Through the month of February, the Arctic gained 766,000 square kilometers of ice (296,000 square miles), which is 38% higher than the 1979 to 2000 average for the month. Air temperatures at the 925 hPa level were 2 to 5 degrees Celsius (4 to 9 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than average across the Atlantic sector of the Arctic, especially near Iceland and in Baffin Bay. Temperatures were lower than average by 2 to 6 degrees Celsius (4 to 11 degrees Fahrenheit) north of Greenland and the Canadian Archipelago, and in the Beaufort, Chukchi and East Siberian seas,……
Hilarious! You just made a strawman argument! Because the quoted SeaIceNews page did not say that winter has just appeared as an entirely new phenomenon. And neither did Mark say this. All he quoted was a particularly fast accumulation of winter ice, which indicates a lack of energy retention in the Arctic of exactly the opposite of what you’d expect from an enhanced greenhouse effect. Hmmm!
And to imply that Mark had believed the IPCC said that winter would disappear is also unfounded. But I know the CRU did say something crazy like that:
According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event”.
“Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” he said.
— Monday 20 March 2000
But that enhanced greenhouse effect is supposed to be human caused, and it’s supposed to be global, and it is supposed to happen first and quickest at the poles.
Instead of blather, would you perhaps care to use data like this to support your argument? What conclusions can you draw from that?
Go on, take the data. It’s not a poisoned chalice at all. Use the data. USE IT… đ
The pollsters called me. I told them I’d vote Labor. When they hung up I laughed. I can’t wait to whack the Labor/green coalition of fools at the election. It can’t come soon enough.
That’s it! Now I understand why Labor has 30-something percent in the polls! The mystery 30% are having a cruel but incredibly hilarious joke at the expense of Gillard et al.
My faith in the Australian voting public is restored, and hopefully confirmed on September 13th.
Don’t despair James XLeftie. The Alarmists have always tended to be more hysterical because they haven’t the facts or understanding and rely on emotives, such a group inclusionism and now they’re getting desperate, so the appeals to emotion can only get more intense.
This site isn’t entirely devoid of passion either, but I think you’ll find , on the whole, a rather greater ( if not limitless) tolerance of honest dissent.
This site isnât entirely devoid of passion either …
Thats true Eddie, but Jo always insists on people being polite and sticking to the topic “being discussed”. Sometimes you can almost hear the alarmists gritting their teeth …
I think Troll baiting discussing flaws in the wharmist arguments, is great. More people should try it â it is a fantastic way of de-stressing at the end of the day.
There is another reason that trolls are useful.
In “On Liberty”, John Stuart Mill drives home the point that different points of view are required in order for free speech and democracy to function.
The rationale of course is that to argue the position of liberty one must expend some effort for defend the position and thereby reinforce the concept in one’s own mind.
I have weighed in to the Conversation a few times, and must admit that it is not easy to be a troll defend a position in the midst of so much viciousness, hatred, abuse, and flak.
I believe everyone should try it, if for no other reason than to gain some humility and understand the other perspective. Another good reason is that we might change someone’s mind. Not the little twirp Anna Rose, but someone with at least half a brain.
Think of it this way; you may not change the minds of the welded on (like the lefties and alarmists who predominate on the ABC’s “The Drum”) but others also read your comments. They see your objective facts compared to the emotive smears of the alarmists and the lefties. It is these people who comprise your audience. They appreciate the facts.
Yes, trying it from the others point of view can be so enlightening, but also hard work at the rabid warmIst blogs, where reason is something more often alluded to than followed, while they indulge in all sorts of fallacious thinking and emotive crap.
We don’t see many quality warmers here though. Trolls only reinforce our own sense of correctitude without really challenging it.
Warmers, coming here though can expect a hard time though tend to be tolerated for longer, even the just nuisance ones.
Yes, I have seen the same. Alarmists are getting more and more desperate and this means they have an extremely low tolerance towards any inconvenient facts.
I think Google started it when it “made the results more relevant” by downgrading all skeptical sites in the search results to double digit page numbers in… was it 2010?
(Also sites critical of Obama were removed from the search results. If google would have done anything similar during Bush’s term people would have been up in arms. But now it’s ok because he is so totally not-evil!)
This quite effectively hid skeptism from the views of people who search for anything AGW-related and makes it seem like nobody actually disagrees with anything. Now news comment sections are about the only place where ordinary, non-interested people might stumble upon something skeptical.
This move by google also made it polically correct to silence climate change skeptics.
Just heard about Da Gubmint’s changes to superannuation legislation.
Does manicbeancounter or anyone else here know what these changes are about?
I have some inconvenient questions.
Why is my old super account switching its investment earnings report from annualised percentages to Unit Prices so calculating holdings is easier, when I care more often about how fast it is increasing than how much it holds?
Why is the new goverment “MySuper” standard for insurance products requiring Death and TPD insurance as a standard feature while at the same time telling me the new standard is wonderful because it helps “ensure you don’t pay for services you don’t need or use”?
Why is the government designing superannuation products at all?
Why is the new “government standard” superannuation product called MySuper when really it should be called TheirSuper ?
You can read about it here.
Nothing to onerous that I can see.
No doubt there is some cunning plan in there for da gubmint to get hold of it.
The Red Queen must go. And take her Goose with her.
> No doubt there is some cunning plan in there for da gubmint to get hold of it.
Now there’s a slice of sarcasm thick enough to butter your toast with. But you shouldn’t be so trusting.
Actually there was a cunning plan just last month, it’s called taxing superannuation, aka “da gubmint getting hold of it”.
As Robert Gottliebsen reported on 4 February this year:
To its great credit Treasury now understands that the current government cannot raise enough taxes on the current structure to fund its big spending proposals, including the school kids bonus, Gonski reforms, disabilities support, etc.
Accordingly, Treasury believes that the government must tax savings and the leaks indicate that they (or the politicians) have chosen the superannuation system to attack.
And repeated again the next day for the benefit of anyone who missed it the first time (such as you and I):
Treasury and the politicians are canvassing the taxing of those with superannuation fund balances of over $1 million, forgetting that the $1 million, if invested in bank deposits, would yield only $38,000 in income.
[…] If Julia Gillard believes that to fund the nation we have to have a savings tax then she must tell us and put the plan before the public for a vote.
Well after this news got out, the furore caused an immediate backflip by the Red Queen, but who really knows if there will be “no super tax under a government she leads”?
JULIA Gillard’s move yesterday to rule out taxes on income from superannuation balances over $1 million may have cut off one new revenue raising option for the May budget, but like a hydra-headed monster, other options to milk the $1.4 trillion industry are set to emerge.
The possibilities now under consideration include new taxes on contributions for higher income earners and a possible increase in the 15 per cent tax on investments in superannuation.
And then the delightful news in the actual ATO page you cited:
“the super rate will increase from 9% to 12%”
Right, so people who’d prefer to spend their money now on enjoying life instead of saving for their future no longer have that choice. Less choice for the young Aussies, no incremental benefit as a reward for being self-disciplined, that’s what this gubmint is all about. The erosion of self-determination and personal responsibility.
Will the Liberals save us? Nope, their plans are almost as suspicious. The Liberal party who wanted to get your superannuation contributions before it even gets to your super account:
03/06/11
The Coalition will relieve the red tape burden from Australiaâs small businesses by giving them the option to remit the compulsory superannuation payments made on behalf of workers, directly to the ATO. […]
Small business will be given the option to remit superannuation payments to the ATO at the same time as they remit their PAYG payments.
This will require only one payment to one agency â rather than multiple cheques to multiple superannuation funds. The ATO will be responsible for sending the money to superannuation funds
By the way the above document no longer appears on the Liberals web site. Why is that? Because Labor implemented it. Labor and Liberal, two faces of the same coin. How long before the option becomes mandatory? Assume the countdown has started.
In the wider political environment your sarcasm comes amidst an era of other countries governments stealing citizens superannuation savings in order to pay off government debts, up to and including that bastion of freedom and private property the USA. So you see, all the cool kids are doing it, stealing citizen super is trendy.
I wish the smug sarcasm was deserved, but the outlook is not good.
A socialist think tank finds that Libya is more at risk from “Climate Change” than rabid islamists. That’s a surprise (cause typically socialists really like rabid islamists.
Well, New Zealand is now officially in drought, and we are not allowed to water gardens, or wash cars. We are even encouraged by our local authorities to call a hot line phone number if we see any of our neighbours flaunting the rules. There is no mention, yet, of paying a bounty, but we live in hope â there is this fellow who always parks too close to my driveway and …
My local council, horror of horrors, has had to turn off the fountains. Why this might be necessary is something of a question, because we have previously been assured that they recycle the water, but I am sure that there is a rational explanation. More surprising though, is the fact that Wellington has a fountain in one of the inner city bays that uses sea water, and there are plans to turn that off as well â perhaps they are worried that it will reduce the rate of sea level rise.
And that brings me to my point.
Nowhere, that I have seen, is there any mention of this drought being due to climate change. People are saying that it is currently the worst drought in sixty or seventy years, and referring to what was done then to get through it. But it is just about weather patterns, and the fact that the local Regional Council has one reservoir out of commission for earthquake strengthening.
The silence from the alarmist factions is deafening. It is a non-event, as far as they are concerned, or so it would appear. We have a Mayor who is a member of the Green Party, but all she is talking about is the steps being taken by the Council to conserve water to get us through, and what is being done about the rare plants in the Botanic Gardens. No hype, no politics even. This is weird.
It is especially weird, given that Wellington is like Canberra. It is a political town. A significant percentage of the population work for the Government in one capacity or another. This includes all of the Departments that one would expect to be having attacks of the vapours, or using the drought as justification for all sorts of schemes, but no.
I have decided that I must have awoken this morning in some form of alternative reality.
Perhaps if I open another bottle of that excellent Burgundy and go back to bed, I might re-awake in the real world, or at least one where I have a clue about what is going on.
This sounds intriguing, Rereke. I might have to pack up and move over there into your universe – I’m still stuck in Australia with the Red Queen. However, her time is running out. She’s desperately trying to take complete control of the press and the Internet over here (pushing it through this week)so they will print rave reviews about her in time to save her bacon (not going to happen).
Meanwhile, enjoy the commonsense that seems to be washing around Wellington. I hope it’s not an illusion. There’ll be traces of watermelon about, I’m sure. The trick with those might be to ignore them, wash them down the drain (oops, I forgot, water restrictions) or float them out to sea. Just don’t shove them in the direction of Australia, please, we have enough watermelon to get sick on, we don’t need any more.
I’m sorry to hear abut NZs drought. I wouldn’t wish a drought on anyone reliant on the weather to make a living.
Of course, it is also up to people whose income is reliant on the weather to actually plan for and mitigate against events such as drought (within reason).
I have heard that even Taranaki hasn’t had much rain for 3 months. Considering more than 3 days without rain used to be considered a drought over there (true story), the Cockies must be absolutely beside themselves.
Of course, over here, we call a 3 months stint without rain…… Summer……
Don’t worry Madjack –Taranaki has heavy rain warning for today !!
As RW has said we have had great summer ( if you are a townie) but the farmers who are as important to us as the miners are to Australia are hurting and will suffer for the next twelve months or so as any resowing of grass they try when the rain comes will be a gamble ( it might be too cold by then for it to take hold properly)
Most dairy farmers have gone down to one milking per day, and taken the opportunity to identify any cows that are not meeting quota. They may dry off the remainder earlier than in other years, so the country will face a drop in revenue. Whether it is significant or not will depend, as always, on the international milk price. Dairying is big business in New Zealand, but is tiny when compared to some other overseas dairy providers.
Beef farmers are the hardest hit, because the meat works already have a backlog, and each day the live weight price decreases, and the condition of the cattle goes down. In the meantime, the price of hay goes up, and some farmers who cut hay in the early summer, and sold “the surplus”, now face the prospect of having to buy it back at a premium, either now or later in the year.
So the “drought” is significant, but not as serious as some historic ones. As Rod points out (below) we have seen worse.
Hi Rereke
In the last drought we had here in Victoria our local (Ballarat) council had to work with Central Highlands Water a state owned water business, and between the two screw ups the only thing that saved us from running out of water were the Ballarat people’s great efforts to reduce usage (we got 150L a day) but the prices kept going up?. It didn’t matter how many great ideas about water saving or storage were thrown at these bureaucrats they would just ignore them or procrastinate until people gave up, this drought also was a catalyst to bring every ecotard out of the swamp to scream their AGW agendas with some truly bizarre claims until the drought broke and they moved on to “extreme weather” events, for some it will never end.
And as for Burgundy I’m on the red wine diet and I’ve lost 4 days already!
The only reason for politicians to be silent is fear.
Politicians are sensitive to the way the mob moves.
This time the harm they have enabled may provoke the mob into action.
Calling people too stupid to understand the science, while you lie and steal, generally does not end well.
Hi Rereke – This anomaly has been caused through Tim Flanneryâs busy taxpayer-sponsored touring schedule.
We apologise for the delay and will alert Captain Drought as to the urgency of the problem and heâll be over there in a flash to get the media back on track.
That’ll be yet another government lie/distortion/blunder for Malcolm Roberts to add to his growing list of Appendices in CSIROh!
For those who think the LNP are our impeccable trustworthy saviours, he has Greg Hunt nailed already over A21.
I’ve posted about this on the thread below but everyone should take note of Steve McIntyre’s lastest on the Marcott et al “paper”.
It’s probably worse than the Gergis affair.
RW
I would have absolutely no sympathy for Marcott and Shakun. If they let their egos get ahead of them in their urge to get into the spot light, that is their problem. They can go down with the rest of the clowns.
I would have absolutely no sympathy for Marcott and Shakun
Neither would I, but it would have been good to have them on the opposition team, if only because they are obviously naive and accident prone, and that combination always gives us the opportunity for some form of entertainment or other.
Gobsmacking indeed. They do not merely dream themselves Masters of the Climate, now they are Time Lords too.
I do wonder if at any stage a co-conspirator of Marcott reassured him “Don’t worry mate, it’s only other people’s money!”
And interesting that none of these hockey sticks and date adjustments occurred in Marcott’s thesis – presumably because if he’d done that originally his thesis defense would not have lasted 5 minutes in front of 3 competent professors. So there was a Good Marcott, then co-authors got involved, then there was a Bad Marcott et al.
The parallels with Gergis only grow. Other elders of the Adjustment Bureau carry out the much-needed “corrections” while the nipper is rewarded with first-named author status – so he/she takes the blame when the trick is discovered. Hit and run, even against their own kind. It’s practically scientist cannibalism.
It’s enough to make you Rage…. Just victims of the in-house drive-by
They say jump, you say How High?
They would take it to the next level. Just invent the data to begin with. At that point even McIntyre would no longer be able to tell historic fact from political fiction, because the numbers at their source will be completely consistent with all further analyses and publications. i.e. – The Matrix.
This requires an extreme level of dishonesty and maliciousness so much greater than anything we have seen so far that I doubt it will ever happen.
So you see I am an optimist about scientists. đ
Coming this Saturday – experience what a renewable energy future will be like on a windless night. Yes, it’s Earth Hour 2013 from 8:30pm to 9:30pm. Or else let’s again celebrate Human Achievement. See Jo’s post from last year for some ideas on what you can do. Lighting up your home as a tribute to human achievement won’t cost a huge amount, but if you are worried about extra cost, just schedule some things for that hour you’d do anyway: time to put a load of washing on; get the dishwasher working on that stack of dirty plates; plan a later meal and get the oven going then to cook it; a spot of vacuuming.
I’ve never understood why Earth Hour is scheduled for a Saturday night. If the aim is to save energy, shouldn’t it be scheduled for 3pm-4pm on a workday afternoon? You don’t have to look very hard to find out that the electricity peak demand occurs in late afternoon on summer weekdays.
I’m sure it can’t be on Saturdays because no rational commercial organisations would support Earth Hour if it meant turning off the power when they actually needed it. Suggesting that the organisers chose the time because corporate sponsors would only support it when their businesses aren’t even open would just be terribly cynical of me, wouldn’t it? And suggesting that Earth Hour actually saves negligible amounts of energy and is quite pointless except for making the converted feel warm and fuzzy would be heartless, so I won’t.
If Earth Hour were to be held at the height of Europeâs winter, they would find out how many true believers they really have. If these donât die from exposure, that is.
The Drax Power Station conversion from coal fired to using wood chips intrigued me somewhat, so I went looking for as much information as I could find, and at the same time, it gave me an opportunity to again mention the technology that gives us electrical power from lumps of coal, showing how Drax does that.
Drax is converting three of its six units from coal fired to wood chip fired. This change will take a number of years, and all three should be operational by 2017.
So, how much wood chip?
When operational, each of those 3 Units will consume 2.3 million tons of wood chips each year and the plant will require 7.5 million tons of wood chips each year. Just to service these three units at this one plant, will require a forest of, wait for it, 4,600 Square Miles.
While this use of wood chips will emit enormous amounts of CO2, this is classified as renewable power, because the CO2 was sequestered from the air during the growing process for the trees, and trees are planted to replace those chipped into pellets for burning at this plant. Seconds to burn, and years to grow.
Have we gone mad?
Found an image of one of their generators also, a 660MW generator, and images of large scale generators are not all that easy to find.
I did a comparison also of how much power this ONE generator delivers and then compared that to how many towers it would take, and that comparison is actually scary.
The real madness lies in the belief that coal is compressed vegetation – coal is a continuing deposit of carbon via methane, from the upper mantle as per the late Tommy Gold’s ideas. But the oil and coal industries are wedded to the fossil fuel theory so I doubt much will change their views. As long as they believe in fossil fuel theory, then the madness will continue.
How does your notion of depositing carbon via methane deal with peat beds, which we can see constantly forming, let alone the clear and obvious plant cellular and pollen structures seen in thin sections of coal ?
BTW, for TonyOz: most domestic power stations are designed for and burn coal with an energy content between ~24-28MJ/kg, moisture of ~10% (air dried basis) and a Relative Density (RD) ~1.35-1.45. LaTrobe valley brown coal/power station complexes are atypical and completely symbiotic
Wood has an energy content of ~12MJ/kg, a moisture content > 60% and an RD ~0.7 or so. This is why entire forests need to felled constantly to keep 24/7 power supply operational
Oil gushers did occur as totally natural events. So it is possible in some places that an ancient swamp, peatbog, or field, was buried under a natural eruption of pre-formed oil, so mixing the vegetation and deep-origin oil. In the case of shallow seabeds filling up with marine detritus, these could have been buried and then later infiltrated by deep-origin oil.
In coal mining history there are stories of tree roots and even perfectly preserved fern leaves being found in the middle of coal seams.
So just to turn the tables, do you know of any physically plausible process that could compress peat into coal at elevated temperature and pressure whilst also leaving fern leaves so perfectly preserved inside it that their species can be identified millions of years later by the pattern of hairs on the fronds?
For me, it is like an Inspector Poirot crime story. No matter how reasonable the cover story may seem in a dozen different aspects, there is always somewhere the one tiny little clue which is incompatible with the cover story. The preserved ferns are that clue.
