ‘dirty little secret’ lands it in a new scandal” he writes:
“The seminar’s co-organisers, Roger Harrabin and Joe Smith, were later able to boast that one of the first fruits of their good work was the BBC’s Climate Chaos season, a stream of unashamedly propagandist documentaries, led off with two fronted by Sir David Attenborough which featured a string of ludicrous scare stories.”
watch the opening 10 mins of the first of Attenborough’s “i believe in CAGW” docus, which aired just months after the 28Gate Seminar, and be prepared to be shocked by the mass of misinformation. will attenborough have to be sent to be re-educated, i wonder? notice this is not an ordinary Attenborough docu. it’s like some stock footage US/Discovery-style docu, with Attenborough simply narrating:
“The sun is doing strange things to our elements” ???
Is that about this?
A Response To E. Allan Blair
by P.A. Stahl (Member: Solar Physics Division of the American Astronomical Society)
C14 is produced in the upper atmosphere via the impact-interaction with high energy cosmic rays, say from galactic sources. Solar activity in turn modulates the intensity of these cosmic rays via the action of the heliosphere which deflects a fraction of the intense cosmic ray flux…
It follows from this that if a record could be obtained of the ratio of say C14 to C12, then one would have a proxy indicator of solar activity for any time If such a record showed falling C14 to C12 we’d deduce higher solar activity, and if increased C14 to C12 lower solar activity. If the same ratios were obtained in the modern era it might be feasible to normalize all the results to compare them and draw conclusions….
Fortuitously, a 2000-year record of C14:C12 deviations has been compiled by P.E. Damon (The Solar Output and Its Variation, The University of Colorado Press, Boulder, 1977), and this is shown in the accompanying graph….
Unfortunately the scientific content disintegrates to “These results comport with modern findings that the last ten years have been the warmest ever, since records have been kept. “ with no mention of the fact that current temperature is colder when compared to the rest of the Holocene graph
Special….. As opposed to run-of-the-mill brain-dead morons who are too scientifically illterate to see that the CAGW hypothesis has MAJOR validation issues.!
“Skeptics” are rarer than we think. Especially since some masquerading as “skeptics” aren’t really skeptical about AGW, they only pretend to be skeptical to stop action being taken.
Gee whiz JB,
You now appear to be claiming there’s a conspiracy group hiding amongst the conspirators. (I think?) 🙂
What action BTW?
Carbon tax and cap and trade?
That one doesn’t seem to be achieving any ‘climate’ outcomes.
This was done to death less than a week ago on this site.
Stripped of all the mumbo jumbo spin, what the actual survey results show are that in just twelve months:
1) – Belief that climate change is natural CLIMBED from 43.6% up to 45.3%
2) – Belief that climate change is human induced REDUCED from 46.3% down to 43.2%
3) – Belief that the whole “CAGW theory” is utter BS ROSE from 6.5% to 8.0%%.
FFS Cat even used the same “special people” lame gag.
Now fortunately for us and unfortunately for you, the truth is not a matter of majority opinion. Polls don’t run the universe. It has its own set of rules and bothers not one tiny bit about humans. All we can do is try to figure out what those rules are and then live with them.
So I’ll take real evidence over your climate change theories any day even if I’m the last denier on earth.
And if you or anyone wonders about my using denier, look up the history of a little ditty called Yankee Doodle and learn from it. I’m quite happy to wear your label and toss it back in your face. It’s rapidly becoming a badge of honor like so many other pejoratives thrown around by fools who can’t make a sound argument for their cause.
Now do go away until you can hold an actual debate, backed up by real evidence.
The issue of how the air close to the surface is warmed primarily by conduction and convection (and not by radiation) is discussed in an article about to be published in the next 24 hours (co-authored by myself and John O’Sullivan) which puts forward the viewpoint held by most of the 120 or more members of Principia Scientific International all of whom know that the blame does not lie with carbon dioxide. There are several papers already on our website to which I have referred above, and readers should also study Computational Blackbody Radiation by another PSI member, Claes Johnson, professor of Applied Mathematics.
partisan politics causes blindness. when on earth will those who still believe the CAGW scam is run by greenies & leftists wake up:
17 Nov: Detroit News: David Shepardson: EPA rejects bid to relax ethanol mandate
The Environmental Protection Agency on Friday rejected a request from eight governors and nearly 200 members of Congress to waive requirements for the use of corn-based ethanol in gasoline, after last summer’s severe drought wilted much of the nation’s corn crop.
The move is a victory for corn farmers who have seen corn prices jump 400 percent in recent years. But it is a loss for pork and beef producers who say the diversion of corn to ethanol raises feed prices and ultimately prices at the supermarket.
Automakers have clashed with ethanol advocates and opposed boosting the percentage of ethanol. They argue that higher concentrations of ethanol in gasoline — which may be necessary in order to meet stepped-up minimums for annual ethanol usage — can harm engines in most vehicles on the road today…
***
The law was signed in 2007 by President George W. Bush and requires production of increasing quantities of ethanol…
Michal Rosenoer, biofuels policy campaigner at Friends of the Earth, criticized the EPA decision.
“If the worst U.S. drought in more than 50 years and skyrocketing food prices are not enough to make EPA act, it falls to Congress to provide relief from our senseless federal support for corn ethanol,” he said…
The American Coalition for Ethanol praised the decision by the EPA.
“Despite millions of dollars spent by Big Oil and Big Food to shamelessly attack American-made ethanol, it comes as no surprise EPA denied the requests to waive the RFS because the facts are on our side,” said Brian Jennings, executive vice president of the group…
In August, a top United Nations official urged the Obama administration to suspend ethanol requirements as fears of food shortages grew around the world.
The law assures big demand for corn. It is popular in corn-growing states, making it politically difficult to waive the requirements…
By some estimates, Congress has awarded $45 billion in subsidies to the ethanol industry since 1980…
This year, the Renewable Fuel Standard requires the use of 13.2 billion gallons of corn ethanol, the production of which could require using more than half the country’s corn crop, up from 5 billion gallons in 2007.
Next year, the standard increases to 13.9 billion gallons. By 2022, the U.S. must use 36 billion gallons of biofuels, though 21 billion gallons are supposed to be from advanced cellulosic ethanol.
To meet the increasing amount of ethanol required under the law, the EPA has approved use of a higher blend of ethanol fuel called E15. It is 15 percent ethanol, up from the E10 at most pumps today. Just a handful of stations currently sell E15…
Last month General Motors Co., Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler Group LLC approved the use of E15, but only for 2013 model vehicles and newer.
They still oppose the use for vehicles from 2012 and earlier. http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20121117/AUTO01/211170359/EPA-rejects-bid-to-relax-ethanol-mandate
the most dishonest thing about the following is it pretends this is something new:
18 Nov: BBC: Nick Childs: Defence firms seek broader agenda
A number of defence and aerospace companies have begun to explore how they could apply their skills to help with global challenges like energy shortages, the environment and natural disasters. But is this just a potentially lucrative new market to compensate for stagnating defence budgets?
This week some of those involved in the initiative gathered at a conference in London. One of the instigators, Nick Cook, a former aerospace journalist who now runs a company called Dynamixx, explained how he latched on to the idea.
“It was patently obvious to me that the aerospace and defence sectors had technologies which operated in all segments of the eco-sphere from sub-sea to space,” he said. “So why should they not know about the environment and how to go about tackling some of the particularly big problems encapsulated by climate change?”…
Recently, five of the major defence and aerospace companies – US firms Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman, and Saab and Finmeccanica from Europe – signed up to a statement promising to look at co-operation to tackle what they called “global challenges”, that could include renewable energy, climate change, and disaster relief…
There is, of course, a potentially significant economic incentive. Defence spending globally is still growing. But Western defence budgets are stagnating or declining, and the global market is getting more crowded. On the other hand, it has been estimated that the market for global infrastructure development could amount to $40 trillion (£25trn) over the next 25 years… http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-20385312#
Carbon Market Europe 16 November
This week’s edition explains why CO2 prices fell by more than a fifth despite the publication of an EU proposal to drastically curb supply, and how the promise of a global pact to limit emissions from aviation led Brussels to rein in its CO2 regulation of foreign flights. Plus, Gordon Moffat of European steel association Eurofer writes on why the EU’s plan to delay permit sales puts at risk Europe’s industrial future and the credibility of its carbon market. http://www.pointcarbon.com/news/cme/1.2063316
even if “rich countries” were doing well, the best the “poor countries” could hope for is crumbs from the trading of carbon dioxide:
Rich countries to constrain climate cash pledges this year: EU
LONDON, Nov. 16 (Reuters Point Carbon) – Budgetary crises and stuttering economic growth mean rich nations are unlikely to pledge major sums this year to help poor countries tackle climate change, Europe’s senior climate negotiator said on Friday, though the EU will continue to give “significant” money. http://www.pointcarbon.com/news/1.2063286
Is Geo Engineering (aka spraying crap into the air we all breathe) a good idea?
Should there be a public referendum “IF” such activities were “HYPOTHETICALLY” taking place? Let’s see what some “climate scientists” (aka UN Agenda 21 puppets) have to say about it shall we?
Several leading climate change experts have highlighted the need for further research and understanding into the effects, risks and cost-effectiveness of implementing geo-engineering procedures to counter-act the effects of climate change.
The experts were speaking at Australia’s first geo-engineering symposium, Geoengineering the climate? A southern hemisphere perspective, which recently took place in Canberra.
Proposed geo-engineering procedures discussed at the symposium included Solar Radiation Management (SRM) and Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR).
“The geo-engineering of climate really comes in two packages- one is you go out and you do things to reflect some of the sunlight away from the planet and cool it, to actually offset the warming that’s caused by these gasses, and the second one is that you actually try to remove the gasses from the atmosphere”, explained guest speaker Dr Graeme Pearman from Monash University.
Proposed options for SRM detailed at the symposium included the simple measure of painting one’s roof white to reflect sunlight back to space, to the more involved measures of placing sulfate aerosols in the stratosphere to scatter radiation, and solar collectors in space that reflect solar radiation.
Dr Greg Bodeker of Bodeker Scientific, New Zealand, devoted a large portion of his presentation to the analysis of sulfate aerosol geo-engineering, highlighting that while the aerosol geo-engineering would almost certainly work, the associated risk of stratospheric aerosols is very high.
As Dr Bodeker explained, “It comes back to this whole idea of how complete is our knowledge of the system, and how certain are we that our knowledge is sufficiently complete to be able to provide policy makers with sound scientific basis for the formulation of this policy?”
“In general, we do not know enough about the system to be able to be confident in making statements about how the system will respond to any sort of geo-engineering”, he added.
Mr Roger Beale, a member of the Climate Commission and speaker at the symposium, spoke primarily of governance risks in regard to climate change mitigation and geo-engineering.
Mr Beale stated that geo-engineering can be considered viable in light of “the risk of failure of global governance to support mitigation”, whereby “SRM and CDR could theoretically be implemented by one or a small number of countries without global agreement.”
However, Mr Beale also highlighted the issues of equity in world-wide geo-engineering, stating “only a few countries might be able to actually change the global climate, but then they would have to bear that ongoing cost, and you would have to keep doing it… and doing it at larger dosage rates if you are not mitigating emissions”.
Continuing, Mr Beale added that these factors could provoke a “sudden cessation”, leading to “rapid change” that would ensue from the impact of “greatly increased concentrations of greenhouse gasses”.
“There is a huge diversity of opportunities, and most of them we’re not in a position at this stage to really be able to advise the pros and cons and that’s partly why we need more research”, stated Dr Graeme Pearman.
Mr Beale stated that geo-engineering can be considered viable in light of “the risk of failure of global governance to support mitigation”, whereby “SRM and CDR could theoretically be implemented by one or a small number of countries without global agreement.”
However, Mr Beale also highlighted the issues of equity in world-wide geo-engineering, stating “only a few countries might be able to actually change the global climate, but then they would have to bear that ongoing cost, and you would have to keep doing it… and doing it at larger dosage rates if you are not mitigating emissions”.
No, none whatsoever.
But if the government is spending money funding scientists “talking” about doing it “without global agreement” in increasing “dosages”, I have no problem imagining that it is indeed possible that they ARE DOING IT RIGHT NOW without global agreement or agreement of the population.
This, and what I see above my head is proof enough for me.
Do you suppose that governments would never do anything behind our backs?
(or in this case above our heads???)
Sonny, instead of replying to what you wrote I instead thought I’d count the logical fallacies in your argument. Just three. I thought there were more.
This is an interesting idea Sonny, personally i see no evidence which suggests it is happening but lets suppose for the moment it is happening as we speak.
At some point this geo engineering (GE) is going to cause the temps to drop and maybe we have had this 15 year hiatus due to GE people are now starting to question the AGW theory based on this fact, our emissions have increased quite a bit of late but yet the temps refuse to budge so people are now openly questioning this stupid theory but inknowns to us (sceptics at least) it is teh GE that is stopping the temps from rising.
Now lets assume they continue to pump out crushed glass or whatever up there to the point where they drop the temp by say 0.5C, do they allow the sceptics to gloat about how stupid Matt and James have been or do they come clean in order to get the heros welcome they al feel they richly deserve?
Alternatively they may cock it up and drop the temps by too much creating a negative feed back or tipping point and we spiral rapidly into an ice age much to James astonishment and they keep quiet. Thus allowing we sceptics to claim victory and work on a thousand coal fired power plants begins immediately.
Of course all of the above is written in jest, what is not is that some mad scientist somewhere (supported by idiots like James) actually think they can change the weather but not only change but control. I suspect we could change the weather somewhat it is the controlling part that scares me the most.
Crackar,
Here is another hypothesis.
Global warming is the excuse that will one day be used retrospectively to justify
The spraying of aerosols into the atmosphere (but the real reason is something else altogether perhaps weather modification experiments for military applications, biological weapons, solar shielding from mass coronal ejections etc etc). Use your imagination!
They do this in a clandestine way because the public would never accept the health risks associated with polluting our atmosphere irrespective of what the motives were or their degree of benevolence.
One question to resolve is if we currently have the technology to spray shit out of a plane in such a way that it LOOKS like normal contrails.
Do we have advanced enough propaganda techniques to put out a lot of misinformation on the web convincing people that this is what planes have always done?
Do you remember asking the question as a child “Mommy, why do planes make clouds”? “Mommy, why is there a rainbow around the sun?”
I am not disputing any of the above, i am merely trying to understand the mechanism they use to spray whatever it is they spray. For any of the things you say to be true we must first understand how they do it.
Yes patents there are many i am sure but to physically change the climate by spraying a substance into the atmosphere would require a large amount of spraying. Remember the whole point of GE is to block out the sun or reflect the suns rays etc.
It may suprise you but even secret squirrell stuff from the military has to comply with CASA when it comes to A/C safety regs etc. You would need a tremendous amount of A/C doing the spraying to have an effect so one would expect to see A/C with this equipment attached, have you seen any Sonny?
This flows on to what GA is asking so i will respond to them as well.
For any of the things you say to be true we must first understand how they do it.
GA i understand your confusion, here is an example. You believe in AGW but if i ask you for evidence to suggest AGW is true we find you have none. Now take this methodology and apply it to chemtrails, Sonny believes people are spraying chemicals into the atmosphere to GE the climate so the first thing we need to do is establish whether they are actually doing this. Until this is achieved there is no point in discussing it any further.
I will wait until that lone pea inside your head stops rattling around before i go any further OK.
Crop dusters prove we have the technology but that was never in question, we need to establish whether “they” are actually doing it.
I dont care what a weather reporter says about chemtrails as that is not evidence is it.
The kind of evidence i am talking about is say photographic, do you have photos of A/C fitted with spraying equipment that have the ability to cruise above 40000 feet for example?
As for military A/C and i mean C130H or J model, Caribou or C17 then they would have to be moded, all A/C modes that can affect flight are done through where i work, we have done some interesting and unusual mods but i can tell you we have never moded anything that can do this.
Crackar, why should the quantity of spraying required be any obstacle ?
You need a large number of Big Macs to keep Americans obese but we have the technology! I presume that billions of dollars have been made available for Geo Engineering.
Cracker I have no evidence whatsoever for my belief.
I do not have access to these aerial vehicles to photograph them – nor will I link to supposed chemtrail plane photoraphs on the web because these are available for anybody to goolge and assess.
Ah good we are making progress, yes we have the technology to make Americans obese by supplying them with a never ending supply of Big Macs (this fact is a problem in many countries i might add) and whats more we have the evidence to support this claim.
We have the technology to fit spraying or if you like dispersing systems to A/C for the sole purpose of GE the climate, these systems would need to be fitted to A/C capable of high altitude long range flight, enough A/C operating all over the globe in unison 24 hours a day to accomplish such a feat? Plausable i suppose but do we have the evidence?
A photo?, a video? a signed statement by a whistleblower perhaps?
I have not seen any and all i ask of you is to supply with such evidence if you have any, supply we the evidence and you will convince me until then i will remain sceptical.
Crackar I have no proof that I have obtained personally.I have my own photos and videos but these are easily debunked as “regular contrails”.
Others online have what they claim is proof and this is why so many people have created websites, petitions, analyzed snow, rain water, taken photographic evidence, video evidence etc etc.
I have succeeded in raising awareness of the possibility of chemtrails. The standards of proof are and should be determined by the individual through independent research not me spoon feeding it to you.
For what it is worth (which is not much) Someone on one of the farming blogs along with the help of friends grabbed a sample of the stuff at an airforce base in the USA and had it analysed. Unfortunately that was years ago. Since I take the whole subject as a bit wacky I did not bookmark it.
There are also planes available who can spray. Think Agent Orange during Vietnam, crop spraying and dumping water on fires. Therefore it is certainly possible.
Will a government do such things? YES. Think of the forced neutering of native American women by the US government before the 1970’s as well as the radiation experiments done on unknowing cancer patients (My mom was a subject and suffered very bad radiation burns by “mistake” from a doctor who was writting a paper on her.)
The easiest way for government to hide what they are doing is to say those who are trying to gather data are wackos and Conspiracy Nuts. Heck they are using the same method to sideline skeptics. Unfortunately there are enough wackos out there to taint those who are not wacko so the labeling works even when there is massive evidence on the side of the “Wackos”
Sonny i dont want you to spoon feed me anything i am just trying to get to the bottom of this thing.
For example if you wanted to perform an act of GE i could not think of a more expensive and useless way to do it than to sprinkle shit in the air. What would be the point anyway……block out the sun? Oh wont that ne great and when all the plants die and we have no food what do we eat?
The theory does not even make sense.
I looked at quite a few google links to chemtrails and not once did i see anything that could be construed as evidence, oh i saw lots of planes flying around with contrails but no evidence of dispersion equipment mounted to passenger jet type aircraft.
Another brain fart was by that pommy git who wanted to paint the rooves of houses and road white!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Remenmber the idea to dump iron filings into the ocean?
I seem to recall another stupid idea about covering the ocean to cool it down.
Then there is the giant space mirrors
The list of stupid goes on.
If you want to believe in whacky theories i suggest you look elsewhere.
“”(O)ne thing we can do is to inject sulphur into the stratosphere, because that sort of sulphur will stay up there for a considerable time.
It will create a sort of a brown haze, much like you see over parts of Asia today but higher in the sky, and that will act as an agent of global dimming.
It will prevent some sunlight reaching the surface of our planet, and therefore will cool our planet.
The way we may do that is simply by adding sulphur into jet fuel.
Most modern jets fly in the lower part of the stratosphere, so releasing sulphur into the atmosphere at that level would be an efficient way of dimming our planet.
?
Now the consequences of that sort of experiment, they’re unknown,…””
?
Quote; Gee Aye
November 19, 2012 at 2:58 pm: “this is the funniest line ever!”
Fact: It would be funny if it wasn’t crazy & true!
I think this is a real step up for the Jo nova blog.
This is the first time I have achieved a level of debate here on the topic of Geo Engineering without being shouted down as a lunatic.
I this chemtrailing, Geo engineering, aerosol spraying or whatever other euphemism one wishes to adopt is going on (although I have absolutely no evidence that it is), then what we have on our hands and in our skies is one of the most outrageous environmental and public health crimes ever committed.
We need more people to wake up, harden up and start asking some serious questions. Google “chemtrails” and you will get tens of thousands of hits.
Are all if tree people deluded? Conspiracy nuts feeding off each others psychosis?
Or is this real and happening right now?
Gee Aye,
Try putting a bit more effort into making your comments substantive as opposed to simply providing some light comic relief and we’ll talk.
Debates in the absence of evidence is what CAGW is all about.
That’s I’d you will find a climate science to debate you. Usually they just send cannon fodder.
OK… you are correct. I should have written “debates without data”. You might be aware that there is actual data that is debated by warmists and sceptics alike.
I wonder if those people who constantly tell us that fossil fuel power generation receives (massive) subsidies would like to comment on this comparison from the U.S.
This comparison was made by the Institute for Energy Research, and was a direct copy from the the AWEA. (American Wind Energy Association)
(The bolds are mine)
Further, taxpayers are paying huge sums to subsidize wind power. According to the Energy Information Administration, subsidies for wind power in fiscal year 2010 were almost $5 billion, 19 percent more than the subsidies that fossil fuels (oil, gas, and coal) received. And, 97 percent of the wind subsidies were due to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Further, in 2010, wind power produced just 2.3 percent of our generation, making wind energy subsidies cost $56.29 per megawatt hour, while coal subsidies were just $0.64 per megawatt hour and natural gas and petroleum subsidies were the same as coal on a per megawatt hour basis. That is, wind subsidies were 88 times higher than those for coal or natural gas and petroleum on a unit of production basis.
Can you see how, while subsidies may seem to be similar, (refer to the 19%) when they are correlated with the power actually generated for consumption it brings it into stark relief.
Also, in the same article, a major problem, also not mentioned is that of some grid related problems with respect to Wind Power Generation, and again, the bolds are mine here.
Electricity grid-related problems. A grid-related problem that stems from the use of wind power is the ramping up and down of fossil fuel generators and in some cases nuclear generators to accommodate wind generation when the wind is blowing. When wind capacity was small, natural gas turbines were able to deal with most of the ramping. But now, coal is also being ramped up and down based on the output of the wind units and in some cases, nuclear units are paying penalties because they cannot be ramped up and down in concert with wind generation’s waning and peaking. Nuclear and coal fired plants, like most machines, work most efficiently at constant speeds, and are not therefore designed to respond to the whims of whenever the wind blows. The ramping results in increased carbon dioxide emissions because greater coal fuel consumption occurs when a coal unit is ramped up and down than if the unit is run continuously. This is a similar phenomenon to when automobiles are in stop and go traffic compared to their being run continuously at optimum highway speeds. Efficiency is therefore sacrificed in order to accommodate politically-dictated sources of energy which produce energy when it is least needed, such as at night.
All this to cater for a method of power generation that makes up barely 2.3% of consumed power in the U.S. ….. from around 25,000 huge wind towers.
Correct James – in fact it has cooled – AND the rate of cooling is accelerating.
Working from YOUR start date of 2001, using what is claimed to be the most accurate record (HADCRUT 4), and plotting at three year steps, the accelerating cooling is quite obvious.
The other metric to watch is cooling events like a flip to more La Niñas, and record breaking snows and frosts in the last ten years. You can fiddle with the temperature record but you can not mess with frost/snow as easily.
