How the concern for the worlds poor hurts. The pain! Ian D’oherty skewers the fake compassion. As I said in Global Bullies Want Your Money, How many people would you kill in order to save us from a theoretical “modeled” threat? Would that be thousands? Could it be more?
Could be… Let’s count the ways wasting money on climate change betrays sick? Indur Goklany estimates that biofuels lead to nearly 200,000 deaths in 2010 alone. Is that enough? Warming kills less people than cooling, but let’s demand money to stop the warming. Poor climate predictions lead to real deaths, so why not shut down polite debate before it begins? Jail those deniers!
Researching pointless things will undoubtedly mean some people die who could have been saved — (never ever count the opportunity cost, unless you’re talking about how much funding green programs could have got). Fake markets feeds corruption, farmers die, rivers run dry and some are left homeless, what does a caring person do, call the fake market a “free” market and ask for more. Who hurts the most when cheap energy gets more expensive, not the rich doctors wives who can afford subsidized solar (see point 4).
Skeptics entirely hold the moral high ground. It’s time more skeptics unapologetically plant the flag there and call the fake compassion for what it is. The only ethical choice is to look at the evidence. D’oherty bluntly pokes at the contradictions of those who pretend to care.
Climate change or starving babies – so what bothers you more?
Ian D’oherty
The UN has released its latest report into global warming or, as we’re now meant to call it, climate change.
And, like all UN reports, it should be treated with the same kind of scepticism and contempt that greets every utterance that is farted out of the bowels of that corrupt, counterproductive, bloated and profoundly dangerous organisation.
…if you want to stop climate change, you must automatically be happy to see black babies die. Or you are happy to let brown and yellow babies live in misery, squalor and fear. And are you happy with that?
I’m going to be a bit presumptuous here and suggest that, maybe, you’re not all that happy with starving children. If anything, they end up on the news and make you feel guilty when you’re eating your dinner.
But where do you think the massive increase in emissions is coming from? America? No. Europe? Are you mad?
No, the biggest polluters and biggest emissions are coming from emerging countries and superpowers such as India and China who have spent the last decade engaged in a process of massive industrialisation, hence the spike in emissions
Someone like Robinson and her idiot followers can change to as many crap light bulbs, or buy as many bad cars, as they want. And Robbo can continue to fly around the world and further engorge her carbon footprint wagging her fingers at gullible, guilt ridden Westerners all she wants. But one uncomfortable fact remains – the people who matter in all this couldn’t give a toss what Robinson or Al Gore or Duncan Stewart have to say.
Because the only way to drag your people out of poverty and starvation is industrialisation – of food, of the economy, of the way they live their lives.
Increased living standards and life expectancy comes through industrialisation and with that comes pollution and with pollution comes emissions – which is making poor Mammy Earth feel unwell.
So what do you want? Clean air or dead babies?
“…So what do you want? Clean air or dead babies?”
In an ideal world I’d take the clean air and try to prevent as many needless infant deaths as possible, but I realise that isn’t how the strange, surreal world of the liberal eco-fascists works. Besides, if ‘sustainability’ results in the deaths of a few babies, who’s to worry? As the high priests of CAGW are so fond of reminding us: ‘CAGW is the greatest threat facing mankind’, right? Happily for CAGW devotees, infant mortality in less developed nations is a necessary and (as it happens) useful by-product in the journey towards the ‘carbon free’ agrarian nirvana being prepared for us all by the EU and the UN. Try to remember that, as you toil in the fields beneath the shadows of the wind turbines blowing in the new, carbon-free air. ‘Sustainability’, CAGW and population control = a match made in eco-fascist heaven.
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Going to high-jack, but I am on topic! *shock horror*
Does it seem like policy-makers are struggling with the concept of opportunity cost? If so, they aren’t alone, top economists can’t seem to answer basic opportunity cost questions correctly either:
http://www.smh.com.au/business/modern-economists-are-clever-with-numbers-but-way-out-of-tune-20140418-36w84.html
This is symptomatic of economists becoming numerical specialists in statistics and modelling and no longer seeing the wood for the trees. Sound familiar? That’s why I keep banging on about the similarities between economists and their fancy (but useless) CGE models, which are similar to climate scientists with their fancy (but useless) GCM models. They look impressive to the layman, and both clans can use convincingly confusing tech speak, but their is no substance to either field of modelling.