Well, at least thanks for replying. I can see why geological science is so little known and regarded within the general population. I expect not to change your mind with the following facts … (sigh)
As background, I’ve mapped hundreds of kilometres of coal exposures, both underground and in surface exposures. Picked out by hand and hammer countless fossilised Glossopteris sp (ferns in lay terms) from the interbed horizons of seam roof and floor (NOTE: most are not in the actual black coal seam but “sandwiched” between the ply planes); made and examined countless thin polished sections under polarised light with a microscope; mapped and traced along strike countless structural (tectonic) and sedimentary exposures through the seams; etc. I’ve even picked out T-Rex bone fossil fragments from a Triassic shale exposed in Wyoming US, but obviously along the bed planes … too easy actually, the shale bedding planes were loaded with them. What I am saying here is that I’ve personally found many examples of the fossils that you think cannot be there at such depths
The “tree roots and perfectly preserved fern leaves” you quote are FOSSILS, not the actual original as it lived. Cellular contents are all gone, only the fossilised structural outline remains of the original. The same concept you put forward applies to all sedimentary fossils – how could they survive in such delicate fossilised structural perfection for several hundred million years ? Please grasp that such survivals are actually rare – most fossils are only fragments, broken apart by the burial pressures you note
Temperatures high enough to alter them beyond simple recognition do not necessarily occur to all sedimentary rock assemblages. This certainly happens often enough, but then they become metamorphosed within a very great range of progressive results. Coal metamorphosed at the very lowest of this range is generally classified as anthracite and is normally not much good for power generation or coke making (useful characteristics having been finally squeezed out through pressure/temperature gradients)
I’m afraid Inspector Poirot has lost the time scale here, or perhaps never grasped it at all. Fossilised remains are spread throughout the sedimentary rock pile but only easily recognised at the interbed horizons. Think about why this is true. And then recognise that coal seams are not generally only one simple bed, but quite a few beds (layers) as the peat growth waxed and waned – interbed horizons (planes) exist at all the growth boundaries, which is where recognisable fossilised remains may occur. One of the fun parts of this work is splitting the rock apart along the bed planes in the hope of finding such fossils … sometimes one is rewarded
Finally, polished thin sections of coal are used by specialists within the field to classify under the microscope the initial plant species that formed the peat. These people are truly Inspector Poirots. Such analyses are used to correlate now non-contiguous deposits across geographical space, amongst other uses
You know, five years ago, this would have been so far over my head, I would have stopped reading after a few lines.
Although it’s still over my head (quite naturally, as it’s not my training) I can actually understand what you’re saying.
Right from the start when I wanted to have at least the slightest knowledge of what I was trying to say, I tried to understand coal, not geologically, but as it was used for the fuel for what I was writing about.
I had a basic knowledge, (and hear I mean very lay basic) about the grades, Lignite (brown coal) sub bituminous, bituminous, and anthracite, because people equated coal fired power as just the one thing as a whole, and trying to just explain the process of power generation was only complicated by my (mainly inept) manner of trying to explain brown coal fired power (Victoria, and S.A.) and Black coal fired power.
So again, I will not even begin to have the correct knowledge, but having you to pick me up, and add explanation as well, is in fact a good thing.
That’s why I have always gone to great pains to add the word ….. average ….. when I tell people that one ton of coal makes 2.86 tons of CO2, on average.
> I expect not to change your mind with the following facts ⌠(sigh)
Well [snip] you very much Ian!
On top of that you’ve laboured under a false assumption. You fabricated the opinion of “the fossils that you think cannot be there” whereas I actually used the fact of these fossils’ existence to cast doubt on the fossil fuel theory.
Then follows a totally gratuitous explanation of fossils, despite my already knowing what fossils are.
Finally there is the confusion of fact (co-located plant remains) and theory (fuel origin) in which fossil fuel theory is used to justify itself.
You begin with insult and you end with circular logic. Now why would I look any further into the above comment? I’d have to be really crazy to try.
Would you like to try again without the insults and the circular logic?
How is the fact of fossilised ferns inside coal seams consistent with a theory that says the source peat around them has been sheared and had all heck squeezed out of it?
Because that does seem to posit a process that can crush and decompose all the other peat yet can spare a lone leaf quite selectively.
Is there something about the cells or surface chemistry of ferns that makes them respond differently to the subterranean pressure cooker?
And furthermore, why are oil and gas usually found with an impermeable clay layer above them, when this is not required by fossil fuels theory?
Your intense desire to abuse your students while educating them is so refreshingly old-school! đ
Read Gold’s books on the subject. This is explained. Gold is pretty fair, unlike most scientists, who could make a good living selling used cars(or used climate theories), pushing their pet theories.
Thank you, but I have read it. Too much arm waving and dodging on this topic for my practical knowledge and experience over 40 years
Geologist (including me) make up the bulk of scientific resistance to CAGW. We have no need for selling used cars and would certainly never buy one from someone who thinks that the peat > (brown or black) coal cycle is some “pet” theory
I’ve mapped peat/coal deposits in all stages of coalification (yes, that’s a real word) world-wide. I’ve seen the metamorphosis process exposed in various progressions and analysed the fossilised plant components. Palynology experts (of which I am not one, merely practised in some aspects) identify the original plant species for non-contiguous correlation – not a “pet” theory
Peat beds are not a problem and if vegetation is replaced carbon by upwelling methane, so the microstructures will be faithfully preserved. Those microstructures should not be there, however, if coalification is the end product of compression, since that degree of compression should basically destroy any and all the delicate microstructures. Simple chemical replacement would retain the microstructures.
It’s basically the logical fallacy of arguing the consequent.
I’ve been in the Morwell pit years ago and still remember the presence of decapitated large trees in the deposit -non of which are coalified. These trees also passed into the overlying sediment on occasions, suggesting a rather rapid burial event.
Has anyone conducted an experiment verifying the compressional-coalification process?
Too much time in the bush eh Louis, methane brain farts still – so what were your decapitated trees made of? Probably silicified from their contact with the overlying sediment would be my guess.
Please explain rank progression in your methane coal and petroleum world, how about the organic chemistry and coal macerals.
Careful you will give Jo’s Blog a bad reputation.
Did anyone else spot Brooksie on TV today, just after the GP, boy got a face for radio. Rabbited on about heatwaves increasing in frequency in the last 100 years- hey Barry can you let us all know where we can get the peer reviewed paper on that?
Question Tony from someone who studied thermodynamics a long time ago (and even then, didn’t actually get a very good grade for it).
What are the practical differences between burning coal and burning wood chips?
Apart from the fact I expect that wood chips would contain a lot more moisture which I am imaging isn’t a good thing, the (sorry, struggling for the correct term here) latent energy(?) by mass of wood is a lot less then coal, so wouldn’t you be burning a LOT more wood, and hence releasing a lot more evil and horrible nasty CO2 just to produce the same amount of power?
Like I said, it has been a long time since I studied this but it does seem to me that even by the low bar the renewable energy people set themselves, this idea is pretty dumb.
Specific Energy (SE). Most common unit is now MJ/kg, used to be Kcal/kg (weird mixture of British and metric) or earlier, BTU/lb
See my post above for other specific measurements
Emissions from wood are typically CO2, H20 and mixes of sulphur, nitrogen as oxides and various trace elements (which can include mercury). The exact mix depends on the plant species being burnt
my impression on that is that 4,600 square miles is what it will take to service this ONE Power Station’s three units for the expected life of the units, and there’s no info I can find on its life expectancy, but a typical coal fired unit has an average life span of 50 years.
Your posts are always fascinating. Full of hard facts I know I can count on being well researched, informed and correct. You put a refreshing practical perspective on all you talk about which cuts through an awful lot of BS. A trusted beacon of clarity & sense in a confusing Universe.
Long may you keep blogging for as long as it pleases you.
Old joke. Have you read that book Victor Hugo by that guy with the strange surname, you know, umm, Les Misearbles. Ripping yarn.
When our three children got to the stage where they could purchase their own presents for Mum and Dad for Christmas, with their own money, they asked me what I would like. I thought for a while and asked for a voucher for a book store. One son thought this was akin to giving money, so he asked me for a list of books and he would get me three. He got me Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove, Bonfire Of The Vanities by Tom Wolfe, and Anna Karenina by ‘The Count’. He thought that would cure me of reading. The others and my good lady wife gave me the vouchers. This stack of books I thought would see me good for a year, but they only lasted 5 Months, and from that point forward, that makes up every Birthday and Christmas present, and I get the others myself. Best idea I ever had.
It took me a couple of years to work into the classics, and the number of (seemingly) knowing looks I got (posing eh!) when they saw War And Peace on my shelf, and every one of them asks if I have really read it. It even surprised me, because I really did like it. Great story. They think all those thick volume classics on my shelf are just there for show. The only one I wasn’t all that keen on was Ulysses. Dead boring.
Admittedly I’m a total Big Book Scaredy Cat and have never even contemplated reading it. I can’t stand wasted effort and so a big book presents a big risk in that regard. I’m not averse to learning about human nature, I just think there’s … erm… more efficient ways of going about it.
I mean, basically, in a roundabout very cut-down simplified way, surely the TV series Dexter has a similar theme to Crime and Punishment while probably having more humour yet demanding far less time investment. Well, horses for courses perhaps.
I have read 5 of them from that list, all of them good, and Atlas Shrugged probably the best novel I have ever read.
However, number 5 on that list is the Australian novel Poor Fellow My Country, and if you want to try one of the ‘biggies’ start here, because this actually does go close to being The Great Australian Novel. Good luck finding a copy though. A truly fabulous read.
Bugger! I didn’t even think to check. I’ve been misled! I was told C&P was really difficult to get through, but it now seems at “only” 564 pages it is barely halfway towards counting as one of the longest novels.
Maybe this reader’s difficulty was the bleakness of the subject matter rather than the word count.
Anyhow, I will just have to be content with a list of pithy quotes from the same, one of which seems very appropriate to our modern climate scientists. âWhen reason fails, the devil helps!â
I’d rather read The Scarlet Letter again than Homer. It was absolutely a case of asking myself through every page why anyone thought this junk was interesting â both volumes too! It was required reading and I passed the course. But you can guess whether the books are still on my bookshelf or not.
But it seems you get the picture. đ
“One man’s food is another man’s poison,” sure is true in the literary world.
I just loved the Rutherfurd novels. Both Dublin (Doovlin) and Ireland Awakening give wonderful insight into the so called troubles there. I’ll bet that Americans are not aware they were the genesis of the Irish Potato Famine.
What I found was something totally unexpected. I detested Michener, because all I had ever been shown about him was the Musical South Pacific, and I just hated that genre from that time of musicals.
In ’96 when I had to spend 4 weeks away from our home on the Gold Coast in Sydney attending to a major health scare for my wife, I took a store of books with me to read at her bedside.
I finished all of them after a couple of weeks. I found a book store in Randwick, oddly named Book And Cranny. Poring around in there I actually picked up a Michener, and debated whether or not to get it. I did, and in an absolute rush, read it in four days. That was Chesapeake, and I was so sad that I had missed out on something this good for so long. Over the next few Months, every time I saw a Michener in a book store, I purchased it. That was of itself lucky, because even though it took me a couple of years to get through them all, he died late in ’97, and his novels just disappeared off the shelves, probably tied up following his death and the redirection of royalties. However, I now had them all. (well, all his fiction anyway) Chesapeake was probably the best of them IMHO but most were really good. Formulaic probably, but it worked so well for him. Texas and Space were also up there as well, but I liked them all.
Oddly, Tales Of The South Pacific, which won him the Pulitzer (for his first novel) was the one I liked the least, and that musical is based (loosely) around just a couple of chapters from that novel.
I liked the American authors from around that era, Irving Wallace, and especially John O’Hara from a little earlier, and a couple of the Calder Willingham novels.
I’m currently reading Peter F Hamilton’s Great North Road, a mixture of sci fi and crime fiction, only set now +200 years. His work is really good, and I’m fussy with my Sci Fi, preferring Dr, Asimov, and for Sci fantasy, Bob Heinlein, and of course Doc Smith, but only his classic Lensman series.
I’m reading “Intellectuals” by Paul Johnson. The upshot of it is that the self-styled intellectual is a relatively modern invention (last 300 years or so) and that they took centre stage by bagging the Christian culture of the west. Johnson’s take on it is that we have had these guys around for long enough to consider whether they delivered on what they promised and whether the new messiah’s had any right to be casting stones.
The results so far indicate that they didn’t and they don’t.
theft on a grand scale. there have been attempts in the MSM to portray all cypriots as russian mafia, however:
16 March: Guardian: Paul Gallagher/Helena Smith: Cyprus: panic as savings levy is imposedCypriots rush to ATMs before savings are docked as part of a bailout deal agreed in Brussels
Cypriots reacted with shock that turned to panic on Saturday after a 10% one-off levy on savings was forced on them as part of an extraordinary 10bn euro (ÂŁ8.7bn) bailout agreed in Brussels.
People rushed to banks and queued at cash machines that refused to release cash as resentment quickly set in…
The move in the eurozone’s third smallest economy could have repercussions for financially overstretched bigger economies such as Spain and Italy.
People with less than 100,000 euros in their accounts will have to pay a one-time tax of 6.75%, Eurozone officials said, while those with greater sums will lose 9.9%…
At the Anglican Church’s weekly Saturday thrift shop gathering in Nicosia, Cyprus’s war-divided capital, ex-pats expressed alarm with many saying that they had also rushed to ATMs to withdraw money from their accounts. “There’s a run on banks. A lot of us are really panicking. The big fear is that there soon won’t be cash in ATMs,” said Arlene Skillett, a resident in Nicosia…
She said a lot of elderly Britons had transferred savings to the island when they had decided to retire there. “Nobody can understand how they can do this â isn’t it illegal? How can they just dock money from your account?” she asked…
“A lot of us just can’t believe it,” said Alexandra Christofi, a divorcee in her 40s who said she had rushed to her bank before doors even opened at 6am. “I had put my money there for a rainy day. It’s absolutely all I have and I cannot understand how Cyprus is being singled out. Other EU countries got bailouts and we’re only in this position because we supported Greece,” she said, referring to the massive losses the Cypriot banking system suffered as a result of Greece’s restructuring its debt last year. “Where is the fairness in that? Where is the solidarity and support that is meant to be the reason why we are all unified in this common currency in the first place?”
Maria Zembyla, from Nicosia, said the levy would make a “big dent” in her family’s savings and “erode the investor confidence”. “It is robbery…
Howard Skelton, in Limassol, said: “The only people who will benefit in the long term are the banks. It will be many years before the man in the street begins to feel any benefit from this bailout. The sooner I can return to the UK the better.”
The levy does not take effect until Tuesday, following a public holiday, but action is being taken to control electronic money transfers over the weekend. Co-operative banks, the only ones open in Cyprus on a Saturday, closed following a run on the credit societies while ATMs cancelled transactions due to “technical issues”…
“I’m extremely angry. I worked years and years to get it together and now I am losing it on the say-so of the Dutch and the Germans,” said British-Cypriot Andy Georgiou, 54, who returned to Cyprus in mid-2012 with his savings.
“They call Sicily the island of the mafia. It’s not Sicily, it’s Cyprus. This is theft, pure and simple,” said a pensioner.
IMF managing director Christine Lagarde, who attended the meeting, said she backed the deal and would ask her board in Washington to contribute to the bailout. “We believe the proposal is sustainable for the Cyprus economy,” she said, “The IMF is considering proposing a contribution to the financing of the package. The exact amount is not yet specified.” http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/16/cyprus-savings-levy-imposed-eurozone
I don’t see what you lot are complaining about. Clearly these Cypriot plebs don’t know what’s good for them! This savings levy is like the GST only better because it doesn’t discriminate against the rich by exempting food. They’re just cutting out the middle man. It’s more efficient! đ
Then the Powers That Be have the cheek to tell everybody that gold is some sort of refuge for storing value, while all the time the physics labs of the world are secretly working on methods that have already been proven to transmute Tungsten into Platinum and even Gold at low energy. They are certainly trying to optimise this technique and industrialise it. When more people discover that, what will this do to the price of gold, or GoldNerds for that matter?
The goldbugs can only hope that the first group to succeed in this modern alchemy on a commercial scale will keep their invention secret just to keep the price of gold high, or else they will be victims of their own success.
It sounds like something for nothing. I do remember my physics classes and unless I’ve lost it in recent years there’s a lot of energy that either has to go in or come out depending on the direction. Actually a lot of energy must go in first, even if you get a lot out. Someone correct me if I’m wrong.
A couple of years ago we’ve seen some similar claims about practical fusion reactor technology about ready to go public in a big way and yet there’s no sign of anything now. Being both an honest skeptic and a firm believer that the laws of physics are immutable I prefer to think those weren’t what they were said to be rather than fantasize about a conspiracy to keep them hidden.
This sounds like something even more worthy to be skeptical about. Like global warming, believe after you see it happening.
I do wish the price of gold would go up. That would be very good. đ
I can’t pretend to be an expert but a grasp of a few principles is enough to follow what he’s claiming. And after watching the whole thing again I can only believe he’s claiming to change something from a lower to a higher energy state at the atomic level without putting in the difference in energy, a difference that is very large. That energy has to come from somewhere.
His work looks very hard to shoot down but…
If anyone can explain why this doesn’t violate a very basic law of physics I’m open to being taught.
I don’t know Roy, if Toyota and Mitsubishi had a way to slip a lot of gold quietly out a back door I think they’d be motivated to keep it secret for quite a while.
I’m a little in doubt about their ability to simply manufacture it. But I would keep any large amount of gold I had a secret too, as would anyone with a lot of it â at least as secret as you could under all the scrutiny that goes on these days. But I don’t think that would be a conspiracy.
Nowadays maybe we need to buy guns and ammo as an investment. It certainly worked for the DOJ (very sarcastic for you non U.S. folks). So what do you think? Will there be a booming black market?
But CO2 into oil sounds good to me. You write it up and I’ll hire the patent attorney. đ
while all the time the physics labs of the world are secretly working on methods that have already been proven to transmute Tungsten into Platinum and even Gold at low energy
Maybe you should have inserted a ‘smiley’ after that, Andrew. Is there a ‘beer-reviewed’ paper on the subject?
Good luck to any physicist trying to insert/remove the exact number protons from a nucleus. Need a pretty fine set of tweezers.
Or maybe you should have checked the link I gave before jumping to preconceived conclusions?
Tested by Mitsubishi. Verified by Toyota. Yes the car manufacturers.
According to the programme for the American Nuclear Society 2012 Winter meeting, on Wed 14 Nov a presentation was given in the DISCUSSION OF LOW-ENERGY NUCLEAR REACTIONSâPAPERS/PANEL, titled:
9:45 A.M.
Transmutation Reactions Induced by Deuterium Permeation
Through Nano-Structured Pd Multilayer Thin Film, Yasuhiro
Iwamura, Takehiko Itoh (Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd.), Y. Terada
(Japan Synchrotron Radiation Research Institute), T. Ishikawa (Coherent X-ray
Optics Laboratory, SPring-8/RIKEN)
Note SPring-8/RIKEN is the name of a synchrotron for materials testing operated by Toyota Laboratories.
