Has anyone noticed: Skeptics such as Anthony Watts have talked about UHI for years, but the ‘consensus’ ignored it- but now they are pointing to UHI as a factor, and claiming skeptics have always denied it.
SYDNEY, July 8 AAP – Opposition Leader Tony Abbott will flesh out the coalition’s plans to cut $1 billion worth of red and green tape from the Australian economy.
….
Central to the policy are promises to repeal the carbon price and mining tax and streamline environmental regulation.
Crikey, is there hope yet that the Libs will prove me wrong?
Central to the policy are promises to repeal the carbon price and mining tax and streamline environmental regulation.
… And $2.2b will be allocated, in the next financial year, for the establishment of a new Department to oversee the reduction in spending … ‘Cos that’s how things get done 🙂
1913: 134°F in Death Valley, CA
This week, on July 10th, it’s the 100th anniversary of the hottest day on earth.
That’s a big deal because if we’d been in a century of runaway hockey stick warming that record should have been broken time and time again. But the record stands.
Their “data” shows out of control warming for a century. But the data is more easily manipulated than individual temperature stations, and zero stations across the planet have surpassed the 1913 record.
The lowest spot in Death Valley regularly exceeds 120° F (~ 49° C) in the summer and gets near or to 130 (~ 54° C) quite often. So that hottest day doesn’t exceed normal experience by enough to qualify as extreme weather in my humble (or maybe not so humble) opinion.
When I ask someone who’s claiming record high temperatures where and when the record was recorded and how much the prior record was exceeded, I never get an answer. That tells me something.
Do visit Death Valley though if you haven’t already been there. It’s spectacular and beautiful with much to see. But go in the winter. The Furnace Creek Inn boasts the only swimming pool I know of that doesn’t need chlorinated water. They have a natural hot spring that provides enough water for the entire Inn plus the Furnace Creek Ranch a little lower down the valley and still replaces the water in a large swimming pool often enough that chlorination isn’t required. It’s the best swimming ever and warm enough for even a chilly winter day. The pool is open to both guests of the Inn and the Ranch. The Inn is a 4-star resort with a gourmet dining room too.
Those Capuchin monkeys have a pool like that. I dont know where exactly. Somewhere in Japan…The Cspuchin monastary maybe….(;-) They sit around in it all day surrounded by snow. Cheeky feckers. Well, according to the BBC, so take that with a sack of salt.
Hottest I experinced outdoors was 116F in some place up a mountain outside Sydney. 1975 I believe.
All this crap about “the country’s first democratically elected…” bollox.
Its the usual azdholes saying it (BBC et al). So Adolf Hitler was democratically elected. As was Morsis mate Obama. Evidence enough of the limits of democracy.
Ive never been a fan of democracy (an invention of slave owning pederasts in bathrobes). Roman rule was mmore my thing, but they say democracy is just the least bad of systems. And you cannot improve on one man one vote (once, in the case of an Islamic society). And quis custodiat and all that. BUT there is one very simple law that would improve our electoral systems immensely. For a politician to reneg on a promise made during election should be made a criminal offence and disqualify them from holding office. Very simple, very equitable, very little custodiat quissing involvd.
There should be a petition for it. I wont be signing though. If democracy is your bag, you improve it.
Actually Hitler was never really elected. The National Socialist German Workers Party polled fewer votes in the 1932 election than they did in 1931 but the moribund President Hindenburg was persuaded to include them in a coalition government led by Hitler with only two other Nazis in the twelve-man cabinet. The NSDAP then completed an internal coup by means of threats, bribery, blackmail, and extreme violence.
Hitler was never fairly elected by a democratic system. That’s a myth.
Yes…exactly like the British SDLP party (even sounds like NSDAP) which polled fewer votes than ever before and has ever since been co-rulers of the UK with the the other minority polling party, the Tories. Not so different is it really? And the point is, it was the electoral system that put the NAZIs in power (however it was used or exploited)…their earlier attempts at a coup had failed miserably.
Sounds like JULIARS election fortunately Juliar didn’t manage to kill as many as Adolf.Not for want of trying. $200.000+ for being a liar and a failure is a good deal.<:)
Can anyone help me with a query I have had in my mind for some time? The question in which I am interested is, ‘What is the theoretical global warming potential of a molecule of water vapour?’ …. And, ‘What is this theoretical global warming potential expressed in terms of a CO2 equivalent?’
This question has arisen for me because I have been interested in the issue of farm livestock and the assertion that is continually made that livestock emit an inordinate amount of global warming gases. Cattle and sheep get vilified on the basis of the methane they emit and those doing the vilifying always cite the global warming potential of the methane molecule when doing the vilification. In my book, ‘Should meat be on the menu?’ I have pointed out that, for various reasons, and despite the fact that the methane molecule has a theoretical global warming potential of 23, 25, or 77 times that of the carbon dioxide molecule, the livestock industry is ‘not guilty’ of the huge global warming input of which it is accused. (The actual multiple jumps around a bit depending on various assumptions about how you do the maths.)
The whole process led me, one day, to idly ponder what was the global warming potential of an H2O molecule. After all, there is so much of it in the atmosphere. I have, however, experienced difficulty in finding an answer. Can anyone shed some light on this for me. … and, maybe, another question. ‘Is the result important or not?’
Air with water vapour has a higher specific heat than dry air. The greater the humidity, the more heat energy it can absorb for a given change in temperature. That’s down to the specific heat of water being high.
The air cools the surface that has been or is being warmed by the sun. Humid air’s ability to absorb heat for a lower temperature rise also means that it’s more effective at removing heat from the surface; and storing it in the water vapour in the air.
The real “magic trick” of water in the atmosphere is that of condensation, which, especially at altitude results in “bursts” of radiation of the heat previously stored in the water, from the surface of the droplets as they condense. The very cold droplets fall through warmer air, removing heat from it. The droplets sometimes don’t even reach the ground as precipitation (“virga”) but their evaporation or sublimation removes heat from the surrounding air.
Nobody can successfully model the “heat engine” of the water cycle within the climate system. There will always be too many unknowns. Phase changes which are critical to the operation of the engine are dominated by boundary conditions that are in practice, indeterminate. They can be known, but not well enough to fully define the state of the system. (Blame it on Heisenberg.)
Higher humidity air also has the properties of:
-needing a lot more energy to heat than drier air;
-taking much longer to release energy, keeping nights and winters warmer when humidity is higher;
-as the energy is released, clouds can form, further reflecting incoming sunlight and cooling days, and also warming nights.
The most under rated and over worked greenhouse gas!
Cattle and sheep get vilified on the basis of the methane they emit and those doing the vilifying always cite the global warming potential of the methane molecule when doing the vilification.
Peter C & others cover the H2O issues. The methane vilification has been demonstrated to be way over the top.
(Here is Oz cattle & sheep have professional PR, unlike the less fortunate feral camels.)
I’ll see if I can find the relevant study – if interested, email me on troppo19 at gmail.com.
“In 2006, the United Nations concluded that the livestock industry was a big contributor to climate change.
In its report “Livestock’s Long Shadow,” the U.N. concluded that livestock were contributing 18 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases — allegedly more than the entire world’s transpiration.
“Despite oft-repeated claims by sources ranging from the United Nations to music star Paul McCartney, it is simply not true that consuming less meat and dairy products will help stop climate change, …”
UC Davis Associate Professor and Air Quality Specialist Frank Mitloehner says that McCartney and the chair of the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ignored science last week when they launched a European campaign called “Less Meat = Less Heat.”
More meat=more cattle farts + fewer Man farts.
Less meat=less cattle fartage + more Mccartney / veggie Farting
Net result exactly the same. The euations are reciprocal, commutative or however mathmaticians put it.
Flippantly put but seriously true.
As Ive said before, I simply dont believe that pillock McCartney is the same guy who wrote those really timeless and classic songs. McLennon is more likely the truth. Will he fess up on his death bed.
As some wag said after the passing of Harrison, “All we have left is the “B” sides.
.
McCartney & Pachauri weren’t the only ones ignoring the science.
When the Australian greenLaboUr government invested (taxpayer) $9M+ into Henbury Farm, scientific advice was also ignored or omitted.
Rod Simms, chairmen of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, charged with POLICING “gouging” in carbon markets, was privy to investing in Henbury Farm.
To date, Henbury Farm has NOT produced ONE carbon credit.
Will Simms now use the ACCC to pursue the Australian government on behalf of Australian tax payers?
Will Simms present the science of Mitloehner as evidence of lack of due diligence and mis-leading climate science by the Australian Government when investing tax payer dollars, leading to fraud?
Or is chasing Brumbys more important?
.
This stinks and needs lawful investigation.
In fact the methane from rice paddies vastly outweighs that from cows (look it up). Yet the eating of meat is quite commonly demonized as harming the planet while rice is never mentioned. Do I detect a vegetarian agenda?
(lewandowsky bait)
… a secret vegetarian plot to take over the world …
It is a little heavy in some areas but you can see how the Hydrogen atom enables the molecule (CH4 and H2O) to react to IR in multiple ways whereas the CO2 molecule does not hence why they are much stronger GHG’s than CO2 is. The article has a AGW slant but the physics are good.
Here is one for the warmbots out there, as Al Gore once famously said “its complicated” so here is the dumbed down version for you
What is the CO2e of water vapour? Good question, i am sure there is an answer out there some where but good luck finding it, this sort of info is hidden as it would expose the scam for what it is.
I think we have enough info to do a rough calculation:
CO2 ~ 0.0400% CO2E of 1
CH4 ~ 0.00017% CO2E of 25 effectively 0.00425 of CO2
N2O ~ 0.00003% CO2E of 298 effectively 0.00894 of CO2
H2O ~ 0.25% (globally) CO2E ? However to at best match the affects of CO2 then its CO2E would have to be 0.16. Obviously this figure is absurd.
Let me know if you find the CO2E of H2O as i would be very interested
This GWP contribution seems relevant to a statement Monckton once made.
CH4 ~ 0.00017% CO2E of 25 effectively 0.00425 of CO2
When I sat through a 2-hour long Monckton monologue and had heard most of it before, the bits I remembered most are the personal anecdotes and lesser known trivia.