When the earth is ‘warm’ the jets are zonal when the earth cools due to less solar energy the result is the jet stream becomes meridional. This produces standing wave patterns like the Russian and US heat/drought conditions. It also sucks cold air down from the poles to produce more snow. Weather becomes more variable like it was in the 1960s – 70s and during the Little Ice Age. (Why do you think the battle cry is now weather weirding? They KNOW what cold weather/inactive sun does) link
This meridional jet stream pattern is what cause Sandy to hit NJ/NY instead of NC. Anyone watching Sandy AND the jets like I did could see it easily and predict the Sandy would hit further north.
Another dud green scheme from Labor – all seeming and no doing, with taxpayers again losing millions:
ONE of the nation’s largest tree planting schemes has become an expensive failure with the majority of the 2.5 million trees planted under the River Murray Forest project now dead because of poor planning, drought and a ban on watering.
Former premier Mike Rann allocated $5.7 million to the scheme in a bid to woo the Greens before the 2007 South Australian election…
At the 2007 program launch the former premier also pushed the eco benefits of the plantings, saying the natives, once established, would absorb 12,800 tonnes of carbon dioxide, equal to taking 35,000 cars off the road.
luckily for the World Bank, our PM has their back.
Angry –
will u still be angry, if/when?
July 2011: The Australia Institute: The real cost of direct action
An analysis of the Coalition’s Direct Action Plan
Could tree planting achieve the target more easily?
The Coalition has promoted tree planting as a possible way to cheaply reduce emissions. To put the scale of the emissions reduction that the Coalition has committed to into context let’s look at how many trees would need to be planted to reach the 2020 target. To reduce emissions by 160 million tonnes of CO2e in 2020 it would require planting trees over an area of 265,600 square kilometres or far more than the size of Victoria. The trees would also require 96,944 gigalitres (GL) of water per year. The controversial draft Murray Darling Basin plan released last year planned to buy back water entitlements by 3,500 GL. This means the trees planted as a carbon sink would require more than 27 times the water proposed to be cut from the Murray Darling Basin. The Coalition is not proposing cutting all the emissions by planting trees. The above figures are just to highlight the scale of the undertaking if trees were to be used as a major way of offsetting emissions.
According to their Direct Action Plan the Coalition plans to offset emissions by 15 million tonnes from planting trees. To achieve this would require an area of 25,000 square kilometres and about 9,100 GL, two and a half times the amount of water proposed to be bought back by the Murray Darling Basin Plan. https://www.tai.org.au/index.php?q=node%2F19&pubid=878&act=display
Nationals: The Coalition’s Direct Action Plan
Green Corridors and other measures
The Coalition commits to the planting of an additional 20 million trees by 2020 to re-establish urban forests and green corridors… http://www.nationals.org.au/DirectActionPlan.aspx
14 Nov: Asia Times: Why bankers rule the world
By Ellen Brown
(Ellen Brown is an attorney and president of the Public Banking Institute. In Web of Debt, her latest of eleven books, she shows how a private cartel has usurped the power to create money from the people themselves, and how we the people can get it back. Her websites are http://WebofDebt.com, http://EllenBrown.com, and http://PublicBankingInstitute.org.)
In the 2012 edition of Occupy Money released this month, Professor Margrit Kennedy writes that a stunning 35% to 40% of everything we buy goes to interest. This interest goes to bankers, financiers, and bondholders, who take a 35% to 40% cut of our gross domestic product.
That helps explain how wealth is systematically transferred from Main Street to Wall Street…
Tradesmen, suppliers, wholesalers and retailers all along the chain of production rely on credit to pay their bills. They must pay for labor and materials before they have a product to sell and before the end buyer pays for the product 90 days later. Each supplier in the chain adds interest to its production costs, which are passed on to the ultimate consumer. Kennedy cites interest charges ranging from 12% for garbage collection, to 38% for drinking water to, 77% for rent in public housing in her native Germany.
Her figures are drawn from the research of economist Helmut Creutz, writing in German and interpreting Bundesbank publications. They apply to the expenditures of German households for everyday goods and services in 2006; but similar figures are seen in financial sector profits in the United States, where they composed a whopping 40% of US business profits in 2006. That was five times the 7% made by the banking sector in 1980. Bank assets, financial profits, interest, and debt have all been growing exponentially…
In 2011, the US federal government paid US$454 billion in interest on the federal debt – nearly one-third the total $1,100 billion paid in personal income taxes that year. If the government had been borrowing directly from the Federal Reserve – which has the power to create credit on its books and now rebates its profits directly to the government – personal income taxes could have been cut by a third…
Consider California. At the end of 2010, it had general obligation and revenue bond debt of $158 billion. Of this, $70 billion, or 44%, was owed for interest. If the state had incurred that debt to its own bank – which then returned the profits to the state – California could be $70 billion richer today. Instead of slashing services, selling off public assets, and laying off employees, it could be adding services and repairing its decaying infrastructure.
The only US state to own its own depository bank today is North Dakota. North Dakota is also the only state to have escaped the 2008 banking crisis, sporting a sizable budget surplus every year since then. It has the lowest unemployment rate in the country, the lowest foreclosure rate, and the lowest default rate on credit card debt… http://atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/NK14Dj01.html
The nit Block is picking is pretty dumb in my opinion.
Gary North, in attacking Ellen Brown for her support of government-issued credit, has repeatedly referred to her as a “Greenbacker.
…The Greenback movement refers to those who supported the issuance of interest-free paper money at the federal level during the Civil War era…
Calling for a constitutional amendment to make Greenbacks constitutional means that Ellen Brown is not a Greenbacker, since she is saying that the Greenbacks that were issued at the time were unconstitutional, and would be unconstitutional if issued today, until an amendment is passed. http://fauxcapitalist.com/2012/04/29/gary-north-ellen-brown-is-not-a-greenbacker/
Ellen Brown is a Greenbacker she is just going about instituting the same idea legally instead of ignoring the US Constitution as was done in 1913.
Block even states in another article
Gary North recently wrote a very, very good essay …before I get to them, let me say that I regard them as only minor errors in an otherwise excellent, no, make that magnificent piece on LRC. Gary explains in great detail why most mainstream economists think a full gold (coin) standard will lead to economic disarray. He also unearths in great detail the evils of the fed in suborning most mainstream money-macro economists.
Ellen Brown is correct in many things she says but taking fiat money creation away from the Banksters and giving it to the politicians via a constitutional amendment creates the possibility of another Zimbabwe The reason for tying money to gold and/or silver is to keep the Banksters AND the politicians from printing it at will. Fiat money in any form lets the creator steal/tax the people through the hidden mechanism of wage devaluation and price inflation. Adding to the gold supply though mining also does this (Think colonial-era Spain) but it at least puts a good set of brakes on the process since you can not just print it a will.
I would suggest reading Gary North’s (Mises on Money) (It beats slogging through Mises 885 page Human Action see info at link)
June 2012: 4 mins: Youtube: CNBC admits We’re all SLAVES to CENTRAL BANKERS
“Do we all work for Central Bankers? Is this Global Governance at last? Is it One World.. with the Central Bankers in charge?” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efKchHKMb2k&feature=player_embedded
funny thing is, CNBC was/is the only business channel to acknowledge reality on occasion, yet it was removed, from Austar & then, i believe, Foxtel. now that Foxtel owns Austar, it still isn’t available:
Jan 2011: DTV Forum: Austar Covertly Reducing Available Channel(s).
We are self-funded retirees who juggle our limited finances so not to have to work or become dole bludgers. In order to do that we buy and sell shares which in reality is only one step up the financial ladder from the TAB. Like all the best punters we need to study form and the latest prices, CNBC Asia was a relevent channel to our region with plenty of Aussie content, unlike Bloomberg which imo is far too US biased. Despite both actually being American… http://www.dtvforum.info/index.php?showtopic=92449
yet it would seem Foxtel has special packages for Business, which includes CNBC!
Just read this on my Windows 8 news feed. Dont know which news source it came from.
Personally, If the world bank is running this scare then it has NOTHING to do with facts and all to do with money money money.
Its all still very much entry level scare tactics.
Warning of Devastating 4C Warming
The World Bank has warned that global temperatures could rise by four degrees this century without immediate action, with potentially devastating consequences for coastal cities and the poor.
Issuing a call for action, the World Bank tied the future wealth of the planet – and especially developing regions – to immediate efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions from sources such as energy production.
“The time is very, very short. The world has to tackle the problem of climate change more aggressively,” World Bank President Jim Yong Kim said on a conference call on Sunday as he launched a report conducted for the global lender.
“We will never end poverty if we don’t tackle climate change. It is one of the single biggest challenges to social justice today.”
The study said the planet could warm 4.0 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels as early as the 2060s if governments’ promises to fight climate change are not met.
Even if nations fulfill current pledges, the study gave a 20 per cent likelihood of a four-degree rise by 2100 and said that a three-degree rise appeared likely. UN-led climate negotiations have vowed to limit the rise of temperatures to no more than two degrees.
“A four-degree warmer world can and must be avoided. We need to hold warming below two degrees,” Kim said.
“Lack of ambitious action on climate change threatens to put prosperity out of reach of millions and roll back decades of development.”
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in a statement that the study showed the need to hold nations to their commitment, made last year in Durban, South Africa, to put in place a legally binding new climate agreement by 2015.
The more than 190 nations in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change start their latest annual talks on November 26 in Qatar.
Global temperatures have already risen about 0.8 degrees Celsius.
The planet has charted a number of record-breaking temperatures over the past decade and experienced frequent disasters some experts blame on climate change, most recently superstorm Sandy, which ravaged Haiti and the US East Coast.
The report said that, if temperatures rise by four degrees, regions will feel different effects – recent heatwaves in Russia could become an annual norm and July in the Mediterranean could be nine degrees higher than the area’s warmest level now.
Under that scenario, the acidity of the oceans could rise at a rate unprecedented in world history, threatening coral reefs that protect shorelines and provide a habitat for fish species.
Rising sea levels could inundate coastal areas with the most vulnerable cities found in Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Madagascar, Mexico, Mozambique, the Philippines, Venezuela and Vietnam, the study said.
“Many small islands may not be able to sustain the communities at all. There would be irreversible loss of biodiversity,” Kim said.
The study found that the most alarming impact may be on food production, with the world already expected to struggle to meet demand for a growing and increasingly wealthy population that is eating more meat.
Low-lying areas such as Bangladesh, Egypt, Vietnam and parts of Africa’s coast could see major blows to food production, with drought severely hindering agriculture elsewhere, the study said.
Flooding can also contaminate drinking water, increasing illnesses such as diarrhoea.
The dire warnings were designed to encourage bolder action, but the report did not focus on potential steps.
Identifying one area, Kim called for less reliance on coal, which is the dirtiest major form of energy but is politically sensitive in the United States and China due to industry jobs.
Kim said that the World Bank was determined to support renewable energy in its lending, saying: “We do everything we can not to invest in coal – everything we possibly can.”
The fight against climate change has faced political obstacles in a number of nations including the United States, where many conservative lawmakers have called action too costly and cast doubt on the science.
Kim, a physician and former president of Dartmouth College who was tapped for the World Bank by US President Barack Obama, said that 97 per cent of scientists agreed that human activity was causing climate change.
“As someone who has lived in the world of science for a long time, 97 per cent is unheard-of consensus,” he said.
The report was carried out by German-based Climate Analytics and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. The World Bank said it did not consider the study a substitute for next UN-backed scientific assessment on climate change expected in 2014.
So 97% of bankers agree global warming is real.
So these bankers that are so worried about global warming are going to do all the banking associated global warming climate change for free. 🙂
Personally, If the world bank is running this scare then it has NOTHING to do with facts and all to do with money money money.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Of Course the World Bank is running the scare. Who do you think was running the IPCC before Dr Pachauri?
Robert Watson of the World Bank now Chief Scientific Advisor to the UK Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
This is a Climategate e-mail made in response to Robert Watson TELLING the crowd what to put into the Summary for Policymakers. One of the people included BTW was Dr Pachauri
…clearly about the main messages. I must admit that I am somewhat confused about the 26 page summary, since this comes very close to (although it is different from) the full-scale document the various teams are currently writing. My view would be that those teams take their own text as the starting point and try to improve/shorten it on the basis of your text. Here, I only respond to your main messages in italics and mainly focus on WG3 issues…..
Question 1:
Most points made may be introducing the rest of the SYR, but they do not address the question. I think the chapter should do both. In my view, in addition to your 6 paragraphs, one or more paragraphs could be related to five key aspects of Article 2: (a) dangerous interference, (b) stabilization, (c) natural adaptation, (d) food security, and (e) sustainable economic development. Three of these words (b), (c), (d) are not even mentioned. Two of your paragraphs now do hardly relate to the question (the 4th and 6th)
…I would not include a WG3 paragraph, like “The Kyoto Protocol has led to the creation of new market mechanisms”… http://foia2011.org/index.php?id=4628
The e-mail was long but please read it because it give a very good look at how they were intentionally twisting science to fit the political agenda.
…The first italics could be positively relating to the question rather than negatively; e.g. take the 2nd and 3rd sentence as italics: “Scientific, technical and economic knowledge provides indispensable information needed to arrive at an informed judgement as to what level of anthropogenic interference would be dangerous… ”
The e-mail then goes on about how to twist the wording so that
an increase of GHG concentrations …relates dangerous anthropogenic interference to the level and the time-frame of stabilization of concentrations of GHG concentrations in the atmosphere, which would be required to allow ecosystems to adapt naturally to climate change, to ensure that food production is not threatened and to enable economic development to proceed in a sustainable manner….
What Bull patties. As if plants need time to adjust to more CO2 when they are near starvation levels.
Another e-mail from Kenneth M. Chomitz of the World Bank shows interference with how a peer-reviewed journal is run.
…. Dear Michael,
I really like the solution of presenting view and counterview articles. I retain some reservations about your proposed editorial. It seems to me that you have the difficult problem of wearing two hats: one as the advocate of particular policies and viewpoints, and the other as an editor of a journal which aspires to be a neutral forum for policy discussion. I appreciate and sympathize with the depth and grounding of your personal views. However, as editor, it seems to me, you have to bend over backwards to be neutral. The editorial uses charged words like ‘demonize’ and could easily spark the war of words you wish to avoid. A strongly worded editorial risks associating the journal with a particular viewpoint, and hence reducing the journal’s value and reputation as a neutral forum…
Kenneth M. Chomitz
Development Research Group
World Bank
[Answering e-mail]
from: Hadi Dowlatabadi
subject: Re: [New] Editorial for Climate Policy, Issue 2.
Dear Ken,
I agree with your perspective, but why not set a realistic target? The editorial columns at Science, Nature and New Scientist have rarely hidden their subjective perspectives. I think there are shades to this, and Michael can be a shade grayer, but the passion is also important.
The dialogue approach allows him to be editor, hold strong opinions, but still be viewed as someone who is willing to listen. This is how Steve Schneider has conducted his reign at Climatic Change and I believe despite his well known personal perspectives he has been able to draw on many in the community to contribute to the dialogue that defines the differences in perspectives permeating this subject.
On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but – which means that we must include all doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climate change. To do that we need to get some broad based support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, means getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This “double ethical bind” we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both. http://climatesight.org/2009/04/12/the-schneider-quote/
A tad bit weasel wordy isn’t it? It points out that he was very much an Activist first and trying to balance that with science and not the other way around. Notice that the blog I took this from, who confirmed that Schneider did say it, can not see that Schneider has in this restatement of what he said, CONFIRMED he is not an objective scientist. An objective scientist would not have a “double ethical bind” in regard to the climate if he was not trying to make “the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climate change.” Instead he would be working to determine IF there was “disastrous climate change.”
More on the World Bank from the Climategate e-mails.
There are 43 Results found for “worldbank.org” at FOIA link
Remember the “Dog Ate My Homework” stone walling of FOIA’s from sceptics? Well it seems the “Team” was very happy to give the World Bank Raw Data. And it even includes our favorite Mike Mann.
subject: Re: Fw: Need to draw the 1000 yr record on a World Bank cover asap…
Hi Michael, [Mann]
Hope all’s well with you. I am finishing up a not particularly contemplative sabbatical at the World Bank, working on their World Development report. We are 2 weeks away from printing and the cover we were going to use just appeared on another book.
Chaos and panic ensued….
Dear Keith –
I understand from Michael Mann (see exchange below) that you may be able to provide us the raw data of the 12 proxy temperature reconstructions for the past 1000 years that were used for the “Dire Predictions” book. As you will gather from the emails below, we need to quickly redesign the cover of the forthcoming World Development Report on Development and Climate Change – the cover graphic we had chosen appeared on a different report 2 weeks ago …
Alex
I am forwading this message to Tim Osborn , my colleague in CRU who will be able to supply the data – he drew the Figures in the AR4 report and you might usefully discuss the data and figures directly with him. I am away from work for some time yet – good luck
Keith
Dear Alex, I’ve made available all the data used in the IPCC AR4 paleo chapter (at….
Tim –
thanks for these. Having the source data will make things much easier for us. I hope you enjoyed Perseid!
-alex http://foia2011.org/index.php?id=4219
Do you really need anything more to show just who is buddy-buddy with who?
…The draft hands effective control of climate change finance to the World Bank; would abandon the Kyoto protocol – the only legally binding treaty that the world has on emissions reductions; and would make any money to help poor countries adapt to climate change dependent on them taking a range of actions.
The document was described last night by one senior diplomat as “a very dangerous document for developing countries. It is a fundamental reworking of the UN balance of obligations. It is to be superimposed without discussion on the talks”….
And the weather not warming. skeptics should have a won this battle hands down but the Activists are still in denial. Too bad they can not see the Bankers, Corporate interests and the MSM all riding Global Warming for money and power.
Notice that the report is based on junk from Potsdam Institute for the Mentally Unstable. They are one of the main sources of the most bizarre and idiotic aspects of CAGW mantra along with Mann, Hansen, Trenberth etc.
Would be interesting to see where there funding comes from. !
One thing you know for cetain is that anyone who STILL accepts that 97% rubbish, has made zero attempt to validate any part of climate science. Despite apparently having a some physics knowledge, he has chosen to remain pig ignorant about anything resembling the facts.
And this guy is president of the world bank,………. really ?????
And the climate nonsense is from Potsdam.. enough said!
15 Nov: VIDEO: Macleans Mag, Canada: Bob Rae steps up to defend carbon pricing
Bob Rae (interim leader of the Liberal Party of Canada) was in Toronto today to deliver a speech on energy policy. Included in that was a defence of putting a price on carbon:
Do you know who’s providing the leadership today on carbon pricing? The province of British Columbia. And the province of Alberta. They’re not afraid to talk about carbon pricing. They’re not afraid to use market mechanisms to force innovation and more conservation. They’re not afraid to send the right messages to markets. They’ve done that. They’ve moved ahead of the game. The Conference of CEOs, under the leadership of John Manley, has said exactly the same thing. We have to send a signal to the markets about the price of carbon going forward and we have to do it in a way that, once again, will force producers and force the industry to become more innovative. And that’s a more effective way to do it than, and this is really ironic coming from a so-called Conservative government, the kind of centralized, command-and-control regulatory approach which now seems to be the vogue in Ottawa…
Now, you and I both know our shared experiences as a country in trying to have a national conversation on this question of carbon taxing or cap-and-trade—either technique, either method of trying to create a signal to the markets about price. But I’m here to tell you that if we don’t send a signal to the markets about price, the market won’t take us seriously when it comes to conservation and the market won’t take us seriously when it comes to greening the economy and the world won’t take us seriously when it comes to those things.
What’s more, the industry itself is asking for this. Talk to a CEO of any major energy company in Canada and they will tell you we need to know what prices are going to be and what government policies are going to be in order for us to make and justify the investments to our shareholders that we know we have to make. Two projects right now on carbon capture, two separate major projects on carbon capture, have been put on hold by two major companies for the simple reason that there is no signal to the market. That’s wrong.
But I know full well that anyone who steps up to the plate and says this is something we have to do and at the same time provide for tax cuts to lower and middle income people, provide for real cuts in income taxes, make sure that regions that are badly effected are helped and not hurt, it’s quite possible to do it, but anyone who suggests it will immediately have their head blown off. But, having my head blown off many times, I don’t mind… http://www2.macleans.ca/2012/11/15/bob-rae-steps-up-to-defend-carbon-pricing/
Bob Rae’s brother, John, is Executive Vice-President of political powerbrokers, Power Corporation:
Wikipedia: Power Corporation
A U.S. investigation into the UN Oil-for-Food scandal determined that Power Corporation had extensive connections to French bank BNP Paribas, which was selected in 1996 to broker the Oil-for-Food program. Power owned a stake in Paribas through its subsidiary Pargesa Holding SA…
The Desmarais family and Frere are also the largest shareholders in oil company Total SA, France’s largest oil company.Total was the subject of a formal investigation by the United Nations in February 2010 for bribery charges concerning oil deliveries from Iraq during the rule of dictator Saddam Hussein…
Additionally, the company has long been a close ally of the Liberal Party of Canada, although former or current members of other Canadian political parties have also worked for Power Corp. A brief summary of the connections between Power Corp. and those with political power in Canada is below…
Former Prime Minister of Canada, Paul Martin, was hired in the 1960s to work for Paul Desmarais, Sr. by Maurice Strong…
John Rae, the brother of former NDP Premier Bob Rae, currently serves as Power Corp.’s Executive Vice President…
Former member of the Liberal Party of Canada Maurice Strong became President of Power Corp. by his mid-thirties. He had a role in the creation of the Canadian International Development Agency and in 1976 he was appointed to run Petro-Canada. He later worked for the United Nations…
Power Corp.’s international advisory board has featured individuals such as former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, former oil minister of Saudi Arabia Sheikh Ahmed Zaki Yamani, former head of the US Federal Reserve Board Paul Volcker, and the previously mentioned former Prime Minister of Canada Pierre Trudeau… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Corporation
***MUST READ ALL. DON’T MISS THE HELEN BOADEN/Andrew Dlugolecki STUFF ON PAGE 3 & KEEP AN EYE ON UNSWORTH, NOW PROMOTED, WHO WAS AT THE JAN 2006 SEMINAR:
3 pages: 19 Nov: UK Register: Andrew Orlowski: How can the BBC be saved from itself without destroying it?
Dumbed-down climate coverage is just a symptom
Special Report
Blogger Tony Newbery’s pursuit of the seminar’s previously secret attendee list highlights two things of much greater significance. One is that it casts light on a strategy by the BBC’s legal department to shield the public-funded corporation from scrutiny by the citizen, by redefining itself as a private organisation.
The Freedom of Information Act 2000 allows facts and figures to be withheld and kept secret “for the purposes of journalism”, and the BBC’s use of this get-out clause is so pervasive it must be considered strategic rather than accidental. This appears to have the full backing of executives: the BBC’s director of news Helen Boaden appeared as a witness during an information tribunal hearing into Newbery’s request; the journalism derogation was trotted out as a key pillar for the BBC’s defence.
And the trust? It appears not to know or not to care about the battle over the climate seminar’s attendees. But the affair also highlights the role the BBC thinks it must perform – and it’s rather different to the one licence-fee payers expect it to perform – that of staying aloof from the fray…
Scientists are clever, they should tell us what to do – right?
A thought exercise. Imagine, if you will, that an astronomer discovered a large meteorite hurtling to Earth. The precise time and date of impact were then calculated. This would leave us with a wide range of moral and economic choices. It would be very strange, in fact inconceivable, if someone handed all these decisions to the astronomer to make.
“Here you go, Man with the Telescope – tell us what to do!”