According to the article I linked above, Iwamura-san said during this panel session that Tungsten had been transmuted into Platinum at low energies.
If this is a hoax, it has certainly fooled The Chiefio too, oh ye of excessive faith!
People think I make stuff up, but the world is more bizarre than some will believe.
And so it begins, Mark and Pat,
The EU commissars and IMF wanted 40% (!) of depositors money confiscated, but they settled for “only” stealing 6.75% for deposits under 100k and 9.75% for over that. So if you were a Cypriot who just sold your house for 400k and deposited it in the bank pending another purchase, the IMF believes it is reasonable to bail out a bank for its mismanagement and malfeasance to the tune of 160k of your money at a whim, with a flick of a switch. I can only assume this Cyprus trial is a test case to see if this can be gotten away with by the powers that be, and when this is tolerated it will spread to the PIGS, then France or the UK, whichever comes first. Why isn’t this front page news, the institutionalized overt theft from taxpayers to fund creditors. It is not their money to confiscate!
Then we will have a civil war in Spain, widespread rioting in the streets and bank runs across the rest of the EU and then the Germans can set the GPS for Warsaw all over again.
KK,
Violence unfortunately seems inevitable. Each of the weak links in the EU will progressively be sacrificed IMHO with the population bled white by progressive taxation and austerity measures until nothing is left except a lifeless corpse for a country, when internal strife and/or separatist movements will see eventual civil war, especially likely being Spain with the Basque issue or perhaps an ultra-leftist coup d’etat. I hope I’m wrong but can’t help seeing the echoes of the past in the present situation, only writ larger.
When government breaches contracts with impunity, civil society is done.
Government is nothing more than a promise, a contract to allow us civilization.
Civilization is never more than skin deep.
Lying, stealing, special interest group government rips the skin right off.
Our nature has an aspect that loves destruction, to blindly rend and tear, most men know it and as we age it is easier to suppress,but its ever present.
Thats why we require the illusion, we call civilization.
Neither angels or demons, we be man. Religions know the beast, some sooth it, others promote it.
But we adapt to chaos very well, those of us with hand eye coordination and tool using ability.
I suspect mans successful survival to date , is because of our nature, not inspite of it as the trembling ninnies claim.
I am watching this theft with amazement and some terror, is it the IMF’s intention to collapse the banking system?
When a regional bank went shaky and required a bail-out, the Spanish Government converted the depositors money into shares in the bank. Supposed to stop the panic withdrawal of money from the failing bank, as obviously those shares were difficult to sell, and could only be sold at a huge discount on the supposed value.
Many of the banks had lent money to the ‘house bubble’ where there was a mad construction of ‘second houses’ (targeting UK residents mostly) that left Spain with over a million unoccupied houses. Some of the English buyers either defaulted or sold out cheaply to “smart” Spaniards who saw a chance to own a house. The banks were allowed to foreclose on the mortgages and many did to get hold of an asset, that would justify further loans. The occupiers were evicted but still remained liable for the mortgage.
Naturally the price of empty houses dropped further. If the bank then went broke despite the loan, then the original bank depositors lost all their money.
This has not been a popular action by the Government and has been modified recently, but not to the point of undoing any losses to the public. What’s to stop the public revolting? (from the Wizard of Id) lack of funds.
I cannot see the euro survive in its present form. It requires enormous funds to try and keep the scheme going, for the benefit of some banks. With the example of Iceland and its economic improvement since it devalued, it can only be a matter of time before some “anti-austerity” party is in power and leaves the Euro, provoking a stampede by other countries. There will be an avalanche of banks failing as government bonds crash in value, followed by the towering Brussels edifice of bureaucracy unaccountable to anyone. Next revolution and the assertion of nationality. I only hope that war doesn’t breakout.
Or, actually, I was. Mid-last year, we still had some money in Spain, left there after finally selling our house in the Sierra de Madrid, I moved a lot of the money to here (Oz) out of the Euro as insurance against a serious collapse in the value of the Euro. While the Euro has gone up a little since then, at least I’ve been getting somewhat more than (effectively) zero interest on the money. I do fear for my in-laws in Spain that one day things may collapse along the lines you mention. The fallout will be something the political elite will deserve but will hit hardest on the ordinary people of Europe who have been hoodwinked by Euro-socialism. As much as it would be poetic justice, I hope it doesn’t come to that end.
Was being slightly childish (yes, I CAN be shallow đ ) and gently teasing the Australian Youth Climate Coalition on their FBook page.
Currently on their FBook they display a photo taken at one of their little rallies in what I assume is sunny Melbourne (there are grey skies and everyone is wearing long sleaves… I am guessing Melbourne… đ )
The rally has them holding up signs asking ‘THIS or THIS’ with one side of the group all wearing ill fitting green hard hats and matching blue t-shirts, and the other side all dressed up in mock Victorian era clothing.
So, to me I look at this photo and intantly thing ‘COOL! STEAMPUNKS!’ and instantly reject their green hatted uniformity for a group that at least knows how to party and dress well in a corset.
Out of kindness I pointed this out to the poor little misguided moppets, offering up the point that they really hadn’t thought their protest through that well and that since the Steampunk movement was massively more popular then the AYCC, then maybe it wasn’t wise to try and paint them as the villians.
I note that my wallpost does seem to have been deleted.
It will be interesting to see how the newly elected Jesuit Pope Francis will reconcile his mission to serve the poor of the world with the evangelistic fervour many of his Jesuit brethren have approached action on climate change.
Before becoming a priest the Pope, Jorge Bergoglio earned a Masters in Chemistry. It is not unusual for Jesuits to be highly educated, they are considered the intellectual order of clergy among the 1.2 Billion Roman Catholics, but they also tend to be somewhat left wing in their politics.
I couldn’t find any past record of statement by the new Pontiff on the subject of climate change. It would be hard to believe he hasn’t been influenced by the constant stream of climate alarmism from the Jesuit community around the world.
Here in Australia the Jesuit’s produce the Eureka Street Magazine which regularly prints articles which are aggressively supportive of climate change action and anti- climate ‘sceptics’. In fact in one article provocatively titled ‘The perverse skills of climate change deniers’, (Jo’s other half, Dr David Evans rates a mention), the author is scathing of Australia’s leading Roman Catholic Cleric, Cardinal George Pell.“That Cardinal George Pell allows himself to be aligned with climate change deniers is very sad. The credibility of church mission to serve humanity is compromised. What is more, many of the faithful are scandalised and their following of church leaders sorely tested.”
From the Jesuits Around the World Newsletter dated 19 February 2013 a writer from the US penned a piece entitled Saving the Earth as a New Frontier, in which he lists all the usual ‘Green activist scares’ including, “…rivers are running dry, glaciers and ice caps are melting, coral reefs are bleaching, the ocean is becoming more acidic, the atmosphere is warming…”. The author believes that Jesuits are called to make a religious response to Earth’s fate.“This appears to be the most challenging role that we Jesuits have ever been asked to assume,” he writes. “It will require that we move beyond any denial and paralysis and that we move into the future with hope, courage and intention”
This type of climate alarmist material seems to be more prominent in the Jesuit material of wealthy western countries. It will be interesting to see if the new Pope who has lived in a developing country with areas of great poverty, has a different perspective.
Does Pope Francis understand that many of the climate action policies only serve to enshrine poverty in underdeveloped countries making economic development more difficult and causing the price of food and energy to soar?
Has Pope Francis been tracking the climate debate over the years, and now realise much of what was stated as settled science and fact some years ago, has been invalidated; and much of the scepticism his fellow Jesuits were ridiculing from those such has Cardinal George Pell, was well founded?
Before becoming a priest the Pope, Jorge Bergoglio earned a Masters in Chemistry. It is not unusual for Jesuits to be highly educated, they are considered the intellectual order of clergy among the 1.2 Billion Roman Catholics, but they also tend to be somewhat left wing in their politics.
May I point out that a great education and wisdom do not correlate in any way. They never have and I fear, never will.
We so often accept smart and educated as useful when we should talk about wisdom. But then whoever said we were wise enough to know the difference?
If I may paraphrase Admiral Farragut, “Damn the critical thinking, full speed ahead.”
Totally agree Roy. I suspect the Jesuits simply thought they were on a political winner where they could dovetail their reputation for intellect with their concern for popular environmental issues.
I can offer a different explanation â their education is probably a bit short on practical aspects. Thus the acceptance of the Gospel From Authority.
That’s my own speculation and you should treat it accordingly. I think they have a genuine concern beyond personal political points. But I take note of the “called by God” attitude. I wish a whole lot of people (not nearly all Catholic) could give up “their calling” for the only one Christ ever gave to anyone. “He who would be greatest among you must be the servant of all. And this would be a different world.
In context you have to take that word servant very literally.
Anyway, when the leaders are misled so are the followers.
The reality is that man-made global warming is a myth: the global temperature is well within lifeâs limits and, indeed, the present day is cooler by comparison to much of Earthâs history. Perhaps this will be the moment that this fact becomes the new scientific orthodoxy.
Strong stuff indeed from the MSM.
The Mail on Sunday is the highest selling ‘mid’-market Sunday newpaper, beaten only by the trash tabloids , in terms of popularity.
You are right â this is going to ruffle a few feathers. I have always felt sorry for David Bellamy being ousted from the Beeb. But the time of retribution might be at hand.
The other interesting point is that all of the comments are skeptical, apart from the last one, where the commentator has obviously not read (or understood) the whole article.
The Mail is targeted at a UK demographic who still see the local pub as being an integral part of their social environment. This article will be discussed at length, over a few drinks, and a lot of people will go home and read it, because nobody will want to be the odd one out when it is next discussed.
This is a real sea-change, and there is nothing so irate as the “British” working class, if they feel they have been “done to” by the upper class and the Guvmint.
In short, the article has legs. Good on the Mail for publishing it. I take back allmost some of my historical criticism of The Mail.
Rereko you spoke too soon, did you see the talking head climate scientist on the idiot box this evening. Apparently this drought (?!) which is currently a once in 50 year event will become a once in 20 year event by 2050. Utter bullshit. He has no solid scientific evidence to make such a bold claim.
Of course the interviewee was out of his depth so it went unchallenged. At the same time, try and build viable and sensible water storage projects here and the great unwashed will be lying in front of the diggers. It rains like buggery here sometimes so it seems to me that water shortages are a human failure.
Looking at the comments on these articles at The Mail and perhaps more usefully at the comment ratings, the is very little support being expressed for ‘problem’ of AGW.
Good grief! And on the same page, a Time Magazine cover proclaiming, “WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW TO SURVIVE THE COMING ICE AGE.”
Time has had global warming coming out of its ears for so long I nearly died of shock! Where is my defibrillator? And where is John Brookes with a good rebuttal when you need him?
Time, of course was old stuff but it points out the confounded gullibility of people who must survive on what they publish. If it will sell publish it. Need it be factual? No!
I was looking to see if anyone produced this link; I was going to if no one had. The troll panic commenters were out in force! The DM is pretty trashy but does have a few good writers. I wonder if if this will encourage other parts of the MSM?
Something I always find intriguing about the graph in that Daily Mail article.
It shows the match or otherwise between the IPCC ‘projections’ and the actual observations. But what projections? Those will be the ones from the most recent IPCC report in what was it, the early 2000s? So of course, everything prior to 2000 will show a match between projections and obs, because they HAD the obs to work with.
What would be more instructive would be to see each IPCC report’s projections mapped to actual obs for the total period to date since 1990. In other words, how accurate were the projections BEFORE they had real world obs to work with?
The “Mail online” has breaking news about “the great green con”, there are two articles so-far and expect much more to come. Finally the wheels are falling off the warmist’s cart and true science can get back to debating in the way that scientists are meant to.
Thankyou John. In addition to Mark’s link to one of them up at #17 I now found the other one, on local Government’s Green tyrannies, while pensioners starve. containing as well more on vested interests in high places. The MPs & Peers cashing in, many of them no doubt divided by their Free Market instincts while ruling subsidies.
NIWA data fiddler Jim Salinger making hay of the drought in New Zealand and CAGW wannabee chimes in…
Scary stories……
North Island’s worst drought in 70 years
A climate expert believes summers like this one will become the new norm for New Zealand.
Droughts have already been declared across much of the North Island.
Other regions including Manawatu and Canterbury are either asking for help, or about to do so.
Climate scientist Jim Salinger says if current weather patterns continue, New Zealand’s climate will be similar to the Mediterranean.
“What it means is that if it just doesn’t rain for at least four months of the year, it means you have to bring in your water from elsewhere.”
Dr Salinger says the drought is the worst the North Island has seen in 70 years.
Mean temperatures have now increased 1C since the 1900s.
Their projections from climate models show that by the 2080s much of the country’s agricultural zone will experience some increase in drought, even under lower climate warming scenarios.
James Renwick, Associate professor of physical geography at Victoria University, said global warming was the only explanation for the current drought, which he described as “an exceptional event”.
Ignore Jim Salinger at your peril – sounds like NZ’s version of Tim Flannery who was spouting similar BS during our drought only to look a fool when the rains returned and flooded everything.
Lots of ‘learned’ discussion here but not a mention of how the CO2 released by burning ‘fossil’ fuels effects the climate. Until someone publishes a paper showing how ‘backradiation from a cold source increases emitted radiation from a warmer source’ I will remain a sceptic.
Not too learned as it’s much the same sort of teacup reading we in Australia got from climate “experts” a few years ago.
Tim Flannery who is most certainly himself a climate illiterate, yet heads our Climate Commission, was no doubt spouting the prognostications of those âexpertsâ on his Commission who, it turned out knew nothing about Aussie droughts, the regional climate or the likely outcome which of course was the filling of our water storage dams a few years after the false prophets promised dire outcomes.
Those peanuts in NZ, one can be sure, are just as clueless as our climate âscientists” on what the future for NZ holds climate wise.
Genuine climate scientists know their limitations because so much is still not understood about the interaction of the many variables that constitute Earth’s climate and so don’t make fools of themselves by mouthing rubbish.
Sir, you appear to be an injured animal, and so out of pity for you, and also as a service to others reading of your confusion, I must offer you this link which you should read and digest. Several other comments on that thread by vastly more scientifically qualified people (such as BobC) may be helpful at a deeper technical level.
Of some interest to you may be the fact Doug Cotton made a video on YouTube several months later in which he admits as true everything that I tried to tell him about the reality of backradiation and how it creates a greenhouse effect. Oddly enough there were some new perspectives on the origin of the vertical temperature profile that I learned from his video, so the learning is not all in one direction.
Doug used to be a Slayer, because he believed there was no radiative blanket greenhouse effect. By admitting backradiation is real, he has admitted there is a greenhouse effect. He has, in that sense, been cured of his Slayerism.
So you see, people such as yourself do have hope. If Doug could be cured, so can you.
Thanks for the link. I have down loaded the pdf. Will give it a good read. Will be looking specifically for how radiation emitted by the atmosphere differentiates – in the 15 micron region – between radiation from H2O and CO2 molecules when the H2O far out masses the CO2 to give you a lapse rate of 6.5C per kilometre of altitude. Also at that lapse rate physical drops of water are present which have an emission factor of ~0.97, almost as good as the sea surface below for example.
If you do the basic math for a 1 square metre column of air at STP to the tropopause you will find some 4.8 GRAMS of CO2 as opposed to KILOGRAMS of water droplets and H2O molecules.
Now under 100% cloud cover, at night, you can note that air temperatures remain stable, it doesn’t cool down very much, that now is backradiation.
It’s not the CO2 that will be the problem when buring wood; it’s all the resins and other junk that will be poorly combusted and need scrubbing from the stacks.
A very costly operation a.
But there will be a solution to reduced said costs.
Someone in power will “authorise” for the scrubbers to be turned off for strategic periods, say 90% of the time.
Thank you, all of the above, we humans need to rid ourselves of the socialist-communist manipulators, extreme Greens, Union Labor and fellow travellers
We are swimming in energy – just think of the earth as a leaky electrical capacitor, and figure out how to become part of the solar electric circuit. But beware the crony-capitalists – they don’t like their government monopoly to be threatened.
It may not be the Washington Post , but the Washington Times repeats this account from Edinburgh University today
…. the University of Edinburgh found âfor onshore wind, the monthly âload factorâ of turbines â a measure of how much electricity they generate as a percentage of how much they could produce if on at full power all the time – dropped from a high of 24 per cent in the first year after construction, to just 11 per cent after 15 years.â
Joe V.
that link is hardly a rebuttal, more an Ad Hom.
They might have referred to the 4,000 wind turbines in the USA, where the cost of repairs has left them idle. As for the claim that the oldest turbines in scotland are 16 years old, so what? Are they running at the same capacity load as when they were installed?
It is likely that prof. Hughes is correct. The average capacity factor in the UK has been shrinking in recent years. Or is Global Warming causing less extreme weather?
Rereke W, you obviously don’t watch the same news on TVNZ that I do. When news about the drought first ramped up, an ‘Unknown climate Scientist’ who sounds remarkably like the arbitarily retired J Salinger (retired for making unauthorised statements to the Meja!)was quoted as saying that the current drought is how NZ climate will be in the future! No names, no pack drill, of course, but the meeja so loves the CAGW rubbish and the front-people passed this nonsense on with great relish.
Here in Auckland’s West, a short distance from harbour and sea,we had a whisker less than one inch of precipitation over the last 24 hours – very welcome too, as it’s all we have had since some time in January, but nowhere nearly enough, as us townies from inside the big smoke actually get more rain than the cockies out in the hinterland do as rising warm air from urban buildings, tar-seal and concrete often causes precipitation.
It seems cruel for us townies to have our lawns and gardens sprinkled so generously ahead of our country cousins, but there are a large number of industries such as lawn mowing and gardening that rely on rain as much as the rural sector does, but our Federated Farmers are a brilliant lobby/pressure group, despite their image (heavily promoted, of course) of them being bronzed individualists who are so busy labouring away on their land that they wouldn’t recognise a suit, white shirt with a stiff collar and suitable tie, along with a shiny pair of shoes if all it fell out of their wardrobe.
And no, I don’t dislike cockies at all but one has to recognise the reality rather than the myth. Many years ago I was an agricultrual contractor, so I am aware that there are far more people vulnerable to the the vagaries of extremes of climate than the farmers, people who usually don’t have large assets or powerful pressure groups to protect them from an inclement climate.
17 March: UK Telegraph: Rachel Cooper: UK troops hit by Cyprus bailout ‘will be compensated’
George Osborne has said that troops and civil servants serving in Cyprus whose savings are threatened by the island’s ÂŁ8.7bn bailout will be compensated.
“Itâs a difficult situation for people who live in Cyprus,” Mr Osborne told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show. “For people serving in our military and our government out in Cyprus, we are going to compensate anyone affected by this bank tax – people who are doing their duty for our country in Cyprus will be protected from this Cypriot bank tax.”