He mentioned it was an odd coincidence that the same year that Putin got his work gangs to finish patching up the numerous holes in the trans-Siberian gas pipeline (~2001) was also the year the global warming stopped. He mused somewhat rhetorically about whether the leaking methane and butane had been the cause of a chunk of the warming.
If the GWP of CH4 is 0.004 of CO2 and even CO2 has been overestimated, well I think that pretty much lays to rest any suggestion that the Siberian gas leaks made any detectable difference to global warming.
Now on the other hand… the pipeline enabled large quantities of a weak GHG to be converted into large quantities of a gas 235 times stronger… ]:-> (ducking and running…)
No, the net non-effect is getting fairly obvious.
Apparently, experiments by Hottel 1954 and Leckner 1971, and others, have shown that the emissivity/absorptivity of water vapour at a concentration of 5% and temperature of 306K is 0.4. Meanwhile the maximum total emissivity/absorptivity of CO2 is ~0.003, making water vapour about 120 times more efficient at absorbing radiation than CO2. See ‘Nasif Nahle: Determination of the total emissivity of a mixture of gases’ and ‘Nasif Nahle: A response to Joe Bastardi’s comments on AGW’.
Can I ask for some people to review something I have been working on? I have noticed an anomaly between studies of polar ice melt and the rate of sea level rise. Various studies claim that polar ice is melting an accelerating rate. But the standard satellite measure of sea level rise shows a roughly constant at 3.2mm per year since 1993.
I have looked at one such study Rignot et. al 2011.
My very tentative findings are
1. The claim total ice melt contribution over 18 years (1993-2011) to sea level rise went from 0 to 2.4mm, or 0% to 75% of the average sea level rise of 3.2mm. Polar ice melt went from 0 to 1.8mm, the rest from other ice masses
2. The calculations appear contrived, including the error bars.
3. There might be no long-term sign long-term in the rate of sea ice melt, but there is in the large swings in short-term ice melt. Although there is a lag of 2 to 3 years between the melt and the rise in sea levels, there shape of the graphs are very similar. There is no “smudging” which would normally be expected with a time-lag.
4. Rather than smudging, due to a time-lag, the impact of sea ice melt seems to be amplified a number of times.
I am referring to both Greenland and Antarctica ice melt. From the abstract of Rignot et al 2011:-
In 2006, the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets experienced a combined mass loss of 475 ± 158 Gt/yr, equivalent to 1.3 ± 0.4 mm/yr sea level rise. Notably, the acceleration in ice sheet loss over the last 18 years was 21.9 ± 1 Gt/yr2 for Greenland and 14.5 ± 2 Gt/yr2 for Antarctica, for a combined total of 36.3 ± 2 Gt/yr2. This acceleration is 3 times larger than for mountain glaciers and ice caps (12 ± 6 Gt/yr2).
I made a mistake in referring to sea ice melt. The first sentence of point 3 should read.
3. There might be no long-term sign long-term in the rate of sea polar ice cap melt, but there is in the large swings in short-term ice melt.
Treeline elevations in the polar urals shows a much warmer MWP and a complete absence of trees during the LIA up until about 1900.
Later studies shows treelines at 430 metres not the 300 metres as stated by Briffa. These con merchants try to disguise and hide data whenever they can just to extend their CAGW fraud as long as possible.
BF the important point is that elevation reduces temp and it is well known that in warmer periods trees can grow at much higher altitudes and in cooler periods like the LIA they vanish at those higher now cooler elevations.
This time they vanished for many centuries until about 1900.
This is well known in other areas like the Rockie mountains for example.
Boreal forests in e.g. Finland get much colder in winter than alpine heights in continental Europe. So I suspect that temperature isn’t generally the governing factor.
I noticed in my wanderings that the treeline in the European Alps is way lower than where summertime temperatures are continuously above freezing; even at night. Daytime temperatures on a mountainside easily exceed 20⁰C in summer. It’s cooler below the treeline due to the shade of the trees.
8 July: Australian: Sid Maher/Lauren Wilson: 1000 jobs lost in pink batt industry
Insulation Council of Australia chief executive Dennis D’Arcy said the home insulation industry had contracted by 20 to 25 per cent from its level before the creation of the scheme, which was closed after four deaths and a political storm over dodgy installations…
Rueben Barnes, 16, Matthew Fuller, 25, and Mitchell Sweeney, 22, died while installing insulation in Queensland. Marcus Wilson, 19, was killed doing similar work in Sydney…
The Home Insulation Program was also blamed for more than 220 house fires, more than 1000 potentially electrified roofs and 240,000 dangerous or sub-standard insulation jobs, with the cost blowing out by $1 billion more than the original budget of $2.45bn…
Mr D’Arcy said the industry had grown from about 5000 people to about 10,000 at the height of the scheme. Many of the new entrants had no experience — and these operators had been responsible for the program’s problems…
Three years after the program closed, hundreds of insulation businesses had been financially ruined, Mr Gibson said.
“Not only have they been left with insurmountable debts, but their businesses have been made worthless by the HIP, and in many cases they have lost their life savings,” he said. http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/jobs-lost-in-pink-batt-industry/story-e6frg6n6-1226675639770
8 July: Australian: Harry Edwards: Protests stop wind farm plan
A LARGE wind farm proposed for near Goulburn in NSW has been shelved after protests from local landholders including Maurice Newman, the former head of the Australian Securities Exchange who has been anointed to chair a new business advisory council if the Coalition wins this year’s federal election.
The planning application for the 100-turbine Golspie wind farm, lodged by renewable energy developer Wind Prospect CWP, lapsed last week, with the company citing “wind resource, land security and grid connection issues”.
Mr Newman, who opposes wind farms and has pledged to lobby against subsidies for them, argues that fluctuations in output from renewable energy sources have increased power costs for consumers by requiring the construction of expensive backup generators…
In January Tony Abbott announced that Mr Newman — appointed by the Howard government to chair the ABC — was his choice to head a new business advisory council for a Coalition government…
“The cost of energy was a comparative advantage for Australia, which offset the relatively higher wage rates of our population,” Mr Newman told The Australian yesterday. “That benefit has been squandered and you can’t underestimate the role of renewable energy behind that lack of competitiveness.
“What the present government has done is decide we should make Australia less competitive by lifting the price of electricity.
“Therefore, if there is a change of government, I’m sure that any business council that I chair will be of a mind to restore Australia’s international competitiveness.”
Labor’s Renewable Energy Target aims to have 20 per cent of electricity generated from renewable sources by 2020. The Coalition intends to review the RET next year if it wins the election, and could rely on Mr Newman’s advice to scrap the target…
Local councillor Malcolm Barlow said Wind Prospect CWP was concerned that a Coalition government would make wind farms uneconomic. “I think the reason (the application) has lapsed, given the upcoming election, is the Coalition is going to review the renewable energy target system and carbon tax,” Mr Barlow said.
He said he strongly opposed wind farms because they were uneconomic, relying on a subsidy of up to $3 million a year per turbine. http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/climate/protests-stop-wind-farm-plan/story-e6frg6xf-1226675644019
13 June: Guardian: Lenore Taylor: Top Abbott business adviser wants renewables target scrapped
Maurice Newman, chairman of Coalition’s proposed business advisory council, doubts scientific case for global warming
The chairman of Tony Abbott’s proposed business advisory council, Maurice Newman, has called for the renewable energy target (RET) to be scrapped because he believes the scientific evidence for global warming and the economic case for renewable energy no longer stack up.
Newman, the former chairman of the ABC and the ASX, said persisting with government subsidies for renewable energy represented a “crime against the people” because higher energy costs hit poorer households the hardest and there was no longer any logical reason to have them.
Newman acknowledged Coalition policy was to retain the current target to generate 20% of renewable energy by 2020, but told Guardian Australia in his opinion “the whole science on which this is based is somewhat in tatters”…
The Coalition resources spokesman, Ian Macfarlane, says the Coalition supports windfarms and the policy aims to allay community fears and provide transparent information. But many Coalition MPs want to see the RET scrapped and new windfarms banned…
Last January Newman wrote in the Spectator that windfarms were “grossly inefficient, extremely expensive, socially inequitable, a danger to human health, environmentally harmful, divisive for communities, a blot on the landscape, and don’t even achieve the purpose for which they were designed – namely the reliable generation of electricity and the reduction of CO2 emissions”.
Abbott has said the prime minister’s Business Advisory Council, to be chaired by Newman, would meet three times a year.
Newman said he imagined it would be similar to the financial sector advisory committee he chaired under the Howard government, which had a secretariat in the treasury…
As well as health and landscape concerns, members of the Crookwell Landscape Guardians at the meeting were concerned that “electro magnetic electricity” could be transferred from windfarms through the air and the ground, possibly causing failures of farm machinery and the danger of electric shocks from farm bores… http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/12/abbott-business-adviser-renewables-target
Planetary surface temperatures have very little to do with incident radiation. At the base of the theoretical troposphere of Uranus it is about 320K but virtually no Solar radiation reaches down through 350Km of its atmosphere to that altitude.
The Sun cannot heat the surfaces of planets like Earth and Venus to the observed temperatures with direct radiation. So it doesn’t matter how much the atmosphere slows cooling if we can’t explain how the temperature gets to 288K on Earth or 730K on Venus before any such cooling begins.
In fact it is energy from the Sun which does the warming by first heating the atmosphere with incident radiation. That absorbed energy then disturbs the thermodynamic equilibrium and this leads to convective heat transfer down towards the surface. In physics “convective heat transfer” can comprise diffusion as well as advection, but advection is not necessary. We don’t need to explain such heat transfer by imagining air moving up or down. We need to understand the process described in the Second Law of Thermodynamics, as in Sections 4 to 9 here.
When I go to pick up a sheet of half inch steel that’s been sitting outside in the sunshine I need to make sure I am wearing gloves, otherwise I will burn my hands. I know that its that hot because the sun is shining on it, not because of convective heat transfer.
Sorry, but you are seriously misguided there sonny.
The Economist reports White elephants seen in North Sea, delving into the huge mess of trying to meet unrealistic expectations in Germany’s transition to renewable energy sources Energiewende (or, more appropriately; Energiewunde; energy wound.) iIt illustrates that technical difficulties cannot be overcome merely by throwing more (of other peoples’) money into the project.