Yet this is what happened throughout the media and political class in response to the dramatic and simplified tale of climate change. Now we have it from the highest authority, Mark Thompson: he gave three lectures at Oxford University recently, which reveal him to be an intelligent and witty man. But in one lecture he makes a quite extraordinary argument [PDF].
Thompson picks apart a statement made by social scientist Dr Benny Peiser, who stated that the scientific fact of climate change invites a range of policies, economic choices, and moral decisions. Peiser doesn’t quibble with the “science”, but merely points out the obvious, that we have to decide what to do. Thompson doesn’t like this because only “scientists” are qualified to make ethical and economic decisions. Others may get involved, but only if they delegate their authority to the “scientists”. This is the course we’re told to follow on climate change.
There are enormous problems with this. The mitigation policies being advanced (and they came in a bundle – buy the science, get the policy for free) fall largely on the developing countries most in need of an advanced industrial society. These policies, if implemented, will perpetuate poverty, increase unwanted human misery and cause avoidable deaths…
Thompson concluded his Oxford lecture by telling scientists that without the broadcasters they “have no voice” – he is literally saying: “Make us your mouthpiece.” Given that Thompson has completely conceded moral authority on the matter, he really has no other conclusion to make. It’s a return of Comte’s Positivism, in which scientists are the ultimate authority in society on all decisions. Why? Because… well, they do science and stuff… http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/11/19/the_virus_that_ate_the_bbc/
Pat that Register article, How can the BBC be saved from itself without destroying it? is superb. Please make sure you also put a heads-up on tips and notes at WUWT.
Too bad the big media outlets don’t carry such good reporting.
posted the latest orlowski/register link in the comments at WUWT’s “discovery channel fail” thread, but will post it in tips & notes.
people everywhere are so cynical about the MSM today, it is difficult to convey the magnitude of the 28Gate scandal, as it relates to BBC. no other media organisation comes close to the Beeb in range, audience size, and influence.
the efforts of andrew montford, tony newbery and maurizio morabito in exposing documentary evidence at the very heart of the CAGW gatekeeping of the BBC are worthy of a book/documentary. if only more people could grasp the significance:
May 2007: BBC: BBC global audience hits new high
Record numbers of people are watching, listening to and clicking on BBC News around the world, according to independent research.
Television, radio and online news have a combined weekly audience of 233m – up from 210m last year.
The survey, across 100 countries, found that 20m more are listening to the BBC World Service each week, with the biggest growth in Bangladesh.
The BBC’s news website is also used by 12m people outside the UK each week.
Globally, 183m people listen to the World Service every week, but in China the audience has shrunk by 3m since last year.
BBC World, the corporation’s commercially-funded TV news channel, had 76m viewers a week – an increase of 10m compared with 2006. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6675271.stm
The article The Greenhouse Gas Blanket that Fails to Warm the World which John O’Sullivan and I wrote is now published here.
Basically it covers the main conclusions from my research, so I refer you to it in response to any questions you may have regarding my various comments above.
In response to a question about the article published today (to which I contributed) I will summarise what would happen in a hypothetical Earth with no water and an atmosphere of only nitrogen and oxygen, assumed not to radiate or absorb.
If this were the case the Earth’s surface would receive more radiation during the day because there would be (virtually) no absorption of incident solar radiation. When you then apply S-B (using integration on a real-world spherical surface) the majority of the radiation would take place directly from the surface at these hotter temperatures.
But there would still be an adiabatic lapse rate ensuring that the nitrogen and oxygen are much warmer at the base of the atmosphere than at the top, even if no energy flows in and out of the atmosphere. Thus is because an adiabatic lapse rate is just that – adiabatic – and so requires no energy input to maintain the temperature gradient. Thus the surface would not cool anywhere near as much as the Moon’s surface does at night. In fact, the surface temperature would be stabilised by conduction both from the atmosphere and the mass below the surface. There is no reason to believe its mean temperature would be much different, even though its temperature would vary more between day and night.
In a nutshell, this is why the accusation that radiating gases produce a GHE and raise the mean surface temperature is all garbage.
You can’t raise or lower the mean surface temperature significantly (within a few thousand years) without transferring an impossible amount of energy into or out of the whole Earth system, including all the mass beneath the crust, right down to the core.
Science should always be backed up by empirical evidence, so I thought I’d summarise what empirical evidence exists for the main points I have made. Links and references for all these have been provided in previous posts and/or papers and articles I have provided before.
There is empirical evidence …
(a) that the heat transfer between two blackbodies is in accord with the quantification in Section 4 of my paper.
(b) that air in equilibrium in a tall sealed insulated container will be warmer at the base than at the top, the difference being explained by the same adiabatic lapse rate which is proportional to the acceleration due to gravity – no coincidence.
(c) that placing a cool blackbody close to a warmer one does slow the radiative rate of cooling of the warm one.
(d) that evaporative cooling accelerates to compensate for any slowing of radiative cooling of the water surfaces.
(e) that low clouds at night slow overall cooling of the land surface at night, this being because the compensating effect of conduction takes a longer period.
(f) that surplus thermal energy in the atmosphere (causing temperatures above the plot based on the lapse rate) will be radiated away
(g) that radiation from a cooler atmosphere does not transfer thermal energy to a warmer surface, and nor does conduction or convection.
(h) that the surface temperatures of all planets with atmospheres can only be explained using the solar intensity and the adiabatic lapse rate. This is very clear cut on Venus where the surface hardly receives or emits any energy, so most heating of the atmosphere occurs when the atmosphere absorbs incoming Solar radiation. You cannot explain Venus temperatures using any radiative greenhouse effect, because such does not exist here, there or anywhere.
If anyone still believes there is a radiative greenhouse effect on Earth, then they need to accept that there is no such thing on Venus.
No more than about 4 W/m^2 of Solar radiation gets through the thick Venus atmosphere to warm its surface. But that surface is hundreds of degrees (not just 33 K) above the mean radiating temperature of the planet. It can’t be explained by any Energy Budget Diagram for radiation and backradiation, because there just would not be enough radiation to match with the temperature of the surface. The only valid explanation is discussed in this comment, and I invite anyone to prove me wrong by producing an Energy Budget Diagram for Venus that matches with the data.
1. The Venus surface could never have been raised 500 degrees by the mere mean 2.1 W/m^2 of insolation that reaches its surface from the Sun.
2. This is solid proof that adiabatic lapse rates form autonomously, and so surface temperatures are determined by such on all planets with an atmosphere.
3. The Venus atmosphere was heated by absorbed incident radiation from the Sun. The ALR ensured the base would be hotter, quite contrary to what you might expect – why not the top? The base heated the surface – nothing else could have.
4. Why should we worry about 1 molecule in 2,500 being carbon dioxide, when the Venus atmosphere is over 96% carbon dioxide, and yet its surface temperature can be calculated by the same formula (based on the acceleration due to gravity) as can Earth’s surface temperature?
There will be more detail in my next paper currently going through the review process. Stop worrying about carbon dioxide – and stay tuned!
It gets hard to explain what I believe happens at the molecular level, but I’ll give it a go.
Firstly, imagine an atmosphere without convection. Venus gets close to this because it is so dense. There is also very little wind because it rotates so slowly (244 Earth days per revolution) and so we can just about consider it to be a static atmosphere. Yet the (pseudo) adiabatic lapse rate is still observed and the same calculations that work for Earth also work there.
We know there are many more molecules where the pressure is higher, so we can assume there is a fairly smooth (near linear) decline in the density of molecules with increasing altitude.
So molecules don’t have to travel large distances up and down. Nor is it any restriction that as many go up as go down, because we already have the distribution we need. Energy can transfer in molecular collisions, without any particular molecule having to travel a significant distance.
So the temperature gradient is a bit like a concrete road going straight down a mountainside. If you pour loads of sand on it at various points (representing absorbed heat at different altitudes) the molecular interactions get temporarily thrown out of the nice equilibrium state they were in. The sand (heat) spreads out and blows away (energy gets radiated away) and it all settles back down to the supporting road.
However, if there is a long-term increase in mean Solar insolation levels it is more like adding a thin layer of concrete to the whole surface, creating a new road surface (temperature plot) which is higher but is still parallel to the old one and still has the same gradient. This is representative of what happens during warming periods in the natural ~1,000 (maybe ~1,400) year cycle and the superimposed ~60 year cycle.
So it’s as if the individual molecules being pulled downwards by gravity and pushed up by pressure from beneath realise they are in the wrong place on top of the pile of sand. So, like grains of sand spreading out, some go one way and some another way until the temperature hump (or dip) levels out and everything gets back to the natural gradient. Or, more precisely, their energy goes in different directions through collisions.
Hence, on Venus, if too much incident insolation is absorbed at the top of the atmosphere, the extra kinetic energy will be “bounced” down the chain (rather like conduction, but better called diffusion) without the individual molecules actually having to travel very far.
This creates an apparent heat flow, but it can only ever involve equal interchanges of PE and KE and thus no change in entropy, and so no violation of 2nd LoT.
Also, while this is happening, each layer in the Venus atmosphere will radiate away whatever extra energy it absorbs and hasn’t sent elsewhere by diffusion, so the temperature falls back to the base line.
As you go from day to night, I suggest that the whole temperature plot from the Venus surface to the TOA shifts downwards about 5 degrees, whilst retaining the same gradient.
Whatever happens, it is apparent that the surface itself will remain very close in temperature to the base of the atmosphere and its temperature is in fact at least “supported” by that of the base of the atmosphere, because conduction would prevent it getting significantly cooler. Stored energy beneath the crust would also have a stabilising effect as on Earth.
The overriding consideration is that, for both Earth and Venus, as well as other planets with thick enough atmospheres – Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune – this process must have happened in the atmosphere first (because of the effect of gravity) and then the surface temperature was established by that at the base of the atmosphere. The internal conduction plot from the core is then also set by the core temperature and the surface temperature. This of course all took a long time obviously at least millions of years, so, in the short term of just a few thousand years, the mass of energy under the surface changes little and so provides a solid stabilising effect.
Hope that’s helped clarify my thinking on all this. It leaves the conventional back radiation and feedback concepts right out of consideration – simply because they cannot override the mechanism which maintains the adiabatic lapse rate. So much for the AGW conjecture!
If, as is generally the case for perhaps over 99% of Earth’s surface, there is a small “step down” in temperature from the surface to the atmosphere at the interface, it is not possible for KE to be conducted (diffused) back from the cooler atmosphere to the warmer surface.
Yes, the base of the atmosphere has, over the life of the Earth, autonomously achieved an equilibrium temperature determined by mean Solar insolation and the effective adiabatic lapse rate which is proportional to the gravitational force.
However, where the surface is warmer its temperature is merely “supported” by that of the base of the atmosphere. It cannot fall significantly below that temperature in calm weather over a flat surface, but as the temperatures approach, the rate of conduction (diffusion) from the surface to the atmosphere will slow down – that’s standard physics. Rates of evaporative cooling do likewise.
The slowing of these non-radiative processes depends on temperature differences right at the interface. In contrast, the slowing of radiative cooling (less than a third of all surface cooling) depends on the temperature of the source of radiation (which may be much higher in the atmosphere) and the proportion of the total potential Planck curve for that temperature which is actually “filled in” by the spectral lines of radiation. This is why carbon dioxide has less effect per molecule than water vapour, and WV less than a solid surface which may be close to a true blackbody if it has a wide range of elements in its composition.
But, as I have said, any slowing of radiative cooling will be nullified by a compensating effect in non-radiative cooling. The pre-determined lapse rate is the main player in adjusting this compensation process.
Doug Cotton
Sydney
(an author for Principia Scientific International)
If you spend a few minutes reading my paper and at least the abstract of the paper published by the American Institute of Physics (cited in reference (8) in my reference [13]) you might understand what happens in the atmospheric physics of both Earth and Venus.
I’m still waiting for a satisfactory alternative explanation from anyone in the world regarding the Venus surface temperature.
Pressure does not maintain high temperatures all by itself, anywhere, not even on Venus. So forget that “explanation.”
My paper is up for PROM (Peer Review in Open Media) for a month, so feel free to publish a rebuttal or debate it with some of these members of PSI. Such a review system far outstrips the “peer-review” system used for typical pro-AGW publications.
Here is my unthreaded question:
How many months before the “big correction”?
Stock markets seem to be reacting to the Obamination, (even though the news says anything but a reaction to the election).
The cost to business of just the health care portion of the upcoming Federal budget are job wreckers. This added to the likely tax increases across the board, likely energy cost increases (due to an unrestrained EPA) and many US states (and cities) teetering on insolvency.
Unions have just caused 18,000 lost jobs with Hostess and I think we are looking at the tip of the iceberg because of the long slow non-recovery. Any business that has cash is holding it, any business that doesn’t have cash is stretching out their payables. To me, all this adds up to a significant crashing sound in the not to distant future.
The question is WHEN?
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For USA exporters it shouldn’t be so bad, but for the rest of you the writing is on the wall.
And it has nothing to do with Obama.
Large USD devaluation in 5 to 7 months’ time due to obsolete foreign USD reserves being sent back into the USA.
There’s enough mainstream news sources which support this, but this interview with Lindsey Williams starting 31:09 wraps it up pretty well.
The answer, for the currency anyway, is July 2013. That’s Lindsey Williams’ prediction.
Several other pundits call the collapse of the USA economy inevitable but won’t name a particular month.
The thing you have to remember about economic collapse is that it exhibits network effects. Nobody is directly connected to all of the sources of failure, they are only connected to the handful of debtors and creditors that they personally have contracts with. Therefore you will not know that collapse is happening in the economy until collapse happens to you. Because you can only see your direct links in the network, you can’t see the whole thing. Getting an early warning about this is difficult. You’ve already had as much warning as you’re ever going to get.
I wish I had helpful advice to give but I’m also flummoxed about what to do.
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Interesting perspective there, on how (not if) the US Dollar is going to ‘realise’ its devaluation.
Is flight from the Euro going to get caught out as well.
Just think, what a co-ordinated takedown of both together could achieve.
The USD has lost 1/3rd. of its value against the Swiss Franc over 10 years.
50
Well Joe, isn’t it a very remarkable co-incidence that the southern EU states (plus Ireland) are in excess debt, the possible breakup of the Eurozone is talked about daily, and the UK reputedly is about to hit the Debt-to-GDP ratio of collapse proportions, all at the same time as the USA?
Just an unlucky co-incidence due the amount of trade between these countries?
Or possibly… planned all along by people who have a lot of capital and derivatives to move around. A “co-ordinated takedown” as you say.
The average person’s response to this in the short term does not depend on why it happened, just that a new Great Depression has begun.
In the medium term it matters as to how this happened. There’s plenty of factors. We have had a globalised economy for only 22 years. It’s like a new toy that we haven’t figured out how to use properly yet. Some have been quite adventurous with their use of the toy and used it in a way that threatens the whole system. The system has also been governed by Keynesian theory since the 1930s and Monetarist policy since the 1970s. The credit has been supplied by Fractional Reserve Banking for hundreds of years. The rules on derivatives trading in the USA were loosened only 10 years ago. Learning which of these rules (FRB, Keynesianism, Monetarism, Globalisation, Derivatives) most caused the failure is going to be an important step towards a more resilient world economy.
The other possibility is that the rules are OK and that this is all due to an individual behaviour of excessive savings, a hoarding of income instead of spending it on a mix of consumption and investment. Do you know anybody with more than 50 grand in the bank who doesn’t know what to do with it? Yeah, thought not. Do you know many people who have become Buddhist monks eschewing all materialist trinkets? No? Then it’s not hoarding it’s the rules.
The Austrian school is adamant about what NOT to do next. Don’t interfere with market adjustment!
But they’re not all negative Nancys:
As always…
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
In Ludwig We Trust.
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I watched an interview last week by Max Kaiser ( on the Kaiser Report) with a UK financial writer/blogger. They discussed the UK debt situation. They added up the public and private debt as a percentage of GDP and added a few minor things to it to show that the UK was approaching total debt of about 1000% of GDP. Then Kaiser said ” remind me what the corresponding figure for Iceland was when they hit the wall ? ”
( it was about 1000 % )
Then Kaiser asked when the other guy when thought it would hit the UK –answer = mid 2013.
So it is not the only the USA with issues , it is everywhere.
Even in Australia where someone else on here a few months ago said the mining boom Australia has had over the last 5-10 years has really been a construction boom. Well check out the major engineering / constructions companies and see how many projects have been delayed or planning stopped. I know of one major international company with a large presence in Australia who is laying off people quite rapidly now.
With regard the USA –in 6 – 12 months it might be turn out to be that the Republicans say the election of 2012 was a good one to lose.
40
I see a lot of casual debt:GDP numbers quoted around the place. One has to remember that there are a lot of different kinds of debt. The simplest breakdown is as public and private debt, to quote Wikipedia:
There’s also a lot of different ways of expressing debt number, gross or net, private household or private industry, etc… It all gets a tad overwhelming and the numbers are too big for the average person to properly comprehend. But here are some debt clocks to blow the average mind:
I would also go on to say there’s “good” debt and “bad” debt. To my mind good debt is that invested in productive assets which will generate a (profitable/productivity) return. An example of bad debt is that which is thrown at asset bubbles which can deflate quickly evaporating the value (e.g. US subprime crisis).
And I still see people running around saying the debt hawks are idiots … any sovereign can print its way out of debt yadda, yadda, yadda. Ignorance must be bliss, because they seem pretty happy. Sooner or later the party HAS to end. Someone has to pay the tab with real assets, and when you have deflated/debased your currency for years, your assets are a steal. Look at house prices in the US compared to Oz.
60
Good debt and bad debt?
I daresay that you noted that the Rudd/Swan/Gillard stimulus package studiously avoided investment in anything that was capable of generating new production.
It also diverted resources from engaging in such production.
Much the same could be said of the NBN, where costs are of necessity at the top marginal rates to construct something that was already being constructed at normal market rates.
There should be no doubting that this is deliberate policy, intended to destroy our economic system.
00
You dont take seriously anything Max Kaiser (The Kaiser Report) says do you ?
While providing an interesting and refreshingly lternative view on world events , he and his sidekick Stacy Herbert are clearly having too much fun, to be saying anything serious, aren’t they ?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4IBUTHyROs&feature=youtube_gdata_player
00
Not convinced in the slightest in the Lindsey Williams statements. Here in WA we have the largest segment of trade with China of the entire country, and it is all based on resource exports. Guess what currency they are priced in? Yes US dollars. I have no idea what he is referring to, and not convinced he does either. He seems to be selling a message that he is somehow channeling the knowledge of the “elites”, but I shalln’t be rude and say what I think he is really channeling. Anyone have any of those references he spruiks?
The closest we came to seeing any serious Renminbi trade was when Twiggy mused out loud about doing trades in China’s currency. To the best of my knowledge that is not yet the case. Even if Twiggy were to receive payment in Renminbi, that currency it tied to the USD and the iron ore prices are quoted in reference to, you guessed it, the USD. By any measure that makes the USD still the reserve currency. Whether that changes in the not too distant future, who knows? One thing is for sure, this chap doesn’t. He seems to think that the US dolar is already dead, i.e. no longer the world’s reserve currency. That is demonstratably and laughably false.
Is China positioning itself to be a major player in the world economy, heck yes. Is it replacing the US any time soon? Hard to judge, but certainly not in the short term. Here’s the BBC article for example:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-18545978
WA alone exported over A$121 billion in resources in 2011 of which 43% was to China (source: http://www.dmp.wa.gov.au/1521.aspx). That’s over A$52 billion to China (mostly iron ore, then LNG). By comparison the A$30 billion currency swap is peanuts, when you consider the whole of the country.
The fact that Australia and other countries see China as a rising superpower and chose to diversify their reserve holdings with a few Renminbi doesn’t make the USD dead. It’s a shot across the bow is all. But to be clear, that doesn’t mean the role of the USD won’t diminish over the medium term.
30
*EDIT* WA exported A$121 of merchandise (i.e. goods, not services) in 2011, of which 92% was resources. Adjust the other related figures down by about 10% to reflect this … still the same picture. I sometimes forget we export a bit of agricultura produce as well, and a few other bits and bobs.
30
The truth is probably somewhere in-between the two extremes, one projecting not so bad and the other projecting total collapse.
Like you, Mark, I wish I knew.
50
Maybe it’s also about solving the baby boomers problem with inflation?
Oh boy they are going to get pissed when their pensions vaporize with this green agenda taxes?
30
With compulsory super the leading vaporiser.
00
One thing I came across that no one seems to note is the cost of Unemployment insurance in the USA and who pays for it. If you are in business especially if you are a small businessman this has a direct impact on your bottomline
The go-to place for actual statistics used by business is Shadow Statistics. The Shadow Statistics Chart shows the real unemployment rate, not the fudged government numbers, has grown from around 21% to 23%. In other words the US economy is NOT recovering it is getting worse. Shadow Statisics is run by John Williams.
In to this business environment you can then add Obamacare which includes an additional cost to an employer if they employ over 50 ‘full-time equivalent employees’ link not to mention the headache and expense of trying to figure out what the heck the government wants you to do.
For some businesses it will be simplest to just get rid of the extra employees and stay under the 50 person limit especially if you have a lot of part time employees who you provided with no health insurance.
In the USA small business produce 39% of the gross national product. They create more than half of the nonfarm private GDP.(That makes you wonder just how much the public sector “GNP” is doesn’t it?) Small business accounts for over half of all U.S. workers, and generated 65 percent of net new jobs over the past 17 years.
Unfortunately All this additional red tape hurts the small business person most. Some have decided to cut back and others have decided it just is not worth the hassle and are closing their doors before they lose what is left of their shirts.
With Obama’s Lets push more regulation mentality I really doubt you are going to see the US economy do anything but continue to sink, Federal Debt Spiral ever upwards and federal tax revenue plummet ( Laffer Curve and all that)
Chiefio, who comments at WUWT, has a good explanation of proof of the Laffer Curve, and proof that Progressives are not capable of learning from history.
10
Interesting, Mark. They said the same thing would happen when the Yen and Gold carry trades ended. Demise of the greenback and rocketing interest rates. It never happnened. My guess is the role of the Fed and speculation. Once the greenbacks return home the speculators use it buy long term treasuries and sell their close to expiring short term treasuries to the Fed. They know the Fed has to enter the market to top up the money supply (monetize debt) and they know that the Fed cannot legally buy treasuries from the US treasury. The Fed has to indulge in open market transactions where the speculators can dump the treasuries at a profit and further depress interest rates over the entire curve and of course raise bond prices. This classic staddle is almost risk free as long as the yield curve does not invert. That’s the clue the party is over! The question is how long can this process carry on. The Fed may think it is in control but it is not. Nothing it does matters. Lower interst rates raise the burden of debt on leveraged companies as capital is transfered to speculators’ pcokets- expect more bankrupcies.
00
For BBC, you can probably read ABC …
http://thepointman.wordpress.com/2012/11/16/some-direct-questions-for-the-bbc-that-itll-never-answer/
Pointman
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Would anyone care to comment on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict about to explode in Gaza?
I’m surprised it’s not getting significant mention anywhere except Fox News.
And for that matter, radical Islam is on the march again in numerous places. But it’s heads in the sand for all the media except Fox.
Does no one realize the magnitude of the problem we face?
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Roy,
I’m here in California and there’s a storm moving in. I have $40.00 in my bank account and $200.00 worth of bills. My patio cover leaks and so does the camp trailer roof. I’m on disability which means a fixed income.
If Israel wipes Gaza off the map, the storm will still arrive and do its thing, my account balance will stay the same, the patio will still leak, etc, etc.