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Economics is known as the Dismal Science, fits well with the Dreadful Science. I suggest that framing Economics as a series of mathematical puzzles is ultimately futile. The more understandable economists use maths to sort data then use the data to develop a paradigm. I agree that relying on models as oracles is a waste of time. i’m reading Simon’s.” The Ultimate Resource” atm. There’s an economist that knew what he was about.
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Well, I disagree. Models are the most efficient way of producing Circular Reasoning Analysis Projections there is.
I should know, I worked as a modeller, for many years, and I have produced my fair share of CRAP, I can tell you.
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Another keyboard ruined with afternoon tea. To the point as always, Mr. Whakaaro.
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This is the product of universities where they half read the first chapter of the textbook, then go down to the pub for the rest of the semester, as their mentors did half a generation previously.
It is notable, however, that we are now seeing such stories in our media. Somebody is waking up!
Keep it coming.
In the industry where I have spent my life, our leaders never even noticed opportunity cost. Whilever they didn’t see themselves bankrupt next week, they thought we were doing well.
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Clearly the green left want both!
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I am not sure about the rest of the world, but the left here in the US have been recently more enamored (at least more openly so) with Mao lately, and it was Mao, who, when asked about starving farmers from one of his policies, famously said, “China has Chinese to spare.”
True Progressives don’t care about dead babies they never met, just where they are headed.
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As long as it’s not their dead babies.
They want all the fruits of the world while others suffer. Just ask Gore and Suzuki. Both have numerous children and multiple houses.
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“Not enough of me, way to many of you” to quote P. J. o”Rourke
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P.J. is proof that conservatives have a sense of humor. Leftists, not so much……………
20
as observed by the imitable Mark Steyn
good literature and good humour are always conservative.
My own analysis indicates that ‘isms’ require a humour bypass
before full membership is conferred.
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Agreed.
Greens are led by Miss Anthropy.
She hates everybody.
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Yes and reminds me of the 1970s 1980s when at school the greenies/lefties introduced the “theoretical exercise” of the 10 people in a lifeboat scenario whereby you HAD to sacrifice one or two people to protect the group, even if you could come up with a solution whereby all people would survive.
The exercise wasn’t about the best solution , but conditioning those who are now adults and descision makers to get used to sacrificing human lives for “the greater good” – it was complete tosh of course, but now when we see the Warmist crowd at work you see the seeds planted all those years ago being now watered and the extension of that original conditioning coming into play.
The answer isn’t sacrifice humans ( although Ian now convinced the Warmist/greenies/loony left would happily sacrifice many for their demented aims ) rather exposé this Warmist/population control / Eugenics agenda for what it is.
Something evil this way comes……
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If you like this piece by Ian O’Doherty – Published 15 April 2014 02:30 AM, you can contact him through…
independent.letters@independent.ie
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…witch brings me to the elephant in the room….. more people more pollution. Maybe we should be controlling population growth instead of trying to reduce a beneficial gas. Less people, less resources less food! Is this the new religion?
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“Maybe we should be controlling population growth instead of trying to reduce a beneficial gas. Less people, less resources less food!
Sounds like the time honored cry of the worried wealthy!
Do you want an axe or a machete when killing those you have deemed unworthy to live on earth?
It is some mistaken Malthusian belief that with a planet of finite resources but with humans capable of almost infinite adaptability and inventiveness, the only method of restraint is killing each other. That is the autonomous law of the jungle, red in tooth and claw, and not of thinking, sentient human beings.
We grow more than enough food for all, we have medicinal drugs systems that are big enough to offer treatments for everyone, we make more than enough cloths for everyone – it is *only* the distribution method that is in error.
As for CO2, it is not, nor ever has been a problem.
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It is well known that with increasing wealth, all other things being equal, comes reduced fertility as expressed by population growth rates. In Europe, reproduction rates among “natives” are less than replacement values. Only by immigration can Europe sustain it’s population now. There is a similar story developing in the US. The quickest way to solve the population “problem” is to make the world filthy rich right quick. Can’t do that by throttling back on the economic engine.
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Commenting on this one is going to be a real can of worms.
I’m not sure that we need massive industrialisation to bring order and sanity to human life.
The best thing for people is good, honest leadership aimed at producing a gradual increase in what we in the west call “living standards”.
This leadership should incorporate all the latest advances in pollution control and harm minimisation in any new power generation BUT this isn’t happening.