For some many years, as windmills have proliferated through the land, Booker and I have been asking the same question: where is the back-up to cover for the many periods when the wind does not blow?
With no apparent evidence of conventional back-up plants being built, little did we imagine that, under our very noses, the capacity was being provided in a form undreamed of. Standby diesel generators are being bought up on a colossal scale, by a growing band of companies set up to exploit what is turning out to be a huge “back-up bonanza”.
This is facilitated by the so-called Short-Term Operating Reserve (STOR) and one company quick to take advantage is Green Frog Power 214 Limited. It was originally set up to invest in and develop “new green technologies”, collecting used cooking oil and turning it into “environmentally friendly biofuel” for generating electricity in their own green electricity generators. This electricity was “100 percent renewable” and supplied to Green Energy UK through the National Grid.
But the Poms aren’t eating enough chips and burgers, so future plants will be powered by derdy diesel.
I doubt the capacity of Britain, even including deep-fried Scotland, to produce enough waste vegetable oil (WVO) efficiently to run those earlier blessed devices. Nor do I believe the WVO source to be entirely “renewable”.
The US Navy has 68 vessels powered by Nuclear power. In the case of the Aircraft Carriers there are two nuclear power plants – one to power the propellers and one to service that ship’s facilities but they can assign both to power the ship.. So the crew of an aircraft carrier are living within metres of nuclear power.
There has never been a reported accident in any of the nuclear vessels. I’m not saying there has never been an accident, just that none have been reported.
The UAE has purchased 2 nuclear power plants from the US and I understand they will be delivered by submarine.
I had an interesting conversation with a US naval officer recently and we were discussing the Aircraft carriers as Dubai has a port capable of docking a Carrier plus it’s whole support fleet. He said the published top speed of a carrier is 35 knots yet he says they are capable of 85 knots! Apparently the rooster tail (That is the term they use for water trail from the rear of any fast moving boat) is 30ft high when the Carrier is at top speed using the power of both reactors.
People tell me I’m crazy, but I really think it would be a lot better to put all our nuclear power plants underwater off the coast. It is failsafe engineering. If things go seriously wrong the failsafe is that the reactor automatically floods with sea water. Absolutely no possibility of a Fukishima type meltdown due to an inability to get enough water in there for cooling. Also underwater (so long as it is reasonably deep) is a very safe place to be in the event of a Tsunami.
As long as it is at least 200m under water that’s okay, because during the next ice age global sea levels will drop, and IIRC it has been 90 to 120m lower in past ice ages.
With large enough vertical loops on the primary and secondary cooling circuits you might even get enough passive cooling to not need pumps at all.
But my number one preference, and it may still be infeasible, is for LENR Power to be proven commercially.
I doubt that 15⁰C makes that much difference to the heat exchange. It would prevent them from e.g. sailing to their Pacific ports in summer. While they may not be able to navigate the tropical atolls, the open seas have cool water just below the surface; IIRC, about a metre below gets you cool seawater if there are fathoms below… SCUBA divers should be able to fill you in.
Besides, water is a poor conductor of heat so in order to use the seawater for cooling (through the hull plates or ducted through heat exchangers within), it’s only necessary to increase the flow rate of seawater; probably by carving through the open sea at a greater rate of knots.
Bernd, whose comment are you replying to. I simply reported the facts as stated in accounts of the Russian ice-breaker fleet, of which I jave been doing some reading this year. Just look on Wikipedia even. The largest vessels have several reactors and can never leave Arctic waters.
Ian – I heard it suggested the best way to get rid of nuclear waste is in barrels and dumped in the deepest oceans – even if they leak the radioactivity will slowly merge with the natural radioactivity in the vast oceans.
What about all those Russian warships with nuclear power supposedly pouring radioactivity into the ocean in northern Siberia – haven’t about them for a while.
Ian, I think it is a brilliant idea. Build them on the surface with a ballast system, have an umbilical connection and when finished, tow it out to sea and submerge.
Less shielding, less complicated cooling, self extinguishing in the event of catastrophic failure and hardly any natural catastrophe could harm it. Make all the parts out of plastics and Kevlar reinforced concrete and you’ll have no corrosion.
Precooked fish bubbling up to the surface for homeless boat people as a side benefit.
8 July: Australian: Henry Ergas: Carbon folly comes at a price
GOOD on the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, the $10 billion fund established by Labor’s climate change package. Other government efforts at picking winners end up shafting taxpayers. The CEFC is doing so from the start.
Not that the CEFC has released much information about its maiden “clean” energy project: the refinancing, announced last week, of Victoria’s $1bn Macarthur Wind Farm. But what is known makes intriguing reading… http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/columnists/carbon-folly-comes-at-a-price/story-fn7078da-1226675618444
Hey, y’know pat, they’re going to try it on one way or the other. Never mind the CEFC. If the government can’t raid one vat of cash to pick winners in the marketplace, privatise profits while nationalising losses, and generally steal the citizens’ money for redistributing it to their buddies in business and trade unions, they’ll just go and try to raid another.
Giant super fund manager IFM says political inaction means a massive pool of funds that could be used to build new Australian infrastructure is being left largely untapped.
IFM, which is owned by the 30 big industry super schemes, has about $50 billion worth assets on its books and says it could easily double that if state and federal governments would support investment.
…
He says investing in new infrastructure brings additional risk either through construction or patronage risk. But he says that could be readily mitigated by government guarantees.
…
“So governments need really to use their own balance sheet but also their regulatory powers to come to an agreed level of risk and risk-apportionment so that much more can happen in that space.”
…
He says the super funds could, in theory, end up owning the National Broadband Network (NBN). “Absolutely, they could if it was a proper risk-reward situation where we could see long-term benefit for our members’ retirement, then certainly that could happen,” Mr Weaven said.
…
Mr Weaven has also criticised uncertainty over climate change policy, which he says is impacting on the fund’s ability to expand its renewable energy portfolio. “The uncertainty has certainly crippled the potential new investment. There hasn’t been a lot of recent new investment in renewable energy at all,” he said.
…
“Presumably at some point [the LNP Coalition] will actually come out with some sort of rational policy about bidding for carbon reduction in some way, but it’s all got so complicated now by their insistence that the carbon price must go first that there is a lot of uncertainty.
Trying to decode the kleptocrats is a challenge, but when I read between the lines it goes like this…
Yes the big super funds owned by the trade unions and banks are quite happy to take some money from the taxpayers to start major projects, especially if government use “their regulatory powers to come to an agreed level of risk and risk-apportionment” to ensure the super funds can never lose money from these harebrained schemes because the taxpayer will bail out the scheme if it goes sour – which it more than likely will because the very fact the scheme won’t go ahead without special government protectionism and extra money means it is probably a loser under current normal free market conditions anyway.
Sounds like Solyndra 2.0 is coming to your super fund soon!
As for the network we didn’t know we needed, why exactly did the super funds not get in on the ground floor with that one? Fiduciary prudence perhaps? Now that the losses are nationalised by default they are only too happy to express interest in the NBN!
Are we having fun yet??
8 July: Guardian: John Abraham: Global Warming and Economists – SuperFreakonomics is SuperFreakingWrong
Those who purchased the book SuperFreakonomics are paying to be misled about climate change
My second point is that Dr. Levitt is a university professor who has a duty to society to get things right. We do, and should, hold university faculty to a higher standard than Fox, CNBC, the Wall Street Journal and the Heartland Institute…
Some of the groups with the most skin in the game actually understand what is going on. One excellent example is the reinsurance company Munich Re which made a splash with its climate cost declarations. Another great recent example is the article Race of our Lives by Jeremy Grantham of GMO, a large global investment management firm.
So we can see that while groups pushing an ideology, or professors pushing books, have trouble with even basic climate science, those investing real money often have a better track record of understanding the risks we face as we continue to warm the globe. Let’s hope that we listen soon enough to do something about it. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2013/jul/08/climate-change-superfreakonomics-superfreakingwrong
***they call this RESEARCH, yet it’s based on acceptance of the CAGW scam!
8 July: NZ Herald: Jamie Morton: $10m freeze on global warming
The Government has proposed cutting $10 million in funding for climate change research in a move described as disheartening for New Zealand’s highly capable climate scientists…
***The contestable grants were used to finance research by tertiary institutions and government agencies on adapting to climate change, reducing emissions and creating carbon sinks, and tapping into business opportunities which arise from climate change…
Green Party climate change spokesman Kennedy Graham said New Zealand had some of the best climate scientists in the world.
“This Government believes that it can hide behind a fig-leaf of indifference from the New Zealand public.
“It thinks the public won’t notice, and if they do, they’ll think the public doesn’t care – wrong on both counts.”
The funding changes will be decided by Cabinet. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10895428
so much outrage & constant MSM coverage over the Murdoch hacking of “CELEBRITIES” whose “FAME” had been manufactured by the Murdoch media in the first place, yet no outrage over the following:
Hilarious spat between Watching The Deniers and WattsUpWithThat.
It started when Watching The Deniers falsely accused Anthony Watts of photoshopping Sea Ice graphs – the following is a screenshot of the original post (disclaimer – physically 2 screenshots which I pasted together, because it was too long for me to capture with one screenshot).
Since then, as Anthony applied pressure, Mike of Watching The Deniers has grudgingly applied minor edits to his false accusation, trying IMO to get away with as little as possible by way of amendment or apology.
There is a followup – apparently Mike Mariot thinks that his compliance with Anthony Watts’ demands is comparable to being a member of The Thin Red Line – the 93rd Highland Regiment at the Battle of Balaclava (1854)
Apparently I am also to be punished for my crime of alerting the target of a lie to the publication of the lie – obviously a serious misdemeanour in communities of climate alarmists, at least when the target of the lie is a “denier”.
Perhaps I should find some utterly inappropriate historic episode of suffering to illustrate my hurt feelings, say Spartacus defying the might of Rome. If I was an alarmist I could keep a straight face as I explained the parallel between my exile from a blog and an epic historical event.
…….here we go again.
The latest comment aligns the ‘Climate Change Deniers’ label with HIV/AIDS deniers!