He added that Britain was “not part of the bail-out” because David Cameron “got us out of these euro bail-outs” when he became prime minister and he added that Cyprus is an example of “what happens if you don’t show the world you can pay your way”.
***”Thatâs why in Britain weâve got to retain the confidence of world markets,” said the Chancellor…
Government sources on Saturday night stressed that funds in the London branches of Bank of Cyprus UK and Laiki Bank would not be affected… http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/9935596/UK-troops-hit-by-Cyprus-bailout-will-be-compensated.html
***”retain the confidence of world markets”??? like the following, mr. osborne, which the MSM has not even picked up?
13 March: AFP: US renews EU, Japan exemptions from Iran sanctions
Under a law meant to pressure the Iranian leadership over its contested nuclear program, the United States bars banks from nations that buy Iran’s key money-maker from doing business in the world’s largest economy.
Kerry announced he was extending for another 180 days exemptions first granted on March 20 last year to Belgium, Britain, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland and Spain… http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hQFcrem8C6_knW_–OVmhbWCWZFg?docId=CNG.9f75a67d1e4ee5257279f933fbd8766e.c1
or how about manipulating CO2 trading, or your banks manipulating the LIBOR rate, mr. osborne?
CFMEU old boy involved in the coal mine saga, while the Union pushes the whole CAGW shut-down-the-coal-mines scam:
18 March: Age: Sam McKeith/AAP: Suspect mine deal signed over $1800 meal
Outside the inquiry, CFMEU mining and energy general secretary Andrew Vickers said the union had rejected requests from Mr Maitland to back the training mine project.
He said the union had never been involved in any wrongdoing regarding the licence.
“The union per se has not, was not, and will not be involved in any suggested corruption or misdoing with the granting of the exploration licence,” he told reporters. http://news.theage.com.au/breaking-news-national/suspect-mine-deal-signed-over-1800-meal-20130318-2ga2o.html
Mining Union Comes to Terms With Sustainable Development
John Maitland spent 10 years as a coal miner in the 1970s, achieving qualifications in rigging, as an open cut examiner and as a Deputy before being elected Secretary of the Queensland District of the Minersâ Federation in 1981. He was President of the CFMEU Mining and Energy Division (and its predecessors) from 1985 until 1996 when he was elected National Secretary of the whole union. He is honorary President of the 20 million member International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers Unions (ICEM), a rare achievement for an Australian as the position is usually held by a leader of the larger German and US unions. He is a member of the Executive of the Australian Council of Trade Unions and a Director of Eraring Energy, a NSW electricity producer…
(John Maitland) the 1950s in New South Wales most people would have either had a relative who was a coal miner or known someone who was. Today coal production is many times greater but it is unusual for the average citizen of New South Wales to know anybody in the coal industry. So they are more willing to question the need for the industry…
Ameef: How is organised labour changing its agenda to embrace sustainable development?
JM: In the past we have been prominent supporters of the ecologically sustainable development process initiated by Bob Hawke as Prime Minister more than a decade ago. The CFMEU has produced kits for our members on climate change and mine environmental management. We were there at the Earth Summit in 1992 and at the development of the Kyoto Protocol in 1998. In 2001 we wrote the climate change policy document for our international union â the International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers Unions (ICEM) which has more than 20 million members worldwide. And of course we have been active in the MMSD process both within Australia and at the global level… https://www.dlsweb.rmit.edu.au/conenv/envi1128/Groundwork%20website/publicat/gw/grnd702/union.htm
MSM is barely reporting the furore in europe over the cypriot money grab and, when they do, they are mostly sanguine, except for a WSJ and a UK Telegraph BLOG:
17 March: UK Telegraph BLOG: Matts Persson: Tomorrow, Cyprus could vote to leave the euro. This is political dynamite
All bailouts are unfair â the people who screwed up almost never pay â but this is in a league of its own. Seventeen Eurozone finance ministers locked themselves in a room and decided that every Cypriot depositor â whether super-wealthy or dirt-poor â will, out of the blue, see part of their hard-earned money seized. Remember, Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades explicitly promised in his election campaign, only a few weeks ago, that depositors were safe. The Cypriot electorate now faces losses on deposits as well as years of austerity (under the bailout loan). Whatâs worse, deposits under âŹ100,000 are supposed to be protected by EU law, not raided by EU leaders. And Cypriot banks have frozen close to âŹ5.8bn, i.e. imposed capital controls which is meant to be illegal under EU single market rules. This is political dynamite…
Most importantly, massive questions still linger over the precedent this sets. If Cypriot depositors are forced to pay today, why not Spanish ones tomorrow? People queuing up in massive numbers outside ATM machines is always an incredibly scary sight wherever you are and given the anger in Cyprus, we just donât know how people will react when banks open again (unclear when, the Cypriot government may declare both Tuesday and Wednesday bank holidays as well)… http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/matspersson/100023412/tomorrow-cyprus-could-vote-to-leave-the-euro-this-is-political-dynamite/
nearly 1,300 people have commented on this blog article, yet is anyone seeing the outrage in europe on their tv news?
Given the state of tension throughout Europe, not to mention the rest of the world, there will be repercussions.
Europeans, Including the Irish, will remove money from banks because they have been shown that Governments see their savings as easy pickings.
I would have no problem taking all of my spare cash home to deposit under the bed, all $3,500 of it, but those who have hundreds of thousands may move it to Switzerland??
Won’t that be a shambles.
A few years ago in the GFC we were all taken in a similar manner in Australia when the share market crashed.
Market manipulation saw much of our hard earned disappear to local Financiers and banks plus stockbrokers in the US.
Even now the US scammers have a tap into Australian share markets and skim off significant amounts of our investments via High Frequency Trading.
Just how our Federal Government came to agree to this is beyond me but is as big a betrayal of trust as the Cypriot deal.
They will either rescind the plan to tax all savings in Cyprus or they will go ahead and create total chaos and collapse of government in Europe.
It’s almost as if they deliberately want to demolish civilised society.
There is still 3 months for Windsor, Wilkie, and Oakeshott to completely screw up the country.
If they have any sense they will nuke those bills this week just as they have claimed they will.
If a government controlled “public interest advocate” can stop companies from broadcasting whatever they like, stopping people from saying whatever they like will be next.
They will supposedly clean up the ABC as long as they get the ability to intimidate every other broadcaster. No thanks. As much as we like to rip on the ABC, totalitarianism isn’t better.
No Deal!
Jo, I just got another email from the Australian Liar Party …
Dear [redacted],
Today the Liberal Party launched yet another misleading attack on the carbon price.
This is the same Liberal Party that has access to a limitless credit card from the big end of town wanting to buy this yearâs election result. Donât just get angry; letâs get even. Even $10 can help us stop Tony Abbott…it all adds up.
First, the facts: The Liberal Partyâs claims are based on a hysterical scare campaign run by the Daily Telegraph, who said the carbon price has caused a so-called âeconomic catastropheâ. What they failed to mention is that since the carbon price was introduced more than 130,000 extra jobs have been created and our economy has actually grown at a rate of 3.1 percent.
Weâve fought so hard to take action on climate change and Iâm committed to making sure the truth gets out. Can you help me fight back by donating to make sure the big polluters donât win this yearâs election?
Todayâs misleading attack shows this fight is going to get nasty. For the sake of future generations, it’s a fight we canât afford to lose.
Make a monthly donation until the election here to help us stop the Coalition from being so âLiberalâ with the truth about our future!
George Wright
Campaign Director – Australian Labor Party
Another money grab. I am going to have sooo much fun with my reply …
surely the price will soon be in negative territory!
EU carbon prices lose 6.6 pct on new supply, Cyprus
LONDON, March 18 (Reuters Point Carbon) â European carbon prices dropped 6.6 percent on Monday, pulled lower by fresh permit supply and wider market worries about a bailout plan for debt-riddled Cyprus, traders said… http://www.pointcarbon.com/news/1.2226716
LOL –
CO2 investors target China as UN scheme struggles
BEIJING, March 18 (Reuters Point Carbon) â Hurt by record low prices of U.N.-backed carbon credits, investors in schemes that cut emissions of greenhouse gases are pulling out of markets set up by international treaties and looking to China for returns instead… http://www.pointcarbon.com/news/1.2225629?&ref=searchlist
LOL again –
Shell to buy 500,000 California forest carbon credits
SAN FRANCISCO, March 15 (Reuters Point Carbon) â Shell Energy has agreed to buy 500,000 carbon offsets sourced from a forestry project in Michigan as soon as regulators approve the credits for use in Californiaâs cap-and-trade program… http://www.pointcarbon.com/news/1.2224348?&ref=searchlist
UK says airlines may need to buy back CO2 permits
LONDON, March 18 (Reuters Point Carbon) â Two UK-based airlines may have to buy back carbon permits previously given to them for free by the British government after the EU agreed to exempt some flights from complying with laws under its Emissions Trading Scheme, Britainâs climate department said Monday… http://www.pointcarbon.com/news/1.2226637?&ref=searchlist
this guy has been employed by this newspaper since 1976!
18 March: Vancouver Sun: Pete McMartin: Climate change deniers cherry-picking in a fruitless debate
Those with their heads in the sand need to start embracing the truth that climate change is real
Climate-change deniers are another thing altogether. Their refutations of the scientific consensus â which overwhelmingly finds that global warming and climate change are real and anthropogenic, despite what deniers say â do carry real consequences. The longer we dither over discredited arguments, and the longer our attention is distracted by the cherry-picking of deniers, the shorter time we have to find solutions to the very real dangers of climate change.
Their latest argument that global warming doesnât exist comes from a recent communique from the British Met office, which hosts the National Climate Information Centre…
In other words, the Met countered, (David) Rose cherry-picked.
But itâs a fruitless debate. http://www.vancouversun.com/columnists/pete_mcmartin.html
18 March: Businessweek: Alex Morales/Christopher Martin: Suntech Defaults on $541 Million Bond, a First for China
Suntech Power Holdings Co. Ltd. (STP) became the first company from mainland China to default on its bonds after failing to repay $541 million of notes due March 15, breaching terms of other outstanding loans…
The move opens the way for Suntech noteholders to sue the company in the U.S., where its shares and bonds trade…
UBS AG is advising Suntech. Chinese solar companies are struggling after taking on debt to expand supply, leading to a glut that forced down prices and squeezed profits. LDK Solar (LDK) Co., the second-biggest solar wafer maker, in December hired Citigroup Inc. to help renegotiate its liabilities and obtain âadditional flexibilityâ from creditors…
Suntech, LDK, Trina Solar Ltd (TSL)., Yingli Green Energy Holding (YGE) Co., Hanwha SolarOne Co. and Jinko Solar Holding Co. were among 12 companies that obtained more than $43.2 billion in credit pledges from China Development Bank Corp., according to data compiled by Bloomberg…
Suntech, the worldâs largest solar-panel maker as recently as 2011, posted four consecutive quarters of losses through the first quarter of 2012 and since then has failed to report quarterly earnings…
LDK has reported six successive quarters of losses through the third quarter of 2012. Its net debt totaled almost $3.3 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg… http://www.businessweek.com/news/2013-03-18/suntech-defaults-on-541-million-bond-a-first-for-china
MarkD –
this move on cypriots is like a trial balloon. if these bureaucrats get away with it in cyprus, it could happen to anyone, anywhere, any time. our MSM shows once again whose side it is on, and it ain’t the public’s. this should be at the top of the news 24/7:
18 March: Daily Mail: Tim Shipman/Keith Gladdis: Betrayal of Our Boys in Cyprus: Ministers pledged to protect UK soldiers’ cash. Now they say savings WILL be hit
24 hours after Chancellor George Osborne insisted military would not suffer
Payments to British pensioners on island suspended until vote on levy…
Move prompts fresh fears the eurozone could be on the verge of break-up…
Servicemen will only be compensated for âreasonable lossesâ if their funds are âconnected with their service in Cyprusâ.
Last night MoD officials said that could mean those who have transferred funds to Cyprus to save for their retirement could lose out.
The volte-face came 24 hours after Chancellor George Osborne insisted the military would not suffer…
On a day of fresh drama:
Panic spread as it was revealed Cypriot banks will be closed for three more days
Stock markets fell around the world and around 0.4 per cent was wiped off the value of the euro
A vote on the tax grab in Cyprus was delayed until today
The Cypriot government suggested deposits below 100,000 euro being hit with just a 3 per cent tax, rising to 15 per cent for those above 500,000 euro (ÂŁ430,000)
Last night a spokesman for the eurozone also hinted that all depositors with less than 100,000 euro could be protected.
In all, up to 60,000 Britons on the island are set to lose out…
Last night Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades phoned European Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn to warn him that there might not be enough support for the deposit tax to pass in Parliament…
He is reported to have told Mr Rehn: âWhen I warned you that there would not be a parliamentary majority to pass the agreement, you didnât want to listen. Give my regards to Mrs Merkel.â
Expats living in Cyprus yesterday told Mrs Merkel to keep her âhands offâ their money. Almost all cash machines on the island have been drained meaning Britons have been forced to borrow from friends or use credit cards…
Hey Pat did you see where Russia has said that 25% of Cypriot money is Russian money and most of that belongs to the mafia, you dont to piss off the Russian mafia. LLLLOOOOOLLLLL
This will be one of the greatest bank runs in history and yes Mark D the bottom of the cliff is commonly known as an abyss.
this move on cypriots is like a trial balloon. if these bureaucrats get away with it in cyprus, it could happen to anyone, anywhere, any time. our MSM shows once again whose side it is on, and it ainât the publicâs. this should be at the top of the news 24/7:
I can agree with the first part and It is frightening.
This morning the MSM did actually carry the real story AND showed the crowds in the streets of Cyprus. I’m afraid the story is already creating a potential run on banks not just in Cyprus but in any EU country. Even here in the US banks pay so little interest on savings keeping cash may be safer. Would anything start a worldwide collapse faster than a run on all banks?
But what if they go after investments? Or Retirement accounts? What if they just put a charge on your Mister Card?
16 March: Reuters: Pedro Nicolaci da Costa, NATIONAL HARBOR, Maryland: Fed’s Fisher: Too-big-to-fail banks are “crony” capitalists
The largest U.S. banks are “practitioners of crony capitalism,” need to be broken up to ensure they are no longer considered too big to fail, and continue to threaten financial stability, a top Federal Reserve official said on Saturday.
Richard Fisher, president of the Dallas Fed, has been a critic of Wall Street’s disproportionate influence since the financial crisis. But he was now taking his message to an unusual audience for a central banker: a high-profile Republican political action committee…
“These institutions operate under a privileged status that exacts an unfair tax upon the American people,” he said on the last day of the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).
“They represent not only a threat to financial stability but to fair and open competition ⌠(and) are the practitioners of crony capitalism and not the agents of democratic capitalism that makes our country great,” said Fisher, who has also been a vocal opponent of the Fed’s unconventional monetary stimulus policies… http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/16/us-usa-fed-fisher-idUSBRE92F09U20130316
Snow cover for the Northern Hemisphere: http://www.natice.noaa.gov/pub/ims/ims_gif/ARCHIVE/NHem/2013/ims2013074.gif
Also:
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
Lots of warming going on for sure.
Cue whinging trolls……..
202
Yes. The IPCC predicted winters would disapppear and that low records would never ever be broken again.
Oh, hang on. No, they didn’t.
Cue the stupid comments or next strawman argument.
19
Hilarious! You just made a strawman argument! Because the quoted SeaIceNews page did not say that winter has just appeared as an entirely new phenomenon. And neither did Mark say this. All he quoted was a particularly fast accumulation of winter ice, which indicates a lack of energy retention in the Arctic of exactly the opposite of what you’d expect from an enhanced greenhouse effect. Hmmm!
And to imply that Mark had believed the IPCC said that winter would disappear is also unfounded. But I know the CRU did say something crazy like that:
But that enhanced greenhouse effect is supposed to be human caused, and it’s supposed to be global, and it is supposed to happen first and quickest at the poles.
Instead of blather, would you perhaps care to use data like this to support your argument? What conclusions can you draw from that?
Go on, take the data. It’s not a poisoned chalice at all. Use the data. USE IT… đ
50
Nonce, your visits here are always counter-productive to your cause. !
00
Go away Kev – you were a loser then, you are still a loser.
Let the Red Queen destroy herself, as she will.
I want to vote her out!
131
The pollsters called me. I told them I’d vote Labor. When they hung up I laughed. I can’t wait to whack the Labor/green coalition of fools at the election. It can’t come soon enough.
150
Gbees
That’s it! Now I understand why Labor has 30-something percent in the polls! The mystery 30% are having a cruel but incredibly hilarious joke at the expense of Gillard et al.
My faith in the Australian voting public is restored, and hopefully confirmed on September 13th.
Cheers,
Speedy
50
KRudd is an actor and he started the downward slide to the mess Union Labor have put the nation into.
30
Re arctic temperatures 1-1=0 no change! Warmist will ONLY emphasize the 3-5C rise in the other part LOL
92
After 15 years, slashdot is no longer my startpage. It has become so politicised it just makes me angry.
ANY thread about AGW / solar / turbines is one sided.. any opposing views (even with hard data / stats) get modded as ‘troll’ and the abuse flies.
It really used to be centrist, with arguments from both sides. Since Copenhagen that all changed, slowly getting worse until most skeptics just left.
Is it me or is the entire mainstream internet going AGW mad, where dissenting opinions are shot down or censored?
221
Don’t despair James XLeftie. The Alarmists have always tended to be more hysterical because they haven’t the facts or understanding and rely on emotives, such a group inclusionism and now they’re getting desperate, so the appeals to emotion can only get more intense.
This site isn’t entirely devoid of passion either, but I think you’ll find , on the whole, a rather greater ( if not limitless) tolerance of honest dissent.
210
Thats true Eddie, but Jo always insists on people being polite and sticking to the topic “being discussed”. Sometimes you can almost hear the alarmists gritting their teeth …
I think
Troll baitingdiscussing flaws in the wharmist arguments, is great. More people should try it â it is a fantastic way of de-stressing at the end of the day.191
RW
I think Troll Baiting (TB) is disgusting behaviour and demeaning for those sad individuals who carry out that sort of childishness.
Nevertheless, there are several forms of TB.
LTB – Linked TB
http://joannenova.com.au/2013/03/has-the-world-started-cooling-hints-from-4-of-5-global-temperature-sets-say-it-might-have/
ETB – Extended TB
http://joannenova.com.au/2013/03/has-the-world-started-cooling-hints-from-4-of-5-global-temperature-sets-say-it-might-have/
or
STB – Short TB
http://joannenova.com.au/2013/03/has-the-world-started-cooling-hints-from-4-of-5-global-temperature-sets-say-it-might-have/
Some people suggest using ITB which is sometimes best; just Ignore them
KK đ
51
sorry links above not working
00
ETB
http://joannenova.com.au/2013/03/has-the-world-started-cooling-hints-from-4-of-5-global-temperature-sets-say-it-might-have/#comment-1252538
LTB
http://joannenova.com.au/2013/03/has-the-world-started-cooling-hints-from-4-of-5-global-temperature-sets-say-it-might-have/#comment-1252407
STB
http://joannenova.com.au/2013/03/has-the-world-started-cooling-hints-from-4-of-5-global-temperature-sets-say-it-might-have/#comment-1252435
00
I totally agree. It is demeaning of the politics behind the alarmist movement, and it is datmeaning that baiting should try to draw out đ
70
I love to demean politicians who lie and cheat.