Cutting corners does increase profits for the guy at the top, hence the massive land pollution in China and India where politics is largely out of the hands of the masses.
By and large, the west has cleaned up its environmental protection act over the last 50 years but it has been a tough slog.
Focusing on the non event item “CO2” as a pollutant is actually taking the focus off the real pollution which is happening in real time NOW in the less well regulated counties like China and India.
KK
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KK a can of worms is an understatement, rational vs emotional vs practical vs ideological it’s all here and important to discuss.
If it’s possible to overcome a forced regression of science and indeed intellect then shurley it’s possible to come up with real world solutions for real world problems?
If one point is taken from the past 20+ years it’s that focusing on one aspect of an idea leads either nowhere or down a dangerous path.
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Sure is. I’m not touching this topic with a 79ft pole.
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“Commenting on this one is going to be a real can of worms.”
“Sure is. I’m not touching this topic with a 79ft pole.”
Seems simple to me! Plants clean the air. Adding CO2 to the air stimulates plants to clean the air more. Prosperity brings about population decline. Global warming has stopped. So in all cases increasing atmospheric CO2 is the solution to the problems…Simple!
http://www.healthextremist.com/indoor-plants-that-clean-the-air-and-remove-toxins/
http://www.wikihow.com/Purify-the-Air-Using-Plants
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KK,:-)
You must learn more about the concept of ‘profit’ and what happens to it.
Applied to typical corporations, it is a measure of management success – management of the purpose of the corporation, such as mining or forestry, not people management.
Good signs of success through profit attract funds for expansion. If you are working well for national prosperity, why not enlarge your success?
Profits are not hoarded into a Scroooge McDuck swimming pool. They are put to work to do more. Ancdote. Two individuals who became personally wealthy from the Mt Morgan gold mine Queensland around the 1920s are notable. One went on to spend a fortune drilling for oil in Persia. He succeeded. Thus, British Petroleum was born. Another prosperity led to what is now one of the top medical research institutes in the World, the Walter & Eliza Hall Institute..
Profits often go this way. It is not publicised much becaue no politician or official can take credit. More often than not, such hangers on are lead in the saddle of free enterprise.
I spent my career mostly in resources. Our team of about 40 graduates found many billions of dollars of new wealth, much of which has been sold and returned to the community by now. Not one of us became personally wealthy. It was salaried employment.
Happy to expand on profits if anyone has questions.
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Hi Geoff,
We have exchanged views previously and you may recall that I am very pro mining in that it is a necessary part of the Australian and world economy and leads all of us to better futures with the goods produced.
Also I am not against profit but have become more than little cynical about the world over the last 20 years.
All businesses deserve recognition for their contribution and can even be given a little kick in the can by government to get them started, but, and here I am repeating myself, eventually ALL businesses must become good honest citizens or they become disreputable in the yes of the community.
Any business which continually uses pressure or inducements with politicians to get too much out of the system loses public support and demonstrates lack of integrity.
As mentioned last time, and we are still waiting, we want a bypass.
To illustrate the non partisan issue of this problem it was engineered by John Howard and Bob Carr.
They colluded to enable coal trains of massive and unprecedented size to move through the city of Newcastle so that the coal companies could avoid paying , what to them, would have been a relatively small cost to provide a rail bypass around the city to the port and coal loaders.
WE ARE STILL WAITING.
Many innocent taxpayers who once had a minor irritation from small coal movements and interurban trains now deal with building damage and lifestyle loss on a grand scale simply to enable a little more profit as coal trains with four engines suitable for outback WA roll past.
This isn’t the Australia I signed up for.
If you have any influence can you intervene on behalf of those average workers now trapped near this rail line?
I’m not really interested in Persia or BP, just our little bit of a fair shake for the city of Newcastle.
KK
ps. My apologies for my comments if they seem insistent but governments must operate for all in administering our country not just those who can afford to buy influence.
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Hi KK,
Wasn’t aware that four engine trains were carrying coal through the city. Gee, the ground would vibrate and rattle windows!
A few questions…is there a viable bypass route? Has there been any credible studies done there in relation to vibration, noise, pollution due to coal dust and the like?
If so, could you either provide links to such or forward the information to me via Jo? I’ll give it my best shot if I have the necessary information.
I believe the port is being considered for sale. Maybe on provision that the new owners construct a bypass?
I’m a supporter of mining but not at the expense of the health and wellbeing of people.