Does anyone here actually deny that the climate changes?
Yup – looks like I’ve been banned from there also – I started writing about the sea ice extent and the total loss of sea ice that hasn’t occurred then I asked myself – why am I posting here? I might as well go and post at Deltoid if I really want to waste my time.
But Eric; you dobbed him in! 😉 You might remember seeing similar behaviour in your early childhood.
Marriott appears to be one very confused man. He argues his point of view vociferously with recourse to prejudice, ad hiominem attacks, arguments from authority and his wilful ignorance of the subject matter to justify his actions.
sheer hypocrisy from CFMEU. why have they supported CAGW if they’re concerned about losses of jobs in the coal industry?
9 July: ABC PM: Plan to privatise Yancoal raises concerns about coal industry
Ian Murray from the mining union, the CFMEU, says it’s worrying when miners extend job cuts beyond contractors and start firing their own workers.
IAN MURRAY: This industry has increased the use of contractors over the last decade or so and when they start to get beyond the contractors and into their core workforce that’s very much a worrying sign for us…
PAT MCGRATH: Ian Murray believes the speed of the price drop has taken some mining companies by surprise, and workers haven’t been kept properly informed about the industry’s problems.
IAN MURRAY: Their level of consultation with stakeholders, including ourselves, has been extremely limited… http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2013/s3799431.htm
“Zombie” CO2 projects on the rise as CDM hits 7,000
LONDON, July 9 (Reuters Point Carbon) – A U.N. programme to channel climate finance to poor nations said it approved its 7,000th greenhouse gas-cutting installation last week, but warnings of “zombie projects” and more companies pulling out of the struggling scheme made the number appear increasingly irrelevant… http://www.pointcarbon.com/news/1.2453540
EU carbon dips 1.7 pct as allocation delay deters buying
LONDON, July 9 (Reuters Point Carbon) – EU carbon prices dipped 1.7 percent on Tuesday as traders said uncertainty over how many permits will be handed out this year was discouraging buyers and dragging down prices… http://www.pointcarbon.com/news/1.2453692?&ref=searchlist
9 July: SMH: Jonathan Swan: Market system best to reduce emissions: Turnbull
Coalition frontbencher Malcolm Turnbull has characterised his party’s climate change policy as ”short term” and says he hopes the world moves to a market-based mechanism to reduce emissions.
But Mr Turnbull, who has previously described Tony Abbott’s Direct Action policy as ”a con” and lost his leadership of the Liberal Party in 2009 due to his support for an emissions trading scheme, chose his words carefully while appearing on the ABC’s Q&A program on Monday night.
”I will support the collective wisdom of the party room,” Mr Turnbull said.
”The big difference between our [climate change] policy … is that it is not designed to go any further than 2020. So it is not a long-term policy.”…
Both Mr Albanese and Mr Turnbull agreed that the most efficient way to reduce carbon dioxide emissions over the long term was to implement a market-based scheme.
”I hope, I imagine, that is where the world will get to,” Mr Turnbull said.
Asked whether he would join Mr Abbott in campaigning to repeal an emissions trading scheme, Mr Turnbull admitted ”there would be more convincing advocates”.
Opposition Leader Tony Abbott said he thought that Mr Turnbull “did a very very good job on Q&A last night” but he contradicted Mr Turnbull’s view that the world was moving in the direction of carbon pricing.
“As I’ve always said, the world is moving away from carbon taxes and emission trading scheme, not towards it,” Mr Abbott said.
“The world is moving towards the kind of Direct Action measures that the Coalition has long been proposing.”…
On Tuesday, shadow treasurer Joe Hockey suggested the Coalition was open to considering an emissions trading scheme if the circumstances were right.
“If the world comes together in pricing carbon across their whole economies, then Australia stands prepared to look at joining them,” Mr Hockey said…
Mr Turnbull said it was probably ”harsh” of him to have described Mr Abbott’s Direct Action policy as a ”con” in a 2009 opinion piece for Fairfax Media. In the same article, Mr Turnbull said the Liberal Party was ”currently led by people whose conviction on climate change is that it is ‘crap’ and you don’t need to do anything about it”.
The Direct Action policy, Mr Turnbull said then, was ”an environmental figleaf to cover a determination to do nothing”… http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/market-system-best-to-reduce-emissions-turnbull-20130709-2pn12.html
8 July: ABC: Q&A: Transcript
DANIEL SKEHAN:…With the Rudd Government’s plan to move to an ETS and the Coalition’s policy being to scrap it, what would your position be?
MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, I’m part of the team and we have a collective policy.
ANTHONY ALBANESE: You’re not.
MALCOLM TURNBULL: You know how politics works. And we have a different climate change policy. We have the same target, that is to reduce our emissions by 5% from 2000 levels by 2020…
TONY JONES: Well, hang on a sec. Well, to bring an emissions trading scheme forward by at least a year, let’s say. If that happens, then Tony Abbott won’t be repealing a carbon tax, he will be repealing or attempting to repeal an emissions trading scheme. Would you support that?
MALCOLM TURNBULL: I will support the collective wisdom of the party room.
MALCOLM TURNBULL: So you would help campaign for the repeal of an emissions trading scheme?
MALCOLM TURNBULL: There would be more convincing advocates but I would certainly – I will certainly – you know, you’ve got to – look, I have a track record there. I mean, you know, I have been a very strong advocate of market-based mechanisms.
***I have to say, however, being very honest – frank about it, that emissions trading schemes to date have worked better in theory than in practice. The over-allocation in Europe has really been something of a disaster in terms of the emissions trading scheme there…
TONY JONES: So have you reformed your personal view about emissions trading schemes?
MALCOLM TURNBULL: No. I think if you want to reduce your emissions over the very long-term, by which I mean, you know, 50 years or something, then you are going to have to have a long-term, market-based price on carbon and that may well be – I imagine that is where the world will get to. I might be wrong. To date emissions trading schemes, as I say, have worked better in theory than in practice…
BILL LEAK: I was just wondering about how you feel about the concept of the green army, Malcolm? I mean, I am imagining Field Marshal Abbott and Brigadier General Turnbull. I would have thought amassing a green army, you know, people armed to the back teeth with shovels and pitch forks. That would be fraught with danger, wouldn’t it? …
TONY JONES: How many will there be?
MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, it is 15,000 but I think it will be…
BILL LEAK: What if you get a mutiny? The ADF has only got about 20,000 people…
TONY JONES: There’s a couple of questions. Will they be getting the basic wage.
MALCOLM TURNBULL: I am not sure what the remuneration arrangements…
CORINNE GRANT: It is $400 a week. It’s $400 a week.
MALCOLM TURNBULL: Look, I’m sure they’ll be adequately paid…
MIRIAM LYONS: Malcolm is right, the push to renewables has largely been driver by the rate but the carbon price has also played a part. It does seem to be working and, you know, I can certainly see why you are looking at changing it so that Tony Abbott can’t use the word tax anymore. But, you know, let’s look at the bigger pictures here for a moment. You know, the Coalition policy on climate change has rightly been criticised and you are probably rightly uncomfortable with the holes that are in it…
MIRIAM LYONS: …But we are in a situation right now where the Climate Commission has told us that 80% of fossil fuels have to remain in the ground in order to prevent runaway climate change. You know, the International Energy Agency, is a very conservative international body, told us, I think almost two years ago now, that we only had five years before we had to stop building coal-fired power plants in order to prevent runaway global warming. So in that context, a bipartisan 5% emissions reduction target really just tells us how unambitious that target is when, you know, you’ve got a party leader on one side of that bipartisan position who used to say that climate change is crap…
TONY JONES: Okay. I’m going to leave it there because we’ve got a little time left to go to a couple of other questions…
MALCOLM TURNBULL: …Barack Obama gave a great speech about climate change recently. A lot of initiatives, an Emissions Trading Scheme is not part of them. The measures he announced are more like the Coalition’s policies, in fact…
TONY JONES: Okay. We are nearly out of time. I’ll go to Anthony Albanese to wind up and the concept there that Tony Abbott is Australia’s Barack Obama.
ANTHONY ALBANESE: Barack Obama certainly doesn’t think so. If you have a look at what he’s had to say about climate change, it’s very different from Tony Abbott. It’s much more in line with what Malcolm’s real views are and with what my views are… http://www.abc.net.au/tv/qanda/txt/s3783606.htm#transcript
Has anyone noticed: Skeptics such as Anthony Watts have talked about UHI for years, but the ‘consensus’ ignored it- but now they are pointing to UHI as a factor, and claiming skeptics have always denied it.
164
UHI is damaging to the consensus position.
Why would they now point it out?
Why would they suggest that we denied its existence?
That doesn’t make sense, at all.
Unless, of course, they now realise that the submarine is sinking, and they are fighting to get to the torpedo tubes … ?
102
I always used UHI but there was a rep-war around these parts two decades back and ever since Ive had to make do with Pritt.
20
They’ve spent so long in the conning tower.
150
Dear Sir, you win the Internet today. I LOL’d.
30
I just gotta agree with Andrew – that is a superb punch line!
20
Couldn’t have done it without the cue.
10
some breaking news today on the policy front….
Abbott to reveal red tape reduction plan:
Crikey, is there hope yet that the Libs will prove me wrong?
60
… And $2.2b will be allocated, in the next financial year, for the establishment of a new Department to oversee the reduction in spending … ‘Cos that’s how things get done 🙂
20
1913: 134°F in Death Valley, CA
This week, on July 10th, it’s the 100th anniversary of the hottest day on earth.
That’s a big deal because if we’d been in a century of runaway hockey stick warming that record should have been broken time and time again. But the record stands.
Their “data” shows out of control warming for a century. But the data is more easily manipulated than individual temperature stations, and zero stations across the planet have surpassed the 1913 record.
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The lowest spot in Death Valley regularly exceeds 120° F (~ 49° C) in the summer and gets near or to 130 (~ 54° C) quite often. So that hottest day doesn’t exceed normal experience by enough to qualify as extreme weather in my humble (or maybe not so humble) opinion.
When I ask someone who’s claiming record high temperatures where and when the record was recorded and how much the prior record was exceeded, I never get an answer. That tells me something.