KK đ
get de meaning?
10
No, but I got Datmeaning.
10
There is another reason that trolls are useful.
In “On Liberty”, John Stuart Mill drives home the point that different points of view are required in order for free speech and democracy to function.
The rationale of course is that to argue the position of liberty one must expend some effort for defend the position and thereby reinforce the concept in one’s own mind.
I have weighed in to the Conversation a few times, and must admit that it is not easy to
be a trolldefend a position in the midst of so much viciousness, hatred, abuse, and flak.I believe everyone should try it, if for no other reason than to gain some humility and understand the other perspective. Another good reason is that we might change someone’s mind. Not the little twirp Anna Rose, but someone with at least half a brain.
101
Rod, I wish I had your optimism.
40
Think of it this way; you may not change the minds of the welded on (like the lefties and alarmists who predominate on the ABC’s “The Drum”) but others also read your comments. They see your objective facts compared to the emotive smears of the alarmists and the lefties. It is these people who comprise your audience. They appreciate the facts.
40
Yes, trying it from the others point of view can be so enlightening, but also hard work at the rabid warmIst blogs, where reason is something more often alluded to than followed, while they indulge in all sorts of fallacious thinking and emotive crap.
We don’t see many quality warmers here though. Trolls only reinforce our own sense of correctitude without really challenging it.
Warmers, coming here though can expect a hard time though tend to be tolerated for longer, even the just nuisance ones.
51
Yes, I have seen the same. Alarmists are getting more and more desperate and this means they have an extremely low tolerance towards any inconvenient facts.
I think Google started it when it “made the results more relevant” by downgrading all skeptical sites in the search results to double digit page numbers in… was it 2010?
(Also sites critical of Obama were removed from the search results. If google would have done anything similar during Bush’s term people would have been up in arms. But now it’s ok because he is so totally not-evil!)
This quite effectively hid skeptism from the views of people who search for anything AGW-related and makes it seem like nobody actually disagrees with anything. Now news comment sections are about the only place where ordinary, non-interested people might stumble upon something skeptical.
This move by google also made it polically correct to silence climate change skeptics.
“Don’t be evil” is a joke.
141
Just heard about Da Gubmint’s changes to superannuation legislation.
Does manicbeancounter or anyone else here know what these changes are about?
I have some inconvenient questions.
Why is my old super account switching its investment earnings report from annualised percentages to Unit Prices so calculating holdings is easier, when I care more often about how fast it is increasing than how much it holds?
Why is the new goverment “MySuper” standard for insurance products requiring Death and TPD insurance as a standard feature while at the same time telling me the new standard is wonderful because it helps “ensure you don’t pay for services you don’t need or use”?
Why is the government designing superannuation products at all?
Why is the new “government standard” superannuation product called MySuper when really it should be called TheirSuper ?
60
You can read about it here.
Nothing to onerous that I can see.
No doubt there is some cunning plan in there for da gubmint to get hold of it.
The Red Queen must go. And take her Goose with her.
72
> No doubt there is some cunning plan in there for da gubmint to get hold of it.
Now there’s a slice of sarcasm thick enough to butter your toast with. But you shouldn’t be so trusting.
Actually there was a cunning plan just last month, it’s called taxing superannuation, aka “da gubmint getting hold of it”.
As Robert Gottliebsen reported on 4 February this year:
And repeated again the next day for the benefit of anyone who missed it the first time (such as you and I):
Well after this news got out, the furore caused an immediate backflip by the Red Queen, but who really knows if there will be “no super tax under a government she leads”?
And then the delightful news in the actual ATO page you cited:
“the super rate will increase from 9% to 12%”
Right, so people who’d prefer to spend their money now on enjoying life instead of saving for their future no longer have that choice. Less choice for the young Aussies, no incremental benefit as a reward for being self-disciplined, that’s what this gubmint is all about. The erosion of self-determination and personal responsibility.
Will the Liberals save us? Nope, their plans are almost as suspicious. The Liberal party who wanted to get your superannuation contributions before it even gets to your super account:
By the way the above document no longer appears on the Liberals web site. Why is that? Because Labor implemented it. Labor and Liberal, two faces of the same coin. How long before the option becomes mandatory? Assume the countdown has started.
In the wider political environment your sarcasm comes amidst an era of other countries governments stealing citizens superannuation savings in order to pay off government debts, up to and including that bastion of freedom and private property the USA. So you see, all the cool kids are doing it, stealing citizen super is trendy.
I wish the smug sarcasm was deserved, but the outlook is not good.
10
Hi Andrew,
The answer to your questions may lie in the composition of the boards of the many new “worker friendly” funds.
They are managed and nurtured by your friendly union executive; at a small fees of course.
Any suggestion that “funds placement” would be influenced by either association with the union mooment or personal gratification are strongly denied.
KK
60
In safe hands then …
30
Sorry old chap, don’t know a thing about it. Spend my time analyzing numbers, not the technical bits. I also live in the UK.
00
http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2013/03/16/climate_change_biggest_challenge_facing_libya_researchers_say.html
A socialist think tank finds that Libya is more at risk from “Climate Change” than rabid islamists. That’s a surprise (cause typically socialists really like rabid islamists.
90
Well, New Zealand is now officially in drought, and we are not allowed to water gardens, or wash cars. We are even encouraged by our local authorities to call a hot line phone number if we see any of our neighbours flaunting the rules. There is no mention, yet, of paying a bounty, but we live in hope â there is this fellow who always parks too close to my driveway and …
My local council, horror of horrors, has had to turn off the fountains. Why this might be necessary is something of a question, because we have previously been assured that they recycle the water, but I am sure that there is a rational explanation. More surprising though, is the fact that Wellington has a fountain in one of the inner city bays that uses sea water, and there are plans to turn that off as well â perhaps they are worried that it will reduce the rate of sea level rise.
And that brings me to my point.
Nowhere, that I have seen, is there any mention of this drought being due to climate change. People are saying that it is currently the worst drought in sixty or seventy years, and referring to what was done then to get through it. But it is just about weather patterns, and the fact that the local Regional Council has one reservoir out of commission for earthquake strengthening.
The silence from the alarmist factions is deafening. It is a non-event, as far as they are concerned, or so it would appear. We have a Mayor who is a member of the Green Party, but all she is talking about is the steps being taken by the Council to conserve water to get us through, and what is being done about the rare plants in the Botanic Gardens. No hype, no politics even. This is weird.
It is especially weird, given that Wellington is like Canberra. It is a political town. A significant percentage of the population work for the Government in one capacity or another. This includes all of the Departments that one would expect to be having attacks of the vapours, or using the drought as justification for all sorts of schemes, but no.
I have decided that I must have awoken this morning in some form of alternative reality.
Perhaps if I open another bottle of that excellent Burgundy and go back to bed, I might re-awake in the real world, or at least one where I have a clue about what is going on.
170
This sounds intriguing, Rereke. I might have to pack up and move over there into your universe – I’m still stuck in Australia with the Red Queen. However, her time is running out. She’s desperately trying to take complete control of the press and the Internet over here (pushing it through this week)so they will print rave reviews about her in time to save her bacon (not going to happen).
Meanwhile, enjoy the commonsense that seems to be washing around Wellington. I hope it’s not an illusion. There’ll be traces of watermelon about, I’m sure. The trick with those might be to ignore them, wash them down the drain (oops, I forgot, water restrictions) or float them out to sea. Just don’t shove them in the direction of Australia, please, we have enough watermelon to get sick on, we don’t need any more.
Cheers. đ
81
I’m sorry to hear abut NZs drought. I wouldn’t wish a drought on anyone reliant on the weather to make a living.
Of course, it is also up to people whose income is reliant on the weather to actually plan for and mitigate against events such as drought (within reason).
I have heard that even Taranaki hasn’t had much rain for 3 months. Considering more than 3 days without rain used to be considered a drought over there (true story), the Cockies must be absolutely beside themselves.
Of course, over here, we call a 3 months stint without rain…… Summer……
60
Don’t worry Madjack –Taranaki has heavy rain warning for today !!
As RW has said we have had great summer ( if you are a townie) but the farmers who are as important to us as the miners are to Australia are hurting and will suffer for the next twelve months or so as any resowing of grass they try when the rain comes will be a gamble ( it might be too cold by then for it to take hold properly)
40
Most dairy farmers have gone down to one milking per day, and taken the opportunity to identify any cows that are not meeting quota. They may dry off the remainder earlier than in other years, so the country will face a drop in revenue. Whether it is significant or not will depend, as always, on the international milk price. Dairying is big business in New Zealand, but is tiny when compared to some other overseas dairy providers.
Beef farmers are the hardest hit, because the meat works already have a backlog, and each day the live weight price decreases, and the condition of the cattle goes down. In the meantime, the price of hay goes up, and some farmers who cut hay in the early summer, and sold “the surplus”, now face the prospect of having to buy it back at a premium, either now or later in the year.
So the “drought” is significant, but not as serious as some historic ones. As Rod points out (below) we have seen worse.
50
Even worse than the 1999-2000 drought when Lake Pukaki was almost dry?
Meridian must be curtailing hydro electric production.
40
Hi Rereke
In the last drought we had here in Victoria our local (Ballarat) council had to work with Central Highlands Water a state owned water business, and between the two screw ups the only thing that saved us from running out of water were the Ballarat people’s great efforts to reduce usage (we got 150L a day) but the prices kept going up?. It didn’t matter how many great ideas about water saving or storage were thrown at these bureaucrats they would just ignore them or procrastinate until people gave up, this drought also was a catalyst to bring every ecotard out of the swamp to scream their AGW agendas with some truly bizarre claims until the drought broke and they moved on to “extreme weather” events, for some it will never end.
And as for Burgundy I’m on the red wine diet and I’ve lost 4 days already!
60
Hello there RW.
A very interesting post; I hope that you find it has become the real world!
BTW… I think you mean ‘flouting the rules’, not flaunting.
00
Oops. Yes “flouting” is the word. That is what happens when you place too much reliance on a stupid spell checker.
20
I’ve been caught out like that with my ‘phone! Cue rude comments from DS1! Annie
00
The only reason for politicians to be silent is fear.
Politicians are sensitive to the way the mob moves.
This time the harm they have enabled may provoke the mob into action.
Calling people too stupid to understand the science, while you lie and steal, generally does not end well.
20
Hi Rereke – This anomaly has been caused through Tim Flanneryâs busy taxpayer-sponsored touring schedule.
We apologise for the delay and will alert Captain Drought as to the urgency of the problem and heâll be over there in a flash to get the media back on track.
10
Roger Pielke Jnr had an interesting post last week.
Thou Shall Not Critique the Australian Climate Commission.
Pielke claims that the Commission tried to slap down a criticism of their report “The Angry Summer“.
60
That’ll be yet another government lie/distortion/blunder for Malcolm Roberts to add to his growing list of Appendices in CSIROh!
For those who think the LNP are our impeccable trustworthy saviours, he has Greg Hunt nailed already over A21.
41
I’ve posted about this on the thread below but everyone should take note of Steve McIntyre’s lastest on the Marcott et al “paper”.
It’s probably worse than the Gergis affair.
http://climateaudit.org/2013/03/16/the-marcott-shakun-dating-service/
When will these idiots learn that trying to fiddle figures and stats. is like a “red rag to a bull” to people like Steve McIntyre and JeanS.
100
But the Hockey Stick propaganda meme has been reinforced in the minds of the impressionable, and that is all that was required.
It was a pity they felt the need to sacrifice Marcott and Shakun in the process.
70
RW
I would have absolutely no sympathy for Marcott and Shakun. If they let their egos get ahead of them in their urge to get into the spot light, that is their problem. They can go down with the rest of the clowns.
41
Neither would I, but it would have been good to have them on the opposition team, if only because they are obviously naive and accident prone, and that combination always gives us the opportunity for some form of entertainment or other.
10
It’s beyond breathtaking. Gobsmacked.
21
Gobsmacking indeed. They do not merely dream themselves Masters of the Climate, now they are Time Lords too.
I do wonder if at any stage a co-conspirator of Marcott reassured him “Don’t worry mate, it’s only other people’s money!”
And interesting that none of these hockey sticks and date adjustments occurred in Marcott’s thesis – presumably because if he’d done that originally his thesis defense would not have lasted 5 minutes in front of 3 competent professors. So there was a Good Marcott, then co-authors got involved, then there was a Bad Marcott et al.
The parallels with Gergis only grow. Other elders of the Adjustment Bureau carry out the much-needed “corrections” while the nipper is rewarded with first-named author status – so he/she takes the blame when the trick is discovered. Hit and run, even against their own kind. It’s practically scientist cannibalism.
It’s enough to make you Rage….
Just victims of the in-house drive-by
They say jump, you say How High?
61
Itâs practically scientist cannibalism
I think it’s further along, like they’re now sucking marrow from the bones. What will happen when there isn’t even enough to make a thin stock?
20
They would take it to the next level. Just invent the data to begin with. At that point even McIntyre would no longer be able to tell historic fact from political fiction, because the numbers at their source will be completely consistent with all further analyses and publications. i.e. – The Matrix.
This requires an extreme level of dishonesty and maliciousness so much greater than anything we have seen so far that I doubt it will ever happen.
So you see I am an optimist about scientists. đ
30
Never underestimate the Mann.
00
Coming this Saturday – experience what a renewable energy future will be like on a windless night. Yes, it’s Earth Hour 2013 from 8:30pm to 9:30pm. Or else let’s again celebrate Human Achievement. See Jo’s post from last year for some ideas on what you can do. Lighting up your home as a tribute to human achievement won’t cost a huge amount, but if you are worried about extra cost, just schedule some things for that hour you’d do anyway: time to put a load of washing on; get the dishwasher working on that stack of dirty plates; plan a later meal and get the oven going then to cook it; a spot of vacuuming.
70
I’ve never understood why Earth Hour is scheduled for a Saturday night. If the aim is to save energy, shouldn’t it be scheduled for 3pm-4pm on a workday afternoon? You don’t have to look very hard to find out that the electricity peak demand occurs in late afternoon on summer weekdays.
I’m sure it can’t be on Saturdays because no rational commercial organisations would support Earth Hour if it meant turning off the power when they actually needed it. Suggesting that the organisers chose the time because corporate sponsors would only support it when their businesses aren’t even open would just be terribly cynical of me, wouldn’t it? And suggesting that Earth Hour actually saves negligible amounts of energy and is quite pointless except for making the converted feel warm and fuzzy would be heartless, so I won’t.
MP
20
If Earth Hour were to be held at the height of Europeâs winter, they would find out how many true believers they really have. If these donât die from exposure, that is.
21
The Drax Power Station conversion from coal fired to using wood chips intrigued me somewhat, so I went looking for as much information as I could find, and at the same time, it gave me an opportunity to again mention the technology that gives us electrical power from lumps of coal, showing how Drax does that.
Drax is converting three of its six units from coal fired to wood chip fired. This change will take a number of years, and all three should be operational by 2017.
So, how much wood chip?
When operational, each of those 3 Units will consume 2.3 million tons of wood chips each year and the plant will require 7.5 million tons of wood chips each year. Just to service these three units at this one plant, will require a forest of, wait for it, 4,600 Square Miles.
While this use of wood chips will emit enormous amounts of CO2, this is classified as renewable power, because the CO2 was sequestered from the air during the growing process for the trees, and trees are planted to replace those chipped into pellets for burning at this plant. Seconds to burn, and years to grow.
Have we gone mad?
Found an image of one of their generators also, a 660MW generator, and images of large scale generators are not all that easy to find.
I did a comparison also of how much power this ONE generator delivers and then compared that to how many towers it would take, and that comparison is actually scary.
Coal Fired Power Plant Technology
Tony.
140
Tony,
The real madness lies in the belief that coal is compressed vegetation – coal is a continuing deposit of carbon via methane, from the upper mantle as per the late Tommy Gold’s ideas. But the oil and coal industries are wedded to the fossil fuel theory so I doubt much will change their views. As long as they believe in fossil fuel theory, then the madness will continue.
54
Have to disagree, Louis
How does your notion of depositing carbon via methane deal with peat beds, which we can see constantly forming, let alone the clear and obvious plant cellular and pollen structures seen in thin sections of coal ?
BTW, for TonyOz: most domestic power stations are designed for and burn coal with an energy content between ~24-28MJ/kg, moisture of ~10% (air dried basis) and a Relative Density (RD) ~1.35-1.45. LaTrobe valley brown coal/power station complexes are atypical and completely symbiotic
Wood has an energy content of ~12MJ/kg, a moisture content > 60% and an RD ~0.7 or so. This is why entire forests need to felled constantly to keep 24/7 power supply operational
60
Okay, I’ll bite.
Oil gushers did occur as totally natural events. So it is possible in some places that an ancient swamp, peatbog, or field, was buried under a natural eruption of pre-formed oil, so mixing the vegetation and deep-origin oil. In the case of shallow seabeds filling up with marine detritus, these could have been buried and then later infiltrated by deep-origin oil.
In coal mining history there are stories of tree roots and even perfectly preserved fern leaves being found in the middle of coal seams.
So just to turn the tables, do you know of any physically plausible process that could compress peat into coal at elevated temperature and pressure whilst also leaving fern leaves so perfectly preserved inside it that their species can be identified millions of years later by the pattern of hairs on the fronds?
For me, it is like an Inspector Poirot crime story. No matter how reasonable the cover story may seem in a dozen different aspects, there is always somewhere the one tiny little clue which is incompatible with the cover story. The preserved ferns are that clue.