If, on the other hand, Gaza triumphs over Israel, the storm will still arrive and do its thing, the camp trailer will still leak, etc, etc,
So, do tell, what is the magnitude of the problem we face? How does anything on the other side of the world really pose a problem to us?
We have been played with crisis after crisis and emergency after emergency until I’m just fatigued by the whole thing. Aren’t you?
Dave
in Sacramento, Californicate
52
Well, the murder of a United States ambassador and three others just might be a problem. Our play it by ear, no-policy foreign policy is only serving those with a stated intent to kill Americans and destroy America. That bothers me. It bothers me a lot.
And yes, I’m tired of it too.
40
Roy it is not surprising there is not a lot of tv coverage from the Israeli side. When you mobilise your reserves and start moving heavy units around the last thing you want is some bozo with a sattelite link broadcasting to the world and by implication your intended target what you are doing and where. That lesson was learn’t back in the Falklsnds War when the Brits allowed tv news people in on the show and the Argentines were getting almost real time intelligence on what was happening. It cost lives and if you look closely at conflicts since there is little in tv coverage which is identifiable. Both Iraqi conflicts had journos “embedded” but if you look at the output it is very bland in respect to real battlefield intelligence. As for the Hamas side of things there is only so many times you can show pics of the same body and the ambulance with the perfectly round hole in the vehicle body. If/when the Israelis strike you can bet there will be lots of people talking about the poor Palestinians and the nasty Israelies [read Jews]. There are only so many times you can turn the other cheek and that is not a concept played out in the Old Testament/Torah and Israel has a legitimate right to defend itself and its citizens from naked aggression. It is a scenario that will be played out again and again. Golda Meir summed it up when she said “There will not be peace until the Arabs learn to love their children more than they hate us”.
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Shouldn’t you people be at the Andrew Bolt website?
321
Buzz off, you dimwit!
122
No really, you should pay a visit to Andrew Bolt’s website. It’s tailored for people just like you.
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Now Roy
Calling somebody a dimwit is not nice and these people are our whetstone without whom we would lose
the ability to sharpen our replies.
Now watch this, Eco-Fluoro will come back with a witty about; “is that the best or sharpest we can be”?.
But it might take a few minutes because he will have to contact Kontrol at SkS Klimate HQ to get someone to work out a reply
tic tic tic
KK 🙂
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The best thing about Andrew Bolt is his manner.
It annoys the crap out of greenies to the point that they can’t stand him.
We need more Bolts in this world.
KK
165
For is it not written that for every Bolt, there is a Nut,….. or maybe several as the case may be. 🙂
210
And that is what holds the industrial world together……….
80
hi Mark D
It’s a statistical fact that 89.07% of the world’s nut and bolts are made of one type of steel or another.
Then die-cast zinc based, aluminum, nylon and other metals.
All that steel, all that CO2, all that Electric Power for the stainless.
It’s a wonder the world temperatures don’t sky rocket just because of nuts and bolts.
I do suspect, however, that the nuts and bolts are on different sides of the warming fence and that we are on the bolt side.
KK 🙂
01
That is a compliment; thank you JMD.
Speaking of Bolt, I just saw Bishop on Bolt; 3 records of Gillard’s setting up of the slush fund for the crook Wilson have gone missing; they were all held in Federal court or equivalent secure locations.
Think about that; 3 seperate sources of documents to do with Gillard’s past activities have gone missing.
Isn’t that amazing?
Bishop was very circumspect; and this is the problem; the documents went missing in WA and QLD, both coalition states and Bishop is the personification of decorum.
Why aren’t those states now setting up Royal commissions to examine why evidence of a Federal court status has gone missing.
150
4 sources now.
1 Slater and Gordon file missing in Victoria
2 WA state archives file missing
3 QLD Federal court file missing
4 NSW Federal Court file missing.
You do not have a legal system without secure storage of records and evidence; FOUR seperate sources holding evidence and information about Gillard have been compromised. Think about it.
100
Or until one side finally has an unequivocal victory over the other.
I understand your point. But that is the end goal of a war — and it is a war. Playing a game with it doesn’t seem very worthwhile and diplomacy is a complete failure.
20
Roy there is a basic distinction between Israel and Hammas. Israel is a civilized nation State which could do a lot more for its citizens and others elsewhere if it didn’t have to continually defend itself against aggression. Hammas is a terrorist organisation that does not really want peace and has a stated aim of driving the Jews into the ocean. Again it is worth quoting Golda Meir – “We Jews have a secret weapon in our struggle with the Arabs; we have no place to go”. Israel has gone to the peace table time and again seeking peace but despite the bleating of the fashionable intelligentsia who find a cause celebre in the Palestinians it is not Israel who are the aggressors. Eventually you get tired of people throwing things at you and you need to remind them that is decidedly bloody unhealthy to keep doing so. Eventually the Arabs may push Israel too far and will find the western concept of total war not to their liking. It is something no nation state wants to do unless there is no other option. War is not a fun pastime.
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David,
I completely agree with you. The problem is that with Hamas, as with Iran and others, the matter is simply religious fanaticism. The sacrifice is always worth it to these people. Total war? Good! World in chaos? Good! Hide behind the skirts of your women and children? Good! No barbarity is too much for them.
After all the fighting and all the diplomacy I think we all know Israel isn’t one bit better off today than they were in 1947 (hope I remember the right year). I’m simply marveling at the extraordinary forbearance Israel has shown to their Arab neighbors. I keep wondering how long it will last.
40
By the way, it seems like Fox has no trouble getting access. So the question is, where is everyone else?
30
Roy two websites might be of interest.
http://pjmedia.com/
http://www.defenddemocracy.org/
10
Roy,
Word from my network is that two significant factors have emerged.
One is that forces in Gaza may now have local capability to manufacture long-range rockets. Some of the “relief ships” had component parts for long range rockets, that forces in Gaza could have copied. Those forces may found an alternate route. The new longer range rockets have the theoretical ability to strike Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, but may not have accurate guidance systems. Time will tell.
The other is that Israel has brought forward the deployment of its “Iron Dome” ground to air defence system, to provide a measure of protection. The first battery was to be deployed next January, so they are undergoing “live testing”, as they say.
Israel has mobilised its reserves, but there is no indication of a ground offensive being mounted against Gaza in the immediate future. Israel is keeping its options open.
Other than that, this is just another cycle of the on-again, off-again conflict. This particular round may have been sparked by the assignation, by Syrian rebels, of Adel Hasan, when he visited a refugee camp in Deraa, in southern Syria. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, of which Adel Hasan was the General Commander, is still seen in Syria as being closely aligned with Syrian President Bashar Al Assad,
The Middle East is not within my usual area of interest, so it has taken me a while to respond – time zones and all that.
50
They are poised right on the Gaza border and ready to go.
I’m tempted to ask three questions.
1. How sure are you about your sources?
2. What effect does anyone expect just from a show of force? Even after being invaded the last time around Hamas is still on a rampage.
3. How long does this festering boil go untreated?
00
Roy,
To answer your questions:
1. The people I got in contact with, are people I have worked with in the past, and I trust them as I trust my Dentist.
But, the information they can share with me is summary level stuff which, by its nature, does not contain detailed nuance. Also, the information will be at least twenty four hours old, and probably more, and allowing for time zone differences, probably closer to forty eight hours old, by the time I get to see it. Information flows, but where it flows from, to get to where I am located, it must take the long way around. This is why the Middle East is not within my usual area of interest. It is too frustrating.
2. It is a psychological game that is being played out here. Whichever side started this current round of activity, is now immaterial. What Israel wants to do is make Hamas appear to be the aggressor, and one who has now acquired longer range weapons, capable of reaching major Israeli population centres. Israel will respond to each attack, but will try to target the Hamas leadership whenever they have a reasonable idea where they might be. Israel wants to appear to be moderate in the eyes of the western world, but they also do not want to be surprised. “Yes, we have moved troops close to the border, but see, we still have not made any move to attack, even though we are being fired upon”.
3. I do hope that is a rhetorical question, because I have no answer.
20
Rereke,
Your answer to question 2 tells me you think the fighting will go on forever. And that, my friend, is exactly what I’m afraid of. Or do you forsee some magical solution?
Obama was supposed to be the second coming of Christ to hear him and his worshipers tell it. But he has nothing to offer either.
With the fighting and violence having already gone on for literally most of my life I’m afraid question 3 is a lot more than rhetorical.
In the meantime, if I’m a citizen of Israel I want only one thing, a permanent end to attack from Gaza and the rest of my neighbors. And how do you think that can be achieved? Given past history I can think of only one way.
It might help if Obama had the good sense to stand for something and mean it. But he doesn’t. And there’s no one else but the U.S. and Israel.
10
Roy,
Well, unfortunately I agree with you. The piece of dirt, currently known as Israel, has been fought over, in one way or another since the tenth century, and possibly before. It is a wicked problem, and therefore is social in nature, rather than political or military. In my view, there is just too much social history tied up in that area, for it ever to be resolved permanently by military or political means. But egos being what they are, neither the politicians nor the military will allow any other group to have a shot at trying to redefine the problem into something that can be solved by political means. So it will continue.
10
So propose another group! But I think you and I both know there is no one else to try anything.
Roy
00
As I see it, there is a lot of history leading to multiple grievances, vendettas, and hatreds on both sides.
This blinds both sides from even thinking about any areas that they might have in common.
What would be needed is a team of skilled negotiators, facilitators, and researchers, drawn from multiple countries that are completely neutral in this conflict. Each individual team member would need to be vetted, and sanctioned by the military and the political establishment on both sides of the dispute.
The role of this team is to find the common ground between the parties – the basic things that they can agree to. They do that using General Morphological Analysis, as described in the paper I referenced in a previous comment.
The key, I think, is to have the members of this independent group, work with both sides alternately, or randomly. This will demonstrably inhibit them from “getting captured” by one side or the other. Their independence is key.
Once this group has established the common ground, and once both sides have agreed that it is common ground, the independent team can then move on to exploring each, or all of, the areas of difference using exactly the same techniques.
As each area of difference is clearly defined, it can be put to one side for future negotiation between the parties, using the more traditional linear techniques. But the difference here is that the negotiations can start from the base of the already acknowledged, common ground.
The costs of this exercise, which will not be trivial, will be born by the countries supplying the independent team members. These countries will periodically submit a combined bulk bill to the UN for payment. This will demonstrably reduce the possibility of the UN, as the funding organisation, having undue influence over the process and the outcomes.
Groups and factions are part of the problem. The solution is to finding ways to work around the groups and factions, and to prevent others from forming.
The negotiators, facilitators, and researchers are, of course, another group, in their own right. But in their case, it is a group with a limited shelf life, and a planned use-by date.
10
Rereke,
My first instinct was to tell you that you need to change what you’re smoking. But I know from reading you for years now that you’re a thoughtful and serious guy. So instead let me just tell you a lesson I’ve learned over the last maybe 5 years of my life as I’ve watched global warming become climate catastrophe and all the surrounding issues, great and small — no one is neutral or independent.
So there goes the outside help right down the drain.
Meanwhile the death and destruction goes on, gaining each side nothing — a hot cold-war going nowhere.
I’ll probably be slammed for this but I don’t understand why Israel doesn’t cook the Hamas goose once and for all. How could they possibly be worse off? Who will try to stop them? No one! There’ll be a lot of bluster and hand wringing but no one will commit troops to stop it.
And it’s a pitiful performance by the so-called United Nations of this world.
I’m glad I don’t have to make such decisions. I don’t want to play God. But those who accept the leadership of nations do have to make those decisions. Shame on them for not doing it.
00
Jo, be interested in a post on the 1 million women movement. Backers, claims etc. It’s got roughly the same number of members it had a few years ago. Seem to be pushing their activism again.
20
There’s a debate over at Jennifer’s site about SLR, so I thought I’d just link my latest comment here as well.
Interesting to note that NZ’s top science museum is still displaying Mann’s fraudulent HS graph.
http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2012/11/land-of-the-long-white-hockey-stick
Just rechecked my copy of Lomborg’s “Cool It” to look at Gore and Hansen’s estimate for SLR until 2100.
The rise due to Greenland melt estimate from the IPCC until 2100 (using all the models I’ve linked to here) is just 3.5cm.
But Gore and Hansen’s estimate is 609cm or 174 times more than the IPCC best estimate. Yet these two idiots are feted by govts around the world, nearly every scientific institution on the planet ( even our CSIRO) and can win academy awards and even win the Nobel prize.
But Alan Jones after years of broadcasting makes a tiny mistake of the position of a decimal point and he is hung drawn and quartered.
He corrected his mistake as soon as he could yet he was lampooned just because he made this one innocent, tiny error.
For those interested see page 82 of “Cool It.”
40
hot potato #1:
12 Nov: Gulf Times: Bonnie James: Climate Change panel chief says ‘not invited to COP18’
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will not be attending the upcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP18/CMP8) in Doha, chairman Dr Rajendra K Pachauri has said.
“For the first time in the 18 years of COP, the IPCC will not be attending, because we have not been invited,” he told Gulf Times in Doha…
opening session of the International Conference on Food Security in Dry Lands (FSDL) on Wednesday at Qatar University.
Later, he told Gulf Times he did not know why the IPCC has not been invited to COP18, something that has happened never before.
“I don’t know what it is. The executive secretary of the climate change secretariat has to decide. I have attended every COP and the chairman of the IPCC addresses the COP in the opening session,” he explained…
http://www.gulf-times.com/site/topics/article.asp?cu_no=2&item_no=544308&version=1&template_id=36&parent_id=16
hot potato #2
14 Nov: This is MoneyUK: Dan Hyde: Pensions savings left teetering on a cliff edge by Bank’s money-printing bond bubble
Bond prices have been soaring because the Bank has been buying them in huge volumes.
But after a halt was called to QE last week, the bubble may be about to burst — causing bond prices to plummet.
The situation is so desperate it has been compared to the Dotcom crash of the late Nineties, in which millions of investors lost money in over-priced technology shares.
And it will heap further misery on savers who are facing pension pay-out rates that have sunk by a fifth in three years.
‘No one knows exactly when or if this crash will strike, but the value of millions of pension pots could easily plunge by as much as 30 per cent,’ says Alan Morahan, of consultants Punter Southall…
However, experts believe fund prices could crash at the merest nudge — particularly if the Bank of England sells back its bonds to banks as it must do at some point…
Laith Khalaf, a pensions expert at Hargreaves Lansdown, says savers who are less than three years from retirement can protect themselves by moving their money into cash now. Though the returns are poor — often around 0.5 per cent a year in a pension — it guarantees your gains.
Anyone more than three years from retirement could consider a cautious managed fund as an alternative.
Mr Khalaf says: ‘By the time it becomes apparent that the bubble has been pricked, it may be too late.’…
AM I AT RISK?
Your pension is under threat if it is invested in bonds. This is most likely to be anyone nearing retirement who has a stock market-linked company pension, also known as defined contribution.
Here, a portion of your salary goes into a fund that invests in shares, company bonds and government gilts…
http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/pensions/article-2232391/Is-QE-bond-bubble-wreck-pension.html
hot potato #3
16 Nov: Russia Today: VTB Capital to start issuing ‘golden bonds’
Investment arm of Russia’s second largest bank – VTB Capital – will start issuing bonds tied to gold price. The new instrument enters Russia just when global downturn makes gold increasingly attractive.
The new so–called ‘gold bonds’ provide for 3 fixed coupons – 0.1% each – with the yield to maturity depending on the gold price dynamics, Vedomosti daily reports. The Gold price on November 26 – the day when the placement is set to kick off – will be taken as the base to calculate gold growth. Overall, the new bonds can create up to annualized 21.3% yield for investors…
“Gold is beginning to re-establish itself as part of the fabric of the financial system,” commented Marcus Grubb, Managing Director, Investment at the World Gold Council.
“In the medium term, the quantitative easing initiatives in the West and the continuing growth story in the East, particularly in India and China, coupled with the seasonally strong quarter coming up in Asia, are excellent indicators for further growth in the gold market,” Grubb added.
“Such bonds will be interesting to those who expect both inflation and global risks to grow next year,” Timur Salikov, investment director at Promsvyaz asset management, told Vedomosti.
On Friday, gold-miner Nordgold provided more firm evidence of gold being an attractive asset. The company increased its IFRS net profit 32% year on year in 3Q 2012 to reach $58mn, while a consensus forecast had expected the bottom line to stand at $56nm.
Nordgold operates in Burkina Faso, Guinea, Kazakhstan and Russia.
http://rt.com/business/news/gold-crisis-vtb-bonds-858/
40
I’m sorry but I’m sure JB, Silly nag and Matty etc will feel a bit miffed I didn’t include their hero GAIA brain Timmy Flannery in combination with the two celebrated big brains above. sarc, sarc, sarc.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeNDSeknn_c
Just to note that Timmy is Gillard’s Chief climate commissioner. He’s the top man appointed by Gillard to explain AGW etc to Aussie electorate.????
Best of luck with that, but this blokes has picked up gongs from universities all over the world and is paid huge sums to address meetings and has his own show and endless promotion on THEIR ABC.
100
Sorry Neville, I can’t stand listening to him or Gillard anymore.
70
hot potato #4
17 Nov: UK Telegraph: Christopher Booker: The BBC’s ‘dirty little secret’ lands it in a new scandal
The truth of a secret meeting that decided BBC policy on climate change has come out online
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/9684775/The-BBCs-dirty-little-secret-lands-it-in-a-new-scandal.html
80
This is priceless. Your side of the argument really needs to get a grip on reality. I notice Monckton is still banging this drum and yet your side defends him as a man of integrity. Go figure.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/16/birther-vermont_n_2146210.html?utm_hp_ref=politics
222
JFC,
I can only conclude you live on a completely different planet to the one I inhabit.
Since when did the extremist views from ANY side in ANY debate from ANY period of human history ever include INTEGRITY and/or attention to REALITY (aka truth) as part of the mix????
I also question your usage of ‘your side of the argument’????
What do you therefore assume we are we arguing about JFC?
What is your realistic ‘side’ ? As opposed to the side that you assume is not linked to reality????
What is your reality JFC?
Chuckle 🙂 🙂
120
Debbie, thanks for conceding on these points. At long last we have someone from the extremist side admitting that they have no integrity or attachment to reality.
Thanks also for asking about reality, it’s encouraging to see that you’re willing to learn. Let’s just say that reality in my world are things like evolution, gravity, you know stuff that’s supported by overwhelming empirical evidence and is yet to be falsified despite many lame attempts (in the case of evolution by creationists,you know,the guys on your side). AGW fits those reality parameters nicely here as well.
Planet la-la-land on the other hand is where people believe all sorts of stuff, like you know, faked moon landings, that Barack Obama was born in Kenya, that the earth is 6000 years old and flat, that Lord Monckton has a cure for AIDS, MS, blah, blah and that AGW is not overwhelmingly supported by the data. Unrealists have deep problems with data, the recent US election being a classic case in point.
PS; to those who accused me of being off topic, ummm, not sure how one can get off topic on an unthreaded weekend. Doh!
[But you are expected to be polite. I suggest you avoid creating labels by which you then pigeonhole people, it is a poor debating technique, and it is not polite – first warning] Fly
218
“extremist side”
Huh?
60
I don’t think JFC knows the meaning of empirical data. 🙁
100
NO, CAGW belongs firmly in the faked moon landing side of issues….
Your moronic attempt to elevate it to the status of evolutionary theory, gravity etc shows just how little you know about science, how small your understanding, how empty your mind.
It is an UNPROVEN hypothesis at best, and that’s being highly generous.
Nearly all facets of it are scientific nonsense, based firmly in the la-la land which you apparently inhabit.
130
JFC,
Can you please give us the proof for gravity?
No? I thought not.
The same for evolution. Do you know enough about the workings of DNA to be able to explain how it works? No? I thought not.
And yet you believe that gravity exists, and you believe that DNA is the reason for evolution.
It comes down to belief systems. I happen to believe in those things too, because I have seen and understood the actual proof of the respective theories.
Where we differ is that you believe in CAGW, whereas I do not.
I do not, because CAGW is a theory (as are gravity, and evolution), but I have yet to see any proof of the theory that carbon dioxide, in and of itself, has any relevance to long term global climatic conditions, Or, if it does, that the miniscule amount of carbon dioxide released by the activities of man, when compared to natural causes like volcanic activity, for example, is significant in the wider scheme of things.
I believe in what I believe, because I understand. To believe without understanding moves into the realm of religion.
You therefore, believe in the CAGW religion, as you have every right to.
You adopt the position of “us and them” precisely because, either consciously or subliminally, you feel the need to mount a crusade against the “unbelievers” and “infidels”. And that is also your right.
But you will not get much traction on a blog as rational, and as scientifically, based at this one. But I wish you luck.
193
JFC – raise the standard please ! you’re sounding like an poorly educated schoolkid.
(if you actually are a schoolkid, I do apologise for my abruptness, but think of it as a life lesson about how when conversing with adults you need to learn to engage your brain and think about the subject before speaking/writing)
131
Conceding on what points JFC?
You seem to think that the ‘climate’ is interested in taking ‘sides’.????
I am not a fan of extremism in any form….I’m sorry to say that you are exhibiting the characteristics of extremism by interpreting my comment thus:
At long last we have someone from the extremist side admitting that they have no integrity or attachment to reality.
I don’t belong to any side JFC…what a remarkably myopic comment on your part.
You seriously need to consider what you think these ‘sides’ are.
30
Under English Common Law, the prosecution presents their case, and and the defense is able to cross-examine or is question that evidence. The prosecution will also cross-examine the witnesses for the defense. There is always a dim view taken when either side make their case by attacking or knobbling the other side or preventing the other side being heard, or suppressing or tampering with the evidence. Yet in climate “science” this appears to be the main thrust of the case.
Like in the criminal law, all the efforts that pro-consensus people put into preventing cross-examination of the evidence, or preventing other voices being heard, would suggest a huge empty void at the center. It suggests an absence of the strong scientific case that can justify undermining the economic prosperity of future generations.
120
Come on KFC
You can Huff and Puff all you like but it doesn’t change the science:
The amount of CO2 emitted by man and carried over to succeeding years is miniscule compared with the turnover of nature.
That is the unedited quantitative reality – sometimes referred to as the UQR – of the situation.
The target for the problem is, and always has been, nature.
DO YOU REALLY THINK THAT WE SHOULD SHUT NATURE DOWN?
You people are nuts!
KK 🙂
120
KK,
Maybe dimwit after all? 😉
40
KFC
You see some things “that are priceless”.
There are also some things that are necessary:
http://www.google.com.au/imgres?imgurl=http://www.biosolids.com.au/images/sewage-treatment-process.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.biosolids.com.au/what-are-biosolids.php&h=425&w=670&sz=44&tbnid=aRJBXbW10ipO0M:&tbnh=76&tbnw=120&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dsewage%2Btreatment%2Bplant%2Bsystem%26tbm%3Disch%26tbo%3Du&zoom=1&q=sewage+treatment+plant+system&usg=__hBXFlKPUFYwOYdbK3_UdfBU85ls=&docid=ip6FbIR3HBiWnM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=vzyoUMykNvCWiQffu4CwAw&ved=0CEwQ9QEwAg&dur=1123
KK 🙂
30
That is very interesting KK.
At last I have documented proof that Sydneysiders are full of cr*p. 🙂
60
hi RW
Modern technology always interest me.
Newcastle has an outer suburb called Toronto which is on the lake.
We used to visit there in the fifties and they had an example of the “old” technology.
They had a Pan system where pans were collected and cleaned and returned empty each month or whatever.
sixties.