Do visit Death Valley though if you haven’t already been there. It’s spectacular and beautiful with much to see. But go in the winter. The Furnace Creek Inn boasts the only swimming pool I know of that doesn’t need chlorinated water. They have a natural hot spring that provides enough water for the entire Inn plus the Furnace Creek Ranch a little lower down the valley and still replaces the water in a large swimming pool often enough that chlorination isn’t required. It’s the best swimming ever and warm enough for even a chilly winter day. The pool is open to both guests of the Inn and the Ranch. The Inn is a 4-star resort with a gourmet dining room too.
20
We just had a “historic” heatwave on the west coast that Drudge headlined for days like it was the apocalypse, and the highest we got was 128.
The point is that in a hundred years of straight up hockey stick warming that 1913 record should have been broken, in Death Valley or elsewhere. But no.
And this is despite apparent monkey business and urban heat effects (asphalt parking lot, buildings) near the monitor: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/06/30/it-seems-noaa-has-de-modernized-the-official-death-valley-station-to-use-older-equipment-to-make-a-record-more-likely/
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I like how the latest weather station is sitting right in front of a chainmesh fence… Yep, they are definitely going for a new “record”.
20
Those Capuchin monkeys have a pool like that. I dont know where exactly. Somewhere in Japan…The Cspuchin monastary maybe….(;-) They sit around in it all day surrounded by snow. Cheeky feckers. Well, according to the BBC, so take that with a sack of salt.
Hottest I experinced outdoors was 116F in some place up a mountain outside Sydney. 1975 I believe.
10
Egypt.
All this crap about “the country’s first democratically elected…” bollox.
Its the usual azdholes saying it (BBC et al). So Adolf Hitler was democratically elected. As was Morsis mate Obama. Evidence enough of the limits of democracy.
Ive never been a fan of democracy (an invention of slave owning pederasts in bathrobes). Roman rule was mmore my thing, but they say democracy is just the least bad of systems. And you cannot improve on one man one vote (once, in the case of an Islamic society). And quis custodiat and all that. BUT there is one very simple law that would improve our electoral systems immensely. For a politician to reneg on a promise made during election should be made a criminal offence and disqualify them from holding office. Very simple, very equitable, very little custodiat quissing involvd.
There should be a petition for it. I wont be signing though. If democracy is your bag, you improve it.
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RIP 42 students and teachers Victims of the Religion of “Peace” Slaughtered for the crime of Seeking an Education.
40
Dont forget the 100,000 slaughtered every year for the crime of being a Christian.
Future historians may regard this age as the Slow Holocaust.
41
Actually Hitler was never really elected. The National Socialist German Workers Party polled fewer votes in the 1932 election than they did in 1931 but the moribund President Hindenburg was persuaded to include them in a coalition government led by Hitler with only two other Nazis in the twelve-man cabinet. The NSDAP then completed an internal coup by means of threats, bribery, blackmail, and extreme violence.
Hitler was never fairly elected by a democratic system. That’s a myth.
30
Yes…exactly like the British SDLP party (even sounds like NSDAP) which polled fewer votes than ever before and has ever since been co-rulers of the UK with the the other minority polling party, the Tories. Not so different is it really? And the point is, it was the electoral system that put the NAZIs in power (however it was used or exploited)…their earlier attempts at a coup had failed miserably.
00
Sounds like JULIARS election fortunately Juliar didn’t manage to kill as many as Adolf.Not for want of trying. $200.000+ for being a liar and a failure is a good deal.<:)
00
Can anyone help me with a query I have had in my mind for some time? The question in which I am interested is, ‘What is the theoretical global warming potential of a molecule of water vapour?’ …. And, ‘What is this theoretical global warming potential expressed in terms of a CO2 equivalent?’
This question has arisen for me because I have been interested in the issue of farm livestock and the assertion that is continually made that livestock emit an inordinate amount of global warming gases. Cattle and sheep get vilified on the basis of the methane they emit and those doing the vilifying always cite the global warming potential of the methane molecule when doing the vilification. In my book, ‘Should meat be on the menu?’ I have pointed out that, for various reasons, and despite the fact that the methane molecule has a theoretical global warming potential of 23, 25, or 77 times that of the carbon dioxide molecule, the livestock industry is ‘not guilty’ of the huge global warming input of which it is accused. (The actual multiple jumps around a bit depending on various assumptions about how you do the maths.)
The whole process led me, one day, to idly ponder what was the global warming potential of an H2O molecule. After all, there is so much of it in the atmosphere. I have, however, experienced difficulty in finding an answer. Can anyone shed some light on this for me. … and, maybe, another question. ‘Is the result important or not?’
10
There is plenty of observational evidence that water causes cooling.
1. The tropics get the most sunlight and should therefore be the hottest parts of the earth but they are not because they are mostly very wet places.
2. Tropical thunderstorms act as air conditioners and keep things cooler.
3. Comparisons between the temperature records of two cities at similar latitudes and elevations show that the city with the wetter climate is cooler.
4. The hottest paces on earth are the dry desserts in the temperate lattitudes.
5. The highest temperatues are recorded during long dry periods (eg Australia and California).
10
Air with water vapour has a higher specific heat than dry air. The greater the humidity, the more heat energy it can absorb for a given change in temperature. That’s down to the specific heat of water being high.
The air cools the surface that has been or is being warmed by the sun. Humid air’s ability to absorb heat for a lower temperature rise also means that it’s more effective at removing heat from the surface; and storing it in the water vapour in the air.
The real “magic trick” of water in the atmosphere is that of condensation, which, especially at altitude results in “bursts” of radiation of the heat previously stored in the water, from the surface of the droplets as they condense. The very cold droplets fall through warmer air, removing heat from it. The droplets sometimes don’t even reach the ground as precipitation (“virga”) but their evaporation or sublimation removes heat from the surrounding air.
Nobody can successfully model the “heat engine” of the water cycle within the climate system. There will always be too many unknowns. Phase changes which are critical to the operation of the engine are dominated by boundary conditions that are in practice, indeterminate. They can be known, but not well enough to fully define the state of the system. (Blame it on Heisenberg.)
40
Higher humidity air also has the properties of:
-needing a lot more energy to heat than drier air;
-taking much longer to release energy, keeping nights and winters warmer when humidity is higher;
-as the energy is released, clouds can form, further reflecting incoming sunlight and cooling days, and also warming nights.
The most under rated and over worked greenhouse gas!
Ken
10
Peter C & others cover the H2O issues. The methane vilification has been demonstrated to be way over the top.
(Here is Oz cattle & sheep have professional PR, unlike the less fortunate feral camels.)
I’ll see if I can find the relevant study – if interested, email me on troppo19 at gmail.com.
00
Prof debunks flatulence as major cause of global warming
“In 2006, the United Nations concluded that the livestock industry was a big contributor to climate change.
In its report “Livestock’s Long Shadow,” the U.N. concluded that livestock were contributing 18 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases — allegedly more than the entire world’s transpiration.
Mitloehner convinced the U.N. to recant its claim in 2010.”
.
UN admits flaw in report on meat and climate change
.
Don’t Blame Cows for Climate Change
“Despite oft-repeated claims by sources ranging from the United Nations to music star Paul McCartney, it is simply not true that consuming less meat and dairy products will help stop climate change, …”
UC Davis Associate Professor and Air Quality Specialist Frank Mitloehner says that McCartney and the chair of the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ignored science last week when they launched a European campaign called “Less Meat = Less Heat.”
00
More meat=more cattle farts + fewer Man farts.
Less meat=less cattle fartage + more Mccartney / veggie Farting
Net result exactly the same. The euations are reciprocal, commutative or however mathmaticians put it.
Flippantly put but seriously true.
As Ive said before, I simply dont believe that pillock McCartney is the same guy who wrote those really timeless and classic songs. McLennon is more likely the truth. Will he fess up on his death bed.
10
He’ll make a fool of everyone.
00
As some wag said after the passing of Harrison, “All we have left is the “B” sides.
.
McCartney & Pachauri weren’t the only ones ignoring the science.
When the Australian greenLaboUr government invested (taxpayer) $9M+ into Henbury Farm, scientific advice was also ignored or omitted.
Rod Simms, chairmen of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, charged with POLICING “gouging” in carbon markets, was privy to investing in Henbury Farm.
To date, Henbury Farm has NOT produced ONE carbon credit.
Will Simms now use the ACCC to pursue the Australian government on behalf of Australian tax payers?
Will Simms present the science of Mitloehner as evidence of lack of due diligence and mis-leading climate science by the Australian Government when investing tax payer dollars, leading to fraud?
Or is chasing Brumbys more important?
.
This stinks and needs lawful investigation.
30
I think Steve Cougan (aka Alan Partridge) quipped:
“Wings. The band The Beatles could have been.”
00
Very seldom mentioned fact: A lot of methane is produced by growing rice.
10
In fact the methane from rice paddies vastly outweighs that from cows (look it up). Yet the eating of meat is quite commonly demonized as harming the planet while rice is never mentioned. Do I detect a vegetarian agenda?
(lewandowsky bait)
… a secret vegetarian plot to take over the world …
40
David,
Here is a good article on how it works
http://www.ams.org/notices/201110/rtx111001421p.pdf
It is a little heavy in some areas but you can see how the Hydrogen atom enables the molecule (CH4 and H2O) to react to IR in multiple ways whereas the CO2 molecule does not hence why they are much stronger GHG’s than CO2 is. The article has a AGW slant but the physics are good.
Here is one for the warmbots out there, as Al Gore once famously said “its complicated” so here is the dumbed down version for you
http://spaceplace.nasa.gov/gumdrops/
What is the CO2e of water vapour? Good question, i am sure there is an answer out there some where but good luck finding it, this sort of info is hidden as it would expose the scam for what it is.
I think we have enough info to do a rough calculation:
CO2 ~ 0.0400% CO2E of 1
CH4 ~ 0.00017% CO2E of 25 effectively 0.00425 of CO2
N2O ~ 0.00003% CO2E of 298 effectively 0.00894 of CO2
H2O ~ 0.25% (globally) CO2E ? However to at best match the affects of CO2 then its CO2E would have to be 0.16. Obviously this figure is absurd.