30
Well, at least thanks for replying. I can see why geological science is so little known and regarded within the general population. I expect not to change your mind with the following facts … (sigh)
As background, I’ve mapped hundreds of kilometres of coal exposures, both underground and in surface exposures. Picked out by hand and hammer countless fossilised Glossopteris sp (ferns in lay terms) from the interbed horizons of seam roof and floor (NOTE: most are not in the actual black coal seam but “sandwiched” between the ply planes); made and examined countless thin polished sections under polarised light with a microscope; mapped and traced along strike countless structural (tectonic) and sedimentary exposures through the seams; etc. I’ve even picked out T-Rex bone fossil fragments from a Triassic shale exposed in Wyoming US, but obviously along the bed planes … too easy actually, the shale bedding planes were loaded with them. What I am saying here is that I’ve personally found many examples of the fossils that you think cannot be there at such depths
The “tree roots and perfectly preserved fern leaves” you quote are FOSSILS, not the actual original as it lived. Cellular contents are all gone, only the fossilised structural outline remains of the original. The same concept you put forward applies to all sedimentary fossils – how could they survive in such delicate fossilised structural perfection for several hundred million years ? Please grasp that such survivals are actually rare – most fossils are only fragments, broken apart by the burial pressures you note
Temperatures high enough to alter them beyond simple recognition do not necessarily occur to all sedimentary rock assemblages. This certainly happens often enough, but then they become metamorphosed within a very great range of progressive results. Coal metamorphosed at the very lowest of this range is generally classified as anthracite and is normally not much good for power generation or coke making (useful characteristics having been finally squeezed out through pressure/temperature gradients)
I’m afraid Inspector Poirot has lost the time scale here, or perhaps never grasped it at all. Fossilised remains are spread throughout the sedimentary rock pile but only easily recognised at the interbed horizons. Think about why this is true. And then recognise that coal seams are not generally only one simple bed, but quite a few beds (layers) as the peat growth waxed and waned – interbed horizons (planes) exist at all the growth boundaries, which is where recognisable fossilised remains may occur. One of the fun parts of this work is splitting the rock apart along the bed planes in the hope of finding such fossils … sometimes one is rewarded
Finally, polished thin sections of coal are used by specialists within the field to classify under the microscope the initial plant species that formed the peat. These people are truly Inspector Poirots. Such analyses are used to correlate now non-contiguous deposits across geographical space, amongst other uses
110
ianl8888,
thanks for this.
You know, five years ago, this would have been so far over my head, I would have stopped reading after a few lines.
Although it’s still over my head (quite naturally, as it’s not my training) I can actually understand what you’re saying.
Right from the start when I wanted to have at least the slightest knowledge of what I was trying to say, I tried to understand coal, not geologically, but as it was used for the fuel for what I was writing about.
I had a basic knowledge, (and hear I mean very lay basic) about the grades, Lignite (brown coal) sub bituminous, bituminous, and anthracite, because people equated coal fired power as just the one thing as a whole, and trying to just explain the process of power generation was only complicated by my (mainly inept) manner of trying to explain brown coal fired power (Victoria, and S.A.) and Black coal fired power.
So again, I will not even begin to have the correct knowledge, but having you to pick me up, and add explanation as well, is in fact a good thing.
That’s why I have always gone to great pains to add the word ….. average ….. when I tell people that one ton of coal makes 2.86 tons of CO2, on average.
Tony.
20
> I expect not to change your mind with the following facts ⌠(sigh)
Well [snip] you very much Ian!
On top of that you’ve laboured under a false assumption. You fabricated the opinion of “the fossils that you think cannot be there” whereas I actually used the fact of these fossils’ existence to cast doubt on the fossil fuel theory.
Then follows a totally gratuitous explanation of fossils, despite my already knowing what fossils are.
Finally there is the confusion of fact (co-located plant remains) and theory (fuel origin) in which fossil fuel theory is used to justify itself.
You begin with insult and you end with circular logic. Now why would I look any further into the above comment? I’d have to be really crazy to try.
Would you like to try again without the insults and the circular logic?
How is the fact of fossilised ferns inside coal seams consistent with a theory that says the source peat around them has been sheared and had all heck squeezed out of it?
Because that does seem to posit a process that can crush and decompose all the other peat yet can spare a lone leaf quite selectively.
Is there something about the cells or surface chemistry of ferns that makes them respond differently to the subterranean pressure cooker?
And furthermore, why are oil and gas usually found with an impermeable clay layer above them, when this is not required by fossil fuels theory?
Your intense desire to abuse your students while educating them is so refreshingly old-school! đ
32
Read Gold’s books on the subject. This is explained. Gold is pretty fair, unlike most scientists, who could make a good living selling used cars(or used climate theories), pushing their pet theories.
31
Thank you, but I have read it. Too much arm waving and dodging on this topic for my practical knowledge and experience over 40 years
Geologist (including me) make up the bulk of scientific resistance to CAGW. We have no need for selling used cars and would certainly never buy one from someone who thinks that the peat > (brown or black) coal cycle is some “pet” theory
I’ve mapped peat/coal deposits in all stages of coalification (yes, that’s a real word) world-wide. I’ve seen the metamorphosis process exposed in various progressions and analysed the fossilised plant components. Palynology experts (of which I am not one, merely practised in some aspects) identify the original plant species for non-contiguous correlation – not a “pet” theory
But never mind the evidence, you’ve read a book
30
Ian,
Peat beds are not a problem and if vegetation is replaced carbon by upwelling methane, so the microstructures will be faithfully preserved. Those microstructures should not be there, however, if coalification is the end product of compression, since that degree of compression should basically destroy any and all the delicate microstructures. Simple chemical replacement would retain the microstructures.
It’s basically the logical fallacy of arguing the consequent.
I’ve been in the Morwell pit years ago and still remember the presence of decapitated large trees in the deposit -non of which are coalified. These trees also passed into the overlying sediment on occasions, suggesting a rather rapid burial event.
Has anyone conducted an experiment verifying the compressional-coalification process?
12
Too much time in the bush eh Louis, methane brain farts still – so what were your decapitated trees made of? Probably silicified from their contact with the overlying sediment would be my guess.
Please explain rank progression in your methane coal and petroleum world, how about the organic chemistry and coal macerals.
Careful you will give Jo’s Blog a bad reputation.
Did anyone else spot Brooksie on TV today, just after the GP, boy got a face for radio. Rabbited on about heatwaves increasing in frequency in the last 100 years- hey Barry can you let us all know where we can get the peer reviewed paper on that?
30
Tony, have you seen anything else on what burning woodchips throws into the atmosphere in comparison to coal?
10
Question Tony from someone who studied thermodynamics a long time ago (and even then, didn’t actually get a very good grade for it).
What are the practical differences between burning coal and burning wood chips?
Apart from the fact I expect that wood chips would contain a lot more moisture which I am imaging isn’t a good thing, the (sorry, struggling for the correct term here) latent energy(?) by mass of wood is a lot less then coal, so wouldn’t you be burning a LOT more wood, and hence releasing a lot more evil and horrible nasty CO2 just to produce the same amount of power?
Like I said, it has been a long time since I studied this but it does seem to me that even by the low bar the renewable energy people set themselves, this idea is pretty dumb.
20
Specific Energy (SE). Most common unit is now MJ/kg, used to be Kcal/kg (weird mixture of British and metric) or earlier, BTU/lb
See my post above for other specific measurements
Emissions from wood are typically CO2, H20 and mixes of sulphur, nitrogen as oxides and various trace elements (which can include mercury). The exact mix depends on the plant species being burnt
10
Thanks Ian. đ
00
Burning wood is virtually “carbon neutral” (minus the fuel used for transportation and processing).
Oh, and that transportation and processing does add up.
20
A question Tony. How long does the 4,600 sq miles of forest keep the power station going ? ( or the half that is to be converted)
20
Ross,
my impression on that is that 4,600 square miles is what it will take to service this ONE Power Station’s three units for the expected life of the units, and there’s no info I can find on its life expectancy, but a typical coal fired unit has an average life span of 50 years.
Good informational video at this link.
Tony.
30
I suppose you could say that this is me being vain again, linking into one of my own Posts, and this one is actually personal.
Yesterday was the 5th anniversary for when I started to contribute Posts at the site I contribute at, now around 950 Posts.
I was asked to Post something on that and answer questions from some of our other contributors there.
Milestones – TonyfromOz – 2008 To 2013
Tony.
61
Congratulations Tony !
Your posts are always fascinating. Full of hard facts I know I can count on being well researched, informed and correct. You put a refreshing practical perspective on all you talk about which cuts through an awful lot of BS. A trusted beacon of clarity & sense in a confusing Universe.
Long may you keep blogging for as long as it pleases you.
61
That’s a long post Tony.
Will have to go back and finish it later.
ps. My wife, the reading machine, is now on her 6th Boney book.
She finds them fascinating.
When I finish Les Miserables I will start them.
KK đ
10
Keith,
Old joke. Have you read that book Victor Hugo by that guy with the strange surname, you know, umm, Les Misearbles. Ripping yarn.
When our three children got to the stage where they could purchase their own presents for Mum and Dad for Christmas, with their own money, they asked me what I would like. I thought for a while and asked for a voucher for a book store. One son thought this was akin to giving money, so he asked me for a list of books and he would get me three. He got me Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove, Bonfire Of The Vanities by Tom Wolfe, and Anna Karenina by ‘The Count’. He thought that would cure me of reading. The others and my good lady wife gave me the vouchers. This stack of books I thought would see me good for a year, but they only lasted 5 Months, and from that point forward, that makes up every Birthday and Christmas present, and I get the others myself. Best idea I ever had.
It took me a couple of years to work into the classics, and the number of (seemingly) knowing looks I got (posing eh!) when they saw War And Peace on my shelf, and every one of them asks if I have really read it. It even surprised me, because I really did like it. Great story. They think all those thick volume classics on my shelf are just there for show. The only one I wasn’t all that keen on was Ulysses. Dead boring.
Tony.
30
War and Peace? Bah. Have you tackled Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky?
Admittedly I’m a total Big Book Scaredy Cat and have never even contemplated reading it. I can’t stand wasted effort and so a big book presents a big risk in that regard. I’m not averse to learning about human nature, I just think there’s … erm… more efficient ways of going about it.
I mean, basically, in a roundabout very cut-down simplified way, surely the TV series Dexter has a similar theme to Crime and Punishment while probably having more humour yet demanding far less time investment. Well, horses for courses perhaps.
10
Andrew, you say here,
Like I mentioned, it took me a couple of years to get up the will to read some of them, and here’s a list of the longest novels.
Number One on that list is the Marcel Proust. Not for me. However, I did like the Monty Python condensed version.
I have read 5 of them from that list, all of them good, and Atlas Shrugged probably the best novel I have ever read.
However, number 5 on that list is the Australian novel Poor Fellow My Country, and if you want to try one of the ‘biggies’ start here, because this actually does go close to being The Great Australian Novel. Good luck finding a copy though. A truly fabulous read.
Tony.
10
Bugger! I didn’t even think to check. I’ve been misled! I was told C&P was really difficult to get through, but it now seems at “only” 564 pages it is barely halfway towards counting as one of the longest novels.
Maybe this reader’s difficulty was the bleakness of the subject matter rather than the word count.
Anyhow, I will just have to be content with a list of pithy quotes from the same, one of which seems very appropriate to our modern climate scientists.
âWhen reason fails, the devil helps!â
10
I suspect you would hate trying to read the Illiad or the Oddessy… đ
00
It’s all Greek to me.
20
Greek and horrible.
00
c’mon man it’s been translated.
yes they fight a lot, suffer and die (but not before some salacious moments).
Come to think of it, it is horrible, it’s just like life today…..some 2850 years later.
10
Mark,
I’d rather read The Scarlet Letter again than Homer. It was absolutely a case of asking myself through every page why anyone thought this junk was interesting â both volumes too! It was required reading and I passed the course. But you can guess whether the books are still on my bookshelf or not.
But it seems you get the picture. đ
“One man’s food is another man’s poison,” sure is true in the literary world.
10
Tony
I read Brothers Karamazov when about 18, long time ago, and just read it again.
Have just finished the fine print version of War and Peace (Maude translation) printed on India paper but it took forever at 4 pages a session.
Now 2/3 rds way through Les Misrables and it’s very readable.
Anna Karenina sits waiting on the shelf but it’s after a few Boneys.
Our local second hand bookstores are very good.
One of the best series was Edward Rutherfurd’s set about major cities: London, New York,Dublin, Sarum Eireland, Russka and so on.
đ KK
00
Keith,
I just loved the Rutherfurd novels. Both Dublin (Doovlin) and Ireland Awakening give wonderful insight into the so called troubles there. I’ll bet that Americans are not aware they were the genesis of the Irish Potato Famine.
What I found was something totally unexpected. I detested Michener, because all I had ever been shown about him was the Musical South Pacific, and I just hated that genre from that time of musicals.
In ’96 when I had to spend 4 weeks away from our home on the Gold Coast in Sydney attending to a major health scare for my wife, I took a store of books with me to read at her bedside.
I finished all of them after a couple of weeks. I found a book store in Randwick, oddly named Book And Cranny. Poring around in there I actually picked up a Michener, and debated whether or not to get it. I did, and in an absolute rush, read it in four days. That was Chesapeake, and I was so sad that I had missed out on something this good for so long. Over the next few Months, every time I saw a Michener in a book store, I purchased it. That was of itself lucky, because even though it took me a couple of years to get through them all, he died late in ’97, and his novels just disappeared off the shelves, probably tied up following his death and the redirection of royalties. However, I now had them all. (well, all his fiction anyway) Chesapeake was probably the best of them IMHO but most were really good. Formulaic probably, but it worked so well for him. Texas and Space were also up there as well, but I liked them all.
Oddly, Tales Of The South Pacific, which won him the Pulitzer (for his first novel) was the one I liked the least, and that musical is based (loosely) around just a couple of chapters from that novel.
I liked the American authors from around that era, Irving Wallace, and especially John O’Hara from a little earlier, and a couple of the Calder Willingham novels.
I’m currently reading Peter F Hamilton’s Great North Road, a mixture of sci fi and crime fiction, only set now +200 years. His work is really good, and I’m fussy with my Sci Fi, preferring Dr, Asimov, and for Sci fantasy, Bob Heinlein, and of course Doc Smith, but only his classic Lensman series.
Tony.
20
Yes Tony
Have read a lot of the James A books.
I think it was Hawaii where the first quarter of the book was like genesis and Geology; boring as hell; but it got better.
When I stared Uni it began a period of about 25 years when I read no novels but recently have been reading quite a bit.
KK
10
Tony
I’m reading “Intellectuals” by Paul Johnson. The upshot of it is that the self-styled intellectual is a relatively modern invention (last 300 years or so) and that they took centre stage by bagging the Christian culture of the west. Johnson’s take on it is that we have had these guys around for long enough to consider whether they delivered on what they promised and whether the new messiah’s had any right to be casting stones.
The results so far indicate that they didn’t and they don’t.
Cheers,
Speedy
20
The PanStarrs comet is worth looking at on the various solar satellite sites or simply on youtube.
20
theft on a grand scale. there have been attempts in the MSM to portray all cypriots as russian mafia, however:
16 March: Guardian: Paul Gallagher/Helena Smith: Cyprus: panic as savings levy is imposedCypriots rush to ATMs before savings are docked as part of a bailout deal agreed in Brussels
Cypriots reacted with shock that turned to panic on Saturday after a 10% one-off levy on savings was forced on them as part of an extraordinary 10bn euro (ÂŁ8.7bn) bailout agreed in Brussels.
People rushed to banks and queued at cash machines that refused to release cash as resentment quickly set in…
The move in the eurozone’s third smallest economy could have repercussions for financially overstretched bigger economies such as Spain and Italy.
People with less than 100,000 euros in their accounts will have to pay a one-time tax of 6.75%, Eurozone officials said, while those with greater sums will lose 9.9%…
At the Anglican Church’s weekly Saturday thrift shop gathering in Nicosia, Cyprus’s war-divided capital, ex-pats expressed alarm with many saying that they had also rushed to ATMs to withdraw money from their accounts. “There’s a run on banks. A lot of us are really panicking. The big fear is that there soon won’t be cash in ATMs,” said Arlene Skillett, a resident in Nicosia…
She said a lot of elderly Britons had transferred savings to the island when they had decided to retire there. “Nobody can understand how they can do this â isn’t it illegal? How can they just dock money from your account?” she asked…
“A lot of us just can’t believe it,” said Alexandra Christofi, a divorcee in her 40s who said she had rushed to her bank before doors even opened at 6am. “I had put my money there for a rainy day. It’s absolutely all I have and I cannot understand how Cyprus is being singled out. Other EU countries got bailouts and we’re only in this position because we supported Greece,” she said, referring to the massive losses the Cypriot banking system suffered as a result of Greece’s restructuring its debt last year. “Where is the fairness in that? Where is the solidarity and support that is meant to be the reason why we are all unified in this common currency in the first place?”
Maria Zembyla, from Nicosia, said the levy would make a “big dent” in her family’s savings and “erode the investor confidence”. “It is robbery…
Howard Skelton, in Limassol, said: “The only people who will benefit in the long term are the banks. It will be many years before the man in the street begins to feel any benefit from this bailout. The sooner I can return to the UK the better.”
The levy does not take effect until Tuesday, following a public holiday, but action is being taken to control electronic money transfers over the weekend. Co-operative banks, the only ones open in Cyprus on a Saturday, closed following a run on the credit societies while ATMs cancelled transactions due to “technical issues”…
“I’m extremely angry. I worked years and years to get it together and now I am losing it on the say-so of the Dutch and the Germans,” said British-Cypriot Andy Georgiou, 54, who returned to Cyprus in mid-2012 with his savings.
“They call Sicily the island of the mafia. It’s not Sicily, it’s Cyprus. This is theft, pure and simple,” said a pensioner.
IMF managing director Christine Lagarde, who attended the meeting, said she backed the deal and would ask her board in Washington to contribute to the bailout. “We believe the proposal is sustainable for the Cyprus economy,” she said, “The IMF is considering proposing a contribution to the financing of the package. The exact amount is not yet specified.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/16/cyprus-savings-levy-imposed-eurozone
70
Yet another example (as if it were needed) of why the plutocrats want the population disarmed
41
Brilliant and observant comment Mark.
The fallout from this might be significant.
30
Might see the price of Gold rise when this becomes common knowledge through Europe.
20
I don’t see what you lot are complaining about. Clearly these Cypriot plebs don’t know what’s good for them! This savings levy is like the GST only better because it doesn’t discriminate against the rich by exempting food. They’re just cutting out the middle man. It’s more efficient! đ
Then the Powers That Be have the cheek to tell everybody that gold is some sort of refuge for storing value, while all the time the physics labs of the world are secretly working on methods that have already been proven to transmute Tungsten into Platinum and even Gold at low energy. They are certainly trying to optimise this technique and industrialise it. When more people discover that, what will this do to the price of gold, or GoldNerds for that matter?
The goldbugs can only hope that the first group to succeed in this modern alchemy on a commercial scale will keep their invention secret just to keep the price of gold high, or else they will be victims of their own success.
20
Tungsten into platinum with little energy input:
It sounds like something for nothing. I do remember my physics classes and unless I’ve lost it in recent years there’s a lot of energy that either has to go in or come out depending on the direction. Actually a lot of energy must go in first, even if you get a lot out. Someone correct me if I’m wrong.
A couple of years ago we’ve seen some similar claims about practical fusion reactor technology about ready to go public in a big way and yet there’s no sign of anything now. Being both an honest skeptic and a firm believer that the laws of physics are immutable I prefer to think those weren’t what they were said to be rather than fantasize about a conspiracy to keep them hidden.
This sounds like something even more worthy to be skeptical about. Like global warming, believe after you see it happening.
I do wish the price of gold would go up. That would be very good. đ
00
I can’t pretend to be an expert but a grasp of a few principles is enough to follow what he’s claiming. And after watching the whole thing again I can only believe he’s claiming to change something from a lower to a higher energy state at the atomic level without putting in the difference in energy, a difference that is very large. That energy has to come from somewhere.