Now they have the system in the link. Times change.
KK 🙂
10
Oh look, a chihuahua named JFC wapping behind a 6ft fence. !!
(good name for a chihuahua, just about the right size)
Except in this case, the only part that has been deep fried, is its brain.
62
Let’s see:
You make a non-comment about nothing on an unthreaded post, throw in a slur about Monckton who hasn’t even been mentioned even in the comments, and finish up with a link to a court case involving Obama’s birth certificate on Jo’s blog which is about climate change.
.
And we’re the ones struggling for a grip on reality?
.
Really?
161
I shall definitely struggle on.
🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂
70
Maybe it’s a troll bot MV.
90
.
Nah – not intelligent enough.
80
Maybe JFC is just bored and looking for a way to waste away the time?
50
It might be that time of the month.
40
Good spot.
Let us not fall into the trap of thinking all trolls are male. Women can have testosterone as well.
20
I posted this in the other Thread in answer to a question about rooftop solar power and the batteries needed.
In case no one goes there to read it, this is something you all do need to read, so I’ll copy and Paste the Comment here as well.
This is that comment.
There’s the problem that no one wants to address about rooftop solar.
It’s sold not as an answer to residential power, but only as a money returning thing, because of the monstrously huge Feed In Tariff (FIT) for grid connected systems.
If rooftop solar was actually serious, then the idea should be for homes to be completely self sufficient, having all their power needs supplied by the rooftop panels.
Therein lies the problem.
After hours supply, which is two thirds of residential consumption.
To achieve that, the panels need to be connected to a large Inverter, naturally, and then part of the generated power needs to be sent through a battery charger to a dedicated battery bank, and here I’m not talking about a car battery, but enough battery power to supply those after hours needs.
Some people wimp out, mainly because of the horrendous cost of the batteries themselves, and get a cheap small scale battery bank.
Here you need to consider that Power In MUST equal Power Out. So, if the average home consumes 20KWH per day, then you need a bank capable of actually supplying that out of hours power, which is around 13KWH.
So, the small scale user with batteries gets the cheapest they can get, enough to cover just that 13KWH.
The real recommendation if you read all the literature is that for effective results, you need a battery bank actually capable of supplying power for three days, in case there is heavy overcast, or even any overcast, and keep in mind here that just one cloud flitting across the face of the Sun sees the panels reducing power by up to 60%, which then takes time to build back up after that one cloud passes.
Considering that even in Winter with heavy overcast, there will still be some light (around 10% in heavy overcast) getting to the panels, then some charge will be directed to the battery bank, but that three day supply is the recommendation, and keep in mind that this is the Minimum recommendation.
These following are from an Australian Company SolarOnline.
Now check this first link for a grid connected system only, (no batteries) and for that residential requirement of 20KWH, the system costs (from) $25,000.
Now check this second link for a stand alone system (Not grid connected and with the batteries) and that same 20KWH system costs (from) $72,000.
That extra is for the Batteries, and as you can see, that comes in at an extra $47,000 and keep in mind that because this is stand alone, there is no FIT to repay that investment. You stump up the whole cost.
This is for the cheapest system, and for a quality battery bank, you could pay an extra $10,000 and more.
Now, keep in mind that no matter how good the batteries, they can only accept so many charges over their life before they become well, useless. That comes in at anything from 4 to an absolute best 7 years.
So, for the life of the panels, and here again I quote the absolute best case scenario, 25 years, you are looking at the original battery bank and between 3 and 6 replacement battery banks at around 50K a time.
So now, your wonderful stand alone rooftop power system will end up costing the original outlay and say 4 new battery Banks (I always try and quote best case) at 50K a time, hence $270,000, a quarter of a million.
Had you just stayed connected to the grid, then in today’s dollars that same power will cost you around $45,000.
See now why the grid connected systems are pushed.
Also keep in mind here that the panels themselves are rated at 85% after 7 to 10 years, and lose around 5% a year from then on.
You can cheap out with the el cheapo grid connected systems and expect every other consumer to pay you for that system, or you can be fair dinkum and do it right.
Now can you see why I speak out so loudly against rooftop solar power. Grid connected people are still consuming two thirds of their power from the grid, still net consumers, and the useless tiny little no count power they return to the grid is so insignificant as to not even register, and we all pay for that in increased costs for electricity, so those people who do have them can point with green pride and say that they are doing their bit.
Well I say Bovine waste to you lot.
Be serious. If you want to do, then do it right, pay for it yourself, and THEN, and only then can you point with green pride.
It’s a con of the highest order.
Tony.
202
You left out the cleaning, Tony.
I wrote before about how my next door neighbour had panels installed, only to see their efficiency drop virtually on a daily basis as grime built up on the surfaces (we live right on the waterfront on Bribie Island).
Well, last month – after the panels had pretty-much stopped working at all, he bit the bullet and had them cleaned. Cost for cleaning, $200.00.
It’s a two storey house. Cost for the hire, erection and dismantling of the scaffolding so the cleaners could do the job, $2,900.00.
130
Exactly memoryvault.
These panels need to be kept clean at all times, and by clean, I don’t mean the occasional spray with a hose from ground level, but actual cleaning with a quality glass cleaner, preferably one with no ammonia, so that cancels out household glass cleaners like Windex, so here I’m talking quality glass cleaning products and the car care ones have no ammonia.
The slightest film, be it dust, salt etc is the equivalent of that proverbial cloud passing across the Sun.
No use relying on God to keep them clean, err, and before the PC crowd come out here, I mean regular showers.
That’s get up on the roof and polish the panels.
Then, also, there’s the longevity of the Inverter, considering it’s running 24/7/365, and again, you can go cheap here, as with the el cheapo solar systems that are now providing TV with an advertising bonanza, but good high quality Inverters. Find one of them with a 25 year life of the panels warranty. Good luck with that.
On a side light, with respect to panel cleanliness, one of the things worrying some people about the Moree Solar PV plant was water consumption, but hey, the plants proposers said that was not a problem as the panels would only be cleaned twice a year. ******* hilarious. I almost fell off my chair with laughter when I read that little gem.
Tony.
90
That is very good news for us with scaffolding tickets
40
Thanks Tony. Duly copied for future reference.
There seems to be some sense developing even among politicians, eg dropping of feed-in tariffs to something like the normal cost of reticulated power. Trouble is, I guess they can’t touch those contracts that run until 2028, but this may be one area where some pollies are starting to see the writing on the wall. It amazes me that so few people realise that PV is the poor subsidising the rich. Political suicide.
In my daily task of advising customers on residential design, I continue to hold back on the subject of PV, and limit the advice to ” maybe just put in the conduits, and make sure there is a plan to show where they are”. Conduit doesn’t cost much and can serve a variety of uses.
I am starting to be asked about low-voltage private PV, which takes me back 30+ years ago, other side of the world, where I worked on a few projects involving restoring dwellings. Rule was, if there are 3 walls standing and evidence it was once a dwelling, you can restore it. (Keeping that 3rd wall up for the required time period was sometimes a drama.) Often, these premises were too far from the grid for reticulated power. So, a variety of options were used for generating a 12 – 24v supply to tractor batteries. If there was a convenient ridge line, vertical shaft air-scoops would work – hand made, balanced on an adapted tyre balancing device. Solar panels – a lot more inefficient then. On one occasion micro-hydro where there was a continuous flow, plus a ram pump to divert potable water from the point above where the cattle/sheep could get to it. More energy demanding electrical devices in those days, but away from smoke control areas so heating/cooking via Aga stove. Always a back-up petrol/diesel generator. Also involved in similar projects in PNG.
Given the much lower power demand of electronic devices, improvements in LED technology etc, maybe home-based dual installations could be viable? Anyone got any useful links that aren’t flim-flam?
70
Interesting.
20
It irks me that otherwise intelligent people knowingly sign up for household solar, and raise the power bills of everbody else, so they can feel good. The FIT is a regressive tax on the poorest amongst us. 🙁
100
Nope, raising the power bills of everyone else is a feature not a bug. Eventually the stupid bogans will vote out the green slime or they’ll continue to be reamed by their power bills.
No sympathy here for those who complain about power bills yet voted Labor/green and subscribe to the CAGW scam.
The rooftop PV isn’t as sensitive to dirt as you think Tony. Regular rain showers work fine, as do the cells. Yes it is a stupid waste of money for the country as a whole but at the installation price and return you couldn’t afford not to do it when I signed up. I did the numbers without basing them on a feed in tariff either. That’s just jam.
00
Yep, there are still problems to be solved. You need to remember that these are early days. When Thomas Edison started in power generation, he did DC, and at 110V. The transmission losses were so large that every city block would have needed its own power station. Luckily humans are a bit ingenious, and AC generation allowed transmission at higher voltages with far smaller losses.
But I do agree Tony – energy sources other than fossil fuel, hydro-electric and nuclear face significant hurdles.
104
Don’t worry John, you get a thumbs up from me, and I rarely do thumbs.
Tony.
30
Actually John, the transmission losses for DC are smaller for any given conductor and equivalent current than for AC. AC won the battle because a very simple device called a transformer doesn’t work with DC. There are others like the induction motor. But the transformer is the foundation for all practical power distribution systems.
However, DC for long distance transmission has been in use for a long time as I pointed out here.
If you’re interested in the subject the Wiki article I linked is very thorough.
Solar and wind power on the other hand, have problems I’m sure you’ve read about here. By far the worst is their availability — or lack of it. Given that the availability problem is completely outside of human control, which would you rather depend on: a) “green” energy; b) conventional generation?
You’re an educated man who can do straight forward analysis of alternatives (a complement). And my question is serious — no sarcasm, no putdown and no traps. So please, give me an honest answer.
40
Yep, there are still problems to be solved. You need to remember that these are early days….
HAHAHAHAHAHA – ROTFLMAO
Charles Fritts, an American inventor, created the first working solar cell. He produced the first photovoltaic cell in the world in 1882. The first silicon based solar cell was developed by Russell Ohl in 1941 and was mass produced in 1954.
Sorry dude, Solar cells are OLD technology. My boy friend was selling them when I first got out of college and I am now retirement age.
Solar cells are comparable to TV and computers except the last two are commercially viable where as Solar cells only have a niche market.
30
Apparently Archimedes invented concentrating solar in 212BC.
10
Thanks cohenite.
I first visited this Wiki page back in 2008, and it was less than one screen at the time, as can be seen with this link. At that time, it also mentioned the Archimedes legend, which is very tenuous, and I’m sure we all used this principle as children, focussing a magnifying glass to burn a hole in paper..
As you can see now, all types of urgers for green power have had their input in their efforts to make it seem like this really is the way of the future.
However, one thing I will direct you to with cohenite’s original link to the most recent page is this, where it says:
Widely Commercialized. Wow, I’m impressed. Note where it mentions that in the 3 years, 2007 to 2010 they added 740MW ….. and that’s on a Global basis. This is the equivalent of just one small to medium sized conventional power plant, and that to the end of 2010 this brings the total up to 1095MW. which is around the size of ONE medium sized conventional coal fired power plant.
There are plans for a further 1.5GW of power to maybe come on line in the coming years, again, still only the equivalent of ONE medium sized coal fired plant.
For context here, the total output from EVERY CS Plant currently in operation on the whole of Planet Earth is surpassed by just 2 of the 4 generators at Bayswater.
Way of the future!
Yeah! Right!
Tony.
10
OMG, a Wikipedia entry about something related to Climate Change that contains actual MATH! The Post-modern science crowd ain’t gonna be happy, I can tell you.
20
Batteries appear to have been around for a while too.
Baghdad Battery link
20
It seems more like they aren’t batteries at all but something else. Could this be another a case of jumping to conclusions not supported by your data? 😉
Just thought I’d ask…
00
A good post Tony.
In the UK solar panels were also being pushed extremely hard. Until the Government reduced the subsidy from £0.43 to £0.21 per Kwh. (compared with the domestic purchase price of electricity of around £0.14,
A comparison of the British situation (with Manchester in particular) can see if we are better placed for solar than in Australia.
There are two advantages in Britain compared with Australia.
1. >99% of households are connected to the national grid. No need to worry about batteries.
2. It rains a lot in Manchester. 1000mm a year, mostly as steady drizzle. So the panels are self-cleaning.
There are a number of disadvantages compared with Australia.
1. The sun is not as strong as in Australia.
2. There are greater seasonal variations both in the strength of the sun and the daylight hours. In December, the days in Manchester are just 7 to 8 hours. In the North of Scotland, this is less than 5 hours. The sun is always quite low in the sky during winter, and there is cloud cover for most of the hours.
3. Typical Winter day-time max is 5 to 10 Celsius, as against 15 to 22 Celsius mid-summer. Houses need heating for most of the year, but there are only about 10 to 20 nights when it is uncomfortably warm for sleeping. In Australia solar is more closely matched to when you need power for air conditioners.
As a result of these factors my household (a typical user, with gas-powered heating and water) has power consumption in January about 4 times the level in July, yet solar power generation is the reverse. Solar is literally worse than useless in Britain. It actually provides the most power at the times of year when least needed, reducing the efficiency and utilisation of fossil-fuelled power stations like coal and gas.
On the subject of local power, some local green types proposed to build a small hydro scheme on the River Mersey, near to where I live. It would have only generated the power of a small car, yet would generate revenue of £1.7m (A$2.5) over 25 years, or about 3.5 times the original investment. The subsidies come off people’s electric bills. Like with solar panels, it is a case of a transfer payment from the “have-nots to the haves”, the exact opposite of what the socialist profess to support.
60
There’s plenty hot potatoes in the air at the moment.
There’s also plenty heavy metals and other nano particles sprayed on us from above.
Breath deeply people and repeat: “Your government loves you”.
1712
So that’s the standard on this thread is it? Totally free for all. Sonny posts unsubstantiated chemtrail scare stories and it gets 5 upvotes, not a single downvote.
I’ll agree the government, as an institution and as the present executive mob, does not love us.
But the downvote is from me and its for lack of evidence for heavy metal chemtrails. And please don’t tell me again that you believe your own eyes, because your eyes are not spectrometers or gas chromatographs.
Like, how is this chemtrail opinion more substantive than the Moon Hoax meme? That would be a start!
132
.
“Unthreaded” is unthreaded Rereke. It’s not a matter of what we may, or may not, individually agree with.
That’s the beauty of an “unthreaded” thread.
.
That, and Jo gets to take a day off.
40
Hi Andrew
I was voting for his interesting line:
“Breath deeply people and repeat: “Your government loves you”.”
Something that is useful to keep in mind; be cynical about government and don’t trust them.
KK 🙂
50
Well yes KK, I’d just prefer him to give a real historic reason for such conclusions.
Being cynical of government was a tried and true mantra hundreds of years before airplanes ever flew.
And now for a short poem.
Also, the leading cause of unnatural death in the 20th century was… government. Just add up the casualties of WW1,WW2,Vietnam,Soviet gulags and forced collectivisation, and Lysenkoism, and the figure is around 200 million people. Although malaria is a natural cause of death, at less than 1 million deaths per year even malaria could not have killed more than 100 million in the 20th century. As individuals nobody wants to fight massive wars or train wheat to grow in the snow, only governments made those events happen. So the claim is justified.
60
Well I concede that Sonny and I probably put different meanings to it, but I still like it.
I’m not too sure we have any government with the brains to pull off some of the complicated scams attributed to them.
They just seem to muddle on in the public arena and surely can’t do better in secret.
KK
00
If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck the chances are it is a duck.
I don’t need DNA analysis to confirm it. Ask Jo to share with you the photograph I sent her via email showing a single “contrail” expand radially from the spray line and fill the sky over the course of 2 hours. I need no gas chromatograph to tell me that that shit ain’t normal.
Jo knows it too.
48
Sonny,
I’ve seen many contrails do weird things. And so what?
Your not understanding it doesn’t make it sinister.
50
My not understanding it does not preclude it from being abnormal.
And I never said anything about it being “sinister”. It could simply be a GeoEngineering operation to combat global warming. It would have been nice to get public support before the process went live..
http://econews.com.au/news-to-sustain-our-world/geo-engineering-goes-under-the-microscope-in-canberra/
Here we have climate change “experts” talking about spraying shit into the sky.
I can spot a duck. Can you?
33
OK, toss the word sinister. The term doesn’t matter. I still see nothing abnormal in any picture of “chemtrails” I’ve ever seen. When the duck looks like the normal exhaust from a jet engine then that’s what I’ll call it.
30
Has this been covered? If so just ignore but….
How are they “spraying” the stuff?
I dont fly too often but when i do i see many planes on the tarmac and none of them have the equipment required to spray anything and i can say with a high level of confidence that not one military aircraft (in Oz) is equipped to perform such a task.
So i ask again how are they spraying the stuff?
Dont say that they put it in the fuel as jet engines wont appreciate crushed glass or any other foreign object circulating through them and i am sure that if CASA knew of anything being added to the AVTUR they would shut down that company down quicker than you could say carbon pollution.
So once again how are they spraying the stuff?
40
I believe under the right humidity conditions it only takes a single nucleation point for a cloud to begin forming, and the edge of the cloud then forms nucleation points for the cloud to spread out further. That’s one of the tenets of the Svensmark hypothesis. Any aircraft exhaust contains small amounts of organic molecules, which are not as effective as silver iodide but still work as cloud seed material. The low pressure of the jet stream induces cloud formation even without any added organics.
These “chemtrails” are contrails, nothing more. I will be convinced to the contrary by mass spectrometer or gas chromatography analysis of air flask samples taken by investigatory aircraft whose results are independently replicated at other chemtrail sites by other teams. There is my skeptical standard of evidence.
And you should let Jo speak for herself.
80
You’ve asked the critical question Crakar.
From the pictures it would have to be released from within the engine exhaust.
Were it chemical I wonder how it would withstand the heat (typically 1,000 degrees F (538C) and up) and not something that living cells, viruses or most compounds that could be harmful can withstand.
Were it particles of something I wonder how you would manage to spray it from that position. Then there’s the heat consideration here also.
And in both cases I wonder why it would look like contrails.
Then there’s the engineering difficulty of releasing something from that position. So you put your spray apparatus under the wing somewhere away from the engine exhaust so you can control the spray pattern and use already known technology to do the job. If it was visible from the ground it would look quite different from anything I’ve seen offered as evidence of chemtrails.
00
Hi Sonny
From my long experience at making mistakes here on Earth I have found that apart from my areas of expertise, it is often wise to listen to experts.
Trouble is everyone wants to pose as an expert.
There are damaging chemicals in av-gas ;no doubt.
Again as with CAGW the question is How Much?
Mostly the con trails will be the product of the predominant item in av-gas: C-H in its many forms being burnt in the presence of O2.
Products can only be Water and Carbon dioxide.
Visual effects with light: a provocation to think outside the square.
Wait till dark; get a torch and a grain, one grain only, of salt.
Place the salt on a smooth surface; floor or table top.
Turn out the lights.
lay the torch beam across the surface. See how the grain stands out? –
yet you can hardly see it when the lights are on.
Contrails mainly are very little but appear to be a lot when under the right conditions.
ps. It should be obvious by now that I am not an expert in contrails.
KK 🙂
10
Nor am I, KK. But I’m a pilot with some actual training in meteorology. I know the behavior of clouds and I also know that contrails are simply clouds that form under a unique set of circumstances. Once a contrail is formed it’s subject to the same forces that shape and mold any clouds, including the possibility that they encounter wind shear that tears them apart and spreads them out across a wide area and can disappear again shortly after formation. They are also influenced by the normal wake left by the airplane as it flies, which for big jets is more extreme than you may imagine.
Living where I do I can watch all this happen from my kitchen window as the daily onshore breeze blows against a mountain ridge, is pushed up and cooled, forming clouds at the top of the ridge, which then billow out in whatever direction the turbulence takes them and finally disappear again as they move inland. This is exactly what you see contrails do except that the cooling takes place because jet exhaust is cooled by being able to expand as it exits the engine rather than expanding because its altitude increases.
Whatever unusual contrail formations you see are normal. Now can we please put chemtrails to rest?
If the government of Australia is talking about seeding the atmosphere with something to prevent climate change, fight that, not some phantom called chemtrails.
20
Could this be a light at the end of the tunnel?
Scientists and Greenies have long had the mantra that farm animals and farmers are environmental vandals. Thus large tracts of productive farmland have been bought by governments to save threatened bird, animal and fauna species. Over 11.000ha in north east Victoria and over 80,000ha in the south west riverina, not to mention locking up the Alpine national parks and the Barmah state forest.
The focus of the land buying was to save the Plains Wanderer, but now 20 years on, The Victorian Government expert on the Plains Wanderer, Dr. David Baker-Gabb, who is also an adviser to Trust for Nature, the Federal Government and a former director of Birds Australia, after a survey in October said “I couldn’t find one, they’re gone”.
Mr. Tony Varcoe, Manager for Conservation Research,Parks Victoria, has confirmed that no Plains Wanderers had been seen as part of their bi-monthly surveys since March 2011.
However, farmers and graziers adjoining the parks report regular sightings of Plains Wanderers, particularly on land that has been continually grazed by sheep. At the time of the buy-backs, farmers and graziers were telling the scientists that the birds needed open areas, but they were ignored.
Now, Mr Varcoe states ” Sheep grazing is a very effective environmental management tool to maintain suitable habitat for threatened flora and fauna”.
Mr. Baker-Gabb says; “Locking out livestock obviously doesn’t work for them”, and buying farms and closing the gate had not worked.
The Plains Wanderer is not extinct, it simply voted with its feet [and wings], away from the feel good, warm and fuzzie scientific natural environment to the degraded farming environment, where the bird is thriving.
So it took 20 years for the environmental scientists to have their light bulb moment over the Plains Wanderer. We are up to 16 years of no global warming detected………….how many scientists will it take to change the light bulb?
191
.
Redress,
How correct you are, Greenies aren’t corcerned with the environment – they just like to think that they are.
The majority of Qld National Parks are the worst weed infested areas in the state. The native fauna & flora is being decimated by pest plants and animals. The north QLD parks are full of lantana, rubber vine, siam weed etc – nothing being done to control it.
110
HI Dave
They had a model as to how they [the scientists] thought the Plains Wanderer should live and behave. The bird had other ideas.
Now the scientists are completely dumping their opposition to livestock in the “Plains Wanderer Parks” even to the extent that they are calling for the Victorian government to purchase its own sheep to run in the parks!
Oh… and they have changed their tune on why the parks were bought…it isn’t as was stated at the time to get rid of the sheep and therefore grazing, to protect delicate biomass…..No, now they were bought to protect the grasslands from cropping.
Sound familiar?
If they will only listen to the Mountain Cattlemen about grazing in the Alpine parks and Barmah Forest, the Irrigation Farmers about the removal of water for the environment in the Murray Darling Basin we might be getting somewhere, and I completely agree about national Parks and their management.
91
Sorry people, should have given links earlier, here they are now
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/opinion/how-the-plains-wanderer-changed-natures-balance/story-e6frfhqf-1226517681233
http://www.northernplainscmn.com.au/documents/20-Patho-plains-surveys-and-monitoring-May-2011.pdf
50
Here in Newy, Glenrock nature reserve is not much better, noxious weeds everywhere !
Its almost like an ALP caucus meetiing !
The real environmentalists are the ones who get out there and clean up these exotic weeds: BushCare, CoastCare.
100
Hi Andy
I have always kept “in touch” with Glenrock over the years and the bush area has become unusable for passive recreation; walking.
While it is true that the modern basis for Glenrock was mining and that some restoration was in order there has been a very misinformed approach to the renewal.