Let me know if you find the CO2E of H2O as i would be very interested
Cheers
30
This GWP contribution seems relevant to a statement Monckton once made.
When I sat through a 2-hour long Monckton monologue and had heard most of it before, the bits I remembered most are the personal anecdotes and lesser known trivia.
He mentioned it was an odd coincidence that the same year that Putin got his work gangs to finish patching up the numerous holes in the trans-Siberian gas pipeline (~2001) was also the year the global warming stopped. He mused somewhat rhetorically about whether the leaking methane and butane had been the cause of a chunk of the warming.
If the GWP of CH4 is 0.004 of CO2 and even CO2 has been overestimated, well I think that pretty much lays to rest any suggestion that the Siberian gas leaks made any detectable difference to global warming.
Now on the other hand… the pipeline enabled large quantities of a weak GHG to be converted into large quantities of a gas 235 times stronger… ]:-> (ducking and running…)
No, the net non-effect is getting fairly obvious.
20
Apparently, experiments by Hottel 1954 and Leckner 1971, and others, have shown that the emissivity/absorptivity of water vapour at a concentration of 5% and temperature of 306K is 0.4. Meanwhile the maximum total emissivity/absorptivity of CO2 is ~0.003, making water vapour about 120 times more efficient at absorbing radiation than CO2. See ‘Nasif Nahle: Determination of the total emissivity of a mixture of gases’ and ‘Nasif Nahle: A response to Joe Bastardi’s comments on AGW’.
00
Can I ask for some people to review something I have been working on?
I have noticed an anomaly between studies of polar ice melt and the rate of sea level rise. Various studies claim that polar ice is melting an accelerating rate. But the standard satellite measure of sea level rise shows a roughly constant at 3.2mm per year since 1993.
I have looked at one such study Rignot et. al 2011.
My very tentative findings are
1. The claim total ice melt contribution over 18 years (1993-2011) to sea level rise went from 0 to 2.4mm, or 0% to 75% of the average sea level rise of 3.2mm. Polar ice melt went from 0 to 1.8mm, the rest from other ice masses
2. The calculations appear contrived, including the error bars.
3. There might be no long-term sign long-term in the rate of sea ice melt, but there is in the large swings in short-term ice melt. Although there is a lag of 2 to 3 years between the melt and the rise in sea levels, there shape of the graphs are very similar. There is no “smudging” which would normally be expected with a time-lag.
4. Rather than smudging, due to a time-lag, the impact of sea ice melt seems to be amplified a number of times.
These results rely on my calculations, and need critical checking. Particularly on point 4. My findings are at http://manicbeancounter.com/2013/07/02/rignot-et-al-2011-on-ice-sheet-melt-acceleration-reconciling-with-sea-level-rise/
20
MBC,
For “Polar ice melt” are you referring to North Pole ice melt or South Pole ice melt?
I was not aware of any evidence of any significant South Pole ice melt, so that leaves us with North Pole ice melt.
Most of the North Pole ice is sea ice, which you refer to in point 3.
Sea ice has already affected sea levels due to displacement. Whether it melts or not is irrelvant to sea levels.
60
I am referring to both Greenland and Antarctica ice melt. From the abstract of Rignot et al 2011:-
I made a mistake in referring to sea ice melt. The first sentence of point 3 should read.
00
This could be the most important post from Steve McIntyre since he and Ross McKitrick exposed the Mann HS fraud.
http://climateaudit.org/2013/07/07/treeline-changes-and-altitude-inhomogeneity/#more-18069
Treeline elevations in the polar urals shows a much warmer MWP and a complete absence of trees during the LIA up until about 1900.
Later studies shows treelines at 430 metres not the 300 metres as stated by Briffa. These con merchants try to disguise and hide data whenever they can just to extend their CAGW fraud as long as possible.
90
My limited understanding is that treeline altitude is dependent on CO2 availability.
But trees are a poor proxy for anything in particular; except trees. Their growth and propagation depends on many limiting factors.
60
BF the important point is that elevation reduces temp and it is well known that in warmer periods trees can grow at much higher altitudes and in cooler periods like the LIA they vanish at those higher now cooler elevations.
This time they vanished for many centuries until about 1900.
This is well known in other areas like the Rockie mountains for example.
10
Boreal forests in e.g. Finland get much colder in winter than alpine heights in continental Europe. So I suspect that temperature isn’t generally the governing factor.
I noticed in my wanderings that the treeline in the European Alps is way lower than where summertime temperatures are continuously above freezing; even at night. Daytime temperatures on a mountainside easily exceed 20⁰C in summer. It’s cooler below the treeline due to the shade of the trees.
20
8 July: Australian: Sid Maher/Lauren Wilson: 1000 jobs lost in pink batt industry
Insulation Council of Australia chief executive Dennis D’Arcy said the home insulation industry had contracted by 20 to 25 per cent from its level before the creation of the scheme, which was closed after four deaths and a political storm over dodgy installations…
Rueben Barnes, 16, Matthew Fuller, 25, and Mitchell Sweeney, 22, died while installing insulation in Queensland. Marcus Wilson, 19, was killed doing similar work in Sydney…
The Home Insulation Program was also blamed for more than 220 house fires, more than 1000 potentially electrified roofs and 240,000 dangerous or sub-standard insulation jobs, with the cost blowing out by $1 billion more than the original budget of $2.45bn…
Mr D’Arcy said the industry had grown from about 5000 people to about 10,000 at the height of the scheme. Many of the new entrants had no experience — and these operators had been responsible for the program’s problems…
Three years after the program closed, hundreds of insulation businesses had been financially ruined, Mr Gibson said.
“Not only have they been left with insurmountable debts, but their businesses have been made worthless by the HIP, and in many cases they have lost their life savings,” he said.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/jobs-lost-in-pink-batt-industry/story-e6frg6n6-1226675639770
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8 July: Australian: Harry Edwards: Protests stop wind farm plan
A LARGE wind farm proposed for near Goulburn in NSW has been shelved after protests from local landholders including Maurice Newman, the former head of the Australian Securities Exchange who has been anointed to chair a new business advisory council if the Coalition wins this year’s federal election.
The planning application for the 100-turbine Golspie wind farm, lodged by renewable energy developer Wind Prospect CWP, lapsed last week, with the company citing “wind resource, land security and grid connection issues”.
Mr Newman, who opposes wind farms and has pledged to lobby against subsidies for them, argues that fluctuations in output from renewable energy sources have increased power costs for consumers by requiring the construction of expensive backup generators…
In January Tony Abbott announced that Mr Newman — appointed by the Howard government to chair the ABC — was his choice to head a new business advisory council for a Coalition government…
“The cost of energy was a comparative advantage for Australia, which offset the relatively higher wage rates of our population,” Mr Newman told The Australian yesterday. “That benefit has been squandered and you can’t underestimate the role of renewable energy behind that lack of competitiveness.
“What the present government has done is decide we should make Australia less competitive by lifting the price of electricity.
“Therefore, if there is a change of government, I’m sure that any business council that I chair will be of a mind to restore Australia’s international competitiveness.”
Labor’s Renewable Energy Target aims to have 20 per cent of electricity generated from renewable sources by 2020. The Coalition intends to review the RET next year if it wins the election, and could rely on Mr Newman’s advice to scrap the target…
Local councillor Malcolm Barlow said Wind Prospect CWP was concerned that a Coalition government would make wind farms uneconomic. “I think the reason (the application) has lapsed, given the upcoming election, is the Coalition is going to review the renewable energy target system and carbon tax,” Mr Barlow said.
He said he strongly opposed wind farms because they were uneconomic, relying on a subsidy of up to $3 million a year per turbine.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/climate/protests-stop-wind-farm-plan/story-e6frg6xf-1226675644019
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13 June: Guardian: Lenore Taylor: Top Abbott business adviser wants renewables target scrapped
Maurice Newman, chairman of Coalition’s proposed business advisory council, doubts scientific case for global warming
The chairman of Tony Abbott’s proposed business advisory council, Maurice Newman, has called for the renewable energy target (RET) to be scrapped because he believes the scientific evidence for global warming and the economic case for renewable energy no longer stack up.
Newman, the former chairman of the ABC and the ASX, said persisting with government subsidies for renewable energy represented a “crime against the people” because higher energy costs hit poorer households the hardest and there was no longer any logical reason to have them.
Newman acknowledged Coalition policy was to retain the current target to generate 20% of renewable energy by 2020, but told Guardian Australia in his opinion “the whole science on which this is based is somewhat in tatters”…
The Coalition resources spokesman, Ian Macfarlane, says the Coalition supports windfarms and the policy aims to allay community fears and provide transparent information. But many Coalition MPs want to see the RET scrapped and new windfarms banned…
Last January Newman wrote in the Spectator that windfarms were “grossly inefficient, extremely expensive, socially inequitable, a danger to human health, environmentally harmful, divisive for communities, a blot on the landscape, and don’t even achieve the purpose for which they were designed – namely the reliable generation of electricity and the reduction of CO2 emissions”.
Abbott has said the prime minister’s Business Advisory Council, to be chaired by Newman, would meet three times a year.
Newman said he imagined it would be similar to the financial sector advisory committee he chaired under the Howard government, which had a secretariat in the treasury…
As well as health and landscape concerns, members of the Crookwell Landscape Guardians at the meeting were concerned that “electro magnetic electricity” could be transferred from windfarms through the air and the ground, possibly causing failures of farm machinery and the danger of electric shocks from farm bores…
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/12/abbott-business-adviser-renewables-target
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From the Guardian? I’m amazed. Thanks for this post – things are looking up!
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“…the danger of electric shocks from farm bores…”
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Today I learned from rural busybodies that wind turbines are giant dangerous Tesla coils.
Yah! If only!
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Planetary surface temperatures have very little to do with incident radiation. At the base of the theoretical troposphere of Uranus it is about 320K but virtually no Solar radiation reaches down through 350Km of its atmosphere to that altitude.
The Sun cannot heat the surfaces of planets like Earth and Venus to the observed temperatures with direct radiation. So it doesn’t matter how much the atmosphere slows cooling if we can’t explain how the temperature gets to 288K on Earth or 730K on Venus before any such cooling begins.