His work looks very hard to shoot down but…
If anyone can explain why this doesn’t violate a very basic law of physics I’m open to being taught.
10
I don’t know Roy, if Toyota and Mitsubishi had a way to slip a lot of gold quietly out a back door I think they’d be motivated to keep it secret for quite a while.
Buy Tungsten it’s cheap right now. http://www.itia.info/tungsten-prices.html
Wait a minute! look at the hockey stick on that graph. Looks like somebody is already onto my suggestion.
Never mind the prospect of transmuting say CO2 into oil?
30
You’ve a great sense of humor my friend. đ
I’m a little in doubt about their ability to simply manufacture it. But I would keep any large amount of gold I had a secret too, as would anyone with a lot of it â at least as secret as you could under all the scrutiny that goes on these days. But I don’t think that would be a conspiracy.
Nowadays maybe we need to buy guns and ammo as an investment. It certainly worked for the DOJ (very sarcastic for you non U.S. folks). So what do you think? Will there be a booming black market?
But CO2 into oil sounds good to me. You write it up and I’ll hire the patent attorney. đ
20
Maybe you should have inserted a ‘smiley’ after that, Andrew. Is there a ‘beer-reviewed’ paper on the subject?
Good luck to any physicist trying to insert/remove the exact number protons from a nucleus. Need a pretty fine set of tweezers.
00
Or maybe you should have checked the link I gave before jumping to preconceived conclusions?
Tested by Mitsubishi. Verified by Toyota. Yes the car manufacturers.
According to the programme for the American Nuclear Society 2012 Winter meeting, on Wed 14 Nov a presentation was given in the DISCUSSION OF LOW-ENERGY NUCLEAR REACTIONSâPAPERS/PANEL, titled:
Note SPring-8/RIKEN is the name of a synchrotron for materials testing operated by Toyota Laboratories.
According to the article I linked above, Iwamura-san said during this panel session that Tungsten had been transmuted into Platinum at low energies.
If this is a hoax, it has certainly fooled The Chiefio too, oh ye of excessive faith!
People think I make stuff up, but the world is more bizarre than some will believe.
00
And so it begins, Mark and Pat,
The EU commissars and IMF wanted 40% (!) of depositors money confiscated, but they settled for “only” stealing 6.75% for deposits under 100k and 9.75% for over that. So if you were a Cypriot who just sold your house for 400k and deposited it in the bank pending another purchase, the IMF believes it is reasonable to bail out a bank for its mismanagement and malfeasance to the tune of 160k of your money at a whim, with a flick of a switch. I can only assume this Cyprus trial is a test case to see if this can be gotten away with by the powers that be, and when this is tolerated it will spread to the PIGS, then France or the UK, whichever comes first. Why isn’t this front page news, the institutionalized overt theft from taxpayers to fund creditors. It is not their money to confiscate!
Then we will have a civil war in Spain, widespread rioting in the streets and bank runs across the rest of the EU and then the Germans can set the GPS for Warsaw all over again.
40
It’s a dumb move all round.
The end of banking and banks.
There seems to be only one end to it.
Violent aggro!
KK
20
KK,
Violence unfortunately seems inevitable. Each of the weak links in the EU will progressively be sacrificed IMHO with the population bled white by progressive taxation and austerity measures until nothing is left except a lifeless corpse for a country, when internal strife and/or separatist movements will see eventual civil war, especially likely being Spain with the Basque issue or perhaps an ultra-leftist coup d’etat. I hope I’m wrong but can’t help seeing the echoes of the past in the present situation, only writ larger.
30
If they come for my money they will find out that 6.75% of SFA = err, SFA.
20
When government breaches contracts with impunity, civil society is done.
Government is nothing more than a promise, a contract to allow us civilization.
Civilization is never more than skin deep.
Lying, stealing, special interest group government rips the skin right off.
Our nature has an aspect that loves destruction, to blindly rend and tear, most men know it and as we age it is easier to suppress,but its ever present.
Thats why we require the illusion, we call civilization.
Neither angels or demons, we be man. Religions know the beast, some sooth it, others promote it.
But we adapt to chaos very well, those of us with hand eye coordination and tool using ability.
I suspect mans successful survival to date , is because of our nature, not inspite of it as the trembling ninnies claim.
I am watching this theft with amazement and some terror, is it the IMF’s intention to collapse the banking system?
30
As distinct from the Spanish Acquisition?
When a regional bank went shaky and required a bail-out, the Spanish Government converted the depositors money into shares in the bank. Supposed to stop the panic withdrawal of money from the failing bank, as obviously those shares were difficult to sell, and could only be sold at a huge discount on the supposed value.
Many of the banks had lent money to the ‘house bubble’ where there was a mad construction of ‘second houses’ (targeting UK residents mostly) that left Spain with over a million unoccupied houses. Some of the English buyers either defaulted or sold out cheaply to “smart” Spaniards who saw a chance to own a house. The banks were allowed to foreclose on the mortgages and many did to get hold of an asset, that would justify further loans. The occupiers were evicted but still remained liable for the mortgage.
Naturally the price of empty houses dropped further. If the bank then went broke despite the loan, then the original bank depositors lost all their money.
This has not been a popular action by the Government and has been modified recently, but not to the point of undoing any losses to the public. What’s to stop the public revolting? (from the Wizard of Id) lack of funds.
I cannot see the euro survive in its present form. It requires enormous funds to try and keep the scheme going, for the benefit of some banks. With the example of Iceland and its economic improvement since it devalued, it can only be a matter of time before some “anti-austerity” party is in power and leaves the Euro, provoking a stampede by other countries. There will be an avalanche of banks failing as government bonds crash in value, followed by the towering Brussels edifice of bureaucracy unaccountable to anyone. Next revolution and the assertion of nationality. I only hope that war doesn’t breakout.
40
I wasn’t expecting the Spanish Aquisition.
Or, actually, I was. Mid-last year, we still had some money in Spain, left there after finally selling our house in the Sierra de Madrid, I moved a lot of the money to here (Oz) out of the Euro as insurance against a serious collapse in the value of the Euro. While the Euro has gone up a little since then, at least I’ve been getting somewhat more than (effectively) zero interest on the money. I do fear for my in-laws in Spain that one day things may collapse along the lines you mention. The fallout will be something the political elite will deserve but will hit hardest on the ordinary people of Europe who have been hoodwinked by Euro-socialism. As much as it would be poetic justice, I hope it doesn’t come to that end.
10
It may be coming soon to a savings account or investment here. If they want civil unrest they’re going down exactly the right road.
Damn the bastards for the idiots they are!
10
I wondered when someone would mention the Cyprus bailout. It’s a terrible situation.
10
Was being slightly childish (yes, I CAN be shallow đ ) and gently teasing the Australian Youth Climate Coalition on their FBook page.
Currently on their FBook they display a photo taken at one of their little rallies in what I assume is sunny Melbourne (there are grey skies and everyone is wearing long sleaves… I am guessing Melbourne… đ )
The rally has them holding up signs asking ‘THIS or THIS’ with one side of the group all wearing ill fitting green hard hats and matching blue t-shirts, and the other side all dressed up in mock Victorian era clothing.
So, to me I look at this photo and intantly thing ‘COOL! STEAMPUNKS!’ and instantly reject their green hatted uniformity for a group that at least knows how to party and dress well in a corset.
Out of kindness I pointed this out to the poor little misguided moppets, offering up the point that they really hadn’t thought their protest through that well and that since the Steampunk movement was massively more popular then the AYCC, then maybe it wasn’t wise to try and paint them as the villians.
I note that my wallpost does seem to have been deleted.
No helping these people đ
80
It will be interesting to see how the newly elected Jesuit Pope Francis will reconcile his mission to serve the poor of the world with the evangelistic fervour many of his Jesuit brethren have approached action on climate change.
Before becoming a priest the Pope, Jorge Bergoglio earned a Masters in Chemistry. It is not unusual for Jesuits to be highly educated, they are considered the intellectual order of clergy among the 1.2 Billion Roman Catholics, but they also tend to be somewhat left wing in their politics.
I couldn’t find any past record of statement by the new Pontiff on the subject of climate change. It would be hard to believe he hasn’t been influenced by the constant stream of climate alarmism from the Jesuit community around the world.
Here in Australia the Jesuit’s produce the Eureka Street Magazine which regularly prints articles which are aggressively supportive of climate change action and anti- climate ‘sceptics’. In fact in one article provocatively titled ‘The perverse skills of climate change deniers’, (Jo’s other half, Dr David Evans rates a mention), the author is scathing of Australia’s leading Roman Catholic Cleric, Cardinal George Pell. “That Cardinal George Pell allows himself to be aligned with climate change deniers is very sad. The credibility of church mission to serve humanity is compromised. What is more, many of the faithful are scandalised and their following of church leaders sorely tested.”
From the Jesuits Around the World Newsletter dated 19 February 2013 a writer from the US penned a piece entitled Saving the Earth as a New Frontier, in which he lists all the usual ‘Green activist scares’ including, “…rivers are running dry, glaciers and ice caps are melting, coral reefs are bleaching, the ocean is becoming more acidic, the atmosphere is warming…”. The author believes that Jesuits are called to make a religious response to Earth’s fate. “This appears to be the most challenging role that we Jesuits have ever been asked to assume,” he writes. “It will require that we move beyond any denial and paralysis and that we move into the future with hope, courage and intention”
This type of climate alarmist material seems to be more prominent in the Jesuit material of wealthy western countries. It will be interesting to see if the new Pope who has lived in a developing country with areas of great poverty, has a different perspective.
Does Pope Francis understand that many of the climate action policies only serve to enshrine poverty in underdeveloped countries making economic development more difficult and causing the price of food and energy to soar?
Has Pope Francis been tracking the climate debate over the years, and now realise much of what was stated as settled science and fact some years ago, has been invalidated; and much of the scepticism his fellow Jesuits were ridiculing from those such has Cardinal George Pell, was well founded?
30
May I point out that a great education and wisdom do not correlate in any way. They never have and I fear, never will.
We so often accept smart and educated as useful when we should talk about wisdom. But then whoever said we were wise enough to know the difference?
If I may paraphrase Admiral Farragut, “Damn the critical thinking, full speed ahead.”
10
Totally agree Roy. I suspect the Jesuits simply thought they were on a political winner where they could dovetail their reputation for intellect with their concern for popular environmental issues.
20
I can offer a different explanation â their education is probably a bit short on practical aspects. Thus the acceptance of the Gospel From Authority.
That’s my own speculation and you should treat it accordingly. I think they have a genuine concern beyond personal political points. But I take note of the “called by God” attitude. I wish a whole lot of people (not nearly all Catholic) could give up “their calling” for the only one Christ ever gave to anyone. “He who would be greatest among you must be the servant of all. And this would be a different world.
In context you have to take that word servant very literally.
Anyway, when the leaders are misled so are the followers.
10
This article from a major UK newspaper will upset a few true believers:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2294560/The-great-green-1-The-hard-proof-finally-shows-global-warming-forecasts-costing-billions-WRONG-along.html
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Woohoo !
Strong stuff indeed from the MSM.
The Mail on Sunday is the highest selling ‘mid’-market Sunday newpaper, beaten only by the trash tabloids , in terms of popularity.
40
Wow – that is all I can say, wow.
You are right â this is going to ruffle a few feathers. I have always felt sorry for David Bellamy being ousted from the Beeb. But the time of retribution might be at hand.
The other interesting point is that all of the comments are skeptical, apart from the last one, where the commentator has obviously not read (or understood) the whole article.
The Mail is targeted at a UK demographic who still see the local pub as being an integral part of their social environment. This article will be discussed at length, over a few drinks, and a lot of people will go home and read it, because nobody will want to be the odd one out when it is next discussed.
This is a real sea-change, and there is nothing so irate as the “British” working class, if they feel they have been “done to” by the upper class and the Guvmint.
In short, the article has legs. Good on the Mail for publishing it. I take back
allmostsome of my historical criticism of The Mail.Thanks for bringing it to our attention.
80
Rereko you spoke too soon, did you see the talking head climate scientist on the idiot box this evening. Apparently this drought (?!) which is currently a once in 50 year event will become a once in 20 year event by 2050. Utter bullshit. He has no solid scientific evidence to make such a bold claim.
Of course the interviewee was out of his depth so it went unchallenged. At the same time, try and build viable and sensible water storage projects here and the great unwashed will be lying in front of the diggers. It rains like buggery here sometimes so it seems to me that water shortages are a human failure.
10
Looking at the comments on these articles at The Mail and perhaps more usefully at the comment ratings, the is very little support being expressed for ‘problem’ of AGW.
When you’ve lost The Mail’s readership, which is second only to The Sun, the rest that may care are too few to matter.
10
Good grief! And on the same page, a Time Magazine cover proclaiming, “WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW TO SURVIVE THE COMING ICE AGE.”
Time has had global warming coming out of its ears for so long I nearly died of shock! Where is my defibrillator? And where is John Brookes with a good rebuttal when you need him?
Is the world ending and no one told me? đ
A good day for sanity for a change! đ
10
Time, of course was old stuff but it points out the confounded gullibility of people who must survive on what they publish. If it will sell publish it. Need it be factual? No!
10
I enjoyed this link – thank goodness some journalists are producing articles countering the propaganda!
00
I was looking to see if anyone produced this link; I was going to if no one had. The troll panic commenters were out in force! The DM is pretty trashy but does have a few good writers. I wonder if if this will encourage other parts of the MSM?
10
Something I always find intriguing about the graph in that Daily Mail article.
It shows the match or otherwise between the IPCC ‘projections’ and the actual observations. But what projections? Those will be the ones from the most recent IPCC report in what was it, the early 2000s? So of course, everything prior to 2000 will show a match between projections and obs, because they HAD the obs to work with.
What would be more instructive would be to see each IPCC report’s projections mapped to actual obs for the total period to date since 1990. In other words, how accurate were the projections BEFORE they had real world obs to work with?
00
The “Mail online” has breaking news about “the great green con”, there are two articles so-far and expect much more to come. Finally the wheels are falling off the warmist’s cart and true science can get back to debating in the way that scientists are meant to.
111
Once the truth comes out, it will be a very short debate!
51
The truth, their truth based on deception or THE truth
20
Thankyou John. In addition to Mark’s link to one of them up at #17 I now found the other one, on local Government’s Green tyrannies, while pensioners starve. containing as well more on vested interests in high places. The MPs & Peers cashing in, many of them no doubt divided by their Free Market instincts while ruling subsidies.
50
Oops sorry. That was the link to the useless windmill story.
The Politicians & Peers going Green while Ppensioners can starve story is here:-
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2294602/The-Great-Green-Con-2-How-councils-duped-bad-science-hire-eco-snoopers–slash-OAPs-benefits.html?ito=feeds-newsxml
20
Two heirs to Banking fortunes get married in a shed . Former Editor of the Ecologist Magazine, Zac Goldsmith, now a Tory MP, marries Alice Rothschilde in a bird sanctuary.
20
NIWA data fiddler Jim Salinger making hay of the drought in New Zealand and CAGW wannabee chimes in…
Scary stories……
North Island’s worst drought in 70 years
A climate expert believes summers like this one will become the new norm for New Zealand.
Droughts have already been declared across much of the North Island.
Other regions including Manawatu and Canterbury are either asking for help, or about to do so.
Climate scientist Jim Salinger says if current weather patterns continue, New Zealand’s climate will be similar to the Mediterranean.
“What it means is that if it just doesn’t rain for at least four months of the year, it means you have to bring in your water from elsewhere.”
Dr Salinger says the drought is the worst the North Island has seen in 70 years.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10870345
Jim Salinger: Ignore Mother Nature at your peril
Mean temperatures have now increased 1C since the 1900s.
Their projections from climate models show that by the 2080s much of the country’s agricultural zone will experience some increase in drought, even under lower climate warming scenarios.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10870582
Climate scientist’s grim warning
James Renwick, Associate professor of physical geography at Victoria University, said global warming was the only explanation for the current drought, which he described as “an exceptional event”.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10871812
00
Note please that the wet season in Australia is two months late 2012/13.
00
Is or was…?
December to March is officially the wet season in Northern Australia.
00
Ignore Jim Salinger at your peril – sounds like NZ’s version of Tim Flannery who was spouting similar BS during our drought only to look a fool when the rains returned and flooded everything.
10
Two peas from the same pod
10
Any chance they can share the same tree?
00
Interesting.
In the central USA we have been having dry and warm similar to the Dust Bowl years 78 years ago.
00
Lots of ‘learned’ discussion here but not a mention of how the CO2 released by burning ‘fossil’ fuels effects the climate. Until someone publishes a paper showing how ‘backradiation from a cold source increases emitted radiation from a warmer source’ I will remain a sceptic.
50
Not too learned as it’s much the same sort of teacup reading we in Australia got from climate “experts” a few years ago.
Tim Flannery who is most certainly himself a climate illiterate, yet heads our Climate Commission, was no doubt spouting the prognostications of those âexpertsâ on his Commission who, it turned out knew nothing about Aussie droughts, the regional climate or the likely outcome which of course was the filling of our water storage dams a few years after the false prophets promised dire outcomes.
Those peanuts in NZ, one can be sure, are just as clueless as our climate âscientists” on what the future for NZ holds climate wise.
Genuine climate scientists know their limitations because so much is still not understood about the interaction of the many variables that constitute Earth’s climate and so don’t make fools of themselves by mouthing rubbish.
10
Sir, you appear to be an injured animal, and so out of pity for you, and also as a service to others reading of your confusion, I must offer you this link which you should read and digest. Several other comments on that thread by vastly more scientifically qualified people (such as BobC) may be helpful at a deeper technical level.
Of some interest to you may be the fact Doug Cotton made a video on YouTube several months later in which he admits as true everything that I tried to tell him about the reality of backradiation and how it creates a greenhouse effect. Oddly enough there were some new perspectives on the origin of the vertical temperature profile that I learned from his video, so the learning is not all in one direction.
Doug used to be a Slayer, because he believed there was no radiative blanket greenhouse effect. By admitting backradiation is real, he has admitted there is a greenhouse effect. He has, in that sense, been cured of his Slayerism.
So you see, people such as yourself do have hope. If Doug could be cured, so can you.
10
Thanks for the link. I have down loaded the pdf. Will give it a good read. Will be looking specifically for how radiation emitted by the atmosphere differentiates – in the 15 micron region – between radiation from H2O and CO2 molecules when the H2O far out masses the CO2 to give you a lapse rate of 6.5C per kilometre of altitude. Also at that lapse rate physical drops of water are present which have an emission factor of ~0.97, almost as good as the sea surface below for example.
If you do the basic math for a 1 square metre column of air at STP to the tropopause you will find some 4.8 GRAMS of CO2 as opposed to KILOGRAMS of water droplets and H2O molecules.
Now under 100% cloud cover, at night, you can note that air temperatures remain stable, it doesn’t cool down very much, that now is backradiation.
00
Old timers called it reflection or re-radiation. The thermal mass of the cloud cover is much more than a puny little bit of CO2 could do.