The model that many modern eco enthusiasts use is the way they imagine the Aborigines would have managed the land.
They have devised a scheme that fits their ideas of what that may have been and implemented their own Euro Aboriginal Ecology of NSW.
The current overgrowth of material in the State Parks is Not how the Aborigines managed the areas they
lived in prior to 1788 when the first fleet arrived.
The Bill Gamage book, the Worlds Largest Estate is basically about the careful use of fire to make safe, liveable and productive areas to inhabit.
A fascinating book which is counter-intuitive, in that fire was regularly used to make the land safe and productive.
The current, “No Fire under any circumstances” Religion runs in parallel with the CAGW religion and leads
to decisions like that of “saving” the Plains Wanderer that Redress talks about.
All this goes to show that religious Enthusiasm for a cause is no substitute for careful examination, observation and analysis of problems.
This latter technique is sometimes known as that forgotten activity SCIENCE.
Walking the political tightrope and balancing off green activism and common sense has led to many deaths from fire in Victoria and extreme property damage in WA.
Time for a return to best Practice management of our natural resources and leave distorted politics out of it.
KK
60
.
I’ve often wondered about the logic of “minimum” catch sizes for fish and crustaceans.
Seems to me we “protect” the immature ones, 99% of which are destined to be part of the food chain anyway, before ever reaching maturity, and then allow people to take those lucky enough to survive, just as they reach breeding size.
Then we scratch our heads and wonder why fish stocks are diminishing.
Seems logical to me that we should allow the taking of the young, with bag limits, and protect the breeders by imposing a maximum catch size.
112
Conceptually MV it about giving all the members of a cohort that survive long enough the chance to breed at least once before they can be included in any human take.
The “99% of which are destined to be part of the food chain anyway” comment is a bit of a furphy as the bulk of that % of predation will generally happen in the very early stages of the life cycle. Cray’s are a good example. They will get to breed at least once, maybe twice before they can be legally caught, and then there are max size limits for females as the large females produce more eggs.
Nor really. Usually it comes down to catch effort being out of proportion to the stock.
27
.
Catamongst,
You’re extrapolating a crustacean example to back your argument for fishery sustainability?
Are you a member of NFI Catamongst?
50
I think Catamon that MV is likely comparing full grown highly fecund female fish with smaller naive and immature (or low fecundity) fish that fall within catch limits. These fish are subject to a much higher predation.
The comment about catch effort is true enough but the head scratching is because we think we know what we are doing but actually don’t. The gap between what we know about terrestrial vs marine species behaviour is vast and fisheries models used to set catch limits suffer from it. Add to this the regulation and monitoring of actual takes.
11
Actually MV, what really works are no take zones. The provide a great resource for the non-invasive users of an area, the people who go to look, not fish and the tourist operators who make a quid off them. The fish there will generally have less fear of people as well. The fish there get more numerous, but also bigger and so generally better breeders and help re-stock adjacent areas.
Needs more enforcement, and leaving the odd bogan without his boat standing on the beach with nothing after breaking the rules as a warning to others. 🙂
56
.
So Catamongst,
You’re saying that “Bogan” fishermen are the problem not commercial fishing nor CAGW?
I ask again, are you a member of the NFI in Australia?
30
Which NFI would that be Dave?
No Dave, that would be silly. They are a problem though as regards fish stock preservation, particularly on a local level.
14
.
Catamongst,
If you don’t know about marine biology then you have no frigging idea?
60
Would that be the seafood industry lobby group in the US Dave?
And if it is, why on earth would you expect someone in Australia to know or care anything about it?
16
Ah, i occurs to me that you are making a joke with the NFI thing. Har Har, fell for that. However, i’m sure you’ll understand that i dont really care as the Oxycodone i’m on at the moment is pretty good stuff.
As to marine biology, yup, i do actually know a thing or two about that.
Remember to close the pod bay doors Dave. XX
15
No take zones ruffle feathers but do work on a number of levels. One reason they work is partly answered by my comment above. No take zones are chosen with some knowledge of the breeding behaviour of the fish within but we still know very little in total. So setting aside an area is actually covering our ignorant arses. In a no take zone, the fish manage themselves, we actually do nothing.
12
If you really want to see no take zones “in action”, the northern part of Ningaloo reef in W.A. is the place to go. Jump in in a no take zone. Then jump in in a zone that can be fished and spot the difference in density and behaviour.
Abrholos has some interesting spots as well that have benefited. Coral Trout and Dhufish in localised no take areas particularly.
The difference, particularly in the “resident” species is enormous. Context is important as well. Pelagic’s don’t benefit as much of course unless the zone is very large.
Except bust the bogans with boats as and when needed. 🙂
02
As you note, pelagics are a different kettle … no, even I wont sink to such a bad pun.
No catch zones do benefit pelagics though, as there are pelagics and then there are “pelagics”. Fish, squid etc that drop by a convenient rock ledge to dump eggs for instance, eels and others that even head up rivers.
22
LoL! Go on, you know you want to!!
02
It’s a sad day when the young scientists (Green) are ignoring the wealth of experience & knowledge on offer in pastoral, agricultural or fishery areas. The local cahp that told me about the Jacaranda flowering times was 89 years old – and said it would rain in SE QLD by mid November.
Luck? I don’t think so.
This alone is probably 90% of the problems today with our environment. The lure of the Green Grant money is taking away the drive for knowledge in the current CSIRO, DERM etc etc.
They just want the money now.
100
Now if only the powers wanting to control us could recognize that we also vote with our feet, that is, with our money and our tires on the road, etc.
60
Now if only the powers wanting to control us could recognize that we also vote with our feet, that is, with our money and our tires on the road, etc….
____________________________________________________
Why the heck do you think there is a drive towards Agenda 21 and “sustainable cities”? (See video It is about the USA but coming to
theaterscities near you.)As Ms. Koire states thanks to the Foodshed idea, you will not be allowed to move from city to city because the city is “food self-suficient” and can only support a maxium number. (Someone must die before you have a kid too no doubt) “Sustainable cities” is just another term for the old soviet type Closed City or as they are now called – “closed administrative-territorial formations”
It is the modern equivalent of serfdom.
10
Yes, we know!
But it won’t hit just the U.S. So what’s your idea for stopping it?
00
Do you ever wonder why the first two metres of the atmosphere in which we stand and in which we measure climate is always just a little below the temperature of the surface? There is no way that radiation alone could keep it that warm. It is all to do with conduction of energy from the surface into the oxygen and nitrogen molecules which collide with the surface. Click here to see a net energy budget diagram which clearly shows “Conduction and rising air 7%” and “Radiation absorbed by atmosphere 15%” so conduction is far from being negligible. And latent heat (23%) outstrips radiation by more than 50%.
Out of these, only conduction significantly affects those first 2 metres because the energy in the radiation and the latent heat is spread over most of the height of the troposphere, so only a very small portion is released in the first 2 metres.
Climatologists love to use those S-B equations, but have no understanding as to why they are not applicable to the surface. The main reason is that it is not an isolated body insulated from all surrounds and only able to lose energy by radiation.
Indeed the energy transferred by radiation may be determined after conduction and evaporation have played their part. The actual amount of radiation is in fact what we can all calculate using S-B. But by no means is all that radiation actually transferring thermal energy from the surface. More than 60% of such energy has already departed the surface by non-radiative processes. These processes, especially conduction, warm the nearby air, including some radiating molecules. The radiating molecules send backradiation to the surface which supplies EM energy and reduces the amount of thermal energy needed to be drawn from the surface. Hence the rate of cooling by radiation reduces so that the radiation only needs to transfer the remaining energy not already transferred by non-radiative processes.
Because of the huge, unimaginable amount of energy stored in the whole Earth system, oceans, crust, mantle and core, there is a very strong stabilising effect which I explained in detail on this page written last year. At some point in the annual seasonal cycle in each location on Earth, the surface temperature cools down on a cold winter’s night to something close to a “base temperature” supported by all this sub-surface energy. It has nothing to do with the slow net terrestrial heat flow – rather it has to do with the temperature that has been established over billions of years. And it could take perhaps hundreds of thousands of years to make much of a change in that temperature. So this is why I keep saying, the non-radiative cooling processes compensate for any slowing of the radiative cooling processes, so there is no net overall effect.
Only long-term changes in the mean Solar radiative flux reaching the surface can affect climate. These changes do happen naturally, and mankind has no control over such.
140
Hi Doug
Great piece.
Very readable.
Just a very small point.
The total IN can be 100% on the energy budget diagram, no problem.
The OUT however will never match that 100%.
There are losses within the biosphere and some of these are linked to: wind turbulence/friction, energy required to enable the vast quantity of bio related chemical reactions to proceed, as examples.
I am not aware of the quantities involved in the enthalpy of Rx for all activity in the soil, sea and living, growing material on the surface but it must show up as a loss in the energy leaving Earth.
Great article.
KK 🙂
30
Pretty much correct NC, although I think you might mean convection where you use the term conduction?
On the global energy budget, compare your link:
http://img15.imageshack.us/img15/93/energybudget.jpg
to Kevin Trenberth’s:
http://www.agci.org/classroom/images/trenberth_energy.png
Then look at this:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/90071372/Szokolay1973.png
The last one comes from “Manual of Tropical Housing and Building – Part 1 Climatic Design” 1974.
(IMHO the “Bible” in my field. Often imitated, never bettered.)
Notice there’s no massive “back radiation” element in images 1 and 3.
20
The last ref is simple and clear.
KK
10
No, Martin. The process that takes place at the surface/atmosphere interface is due to molecular collisions, and this is conduction or diffusion. Convection is movement of molecules – that’s what starts to happen as soon as the molecules are warmed by conduction. The K-T energy budget is not a net energy budget. Only net energy budgets give a realistic indication of actual heat transfers. When they introduce backradiation they are showing a lot of extra radiation each way, none of it actually transferring energy to the surface. My paper discusses this, though you may find it better explained in an article I have written which is due for publication this week.
00
Hi Doug and Martin
Just woke up and haven’t read much of the comment but later wanted to ask about fig 5 item c and how fig 6 relates to the overall energy balance.
Whatever the energy transfer mechanism in the first 10 cms of the air above ground is, I don’t know, conduction or radiation, but the main thing is to work out and measure How Much.
Martins diagrams are clear, simple and apparently very useful; hard to beat that regardless of the H/T mechanisms at work immediately over surface; it pretty soon becomes convection.
KK 🙂
10
Hi Doug, yes your paper does explain it, and I’ll look out for the next one.
A characteristic of the lowest 2m up here on hot days is turbulence, stratification only evident at higher levels.
20
Yes it’s a mildly embarrassing oversight. In the 3rd image Figure 6 the back radiation is implicit in paths B and C. In the atmosphere I live in the molecules are completely politically unbiased and emit their thermal radiation isotropically. Therefore between 50% and 46% of it heads towards the earth, not up to space.
The diagram is incomplete.
When measured, the back radiation from clouds passing overhead is far higher than the back radiation from the clear atmosphere, so your clients are lucky the effect missing from the diagram is probably quite unimportant for building design.
20
Point taken about cloud. Evident last night as it happens. Cooling period extended by 2-3 hours, mild thunderstorm activity. More important in building design is “effective temperature”, eg 33°C and 30 RH% is more comfortable than say 29°C and 70 RH%.
10
Hi Andrew
Just wondering if you have any breakdown of the “back- radiation” process.
I would imagine ( not very scientific) that the path length of any returning IR would be very short and be diffused, perhaps increasing local air temps and increasing convection?
KK 🙂
00
Bah, you and your “path length” problem. 🙂
Well you can’t follow that Joule halfway and call it a victory.
By the 2LoTD, just below the back radiation source the now warmer air has less temperature difference with the warm air close to the surface, so convection and conduction from the surface is now marginally impeded.
You keep trying to dodge it, but the moment any part of that outgoing LWIR gets turned around the resulting reduction in surface cooling is inevitable, one way or another.
It doesn’t matter how you increase the low altitude energy density, it’s gonna stay warmer for longer because of BR.
Now really, where is the mistake in that argument?
Or … is there none? 🙂
10
The mistake is that, in the real world heat rises and heat flows from hotter to colder.
You’re using a combination of “backradiation from colder to hotter” and “thermal blanket” AGWScienceFiction explanations.
How is carbon dioxide, which is a trace gas, a “thermal blanket” when it is practically non-existant 100%holes in the atmosphere?
01
Now Andrew, in that reply you seem to have paraphrased one of my earlier posts. Good stuff.
I just wanted to make sure you weren’t saying that the returning IR reached ground!
KK 🙂
00
KK, some of the IR BR will reach the ground.
There I said it.
Neither you nor I have any experimental evidence to tell us what portion of IR BR will reach the ground, but just by Beer’s Law some of it must, even if only 0.1%. The argument above is not to my knowledge a paraphrase of anything you have said – and if it turns out to be then I will accuse you of sinister subliminal messaging techniques. 😉
I just wanted to make sure you understood that 1) Back radiation is real, 2) it slows surface cooling regardless of what mix of heat processes it causes, and 3) it’s older than the hills.
00
Martin re your tropical buildings energy budget, what is this depicting direct from the Sun? The Sun’s heat, thermal infrared, or shortwave light?
00
Martin
Don’t answer that.
KK
00
MYRRH
Whatever spectra that reaches ground level from the Sun is able to provide heat.
Doesn’t matter if it’s Uv, Vis or IR
KK
00
in Christopher Booker’s article above –
“The BBC’s ‘dirty little secret’ lands it in a new scandal” he writes:
“The seminar’s co-organisers, Roger Harrabin and Joe Smith, were later able to boast that one of the first fruits of their good work was the BBC’s Climate Chaos season, a stream of unashamedly propagandist documentaries, led off with two fronted by Sir David Attenborough which featured a string of ludicrous scare stories.”
watch the opening 10 mins of the first of Attenborough’s “i believe in CAGW” docus, which aired just months after the 28Gate Seminar, and be prepared to be shocked by the mass of misinformation. will attenborough have to be sent to be re-educated, i wonder? notice this is not an ordinary Attenborough docu. it’s like some stock footage US/Discovery-style docu, with Attenborough simply narrating:
Can We Save Planet Earth (VARIOUS SEGMENTS)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1U37QrXpfI
40
Big money attracts the big players. After all, it’s better than wading through croc-infested swamps with a microphone when you’re getting on a bit.
00
Check out the latest issue of New Scientist. Theyre at it again!
http://sceper.eu/2012/11/new-scientist-17-november-2012-p2p.html
20
As someone whose work was published in New Scientist once in 1999, I have no desire to buy the rag it has become.
New Scientist is the Cleo of scientific publications.
40
Thanks Andrew, that’s quite funny, even by New Scientist standards:
At the top, above the main headline, they claim: “The sun is doing strange things to our elements” (but presumably not the climate?).
Then below is, yes, you guessed it, the main “Worse than we thought” headline.
Below THAT, they have “Roll up, roll up..” for “the great marijuana experiment…”
Methinks they already have 🙂
10
“The sun is doing strange things to our elements” ???
Is that about this?
Unfortunately the scientific content disintegrates to “These results comport with modern findings that the last ten years have been the warmest ever, since records have been kept. “ with no mention of the fact that current temperature is colder when compared to the rest of the Holocene graph
10
“These results comport with modern findings that the last ten years have been the warmest ever, since records have been kept. “
For “findings” read “fundings”.
10
“Climate change deniers are rarer than we think.”
http://theconversation.edu.au/climate-change-deniers-are-rarer-than-we-think-10670
It’s great they gather in one place though!
58
See! Rare, special people!! 🙂
27
Special….. As opposed to run-of-the-mill brain-dead morons who are too scientifically illterate to see that the CAGW hypothesis has MAJOR validation issues.!
30
OK Noice,
I’ll bite.
So Catamon gave you one greenie thumb but how did you manage the other one yourself?
KK
31
Call a friend?
Email all SkS readers (at least those that can read)?
2 computers with different ISPs?
All of the above?
30
“Skeptics” are rarer than we think. Especially since some masquerading as “skeptics” aren’t really skeptical about AGW, they only pretend to be skeptical to stop action being taken.
116
John, I presume this post is purely inflammatory. You can’t actually take some of the stuff you write seriously.
71
Sonny
You’re doing better than me.
I couldn’t work out what he was saying.
KK
20
JB, you have GOT to stop your 5 year old posting comments !!!
Its very difficult to tell if its you or him/her making the comment.
60
Gee whiz JB,
You now appear to be claiming there’s a conspiracy group hiding amongst the conspirators. (I think?) 🙂
What action BTW?
Carbon tax and cap and trade?
That one doesn’t seem to be achieving any ‘climate’ outcomes.
10
Real CAGW bretheren are pretty thin on the ground.
97+% of those who deliver the tripe are in it purely for the trough access.
41
Puleeaase!!
This was done to death less than a week ago on this site.
Stripped of all the mumbo jumbo spin, what the actual survey results show are that in just twelve months:
1) – Belief that climate change is natural CLIMBED from 43.6% up to 45.3%
2) – Belief that climate change is human induced REDUCED from 46.3% down to 43.2%
3) – Belief that the whole “CAGW theory” is utter BS ROSE from 6.5% to 8.0%%.
FFS Cat even used the same “special people” lame gag.
.
Don’t you dolts have any new material?
130
Nice One,
Memory Vault (#17.4) sums it all up nicely.
Now fortunately for us and unfortunately for you, the truth is not a matter of majority opinion. Polls don’t run the universe. It has its own set of rules and bothers not one tiny bit about humans. All we can do is try to figure out what those rules are and then live with them.
So I’ll take real evidence over your climate change theories any day even if I’m the last denier on earth.
And if you or anyone wonders about my using denier, look up the history of a little ditty called Yankee Doodle and learn from it. I’m quite happy to wear your label and toss it back in your face. It’s rapidly becoming a badge of honor like so many other pejoratives thrown around by fools who can’t make a sound argument for their cause.
Now do go away until you can hold an actual debate, backed up by real evidence.
141
Many thumbs up if I could Roy :-))
50
The issue of how the air close to the surface is warmed primarily by conduction and convection (and not by radiation) is discussed in an article about to be published in the next 24 hours (co-authored by myself and John O’Sullivan) which puts forward the viewpoint held by most of the 120 or more members of Principia Scientific International all of whom know that the blame does not lie with carbon dioxide. There are several papers already on our website to which I have referred above, and readers should also study Computational Blackbody Radiation by another PSI member, Claes Johnson, professor of Applied Mathematics.
42
partisan politics causes blindness. when on earth will those who still believe the CAGW scam is run by greenies & leftists wake up:
17 Nov: Detroit News: David Shepardson: EPA rejects bid to relax ethanol mandate
The Environmental Protection Agency on Friday rejected a request from eight governors and nearly 200 members of Congress to waive requirements for the use of corn-based ethanol in gasoline, after last summer’s severe drought wilted much of the nation’s corn crop.
The move is a victory for corn farmers who have seen corn prices jump 400 percent in recent years. But it is a loss for pork and beef producers who say the diversion of corn to ethanol raises feed prices and ultimately prices at the supermarket.
Automakers have clashed with ethanol advocates and opposed boosting the percentage of ethanol. They argue that higher concentrations of ethanol in gasoline — which may be necessary in order to meet stepped-up minimums for annual ethanol usage — can harm engines in most vehicles on the road today…
***
The law was signed in 2007 by President George W. Bush and requires production of increasing quantities of ethanol…
Michal Rosenoer, biofuels policy campaigner at Friends of the Earth, criticized the EPA decision.
“If the worst U.S. drought in more than 50 years and skyrocketing food prices are not enough to make EPA act, it falls to Congress to provide relief from our senseless federal support for corn ethanol,” he said…
The American Coalition for Ethanol praised the decision by the EPA.
“Despite millions of dollars spent by Big Oil and Big Food to shamelessly attack American-made ethanol, it comes as no surprise EPA denied the requests to waive the RFS because the facts are on our side,” said Brian Jennings, executive vice president of the group…
In August, a top United Nations official urged the Obama administration to suspend ethanol requirements as fears of food shortages grew around the world.
The law assures big demand for corn. It is popular in corn-growing states, making it politically difficult to waive the requirements…
By some estimates, Congress has awarded $45 billion in subsidies to the ethanol industry since 1980…
This year, the Renewable Fuel Standard requires the use of 13.2 billion gallons of corn ethanol, the production of which could require using more than half the country’s corn crop, up from 5 billion gallons in 2007.
Next year, the standard increases to 13.9 billion gallons. By 2022, the U.S. must use 36 billion gallons of biofuels, though 21 billion gallons are supposed to be from advanced cellulosic ethanol.
To meet the increasing amount of ethanol required under the law, the EPA has approved use of a higher blend of ethanol fuel called E15. It is 15 percent ethanol, up from the E10 at most pumps today. Just a handful of stations currently sell E15…
Last month General Motors Co., Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler Group LLC approved the use of E15, but only for 2013 model vehicles and newer.
They still oppose the use for vehicles from 2012 and earlier.
http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20121117/AUTO01/211170359/EPA-rejects-bid-to-relax-ethanol-mandate
00
the most dishonest thing about the following is it pretends this is something new:
18 Nov: BBC: Nick Childs: Defence firms seek broader agenda
A number of defence and aerospace companies have begun to explore how they could apply their skills to help with global challenges like energy shortages, the environment and natural disasters. But is this just a potentially lucrative new market to compensate for stagnating defence budgets?
This week some of those involved in the initiative gathered at a conference in London. One of the instigators, Nick Cook, a former aerospace journalist who now runs a company called Dynamixx, explained how he latched on to the idea.
“It was patently obvious to me that the aerospace and defence sectors had technologies which operated in all segments of the eco-sphere from sub-sea to space,” he said. “So why should they not know about the environment and how to go about tackling some of the particularly big problems encapsulated by climate change?”…
Recently, five of the major defence and aerospace companies – US firms Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman, and Saab and Finmeccanica from Europe – signed up to a statement promising to look at co-operation to tackle what they called “global challenges”, that could include renewable energy, climate change, and disaster relief…
There is, of course, a potentially significant economic incentive. Defence spending globally is still growing. But Western defence budgets are stagnating or declining, and the global market is getting more crowded. On the other hand, it has been estimated that the market for global infrastructure development could amount to $40 trillion (£25trn) over the next 25 years…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-20385312#
00
Carbon Market Europe 16 November
This week’s edition explains why CO2 prices fell by more than a fifth despite the publication of an EU proposal to drastically curb supply, and how the promise of a global pact to limit emissions from aviation led Brussels to rein in its CO2 regulation of foreign flights. Plus, Gordon Moffat of European steel association Eurofer writes on why the EU’s plan to delay permit sales puts at risk Europe’s industrial future and the credibility of its carbon market.
http://www.pointcarbon.com/news/cme/1.2063316
even if “rich countries” were doing well, the best the “poor countries” could hope for is crumbs from the trading of carbon dioxide:
Rich countries to constrain climate cash pledges this year: EU
LONDON, Nov. 16 (Reuters Point Carbon) – Budgetary crises and stuttering economic growth mean rich nations are unlikely to pledge major sums this year to help poor countries tackle climate change, Europe’s senior climate negotiator said on Friday, though the EU will continue to give “significant” money.
http://www.pointcarbon.com/news/1.2063286
00
Is Geo Engineering (aka spraying crap into the air we all breathe) a good idea?