In fact it is energy from the Sun which does the warming by first heating the atmosphere with incident radiation. That absorbed energy then disturbs the thermodynamic equilibrium and this leads to convective heat transfer down towards the surface. In physics “convective heat transfer” can comprise diffusion as well as advection, but advection is not necessary. We don’t need to explain such heat transfer by imagining air moving up or down. We need to understand the process described in the Second Law of Thermodynamics, as in Sections 4 to 9 here.
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When I go to pick up a sheet of half inch steel that’s been sitting outside in the sunshine I need to make sure I am wearing gloves, otherwise I will burn my hands. I know that its that hot because the sun is shining on it, not because of convective heat transfer.
Sorry, but you are seriously misguided there sonny.
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Offshore Circus
The Economist reports White elephants seen in North Sea, delving into the huge mess of trying to meet unrealistic expectations in Germany’s transition to renewable energy sources Energiewende (or, more appropriately; Energiewunde; energy wound.) iIt illustrates that technical difficulties cannot be overcome merely by throwing more (of other peoples’) money into the project.
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A piece of the puzzle is provided by EU Referendum
But the Poms aren’t eating enough chips and burgers, so future plants will be powered by derdy diesel.
I doubt the capacity of Britain, even including deep-fried Scotland, to produce enough waste vegetable oil (WVO) efficiently to run those earlier blessed devices. Nor do I believe the WVO source to be entirely “renewable”.
Read the rest of the article at the link.
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Do you think Australia could do with one of these ?
http://rt.com/news/floating-nuclear-plant-russia-759/
The Russians , Chinese and Indians will be streets ahead of the rest of the world in energy production technology within 10-15 years.
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The US Navy has 68 vessels powered by Nuclear power. In the case of the Aircraft Carriers there are two nuclear power plants – one to power the propellers and one to service that ship’s facilities but they can assign both to power the ship.. So the crew of an aircraft carrier are living within metres of nuclear power.
There has never been a reported accident in any of the nuclear vessels. I’m not saying there has never been an accident, just that none have been reported.
The UAE has purchased 2 nuclear power plants from the US and I understand they will be delivered by submarine.
I had an interesting conversation with a US naval officer recently and we were discussing the Aircraft carriers as Dubai has a port capable of docking a Carrier plus it’s whole support fleet. He said the published top speed of a carrier is 35 knots yet he says they are capable of 85 knots! Apparently the rooster tail (That is the term they use for water trail from the rear of any fast moving boat) is 30ft high when the Carrier is at top speed using the power of both reactors.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_ClI3EjQTs
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People tell me I’m crazy, but I really think it would be a lot better to put all our nuclear power plants underwater off the coast. It is failsafe engineering. If things go seriously wrong the failsafe is that the reactor automatically floods with sea water. Absolutely no possibility of a Fukishima type meltdown due to an inability to get enough water in there for cooling. Also underwater (so long as it is reasonably deep) is a very safe place to be in the event of a Tsunami.
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Soooo basically…. the Great Barrier Reactor.
As long as it is at least 200m under water that’s okay, because during the next ice age global sea levels will drop, and IIRC it has been 90 to 120m lower in past ice ages.
With large enough vertical loops on the primary and secondary cooling circuits you might even get enough passive cooling to not need pumps at all.
But my number one preference, and it may still be infeasible, is for LENR Power to be proven commercially.
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some of the Russian nuclear ice-breakers rely on cold water around the hull for cooling. They are incapable of sailing south into warmer waters.
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How about a floating reactor
http://www.fromthetrenchesworldreport.com/worlds-first-floating-nuclear-power-plant-to-begin-operating-in-russia-in-2016/49961
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I doubt that 15⁰C makes that much difference to the heat exchange. It would prevent them from e.g. sailing to their Pacific ports in summer. While they may not be able to navigate the tropical atolls, the open seas have cool water just below the surface; IIRC, about a metre below gets you cool seawater if there are fathoms below… SCUBA divers should be able to fill you in.
Besides, water is a poor conductor of heat so in order to use the seawater for cooling (through the hull plates or ducted through heat exchangers within), it’s only necessary to increase the flow rate of seawater; probably by carving through the open sea at a greater rate of knots.
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Bernd, whose comment are you replying to. I simply reported the facts as stated in accounts of the Russian ice-breaker fleet, of which I jave been doing some reading this year. Just look on Wikipedia even. The largest vessels have several reactors and can never leave Arctic waters.
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Nothing here Ace about any nuclear icebreakers being limited by sea water temperature. Got anything more precise than “Wikipedia” and “accounts of”?
I don’t do Russian but the English-language pages of the operators don’t mention any such limitations as to service areas.
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Ian – I heard it suggested the best way to get rid of nuclear waste is in barrels and dumped in the deepest oceans – even if they leak the radioactivity will slowly merge with the natural radioactivity in the vast oceans.
What about all those Russian warships with nuclear power supposedly pouring radioactivity into the ocean in northern Siberia – haven’t about them for a while.
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Just send it to China.
Most “recycling” waste is sent there.
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Ian, I think it is a brilliant idea. Build them on the surface with a ballast system, have an umbilical connection and when finished, tow it out to sea and submerge.
Less shielding, less complicated cooling, self extinguishing in the event of catastrophic failure and hardly any natural catastrophe could harm it. Make all the parts out of plastics and Kevlar reinforced concrete and you’ll have no corrosion.
Precooked fish bubbling up to the surface for homeless boat people as a side benefit.
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Well, well, well is this a positive or negative feed back?
http://www.csiro.au/Portals/Media/Deserts-greening-from-rising-CO2.aspx
Also just for kicks, life can live in the most inhospitable places
http://rt.com/news/lake-vostok-bacteria-dna-745/
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8 July: Australian: Henry Ergas: Carbon folly comes at a price
GOOD on the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, the $10 billion fund established by Labor’s climate change package. Other government efforts at picking winners end up shafting taxpayers. The CEFC is doing so from the start.
Not that the CEFC has released much information about its maiden “clean” energy project: the refinancing, announced last week, of Victoria’s $1bn Macarthur Wind Farm. But what is known makes intriguing reading…
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/columnists/carbon-folly-comes-at-a-price/story-fn7078da-1226675618444
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Hey, y’know pat, they’re going to try it on one way or the other. Never mind the CEFC. If the government can’t raid one vat of cash to pick winners in the marketplace, privatise profits while nationalising losses, and generally steal the citizens’ money for redistributing it to their buddies in business and trade unions, they’ll just go and try to raid another.
Super fund manager IFM urges governments to tap into its billions for major projects
Some choice quotes (my emph):
Trying to decode the kleptocrats is a challenge, but when I read between the lines it goes like this…
Yes the big super funds owned by the trade unions and banks are quite happy to take some money from the taxpayers to start major projects, especially if government use “their regulatory powers to come to an agreed level of risk and risk-apportionment” to ensure the super funds can never lose money from these harebrained schemes because the taxpayer will bail out the scheme if it goes sour – which it more than likely will because the very fact the scheme won’t go ahead without special government protectionism and extra money means it is probably a loser under current normal free market conditions anyway.
Sounds like Solyndra 2.0 is coming to your super fund soon!
As for the network we didn’t know we needed, why exactly did the super funds not get in on the ground floor with that one? Fiduciary prudence perhaps? Now that the losses are nationalised by default they are only too happy to express interest in the NBN!
Are we having fun yet??
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pure comedy:
8 July: Guardian: John Abraham: Global Warming and Economists – SuperFreakonomics is SuperFreakingWrong
Those who purchased the book SuperFreakonomics are paying to be misled about climate change
My second point is that Dr. Levitt is a university professor who has a duty to society to get things right. We do, and should, hold university faculty to a higher standard than Fox, CNBC, the Wall Street Journal and the Heartland Institute…
Some of the groups with the most skin in the game actually understand what is going on. One excellent example is the reinsurance company Munich Re which made a splash with its climate cost declarations. Another great recent example is the article Race of our Lives by Jeremy Grantham of GMO, a large global investment management firm.
So we can see that while groups pushing an ideology, or professors pushing books, have trouble with even basic climate science, those investing real money often have a better track record of understanding the risks we face as we continue to warm the globe. Let’s hope that we listen soon enough to do something about it.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2013/jul/08/climate-change-superfreakonomics-superfreakingwrong
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***they call this RESEARCH, yet it’s based on acceptance of the CAGW scam!
8 July: NZ Herald: Jamie Morton: $10m freeze on global warming
The Government has proposed cutting $10 million in funding for climate change research in a move described as disheartening for New Zealand’s highly capable climate scientists…
***The contestable grants were used to finance research by tertiary institutions and government agencies on adapting to climate change, reducing emissions and creating carbon sinks, and tapping into business opportunities which arise from climate change…
Green Party climate change spokesman Kennedy Graham said New Zealand had some of the best climate scientists in the world.
“This Government believes that it can hide behind a fig-leaf of indifference from the New Zealand public.
“It thinks the public won’t notice, and if they do, they’ll think the public doesn’t care – wrong on both counts.”
The funding changes will be decided by Cabinet.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10895428
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so much outrage & constant MSM coverage over the Murdoch hacking of “CELEBRITIES” whose “FAME” had been manufactured by the Murdoch media in the first place, yet no outrage over the following:
8 July: Age: Philip Dorling: Snowden reveals Australia’s links to US spy web
http://www.theage.com.au/world/snowden-reveals-australias-links-to-us-spy-web-20130708-2plyg.html
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Hilarious spat between Watching The Deniers and WattsUpWithThat.
It started when Watching The Deniers falsely accused Anthony Watts of photoshopping Sea Ice graphs – the following is a screenshot of the original post (disclaimer – physically 2 screenshots which I pasted together, because it was too long for me to capture with one screenshot).
http://eric.worrall.name/wtdscreenshot.gif
I alerted Anthony Watts and Jo to this falsehood. Watts responded by demanding an apology from Mike Mariot, who runs Watching The Deniers:-
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/07/07/watching-the-deniers-makes-hilarious-goof-while-accusing-wuwt-of-doctoring-nsidc-images/
Since then, as Anthony applied pressure, Mike of Watching The Deniers has grudgingly applied minor edits to his false accusation, trying IMO to get away with as little as possible by way of amendment or apology.