10
Richard
It’s not the CO2 that will be the problem when buring wood; it’s all the resins and other junk that will be poorly combusted and need scrubbing from the stacks.
A very costly operation a.
But there will be a solution to reduced said costs.
Someone in power will “authorise” for the scrubbers to be turned off for strategic periods, say 90% of the time.
That should improve profitability.
Shame about the air.
KK đ
00
Thank you, all of the above, we humans need to rid ourselves of the socialist-communist manipulators, extreme Greens, Union Labor and fellow travellers
30
The truth is hydro power or nuclear power, supplementary other power collectors.
10
Or, if we can find the way, Helium3 from Moon soil.
00
We are swimming in energy – just think of the earth as a leaky electrical capacitor, and figure out how to become part of the solar electric circuit. But beware the crony-capitalists – they don’t like their government monopoly to be threatened.
51
Windmills are nowhere near as good as we thought.
It may not be the Washington Post , but the Washington Times repeats this account from Edinburgh University today
The report originally appeared in the Daily Mail. in December, entitled Wind Turbines lasting only about half as long as we thought.
50
The Wind Industry doesn’t seem to like Prof. Hughes
He might be onto something.
http://www.scottishrenewables.com/news/sr-responds-ref-report-wind-farm-economic-lifespan/
20
Joe V.
that link is hardly a rebuttal, more an Ad Hom.
They might have referred to the 4,000 wind turbines in the USA, where the cost of repairs has left them idle. As for the claim that the oldest turbines in scotland are 16 years old, so what? Are they running at the same capacity load as when they were installed?
It is likely that prof. Hughes is correct. The average capacity factor in the UK has been shrinking in recent years. Or is Global Warming causing less extreme weather?
00
Rereke W, you obviously don’t watch the same news on TVNZ that I do. When news about the drought first ramped up, an ‘Unknown climate Scientist’ who sounds remarkably like the arbitarily retired J Salinger (retired for making unauthorised statements to the Meja!)was quoted as saying that the current drought is how NZ climate will be in the future! No names, no pack drill, of course, but the meeja so loves the CAGW rubbish and the front-people passed this nonsense on with great relish.
Here in Auckland’s West, a short distance from harbour and sea,we had a whisker less than one inch of precipitation over the last 24 hours – very welcome too, as it’s all we have had since some time in January, but nowhere nearly enough, as us townies from inside the big smoke actually get more rain than the cockies out in the hinterland do as rising warm air from urban buildings, tar-seal and concrete often causes precipitation.
It seems cruel for us townies to have our lawns and gardens sprinkled so generously ahead of our country cousins, but there are a large number of industries such as lawn mowing and gardening that rely on rain as much as the rural sector does, but our Federated Farmers are a brilliant lobby/pressure group, despite their image (heavily promoted, of course) of them being bronzed individualists who are so busy labouring away on their land that they wouldn’t recognise a suit, white shirt with a stiff collar and suitable tie, along with a shiny pair of shoes if all it fell out of their wardrobe.
And no, I don’t dislike cockies at all but one has to recognise the reality rather than the myth. Many years ago I was an agricultrual contractor, so I am aware that there are far more people vulnerable to the the vagaries of extremes of climate than the farmers, people who usually don’t have large assets or powerful pressure groups to protect them from an inclement climate.
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17 March: UK Telegraph: Rachel Cooper: UK troops hit by Cyprus bailout ‘will be compensated’
George Osborne has said that troops and civil servants serving in Cyprus whose savings are threatened by the island’s ÂŁ8.7bn bailout will be compensated.
“Itâs a difficult situation for people who live in Cyprus,” Mr Osborne told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show. “For people serving in our military and our government out in Cyprus, we are going to compensate anyone affected by this bank tax – people who are doing their duty for our country in Cyprus will be protected from this Cypriot bank tax.”
He added that Britain was “not part of the bail-out” because David Cameron “got us out of these euro bail-outs” when he became prime minister and he added that Cyprus is an example of “what happens if you don’t show the world you can pay your way”.
***”Thatâs why in Britain weâve got to retain the confidence of world markets,” said the Chancellor…
Government sources on Saturday night stressed that funds in the London branches of Bank of Cyprus UK and Laiki Bank would not be affected…
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/9935596/UK-troops-hit-by-Cyprus-bailout-will-be-compensated.html
***”retain the confidence of world markets”??? like the following, mr. osborne, which the MSM has not even picked up?
13 March: AFP: US renews EU, Japan exemptions from Iran sanctions
Under a law meant to pressure the Iranian leadership over its contested nuclear program, the United States bars banks from nations that buy Iran’s key money-maker from doing business in the world’s largest economy.
Kerry announced he was extending for another 180 days exemptions first granted on March 20 last year to Belgium, Britain, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland and Spain…
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hQFcrem8C6_knW_–OVmhbWCWZFg?docId=CNG.9f75a67d1e4ee5257279f933fbd8766e.c1
or how about manipulating CO2 trading, or your banks manipulating the LIBOR rate, mr. osborne?
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—
~60 Year Cycle of ~27 Day Terracentric Solar Rotation
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CFMEU old boy involved in the coal mine saga, while the Union pushes the whole CAGW shut-down-the-coal-mines scam:
18 March: Age: Sam McKeith/AAP: Suspect mine deal signed over $1800 meal
Outside the inquiry, CFMEU mining and energy general secretary Andrew Vickers said the union had rejected requests from Mr Maitland to back the training mine project.
He said the union had never been involved in any wrongdoing regarding the licence.
“The union per se has not, was not, and will not be involved in any suggested corruption or misdoing with the granting of the exploration licence,” he told reporters.
http://news.theage.com.au/breaking-news-national/suspect-mine-deal-signed-over-1800-meal-20130318-2ga2o.html
Mining Union Comes to Terms With Sustainable Development
John Maitland spent 10 years as a coal miner in the 1970s, achieving qualifications in rigging, as an open cut examiner and as a Deputy before being elected Secretary of the Queensland District of the Minersâ Federation in 1981. He was President of the CFMEU Mining and Energy Division (and its predecessors) from 1985 until 1996 when he was elected National Secretary of the whole union. He is honorary President of the 20 million member International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers Unions (ICEM), a rare achievement for an Australian as the position is usually held by a leader of the larger German and US unions. He is a member of the Executive of the Australian Council of Trade Unions and a Director of Eraring Energy, a NSW electricity producer…
(John Maitland) the 1950s in New South Wales most people would have either had a relative who was a coal miner or known someone who was. Today coal production is many times greater but it is unusual for the average citizen of New South Wales to know anybody in the coal industry. So they are more willing to question the need for the industry…
Ameef: How is organised labour changing its agenda to embrace sustainable development?
JM: In the past we have been prominent supporters of the ecologically sustainable development process initiated by Bob Hawke as Prime Minister more than a decade ago. The CFMEU has produced kits for our members on climate change and mine environmental management. We were there at the Earth Summit in 1992 and at the development of the Kyoto Protocol in 1998. In 2001 we wrote the climate change policy document for our international union â the International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers Unions (ICEM) which has more than 20 million members worldwide. And of course we have been active in the MMSD process both within Australia and at the global level…
https://www.dlsweb.rmit.edu.au/conenv/envi1128/Groundwork%20website/publicat/gw/grnd702/union.htm
hypocrites.
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MSM is barely reporting the furore in europe over the cypriot money grab and, when they do, they are mostly sanguine, except for a WSJ and a UK Telegraph BLOG:
17 March: UK Telegraph BLOG: Matts Persson: Tomorrow, Cyprus could vote to leave the euro. This is political dynamite
All bailouts are unfair â the people who screwed up almost never pay â but this is in a league of its own. Seventeen Eurozone finance ministers locked themselves in a room and decided that every Cypriot depositor â whether super-wealthy or dirt-poor â will, out of the blue, see part of their hard-earned money seized. Remember, Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades explicitly promised in his election campaign, only a few weeks ago, that depositors were safe. The Cypriot electorate now faces losses on deposits as well as years of austerity (under the bailout loan). Whatâs worse, deposits under âŹ100,000 are supposed to be protected by EU law, not raided by EU leaders. And Cypriot banks have frozen close to âŹ5.8bn, i.e. imposed capital controls which is meant to be illegal under EU single market rules. This is political dynamite…
Most importantly, massive questions still linger over the precedent this sets. If Cypriot depositors are forced to pay today, why not Spanish ones tomorrow? People queuing up in massive numbers outside ATM machines is always an incredibly scary sight wherever you are and given the anger in Cyprus, we just donât know how people will react when banks open again (unclear when, the Cypriot government may declare both Tuesday and Wednesday bank holidays as well)…
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/matspersson/100023412/tomorrow-cyprus-could-vote-to-leave-the-euro-this-is-political-dynamite/
nearly 1,300 people have commented on this blog article, yet is anyone seeing the outrage in europe on their tv news?
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Yes Pat
This is important. Trust has been broken.
Given the state of tension throughout Europe, not to mention the rest of the world, there will be repercussions.
Europeans, Including the Irish, will remove money from banks because they have been shown that Governments see their savings as easy pickings.
I would have no problem taking all of my spare cash home to deposit under the bed, all $3,500 of it, but those who have hundreds of thousands may move it to Switzerland??
Won’t that be a shambles.
A few years ago in the GFC we were all taken in a similar manner in Australia when the share market crashed.
Market manipulation saw much of our hard earned disappear to local Financiers and banks plus stockbrokers in the US.
Even now the US scammers have a tap into Australian share markets and skim off significant amounts of our investments via High Frequency Trading.
Just how our Federal Government came to agree to this is beyond me but is as big a betrayal of trust as the Cypriot deal.
They will either rescind the plan to tax all savings in Cyprus or they will go ahead and create total chaos and collapse of government in Europe.
It’s almost as if they deliberately want to demolish civilised society.
KK đ
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Absolutely right Pat, this mornings news only mentioned “bailout troubles” in Cyprus.
I’m beginning to believe we have gone over the fiscal cliff, that the cliff is much higher than first thought and the landing may be unsurvivable.
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OT. on the Media Regulation frenzy.
UK Government is rushing through Press Regulation with what seems like an all party stitch up.
How uncanny this should be happening almost simultaneously at opposite ends of the Earth.
Cameron ‘Caves’ in over Historic Press Law
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I wonder if this wonderful site will still exist if the new media legislation is passed.
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There is still 3 months for Windsor, Wilkie, and Oakeshott to completely screw up the country.
If they have any sense they will nuke those bills this week just as they have claimed they will.
If a government controlled “public interest advocate” can stop companies from broadcasting whatever they like, stopping people from saying whatever they like will be next.
They will supposedly clean up the ABC as long as they get the ability to intimidate every other broadcaster. No thanks. As much as we like to rip on the ABC, totalitarianism isn’t better.
No Deal!
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Jo, I just got another email from the Australian Liar Party …
Another money grab. I am going to have sooo much fun with my reply …
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surely the price will soon be in negative territory!
EU carbon prices lose 6.6 pct on new supply, Cyprus
LONDON, March 18 (Reuters Point Carbon) â European carbon prices dropped 6.6 percent on Monday, pulled lower by fresh permit supply and wider market worries about a bailout plan for debt-riddled Cyprus, traders said…
http://www.pointcarbon.com/news/1.2226716
LOL –
CO2 investors target China as UN scheme struggles
BEIJING, March 18 (Reuters Point Carbon) â Hurt by record low prices of U.N.-backed carbon credits, investors in schemes that cut emissions of greenhouse gases are pulling out of markets set up by international treaties and looking to China for returns instead…
http://www.pointcarbon.com/news/1.2225629?&ref=searchlist
LOL again –
Shell to buy 500,000 California forest carbon credits
SAN FRANCISCO, March 15 (Reuters Point Carbon) â Shell Energy has agreed to buy 500,000 carbon offsets sourced from a forestry project in Michigan as soon as regulators approve the credits for use in Californiaâs cap-and-trade program…
http://www.pointcarbon.com/news/1.2224348?&ref=searchlist
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LOL some more –
UK says airlines may need to buy back CO2 permits
LONDON, March 18 (Reuters Point Carbon) â Two UK-based airlines may have to buy back carbon permits previously given to them for free by the British government after the EU agreed to exempt some flights from complying with laws under its Emissions Trading Scheme, Britainâs climate department said Monday…
http://www.pointcarbon.com/news/1.2226637?&ref=searchlist
this guy has been employed by this newspaper since 1976!
18 March: Vancouver Sun: Pete McMartin: Climate change deniers cherry-picking in a fruitless debate
Those with their heads in the sand need to start embracing the truth that climate change is real
Climate-change deniers are another thing altogether. Their refutations of the scientific consensus â which overwhelmingly finds that global warming and climate change are real and anthropogenic, despite what deniers say â do carry real consequences. The longer we dither over discredited arguments, and the longer our attention is distracted by the cherry-picking of deniers, the shorter time we have to find solutions to the very real dangers of climate change.
Their latest argument that global warming doesnât exist comes from a recent communique from the British Met office, which hosts the National Climate Information Centre…
In other words, the Met countered, (David) Rose cherry-picked.
But itâs a fruitless debate.
http://www.vancouversun.com/columnists/pete_mcmartin.html
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18 March: Businessweek: Alex Morales/Christopher Martin: Suntech Defaults on $541 Million Bond, a First for China
Suntech Power Holdings Co. Ltd. (STP) became the first company from mainland China to default on its bonds after failing to repay $541 million of notes due March 15, breaching terms of other outstanding loans…
The move opens the way for Suntech noteholders to sue the company in the U.S., where its shares and bonds trade…
UBS AG is advising Suntech. Chinese solar companies are struggling after taking on debt to expand supply, leading to a glut that forced down prices and squeezed profits. LDK Solar (LDK) Co., the second-biggest solar wafer maker, in December hired Citigroup Inc. to help renegotiate its liabilities and obtain âadditional flexibilityâ from creditors…
Suntech, LDK, Trina Solar Ltd (TSL)., Yingli Green Energy Holding (YGE) Co., Hanwha SolarOne Co. and Jinko Solar Holding Co. were among 12 companies that obtained more than $43.2 billion in credit pledges from China Development Bank Corp., according to data compiled by Bloomberg…
Suntech, the worldâs largest solar-panel maker as recently as 2011, posted four consecutive quarters of losses through the first quarter of 2012 and since then has failed to report quarterly earnings…
LDK has reported six successive quarters of losses through the third quarter of 2012. Its net debt totaled almost $3.3 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg…
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2013-03-18/suntech-defaults-on-541-million-bond-a-first-for-china
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MarkD –
this move on cypriots is like a trial balloon. if these bureaucrats get away with it in cyprus, it could happen to anyone, anywhere, any time. our MSM shows once again whose side it is on, and it ain’t the public’s. this should be at the top of the news 24/7:
18 March: Daily Mail: Tim Shipman/Keith Gladdis: Betrayal of Our Boys in Cyprus: Ministers pledged to protect UK soldiers’ cash. Now they say savings WILL be hit
24 hours after Chancellor George Osborne insisted military would not suffer
Payments to British pensioners on island suspended until vote on levy…
Move prompts fresh fears the eurozone could be on the verge of break-up…
Servicemen will only be compensated for âreasonable lossesâ if their funds are âconnected with their service in Cyprusâ.
Last night MoD officials said that could mean those who have transferred funds to Cyprus to save for their retirement could lose out.
The volte-face came 24 hours after Chancellor George Osborne insisted the military would not suffer…
On a day of fresh drama:
Panic spread as it was revealed Cypriot banks will be closed for three more days
Stock markets fell around the world and around 0.4 per cent was wiped off the value of the euro
A vote on the tax grab in Cyprus was delayed until today
The Cypriot government suggested deposits below 100,000 euro being hit with just a 3 per cent tax, rising to 15 per cent for those above 500,000 euro (ÂŁ430,000)
Last night a spokesman for the eurozone also hinted that all depositors with less than 100,000 euro could be protected.
In all, up to 60,000 Britons on the island are set to lose out…
Last night Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades phoned European Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn to warn him that there might not be enough support for the deposit tax to pass in Parliament…
He is reported to have told Mr Rehn: âWhen I warned you that there would not be a parliamentary majority to pass the agreement, you didnât want to listen. Give my regards to Mrs Merkel.â
Expats living in Cyprus yesterday told Mrs Merkel to keep her âhands offâ their money. Almost all cash machines on the island have been drained meaning Britons have been forced to borrow from friends or use credit cards…
Daylight robbery! Expats blast the ‘bullies in Brussels’
Even those who might lose a more modest amount are worried it could happen again and plan to close their accounts permanently when the banks open again, possibly on Thursday…
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2295115/Cyprus-bailout-crisis-Betrayal-Our-Boys-Cyprus-Ministers-pledged-protect-UK-soldiers-cash-Now-say-savings-WILL-hit.html
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Hey Pat did you see where Russia has said that 25% of Cypriot money is Russian money and most of that belongs to the mafia, you dont to piss off the Russian mafia. LLLLOOOOOLLLLL
This will be one of the greatest bank runs in history and yes Mark D the bottom of the cliff is commonly known as an abyss.
Cheers
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My understanding is that Cyprus is like the Cayman Islands for Israelis.
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Pat says:
I can agree with the first part and It is frightening.
This morning the MSM did actually carry the real story AND showed the crowds in the streets of Cyprus. I’m afraid the story is already creating a potential run on banks not just in Cyprus but in any EU country. Even here in the US banks pay so little interest on savings keeping cash may be safer. Would anything start a worldwide collapse faster than a run on all banks?
But what if they go after investments? Or Retirement accounts? What if they just put a charge on your Mister Card?
Scary very very scary.
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i don’t agree with any of forbes political analogies, but i do agree with the underlying message:
18 March: Forbes: Steve Forbes: Here’s Why Cyprus Could Be A Disaster For All Of Us!
What in the world is going through the minds of European officials with their crazy, destructive demands with Cyprus?…
http://www.forbes.com/sites/steveforbes/2013/03/18/for-whom-does-the-cyprus-bell-toll-alas-all-of-us/
“crony capitalism” is all-pervasive:
16 March: Reuters: Pedro Nicolaci da Costa, NATIONAL HARBOR, Maryland: Fed’s Fisher: Too-big-to-fail banks are “crony” capitalists
The largest U.S. banks are “practitioners of crony capitalism,” need to be broken up to ensure they are no longer considered too big to fail, and continue to threaten financial stability, a top Federal Reserve official said on Saturday.
Richard Fisher, president of the Dallas Fed, has been a critic of Wall Street’s disproportionate influence since the financial crisis. But he was now taking his message to an unusual audience for a central banker: a high-profile Republican political action committee…
“These institutions operate under a privileged status that exacts an unfair tax upon the American people,” he said on the last day of the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).
“They represent not only a threat to financial stability but to fair and open competition ⌠(and) are the practitioners of crony capitalism and not the agents of democratic capitalism that makes our country great,” said Fisher, who has also been a vocal opponent of the Fed’s unconventional monetary stimulus policies…
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/16/us-usa-fed-fisher-idUSBRE92F09U20130316
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