Should there be a public referendum “IF” such activities were “HYPOTHETICALLY” taking place? Let’s see what some “climate scientists” (aka UN Agenda 21 puppets) have to say about it shall we?
http://econews.com.au/news-to-sustain-our-world/geo-engineering-goes-under-the-microscope-in-canberra/
Several leading climate change experts have highlighted the need for further research and understanding into the effects, risks and cost-effectiveness of implementing geo-engineering procedures to counter-act the effects of climate change.
The experts were speaking at Australia’s first geo-engineering symposium, Geoengineering the climate? A southern hemisphere perspective, which recently took place in Canberra.
Proposed geo-engineering procedures discussed at the symposium included Solar Radiation Management (SRM) and Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR).
“The geo-engineering of climate really comes in two packages- one is you go out and you do things to reflect some of the sunlight away from the planet and cool it, to actually offset the warming that’s caused by these gasses, and the second one is that you actually try to remove the gasses from the atmosphere”, explained guest speaker Dr Graeme Pearman from Monash University.
Proposed options for SRM detailed at the symposium included the simple measure of painting one’s roof white to reflect sunlight back to space, to the more involved measures of placing sulfate aerosols in the stratosphere to scatter radiation, and solar collectors in space that reflect solar radiation.
Dr Greg Bodeker of Bodeker Scientific, New Zealand, devoted a large portion of his presentation to the analysis of sulfate aerosol geo-engineering, highlighting that while the aerosol geo-engineering would almost certainly work, the associated risk of stratospheric aerosols is very high.
As Dr Bodeker explained, “It comes back to this whole idea of how complete is our knowledge of the system, and how certain are we that our knowledge is sufficiently complete to be able to provide policy makers with sound scientific basis for the formulation of this policy?”
“In general, we do not know enough about the system to be able to be confident in making statements about how the system will respond to any sort of geo-engineering”, he added.
Mr Roger Beale, a member of the Climate Commission and speaker at the symposium, spoke primarily of governance risks in regard to climate change mitigation and geo-engineering.
Mr Beale stated that geo-engineering can be considered viable in light of “the risk of failure of global governance to support mitigation”, whereby “SRM and CDR could theoretically be implemented by one or a small number of countries without global agreement.”
However, Mr Beale also highlighted the issues of equity in world-wide geo-engineering, stating “only a few countries might be able to actually change the global climate, but then they would have to bear that ongoing cost, and you would have to keep doing it… and doing it at larger dosage rates if you are not mitigating emissions”.
Continuing, Mr Beale added that these factors could provoke a “sudden cessation”, leading to “rapid change” that would ensue from the impact of “greatly increased concentrations of greenhouse gasses”.
“There is a huge diversity of opportunities, and most of them we’re not in a position at this stage to really be able to advise the pros and cons and that’s partly why we need more research”, stated Dr Graeme Pearman.
41
21
so this is a long winded way of saying you have no evidence for chemtrails
21
No, none whatsoever.
But if the government is spending money funding scientists “talking” about doing it “without global agreement” in increasing “dosages”, I have no problem imagining that it is indeed possible that they ARE DOING IT RIGHT NOW without global agreement or agreement of the population.
This, and what I see above my head is proof enough for me.
Do you suppose that governments would never do anything behind our backs?
(or in this case above our heads???)
63
Sonny, instead of replying to what you wrote I instead thought I’d count the logical fallacies in your argument. Just three. I thought there were more.
34
This is an interesting idea Sonny, personally i see no evidence which suggests it is happening but lets suppose for the moment it is happening as we speak.
At some point this geo engineering (GE) is going to cause the temps to drop and maybe we have had this 15 year hiatus due to GE people are now starting to question the AGW theory based on this fact, our emissions have increased quite a bit of late but yet the temps refuse to budge so people are now openly questioning this stupid theory but inknowns to us (sceptics at least) it is teh GE that is stopping the temps from rising.
Now lets assume they continue to pump out crushed glass or whatever up there to the point where they drop the temp by say 0.5C, do they allow the sceptics to gloat about how stupid Matt and James have been or do they come clean in order to get the heros welcome they al feel they richly deserve?
Alternatively they may cock it up and drop the temps by too much creating a negative feed back or tipping point and we spiral rapidly into an ice age much to James astonishment and they keep quiet. Thus allowing we sceptics to claim victory and work on a thousand coal fired power plants begins immediately.
Of course all of the above is written in jest, what is not is that some mad scientist somewhere (supported by idiots like James) actually think they can change the weather but not only change but control. I suspect we could change the weather somewhat it is the controlling part that scares me the most.
Cheers
40
Crackar,
Here is another hypothesis.
Global warming is the excuse that will one day be used retrospectively to justify
The spraying of aerosols into the atmosphere (but the real reason is something else altogether perhaps weather modification experiments for military applications, biological weapons, solar shielding from mass coronal ejections etc etc). Use your imagination!
They do this in a clandestine way because the public would never accept the health risks associated with polluting our atmosphere irrespective of what the motives were or their degree of benevolence.
52
One question to resolve is if we currently have the technology to spray shit out of a plane in such a way that it LOOKS like normal contrails.
Do we have advanced enough propaganda techniques to put out a lot of misinformation on the web convincing people that this is what planes have always done?
Do you remember asking the question as a child “Mommy, why do planes make clouds”? “Mommy, why is there a rainbow around the sun?”
33
Or maybe it’s just a scheme to make money?
12
Sonny,
I am not disputing any of the above, i am merely trying to understand the mechanism they use to spray whatever it is they spray. For any of the things you say to be true we must first understand how they do it.
Regards
Crakar24
11
Cracker there are a number of patents directly related to aerosol spraying dating back to the 50’s
http://globalskywatch.com/chemtrails/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=1360
Also I don’t think that the argument that you’ve never seen a plane on the runway with spraying equipment cuts the cheese.
We do have secret military facilities and airports in Australia.
12
this is the funniest line ever
did you mean to write this? Really?
00
Yes patents there are many i am sure but to physically change the climate by spraying a substance into the atmosphere would require a large amount of spraying. Remember the whole point of GE is to block out the sun or reflect the suns rays etc.
It may suprise you but even secret squirrell stuff from the military has to comply with CASA when it comes to A/C safety regs etc. You would need a tremendous amount of A/C doing the spraying to have an effect so one would expect to see A/C with this equipment attached, have you seen any Sonny?
This flows on to what GA is asking so i will respond to them as well.
GA i understand your confusion, here is an example. You believe in AGW but if i ask you for evidence to suggest AGW is true we find you have none. Now take this methodology and apply it to chemtrails, Sonny believes people are spraying chemicals into the atmosphere to GE the climate so the first thing we need to do is establish whether they are actually doing this. Until this is achieved there is no point in discussing it any further.
I will wait until that lone pea inside your head stops rattling around before i go any further OK.
00
Oh wow, it turns out that this weather reporter agrees with Sony that planes can disperse aerosols. Imagine that! We have the technology!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgEVq5MAKrY&feature=youtube_gdata_player
12
Sonny,
Crop dusters prove we have the technology but that was never in question, we need to establish whether “they” are actually doing it.
I dont care what a weather reporter says about chemtrails as that is not evidence is it.
The kind of evidence i am talking about is say photographic, do you have photos of A/C fitted with spraying equipment that have the ability to cruise above 40000 feet for example?
As for military A/C and i mean C130H or J model, Caribou or C17 then they would have to be moded, all A/C modes that can affect flight are done through where i work, we have done some interesting and unusual mods but i can tell you we have never moded anything that can do this.
00
Crackar, why should the quantity of spraying required be any obstacle ?
You need a large number of Big Macs to keep Americans obese but we have the technology! I presume that billions of dollars have been made available for Geo Engineering.
11
Cracker I have no evidence whatsoever for my belief.
I do not have access to these aerial vehicles to photograph them – nor will I link to supposed chemtrail plane photoraphs on the web because these are available for anybody to goolge and assess.
Eg google images “chemtrail plane proof”.
11
Ah good we are making progress, yes we have the technology to make Americans obese by supplying them with a never ending supply of Big Macs (this fact is a problem in many countries i might add) and whats more we have the evidence to support this claim.
We have the technology to fit spraying or if you like dispersing systems to A/C for the sole purpose of GE the climate, these systems would need to be fitted to A/C capable of high altitude long range flight, enough A/C operating all over the globe in unison 24 hours a day to accomplish such a feat? Plausable i suppose but do we have the evidence?
A photo?, a video? a signed statement by a whistleblower perhaps?
I have not seen any and all i ask of you is to supply with such evidence if you have any, supply we the evidence and you will convince me until then i will remain sceptical.
Cheers
10
sorry just read your last after i posted mine, sorry if i have confused.
Cheers
00
Crackar I have no proof that I have obtained personally.I have my own photos and videos but these are easily debunked as “regular contrails”.
Others online have what they claim is proof and this is why so many people have created websites, petitions, analyzed snow, rain water, taken photographic evidence, video evidence etc etc.
I have succeeded in raising awareness of the possibility of chemtrails. The standards of proof are and should be determined by the individual through independent research not me spoon feeding it to you.
13
For what it is worth (which is not much) Someone on one of the farming blogs along with the help of friends grabbed a sample of the stuff at an airforce base in the USA and had it analysed. Unfortunately that was years ago. Since I take the whole subject as a bit wacky I did not bookmark it.
There are also planes available who can spray. Think Agent Orange during Vietnam, crop spraying and dumping water on fires. Therefore it is certainly possible.
Will a government do such things? YES. Think of the forced neutering of native American women by the US government before the 1970’s as well as the radiation experiments done on unknowing cancer patients (My mom was a subject and suffered very bad radiation burns by “mistake” from a doctor who was writting a paper on her.)
The easiest way for government to hide what they are doing is to say those who are trying to gather data are wackos and Conspiracy Nuts. Heck they are using the same method to sideline skeptics. Unfortunately there are enough wackos out there to taint those who are not wacko so the labeling works even when there is massive evidence on the side of the “Wackos”
11
Sonny i dont want you to spoon feed me anything i am just trying to get to the bottom of this thing.
For example if you wanted to perform an act of GE i could not think of a more expensive and useless way to do it than to sprinkle shit in the air. What would be the point anyway……block out the sun? Oh wont that ne great and when all the plants die and we have no food what do we eat?
The theory does not even make sense.
I looked at quite a few google links to chemtrails and not once did i see anything that could be construed as evidence, oh i saw lots of planes flying around with contrails but no evidence of dispersion equipment mounted to passenger jet type aircraft.
Another brain fart was by that pommy git who wanted to paint the rooves of houses and road white!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Remenmber the idea to dump iron filings into the ocean?
I seem to recall another stupid idea about covering the ocean to cool it down.
Then there is the giant space mirrors
The list of stupid goes on.
If you want to believe in whacky theories i suggest you look elsewhere.
10
“I’m a paleontologist by training,”- Tim Flannery:
“”(O)ne thing we can do is to inject sulphur into the stratosphere, because that sort of sulphur will stay up there for a considerable time.
It will create a sort of a brown haze, much like you see over parts of Asia today but higher in the sky, and that will act as an agent of global dimming.
It will prevent some sunlight reaching the surface of our planet, and therefore will cool our planet.
The way we may do that is simply by adding sulphur into jet fuel.
Most modern jets fly in the lower part of the stratosphere, so releasing sulphur into the atmosphere at that level would be an efficient way of dimming our planet.
?
Now the consequences of that sort of experiment, they’re unknown,…””
?
Quote; Gee Aye
November 19, 2012 at 2:58 pm: “this is the funniest line ever!”
Fact: It would be funny if it wasn’t crazy & true!
10
gai, well said.
I think this is a real step up for the Jo nova blog.
This is the first time I have achieved a level of debate here on the topic of Geo Engineering without being shouted down as a lunatic.
I this chemtrailing, Geo engineering, aerosol spraying or whatever other euphemism one wishes to adopt is going on (although I have absolutely no evidence that it is), then what we have on our hands and in our skies is one of the most outrageous environmental and public health crimes ever committed.
We need more people to wake up, harden up and start asking some serious questions. Google “chemtrails” and you will get tens of thousands of hits.
Are all if tree people deluded? Conspiracy nuts feeding off each others psychosis?
Or is this real and happening right now?
23
Having a serious debate about something that is proposed without evidence is why the FSM was invented. Can we debate pirate numbers instead?
20
Gee Aye,
Try putting a bit more effort into making your comments substantive as opposed to simply providing some light comic relief and we’ll talk.
Debates in the absence of evidence is what CAGW is all about.
That’s I’d you will find a climate science to debate you. Usually they just send cannon fodder.
01
OK… you are correct. I should have written “debates without data”. You might be aware that there is actual data that is debated by warmists and sceptics alike.
00
here’s an absolute gem in the MSM today:
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/degrees-of-devastation-major-report-warns-of-drastically-hotter-planet-20121119-29l3c.html
40
The world bank was relying on carbon credits for a HUGE amount of extra funds, but the carbon trading scam has hit a wall.
So of course the World Bank is trying to reset the planet hypochondria/panic !!!
20
I wonder if those people who constantly tell us that fossil fuel power generation receives (massive) subsidies would like to comment on this comparison from the U.S.
This comparison was made by the Institute for Energy Research, and was a direct copy from the the AWEA. (American Wind Energy Association)
(The bolds are mine)
Can you see how, while subsidies may seem to be similar, (refer to the 19%) when they are correlated with the power actually generated for consumption it brings it into stark relief.
Also, in the same article, a major problem, also not mentioned is that of some grid related problems with respect to Wind Power Generation, and again, the bolds are mine here.
All this to cater for a method of power generation that makes up barely 2.3% of consumed power in the U.S. ….. from around 25,000 huge wind towers.
Tony.
Link to Institute for Energy Research article
31
The world has not warmed since 2001.
http://woodfortrees.org/graph/uah/from:2001/plot/uah/from:2001/trend
20
Correct James – in fact it has cooled – AND the rate of cooling is accelerating.
Working from YOUR start date of 2001, using what is claimed to be the most accurate record (HADCRUT 4), and plotting at three year steps, the accelerating cooling is quite obvious.
GRAPH LINK
30
Wow. James has finally realised !!!!!
Well done, James !!
10
And MV, when HadCrud starts showing a cooling trend.. you KNOW its getting cold !!
10
The other metric to watch is cooling events like a flip to more La Niñas, and record breaking snows and frosts in the last ten years. You can fiddle with the temperature record but you can not mess with frost/snow as easily.
When the earth is ‘warm’ the jets are zonal when the earth cools due to less solar energy the result is the jet stream becomes meridional. This produces standing wave patterns like the Russian and US heat/drought conditions. It also sucks cold air down from the poles to produce more snow. Weather becomes more variable like it was in the 1960s – 70s and during the Little Ice Age. (Why do you think the battle cry is now weather weirding? They KNOW what cold weather/inactive sun does) link
This meridional jet stream pattern is what cause Sandy to hit NJ/NY instead of NC. Anyone watching Sandy AND the jets like I did could see it easily and predict the Sandy would hit further north.
20
Labor looks green, but trees look dead…………
Another dud green scheme from Labor – all seeming and no doing, with taxpayers again losing millions:
ONE of the nation’s largest tree planting schemes has become an expensive failure with the majority of the 2.5 million trees planted under the River Murray Forest project now dead because of poor planning, drought and a ban on watering.
Former premier Mike Rann allocated $5.7 million to the scheme in a bid to woo the Greens before the 2007 South Australian election…
At the 2007 program launch the former premier also pushed the eco benefits of the plantings, saying the natives, once established, would absorb 12,800 tonnes of carbon dioxide, equal to taking 35,000 cars off the road.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/labor_looks_green_but_trees_look_dead/
21
So thats what they spent my “save the murray” levy AKA TAX money on.
30
Debbie –
luckily for the World Bank, our PM has their back.
Angry –
will u still be angry, if/when?
July 2011: The Australia Institute: The real cost of direct action
An analysis of the Coalition’s Direct Action Plan
Could tree planting achieve the target more easily?
The Coalition has promoted tree planting as a possible way to cheaply reduce emissions. To put the scale of the emissions reduction that the Coalition has committed to into context let’s look at how many trees would need to be planted to reach the 2020 target. To reduce emissions by 160 million tonnes of CO2e in 2020 it would require planting trees over an area of 265,600 square kilometres or far more than the size of Victoria. The trees would also require 96,944 gigalitres (GL) of water per year. The controversial draft Murray Darling Basin plan released last year planned to buy back water entitlements by 3,500 GL. This means the trees planted as a carbon sink would require more than 27 times the water proposed to be cut from the Murray Darling Basin. The Coalition is not proposing cutting all the emissions by planting trees. The above figures are just to highlight the scale of the undertaking if trees were to be used as a major way of offsetting emissions.
According to their Direct Action Plan the Coalition plans to offset emissions by 15 million tonnes from planting trees. To achieve this would require an area of 25,000 square kilometres and about 9,100 GL, two and a half times the amount of water proposed to be bought back by the Murray Darling Basin Plan.
https://www.tai.org.au/index.php?q=node%2F19&pubid=878&act=display
Nationals: The Coalition’s Direct Action Plan
Green Corridors and other measures
The Coalition commits to the planting of an additional 20 million trees by 2020 to re-establish urban forests and green corridors…
http://www.nationals.org.au/DirectActionPlan.aspx
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Pat,
These plans by the coalition are as MAD as the LIARS PARTY.
WTF !!!$##%@
Maybe time for some civil unrest to remove some of these characters from our society…
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anyone care to critique the following?
14 Nov: Asia Times: Why bankers rule the world
By Ellen Brown
(Ellen Brown is an attorney and president of the Public Banking Institute. In Web of Debt, her latest of eleven books, she shows how a private cartel has usurped the power to create money from the people themselves, and how we the people can get it back. Her websites are http://WebofDebt.com, http://EllenBrown.com, and http://PublicBankingInstitute.org.)
In the 2012 edition of Occupy Money released this month, Professor Margrit Kennedy writes that a stunning 35% to 40% of everything we buy goes to interest. This interest goes to bankers, financiers, and bondholders, who take a 35% to 40% cut of our gross domestic product.
That helps explain how wealth is systematically transferred from Main Street to Wall Street…
Tradesmen, suppliers, wholesalers and retailers all along the chain of production rely on credit to pay their bills. They must pay for labor and materials before they have a product to sell and before the end buyer pays for the product 90 days later. Each supplier in the chain adds interest to its production costs, which are passed on to the ultimate consumer. Kennedy cites interest charges ranging from 12% for garbage collection, to 38% for drinking water to, 77% for rent in public housing in her native Germany.
Her figures are drawn from the research of economist Helmut Creutz, writing in German and interpreting Bundesbank publications. They apply to the expenditures of German households for everyday goods and services in 2006; but similar figures are seen in financial sector profits in the United States, where they composed a whopping 40% of US business profits in 2006. That was five times the 7% made by the banking sector in 1980. Bank assets, financial profits, interest, and debt have all been growing exponentially…
In 2011, the US federal government paid US$454 billion in interest on the federal debt – nearly one-third the total $1,100 billion paid in personal income taxes that year. If the government had been borrowing directly from the Federal Reserve – which has the power to create credit on its books and now rebates its profits directly to the government – personal income taxes could have been cut by a third…
Consider California. At the end of 2010, it had general obligation and revenue bond debt of $158 billion. Of this, $70 billion, or 44%, was owed for interest. If the state had incurred that debt to its own bank – which then returned the profits to the state – California could be $70 billion richer today. Instead of slashing services, selling off public assets, and laying off employees, it could be adding services and repairing its decaying infrastructure.
The only US state to own its own depository bank today is North Dakota. North Dakota is also the only state to have escaped the 2008 banking crisis, sporting a sizable budget surplus every year since then. It has the lowest unemployment rate in the country, the lowest foreclosure rate, and the lowest default rate on credit card debt…
http://atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/NK14Dj01.html
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anyone care to critique the following?
14 Nov: Asia Times: Why bankers rule the world
By Ellen Brown
I can’t but Gary North (Mises on Money) can. If I can find the correct link.
AH, here it is Ellen Brown’s Errors in Monetary Theory and Economic Theory and it seems it is creating quite a flap too.
You also have The Muddled Economics of Ellen Brown and the Greenbackers by Aaron Brown.
And the opposing side, Dr. Walter Block calls Gary North out on yet more mistakes! Dr. Walter Block is a fellow Austrian School economist.
The nit Block is picking is pretty dumb in my opinion.
Ellen Brown is a Greenbacker she is just going about instituting the same idea legally instead of ignoring the US Constitution as was done in 1913.
Block even states in another article
Ellen Brown is correct in many things she says but taking fiat money creation away from the Banksters and giving it to the politicians via a constitutional amendment creates the possibility of another Zimbabwe The reason for tying money to gold and/or silver is to keep the Banksters AND the politicians from printing it at will. Fiat money in any form lets the creator steal/tax the people through the hidden mechanism of wage devaluation and price inflation. Adding to the gold supply though mining also does this (Think colonial-era Spain) but it at least puts a good set of brakes on the process since you can not just print it a will.
I would suggest reading Gary North’s (Mises on Money) (It beats slogging through Mises 885 page Human Action see info at link)
Another excellent source of info is Appendix E – Money Is Created by Banks
Evidence Given by Graham Towers – Some of the most frank evidence on banking practices was given by Graham F. Towers, Governor of the Central Bank of Canada.
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June 2012: 4 mins: Youtube: CNBC admits We’re all SLAVES to CENTRAL BANKERS
“Do we all work for Central Bankers? Is this Global Governance at last? Is it One World.. with the Central Bankers in charge?”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efKchHKMb2k&feature=player_embedded
funny thing is, CNBC was/is the only business channel to acknowledge reality on occasion, yet it was removed, from Austar & then, i believe, Foxtel. now that Foxtel owns Austar, it still isn’t available:
Jan 2011: DTV Forum: Austar Covertly Reducing Available Channel(s).
We are self-funded retirees who juggle our limited finances so not to have to work or become dole bludgers. In order to do that we buy and sell shares which in reality is only one step up the financial ladder from the TAB. Like all the best punters we need to study form and the latest prices, CNBC Asia was a relevent channel to our region with plenty of Aussie content, unlike Bloomberg which imo is far too US biased. Despite both actually being American…
http://www.dtvforum.info/index.php?showtopic=92449
yet it would seem Foxtel has special packages for Business, which includes CNBC!
Foxtel Business Digital Packages
http://foxtelbusiness.com.au/compare.aspx
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Just read this on my Windows 8 news feed. Dont know which news source it came from.
Personally, If the world bank is running this scare then it has NOTHING to do with facts and all to do with money money money.
Its all still very much entry level scare tactics.
Warning of Devastating 4C Warming
The World Bank has warned that global temperatures could rise by four degrees this century without immediate action, with potentially devastating consequences for coastal cities and the poor.
Issuing a call for action, the World Bank tied the future wealth of the planet – and especially developing regions – to immediate efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions from sources such as energy production.
“The time is very, very short. The world has to tackle the problem of climate change more aggressively,” World Bank President Jim Yong Kim said on a conference call on Sunday as he launched a report conducted for the global lender.
“We will never end poverty if we don’t tackle climate change. It is one of the single biggest challenges to social justice today.”
The study said the planet could warm 4.0 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels as early as the 2060s if governments’ promises to fight climate change are not met.
Even if nations fulfill current pledges, the study gave a 20 per cent likelihood of a four-degree rise by 2100 and said that a three-degree rise appeared likely. UN-led climate negotiations have vowed to limit the rise of temperatures to no more than two degrees.
“A four-degree warmer world can and must be avoided. We need to hold warming below two degrees,” Kim said.