The latest version of Mike’s post is here:-
http://watchingthedeniers.wordpress.com/2013/07/08/anthony-watts-dishonest-misrepresentation-of-sea-ice-graphs-no-surprise-there/
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There is a followup – apparently Mike Mariot thinks that his compliance with Anthony Watts’ demands is comparable to being a member of The Thin Red Line – the 93rd Highland Regiment at the Battle of Balaclava (1854)
http://watchingthedeniers.wordpress.com/2013/07/08/wuwt-attacks-wtd-i-learn-the-only-thing-to-fear-from-the-sceptics-is-your-own-fear/
Apparently I am also to be punished for my crime of alerting the target of a lie to the publication of the lie – obviously a serious misdemeanour in communities of climate alarmists, at least when the target of the lie is a “denier”.
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Eric, I know the pain you’re feeling. I’ve also suffered the pain of being banned over there.
At least you know that your ban is only 3months, I don’t even know how long I’ve been banned for… I never went back and Mike never emailed me.
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Perhaps I should find some utterly inappropriate historic episode of suffering to illustrate my hurt feelings, say Spartacus defying the might of Rome. If I was an alarmist I could keep a straight face as I explained the parallel between my exile from a blog and an epic historical event.
30
…….here we go again.
The latest comment aligns the ‘Climate Change Deniers’ label with HIV/AIDS deniers!
Does anyone here actually deny that the climate changes?
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Yup – looks like I’ve been banned from there also – I started writing about the sea ice extent and the total loss of sea ice that hasn’t occurred then I asked myself – why am I posting here? I might as well go and post at Deltoid if I really want to waste my time.
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But Eric; you dobbed him in! 😉 You might remember seeing similar behaviour in your early childhood.
Marriott appears to be one very confused man. He argues his point of view vociferously with recourse to prejudice, ad hiominem attacks, arguments from authority and his wilful ignorance of the subject matter to justify his actions.
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Indeed, you have to go back to primary school for any parallel to his juvenile weirdness.
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You have to “admire” Marriott. He sets such high standards of behaviour and integrity. For everybody else.
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Oh yeah… he allowed one of my comments through moderation in order to take a “cheap shot” — with a pop gun.
My comment closed with
His response:
Didn’t acknowledge his problems and dismissed my point-wise critique as “outrage”.
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sheer hypocrisy from CFMEU. why have they supported CAGW if they’re concerned about losses of jobs in the coal industry?
9 July: ABC PM: Plan to privatise Yancoal raises concerns about coal industry
Ian Murray from the mining union, the CFMEU, says it’s worrying when miners extend job cuts beyond contractors and start firing their own workers.
IAN MURRAY: This industry has increased the use of contractors over the last decade or so and when they start to get beyond the contractors and into their core workforce that’s very much a worrying sign for us…
PAT MCGRATH: Ian Murray believes the speed of the price drop has taken some mining companies by surprise, and workers haven’t been kept properly informed about the industry’s problems.
IAN MURRAY: Their level of consultation with stakeholders, including ourselves, has been extremely limited…
http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2013/s3799431.htm
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“Zombie” CO2 projects on the rise as CDM hits 7,000
LONDON, July 9 (Reuters Point Carbon) – A U.N. programme to channel climate finance to poor nations said it approved its 7,000th greenhouse gas-cutting installation last week, but warnings of “zombie projects” and more companies pulling out of the struggling scheme made the number appear increasingly irrelevant…
http://www.pointcarbon.com/news/1.2453540
EU carbon dips 1.7 pct as allocation delay deters buying
LONDON, July 9 (Reuters Point Carbon) – EU carbon prices dipped 1.7 percent on Tuesday as traders said uncertainty over how many permits will be handed out this year was discouraging buyers and dragging down prices…
http://www.pointcarbon.com/news/1.2453692?&ref=searchlist
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9 July: SMH: Jonathan Swan: Market system best to reduce emissions: Turnbull
Coalition frontbencher Malcolm Turnbull has characterised his party’s climate change policy as ”short term” and says he hopes the world moves to a market-based mechanism to reduce emissions.
But Mr Turnbull, who has previously described Tony Abbott’s Direct Action policy as ”a con” and lost his leadership of the Liberal Party in 2009 due to his support for an emissions trading scheme, chose his words carefully while appearing on the ABC’s Q&A program on Monday night.
”I will support the collective wisdom of the party room,” Mr Turnbull said.
”The big difference between our [climate change] policy … is that it is not designed to go any further than 2020. So it is not a long-term policy.”…
Both Mr Albanese and Mr Turnbull agreed that the most efficient way to reduce carbon dioxide emissions over the long term was to implement a market-based scheme.
”I hope, I imagine, that is where the world will get to,” Mr Turnbull said.
Asked whether he would join Mr Abbott in campaigning to repeal an emissions trading scheme, Mr Turnbull admitted ”there would be more convincing advocates”.
Opposition Leader Tony Abbott said he thought that Mr Turnbull “did a very very good job on Q&A last night” but he contradicted Mr Turnbull’s view that the world was moving in the direction of carbon pricing.
“As I’ve always said, the world is moving away from carbon taxes and emission trading scheme, not towards it,” Mr Abbott said.
“The world is moving towards the kind of Direct Action measures that the Coalition has long been proposing.”…
On Tuesday, shadow treasurer Joe Hockey suggested the Coalition was open to considering an emissions trading scheme if the circumstances were right.
“If the world comes together in pricing carbon across their whole economies, then Australia stands prepared to look at joining them,” Mr Hockey said…
Mr Turnbull said it was probably ”harsh” of him to have described Mr Abbott’s Direct Action policy as a ”con” in a 2009 opinion piece for Fairfax Media. In the same article, Mr Turnbull said the Liberal Party was ”currently led by people whose conviction on climate change is that it is ‘crap’ and you don’t need to do anything about it”.
The Direct Action policy, Mr Turnbull said then, was ”an environmental figleaf to cover a determination to do nothing”…
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/market-system-best-to-reduce-emissions-turnbull-20130709-2pn12.html
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8 July: ABC: Q&A: Transcript
DANIEL SKEHAN:…With the Rudd Government’s plan to move to an ETS and the Coalition’s policy being to scrap it, what would your position be?
MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, I’m part of the team and we have a collective policy.
ANTHONY ALBANESE: You’re not.
MALCOLM TURNBULL: You know how politics works. And we have a different climate change policy. We have the same target, that is to reduce our emissions by 5% from 2000 levels by 2020…
TONY JONES: Well, hang on a sec. Well, to bring an emissions trading scheme forward by at least a year, let’s say. If that happens, then Tony Abbott won’t be repealing a carbon tax, he will be repealing or attempting to repeal an emissions trading scheme. Would you support that?
MALCOLM TURNBULL: I will support the collective wisdom of the party room.
MALCOLM TURNBULL: So you would help campaign for the repeal of an emissions trading scheme?
MALCOLM TURNBULL: There would be more convincing advocates but I would certainly – I will certainly – you know, you’ve got to – look, I have a track record there. I mean, you know, I have been a very strong advocate of market-based mechanisms.
***I have to say, however, being very honest – frank about it, that emissions trading schemes to date have worked better in theory than in practice. The over-allocation in Europe has really been something of a disaster in terms of the emissions trading scheme there…
TONY JONES: So have you reformed your personal view about emissions trading schemes?
MALCOLM TURNBULL: No. I think if you want to reduce your emissions over the very long-term, by which I mean, you know, 50 years or something, then you are going to have to have a long-term, market-based price on carbon and that may well be – I imagine that is where the world will get to. I might be wrong. To date emissions trading schemes, as I say, have worked better in theory than in practice…
BILL LEAK: I was just wondering about how you feel about the concept of the green army, Malcolm? I mean, I am imagining Field Marshal Abbott and Brigadier General Turnbull. I would have thought amassing a green army, you know, people armed to the back teeth with shovels and pitch forks. That would be fraught with danger, wouldn’t it? …
TONY JONES: How many will there be?
MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, it is 15,000 but I think it will be…
BILL LEAK: What if you get a mutiny? The ADF has only got about 20,000 people…
TONY JONES: There’s a couple of questions. Will they be getting the basic wage.
MALCOLM TURNBULL: I am not sure what the remuneration arrangements…
CORINNE GRANT: It is $400 a week. It’s $400 a week.
MALCOLM TURNBULL: Look, I’m sure they’ll be adequately paid…
MIRIAM LYONS: Malcolm is right, the push to renewables has largely been driver by the rate but the carbon price has also played a part. It does seem to be working and, you know, I can certainly see why you are looking at changing it so that Tony Abbott can’t use the word tax anymore. But, you know, let’s look at the bigger pictures here for a moment. You know, the Coalition policy on climate change has rightly been criticised and you are probably rightly uncomfortable with the holes that are in it…
MIRIAM LYONS: …But we are in a situation right now where the Climate Commission has told us that 80% of fossil fuels have to remain in the ground in order to prevent runaway climate change. You know, the International Energy Agency, is a very conservative international body, told us, I think almost two years ago now, that we only had five years before we had to stop building coal-fired power plants in order to prevent runaway global warming. So in that context, a bipartisan 5% emissions reduction target really just tells us how unambitious that target is when, you know, you’ve got a party leader on one side of that bipartisan position who used to say that climate change is crap…
TONY JONES: Okay. I’m going to leave it there because we’ve got a little time left to go to a couple of other questions…
MALCOLM TURNBULL: …Barack Obama gave a great speech about climate change recently. A lot of initiatives, an Emissions Trading Scheme is not part of them. The measures he announced are more like the Coalition’s policies, in fact…
TONY JONES: Okay. We are nearly out of time. I’ll go to Anthony Albanese to wind up and the concept there that Tony Abbott is Australia’s Barack Obama.
ANTHONY ALBANESE: Barack Obama certainly doesn’t think so. If you have a look at what he’s had to say about climate change, it’s very different from Tony Abbott. It’s much more in line with what Malcolm’s real views are and with what my views are…
http://www.abc.net.au/tv/qanda/txt/s3783606.htm#transcript
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