“Lack of ambitious action on climate change threatens to put prosperity out of reach of millions and roll back decades of development.”
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in a statement that the study showed the need to hold nations to their commitment, made last year in Durban, South Africa, to put in place a legally binding new climate agreement by 2015.
The more than 190 nations in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change start their latest annual talks on November 26 in Qatar.
Global temperatures have already risen about 0.8 degrees Celsius.
The planet has charted a number of record-breaking temperatures over the past decade and experienced frequent disasters some experts blame on climate change, most recently superstorm Sandy, which ravaged Haiti and the US East Coast.
The report said that, if temperatures rise by four degrees, regions will feel different effects – recent heatwaves in Russia could become an annual norm and July in the Mediterranean could be nine degrees higher than the area’s warmest level now.
Under that scenario, the acidity of the oceans could rise at a rate unprecedented in world history, threatening coral reefs that protect shorelines and provide a habitat for fish species.
Rising sea levels could inundate coastal areas with the most vulnerable cities found in Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Madagascar, Mexico, Mozambique, the Philippines, Venezuela and Vietnam, the study said.
“Many small islands may not be able to sustain the communities at all. There would be irreversible loss of biodiversity,” Kim said.
The study found that the most alarming impact may be on food production, with the world already expected to struggle to meet demand for a growing and increasingly wealthy population that is eating more meat.
Low-lying areas such as Bangladesh, Egypt, Vietnam and parts of Africa’s coast could see major blows to food production, with drought severely hindering agriculture elsewhere, the study said.
Flooding can also contaminate drinking water, increasing illnesses such as diarrhoea.
The dire warnings were designed to encourage bolder action, but the report did not focus on potential steps.
Identifying one area, Kim called for less reliance on coal, which is the dirtiest major form of energy but is politically sensitive in the United States and China due to industry jobs.
Kim said that the World Bank was determined to support renewable energy in its lending, saying: “We do everything we can not to invest in coal – everything we possibly can.”
The fight against climate change has faced political obstacles in a number of nations including the United States, where many conservative lawmakers have called action too costly and cast doubt on the science.
Kim, a physician and former president of Dartmouth College who was tapped for the World Bank by US President Barack Obama, said that 97 per cent of scientists agreed that human activity was causing climate change.
“As someone who has lived in the world of science for a long time, 97 per cent is unheard-of consensus,” he said.
The report was carried out by German-based Climate Analytics and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. The World Bank said it did not consider the study a substitute for next UN-backed scientific assessment on climate change expected in 2014.
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The Age is on to it:
http://www.theage.com.au/environment/degrees-of-devastation-major-report-warns-of-drastically-hotter-planet-20121119-29l3c.html
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And ABC radio this afternoon!
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So 97% of bankers agree global warming is real.
So these bankers that are so worried about global warming are going to do all the banking associated global warming climate change for free. 🙂
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Personally, If the world bank is running this scare then it has NOTHING to do with facts and all to do with money money money.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Of Course the World Bank is running the scare. Who do you think was running the IPCC before Dr Pachauri?
Robert Watson of the World Bank now Chief Scientific Advisor to the UK Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
This is a Climategate e-mail made in response to Robert Watson TELLING the crowd what to put into the Summary for Policymakers. One of the people included BTW was Dr Pachauri
The e-mail was long but please read it because it give a very good look at how they were intentionally twisting science to fit the political agenda.
The e-mail then goes on about how to twist the wording so that
What Bull patties. As if plants need time to adjust to more CO2 when they are near starvation levels.
Another e-mail from Kenneth M. Chomitz of the World Bank shows interference with how a peer-reviewed journal is run.
Steve Schneider is the one who said
A tad bit weasel wordy isn’t it? It points out that he was very much an Activist first and trying to balance that with science and not the other way around. Notice that the blog I took this from, who confirmed that Schneider did say it, can not see that Schneider has in this restatement of what he said, CONFIRMED he is not an objective scientist. An objective scientist would not have a “double ethical bind” in regard to the climate if he was not trying to make “the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climate change.” Instead he would be working to determine IF there was “disastrous climate change.”
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More on the World Bank from the Climategate e-mails.
There are 43 Results found for “worldbank.org” at FOIA link
Remember the “Dog Ate My Homework” stone walling of FOIA’s from sceptics? Well it seems the “Team” was very happy to give the World Bank Raw Data. And it even includes our favorite Mike Mann.
Do you really need anything more to show just who is buddy-buddy with who?
Add in Did Julia really say that? She’s here to help bankers “get their share”? along with the Grauniad’s Copenhagen climate summit in disarray after ‘Danish text’ leak
with all the oil company connections to the scam. Enron, joined by BP, invented the global warming industry. I know because I was in the room.
And the weather not warming. skeptics should have a won this battle hands down but the Activists are still in denial. Too bad they can not see the Bankers, Corporate interests and the MSM all riding Global Warming for money and power.
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Notice that the report is based on junk from Potsdam Institute for the Mentally Unstable. They are one of the main sources of the most bizarre and idiotic aspects of CAGW mantra along with Mann, Hansen, Trenberth etc.
Would be interesting to see where there funding comes from. !
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One thing you know for cetain is that anyone who STILL accepts that 97% rubbish, has made zero attempt to validate any part of climate science. Despite apparently having a some physics knowledge, he has chosen to remain pig ignorant about anything resembling the facts.
And this guy is president of the world bank,………. really ?????
And the climate nonsense is from Potsdam.. enough said!
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15 Nov: VIDEO: Macleans Mag, Canada: Bob Rae steps up to defend carbon pricing
Bob Rae (interim leader of the Liberal Party of Canada) was in Toronto today to deliver a speech on energy policy. Included in that was a defence of putting a price on carbon:
Do you know who’s providing the leadership today on carbon pricing? The province of British Columbia. And the province of Alberta. They’re not afraid to talk about carbon pricing. They’re not afraid to use market mechanisms to force innovation and more conservation. They’re not afraid to send the right messages to markets. They’ve done that. They’ve moved ahead of the game. The Conference of CEOs, under the leadership of John Manley, has said exactly the same thing. We have to send a signal to the markets about the price of carbon going forward and we have to do it in a way that, once again, will force producers and force the industry to become more innovative. And that’s a more effective way to do it than, and this is really ironic coming from a so-called Conservative government, the kind of centralized, command-and-control regulatory approach which now seems to be the vogue in Ottawa…
Now, you and I both know our shared experiences as a country in trying to have a national conversation on this question of carbon taxing or cap-and-trade—either technique, either method of trying to create a signal to the markets about price. But I’m here to tell you that if we don’t send a signal to the markets about price, the market won’t take us seriously when it comes to conservation and the market won’t take us seriously when it comes to greening the economy and the world won’t take us seriously when it comes to those things.
What’s more, the industry itself is asking for this. Talk to a CEO of any major energy company in Canada and they will tell you we need to know what prices are going to be and what government policies are going to be in order for us to make and justify the investments to our shareholders that we know we have to make. Two projects right now on carbon capture, two separate major projects on carbon capture, have been put on hold by two major companies for the simple reason that there is no signal to the market. That’s wrong.
But I know full well that anyone who steps up to the plate and says this is something we have to do and at the same time provide for tax cuts to lower and middle income people, provide for real cuts in income taxes, make sure that regions that are badly effected are helped and not hurt, it’s quite possible to do it, but anyone who suggests it will immediately have their head blown off. But, having my head blown off many times, I don’t mind…
http://www2.macleans.ca/2012/11/15/bob-rae-steps-up-to-defend-carbon-pricing/
Bob Rae’s brother, John, is Executive Vice-President of political powerbrokers, Power Corporation:
Wikipedia: Power Corporation
A U.S. investigation into the UN Oil-for-Food scandal determined that Power Corporation had extensive connections to French bank BNP Paribas, which was selected in 1996 to broker the Oil-for-Food program. Power owned a stake in Paribas through its subsidiary Pargesa Holding SA…
The Desmarais family and Frere are also the largest shareholders in oil company Total SA, France’s largest oil company.Total was the subject of a formal investigation by the United Nations in February 2010 for bribery charges concerning oil deliveries from Iraq during the rule of dictator Saddam Hussein…
Additionally, the company has long been a close ally of the Liberal Party of Canada, although former or current members of other Canadian political parties have also worked for Power Corp. A brief summary of the connections between Power Corp. and those with political power in Canada is below…
Former Prime Minister of Canada, Paul Martin, was hired in the 1960s to work for Paul Desmarais, Sr. by Maurice Strong…
John Rae, the brother of former NDP Premier Bob Rae, currently serves as Power Corp.’s Executive Vice President…
Former member of the Liberal Party of Canada Maurice Strong became President of Power Corp. by his mid-thirties. He had a role in the creation of the Canadian International Development Agency and in 1976 he was appointed to run Petro-Canada. He later worked for the United Nations…
Power Corp.’s international advisory board has featured individuals such as former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, former oil minister of Saudi Arabia Sheikh Ahmed Zaki Yamani, former head of the US Federal Reserve Board Paul Volcker, and the previously mentioned former Prime Minister of Canada Pierre Trudeau…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Corporation
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***MUST READ ALL. DON’T MISS THE HELEN BOADEN/Andrew Dlugolecki STUFF ON PAGE 3 & KEEP AN EYE ON UNSWORTH, NOW PROMOTED, WHO WAS AT THE JAN 2006 SEMINAR:
3 pages: 19 Nov: UK Register: Andrew Orlowski: How can the BBC be saved from itself without destroying it?
Dumbed-down climate coverage is just a symptom
Special Report
Blogger Tony Newbery’s pursuit of the seminar’s previously secret attendee list highlights two things of much greater significance. One is that it casts light on a strategy by the BBC’s legal department to shield the public-funded corporation from scrutiny by the citizen, by redefining itself as a private organisation.
The Freedom of Information Act 2000 allows facts and figures to be withheld and kept secret “for the purposes of journalism”, and the BBC’s use of this get-out clause is so pervasive it must be considered strategic rather than accidental. This appears to have the full backing of executives: the BBC’s director of news Helen Boaden appeared as a witness during an information tribunal hearing into Newbery’s request; the journalism derogation was trotted out as a key pillar for the BBC’s defence.
And the trust? It appears not to know or not to care about the battle over the climate seminar’s attendees. But the affair also highlights the role the BBC thinks it must perform – and it’s rather different to the one licence-fee payers expect it to perform – that of staying aloof from the fray…
Scientists are clever, they should tell us what to do – right?
A thought exercise. Imagine, if you will, that an astronomer discovered a large meteorite hurtling to Earth. The precise time and date of impact were then calculated. This would leave us with a wide range of moral and economic choices. It would be very strange, in fact inconceivable, if someone handed all these decisions to the astronomer to make.
“Here you go, Man with the Telescope – tell us what to do!”
Yet this is what happened throughout the media and political class in response to the dramatic and simplified tale of climate change. Now we have it from the highest authority, Mark Thompson: he gave three lectures at Oxford University recently, which reveal him to be an intelligent and witty man. But in one lecture he makes a quite extraordinary argument [PDF].
Thompson picks apart a statement made by social scientist Dr Benny Peiser, who stated that the scientific fact of climate change invites a range of policies, economic choices, and moral decisions. Peiser doesn’t quibble with the “science”, but merely points out the obvious, that we have to decide what to do. Thompson doesn’t like this because only “scientists” are qualified to make ethical and economic decisions. Others may get involved, but only if they delegate their authority to the “scientists”. This is the course we’re told to follow on climate change.
There are enormous problems with this. The mitigation policies being advanced (and they came in a bundle – buy the science, get the policy for free) fall largely on the developing countries most in need of an advanced industrial society. These policies, if implemented, will perpetuate poverty, increase unwanted human misery and cause avoidable deaths…
Thompson concluded his Oxford lecture by telling scientists that without the broadcasters they “have no voice” – he is literally saying: “Make us your mouthpiece.” Given that Thompson has completely conceded moral authority on the matter, he really has no other conclusion to make. It’s a return of Comte’s Positivism, in which scientists are the ultimate authority in society on all decisions. Why? Because… well, they do science and stuff…
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/11/19/the_virus_that_ate_the_bbc/
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Pat that Register article, How can the BBC be saved from itself without destroying it? is superb. Please make sure you also put a heads-up on tips and notes at WUWT.
Too bad the big media outlets don’t carry such good reporting.
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This is also a hot potato:
New Report Examines Risks of 4 Degree Hotter World by End of Century
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gai –
posted the latest orlowski/register link in the comments at WUWT’s “discovery channel fail” thread, but will post it in tips & notes.
people everywhere are so cynical about the MSM today, it is difficult to convey the magnitude of the 28Gate scandal, as it relates to BBC. no other media organisation comes close to the Beeb in range, audience size, and influence.
the efforts of andrew montford, tony newbery and maurizio morabito in exposing documentary evidence at the very heart of the CAGW gatekeeping of the BBC are worthy of a book/documentary. if only more people could grasp the significance:
May 2007: BBC: BBC global audience hits new high
Record numbers of people are watching, listening to and clicking on BBC News around the world, according to independent research.
Television, radio and online news have a combined weekly audience of 233m – up from 210m last year.
The survey, across 100 countries, found that 20m more are listening to the BBC World Service each week, with the biggest growth in Bangladesh.
The BBC’s news website is also used by 12m people outside the UK each week.
Globally, 183m people listen to the World Service every week, but in China the audience has shrunk by 3m since last year.
BBC World, the corporation’s commercially-funded TV news channel, had 76m viewers a week – an increase of 10m compared with 2006.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6675271.stm
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The article The Greenhouse Gas Blanket that Fails to Warm the World which John O’Sullivan and I wrote is now published here.
Basically it covers the main conclusions from my research, so I refer you to it in response to any questions you may have regarding my various comments above.
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John Howard has today said that Al Gore’s climate change movie in 2007 was ‘essentially fraudulent, highly fraudulent’.
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Conclusion
In response to a question about the article published today (to which I contributed) I will summarise what would happen in a hypothetical Earth with no water and an atmosphere of only nitrogen and oxygen, assumed not to radiate or absorb.
If this were the case the Earth’s surface would receive more radiation during the day because there would be (virtually) no absorption of incident solar radiation. When you then apply S-B (using integration on a real-world spherical surface) the majority of the radiation would take place directly from the surface at these hotter temperatures.
But there would still be an adiabatic lapse rate ensuring that the nitrogen and oxygen are much warmer at the base of the atmosphere than at the top, even if no energy flows in and out of the atmosphere. Thus is because an adiabatic lapse rate is just that – adiabatic – and so requires no energy input to maintain the temperature gradient. Thus the surface would not cool anywhere near as much as the Moon’s surface does at night. In fact, the surface temperature would be stabilised by conduction both from the atmosphere and the mass below the surface. There is no reason to believe its mean temperature would be much different, even though its temperature would vary more between day and night.
In a nutshell, this is why the accusation that radiating gases produce a GHE and raise the mean surface temperature is all garbage.
You can’t raise or lower the mean surface temperature significantly (within a few thousand years) without transferring an impossible amount of energy into or out of the whole Earth system, including all the mass beneath the crust, right down to the core.
That is the core of my argument.
See the big picture!
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Science should always be backed up by empirical evidence, so I thought I’d summarise what empirical evidence exists for the main points I have made. Links and references for all these have been provided in previous posts and/or papers and articles I have provided before.
There is empirical evidence …
(a) that the heat transfer between two blackbodies is in accord with the quantification in Section 4 of my paper.
(b) that air in equilibrium in a tall sealed insulated container will be warmer at the base than at the top, the difference being explained by the same adiabatic lapse rate which is proportional to the acceleration due to gravity – no coincidence.
(c) that placing a cool blackbody close to a warmer one does slow the radiative rate of cooling of the warm one.
(d) that evaporative cooling accelerates to compensate for any slowing of radiative cooling of the water surfaces.
(e) that low clouds at night slow overall cooling of the land surface at night, this being because the compensating effect of conduction takes a longer period.
(f) that surplus thermal energy in the atmosphere (causing temperatures above the plot based on the lapse rate) will be radiated away
(g) that radiation from a cooler atmosphere does not transfer thermal energy to a warmer surface, and nor does conduction or convection.
(h) that the surface temperatures of all planets with atmospheres can only be explained using the solar intensity and the adiabatic lapse rate. This is very clear cut on Venus where the surface hardly receives or emits any energy, so most heating of the atmosphere occurs when the atmosphere absorbs incoming Solar radiation. You cannot explain Venus temperatures using any radiative greenhouse effect, because such does not exist here, there or anywhere.
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http://io9.com/5962759/australian-geologists-prove-that-a-south-pacific-island-does-not-exist
When actual researchers check on the consensus, the chart falls apart…
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Random thought of the day.
With all the wind turbines dotting the country, how does the RAF practice their ground hugging flights with new recruits.
Would the wind turbines reduce the risk of invasion by the Russians/Iranians because the countryside bristles with 700m tall spikes.
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If anyone still believes there is a radiative greenhouse effect on Earth, then they need to accept that there is no such thing on Venus.
No more than about 4 W/m^2 of Solar radiation gets through the thick Venus atmosphere to warm its surface. But that surface is hundreds of degrees (not just 33 K) above the mean radiating temperature of the planet. It can’t be explained by any Energy Budget Diagram for radiation and backradiation, because there just would not be enough radiation to match with the temperature of the surface. The only valid explanation is discussed in this comment, and I invite anyone to prove me wrong by producing an Energy Budget Diagram for Venus that matches with the data.
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1. The Venus surface could never have been raised 500 degrees by the mere mean 2.1 W/m^2 of insolation that reaches its surface from the Sun.
2. This is solid proof that adiabatic lapse rates form autonomously, and so surface temperatures are determined by such on all planets with an atmosphere.
3. The Venus atmosphere was heated by absorbed incident radiation from the Sun. The ALR ensured the base would be hotter, quite contrary to what you might expect – why not the top? The base heated the surface – nothing else could have.
4. Why should we worry about 1 molecule in 2,500 being carbon dioxide, when the Venus atmosphere is over 96% carbon dioxide, and yet its surface temperature can be calculated by the same formula (based on the acceleration due to gravity) as can Earth’s surface temperature?
There will be more detail in my next paper currently going through the review process. Stop worrying about carbon dioxide – and stay tuned!
Doug Cotton
Sydney
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It gets hard to explain what I believe happens at the molecular level, but I’ll give it a go.
Firstly, imagine an atmosphere without convection. Venus gets close to this because it is so dense. There is also very little wind because it rotates so slowly (244 Earth days per revolution) and so we can just about consider it to be a static atmosphere. Yet the (pseudo) adiabatic lapse rate is still observed and the same calculations that work for Earth also work there.
We know there are many more molecules where the pressure is higher, so we can assume there is a fairly smooth (near linear) decline in the density of molecules with increasing altitude.
So molecules don’t have to travel large distances up and down. Nor is it any restriction that as many go up as go down, because we already have the distribution we need. Energy can transfer in molecular collisions, without any particular molecule having to travel a significant distance.
So the temperature gradient is a bit like a concrete road going straight down a mountainside. If you pour loads of sand on it at various points (representing absorbed heat at different altitudes) the molecular interactions get temporarily thrown out of the nice equilibrium state they were in. The sand (heat) spreads out and blows away (energy gets radiated away) and it all settles back down to the supporting road.
However, if there is a long-term increase in mean Solar insolation levels it is more like adding a thin layer of concrete to the whole surface, creating a new road surface (temperature plot) which is higher but is still parallel to the old one and still has the same gradient. This is representative of what happens during warming periods in the natural ~1,000 (maybe ~1,400) year cycle and the superimposed ~60 year cycle.
So it’s as if the individual molecules being pulled downwards by gravity and pushed up by pressure from beneath realise they are in the wrong place on top of the pile of sand. So, like grains of sand spreading out, some go one way and some another way until the temperature hump (or dip) levels out and everything gets back to the natural gradient. Or, more precisely, their energy goes in different directions through collisions.
Hence, on Venus, if too much incident insolation is absorbed at the top of the atmosphere, the extra kinetic energy will be “bounced” down the chain (rather like conduction, but better called diffusion) without the individual molecules actually having to travel very far.
This creates an apparent heat flow, but it can only ever involve equal interchanges of PE and KE and thus no change in entropy, and so no violation of 2nd LoT.
Also, while this is happening, each layer in the Venus atmosphere will radiate away whatever extra energy it absorbs and hasn’t sent elsewhere by diffusion, so the temperature falls back to the base line.
As you go from day to night, I suggest that the whole temperature plot from the Venus surface to the TOA shifts downwards about 5 degrees, whilst retaining the same gradient.
Whatever happens, it is apparent that the surface itself will remain very close in temperature to the base of the atmosphere and its temperature is in fact at least “supported” by that of the base of the atmosphere, because conduction would prevent it getting significantly cooler. Stored energy beneath the crust would also have a stabilising effect as on Earth.
The overriding consideration is that, for both Earth and Venus, as well as other planets with thick enough atmospheres – Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune – this process must have happened in the atmosphere first (because of the effect of gravity) and then the surface temperature was established by that at the base of the atmosphere. The internal conduction plot from the core is then also set by the core temperature and the surface temperature. This of course all took a long time obviously at least millions of years, so, in the short term of just a few thousand years, the mass of energy under the surface changes little and so provides a solid stabilising effect.
Hope that’s helped clarify my thinking on all this. It leaves the conventional back radiation and feedback concepts right out of consideration – simply because they cannot override the mechanism which maintains the adiabatic lapse rate. So much for the AGW conjecture!
Doug Cotton
Sydney
10
If, as is generally the case for perhaps over 99% of Earth’s surface, there is a small “step down” in temperature from the surface to the atmosphere at the interface, it is not possible for KE to be conducted (diffused) back from the cooler atmosphere to the warmer surface.
Yes, the base of the atmosphere has, over the life of the Earth, autonomously achieved an equilibrium temperature determined by mean Solar insolation and the effective adiabatic lapse rate which is proportional to the gravitational force.
However, where the surface is warmer its temperature is merely “supported” by that of the base of the atmosphere. It cannot fall significantly below that temperature in calm weather over a flat surface, but as the temperatures approach, the rate of conduction (diffusion) from the surface to the atmosphere will slow down – that’s standard physics. Rates of evaporative cooling do likewise.
The slowing of these non-radiative processes depends on temperature differences right at the interface. In contrast, the slowing of radiative cooling (less than a third of all surface cooling) depends on the temperature of the source of radiation (which may be much higher in the atmosphere) and the proportion of the total potential Planck curve for that temperature which is actually “filled in” by the spectral lines of radiation. This is why carbon dioxide has less effect per molecule than water vapour, and WV less than a solid surface which may be close to a true blackbody if it has a wide range of elements in its composition.
But, as I have said, any slowing of radiative cooling will be nullified by a compensating effect in non-radiative cooling. The pre-determined lapse rate is the main player in adjusting this compensation process.
Doug Cotton
Sydney
(an author for Principia Scientific International)
01
If you spend a few minutes reading my paper and at least the abstract of the paper published by the American Institute of Physics (cited in reference (8) in my reference [13]) you might understand what happens in the atmospheric physics of both Earth and Venus.
I’m still waiting for a satisfactory alternative explanation from anyone in the world regarding the Venus surface temperature.
Pressure does not maintain high temperatures all by itself, anywhere, not even on Venus. So forget that “explanation.”
My paper is up for PROM (Peer Review in Open Media) for a month, so feel free to publish a rebuttal or debate it with some of these members of PSI. Such a review system far outstrips the “peer-review” system used for typical pro-AGW publications.
Doug Cotton
Sydney
00