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Hi Scaper,
Four heavy duty locos pounding past your home is no joke and is really uncivilized given that people voted in the past assuming that a by-pass was going to be built.
It annoyed one resident further out of town so much that he fired a shot at the train cabin a few months ago.
The history of this business does little credit to the coal companies and what makes it more unpalatable as you sit waiting for the gates to open at Adamstown is that the train is only going to Kooragang so that it can REVERSE! and come back out the right way around.
Apparently the mine out near Teralba can’t be bothered building the necessaries to allow correct setup at the start of the journey.
I believe that a site for the by pass from out near Toronto – Teralba to the main coal feeder line at Hexham has been scoped.
KK
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Is the Fassifern-to-Hexham rail bypass a viable option?
10
You can do anything if you are prepared to spend the money and apparently Geoff has spent most of his time in the north of Australia and from what he says the locals have been looked after well up there.
That is great but there are too many examples of mining companies in the Hunter buying their way out of doing correct and adequate rehabilitation after it ends and looking after locals during the actual mine life.
The by pass route: it was seriously proposed and accepted that it would happen so you can assume it is do-able, but if you can get away with using the local urban line, why not?.
I have always accepted that mining is a great endeavor, that’s what Newcastle is built on, but we are well past the stage when mining companies can afford to be less than good corporate citizens.
My comments here are, I suspect, not going to win me a silver star nor a lot of friends in some circles but despite the great work done by many individuals in mine rehabilitation and the dangerous work done in mining the industry is perceived to have an overbearing manner in the way it imposes on the community and community infrastructure.
Mining is great but mining at any costs usually ends up hurting those who lack the mobility to get out of the way of the problem and it’s never the mine owners who wind up out of pocket or unable to get a good nights sleep.
Wow. Maybe I’m treading on a few toes today?
KK
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Our daughter persuaded my good lady wife and me to move to Blackwater where she lived for a number of years. We were there for 11 Months.
During the initial move from the Gold Coast to Blackwater we drove up in our car, turning left at the big cow roundabout at the entrance to Rockhampton, to get to Blackwater.
The railway track runs (basically) alongside the highway, and we immediately started to see the coal trains, huge things, and so long.
Around Blackwater are a number of coal mines and there is one of those coal loader just outside of Blackwater for one of those mines, right alongside the highway.
The coal trains were quite literally running all the time, and you just couldn’t miss them.
They travel from the mines to just South of Rokhampton, then run down the Coast to the port and loaders at Gladstone.
They are pulled by 5 diesel electric locomotives, three at the front and 2 in the middle, hauling 100 hoppers, each containing 100 tons of coal, and the whole unit is around one kilometre long.
They run at 50 minute intervals, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. All up, that’s 10,500 units each with 10,000 tons of coal, so 105 million tons of coal in all.
Pretend that’s all steaming coal.
It’s enough for between 14 and 17 large scale coal fired power plants (2000+MW Nameplate Capacity) for one year.
Tony.
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My intervention?
Read into the previous post.
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Hi Scaper
Reading into the previous posts could suggest that you are either a federal MP or a journalist.
Previous comments that I recall some time back tend to work against both of those and suggest another line of work.
?
KK
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No need to answer my question, I’ve read enough.
I note that the state government expects $700M for the sale of the port (plus 15%) and will be funnelling half into Sydney and Newcastle will receive a light rail line.
Don’t dabble in state politics but let us see if any new coal mines in the rail service area get approval from the Federal Minister for the Environment or co-funding for the Sydney projects using port funds by the Federal Minister for Infrastructure.
Might be some pressure applied to Baird by the Fairfax media and others.
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Hi Scaper
I’m a little confused. But many think that.
Q ? : “No need to answer my question, I’ve read enough.”
A. Purpose?
Your questions:
Q “A few questions…is there a viable bypass route?
A I don’t think it would have been proposed and agreed to if it wasn’t.
Q. “Has there been any credible studies done there in relation to vibration, noise, pollution due to coal dust and the like?”
A. Surely you are kidding? Google tells me I live 867 metres from the line and the screeching and engine noise are very pronounced. Some live 30 metres from all that.
Q. “If so, could you either provide links to such or forward the information to me via Jo?”
A. Why? Can you do anything? I suspect there is a mountain of material on this in Government archives.
Q. “I’ll give it my best shot if I have the necessary information”.
A. Offer appreciated. If you can get the bypass built as a result of your intervention I’ll run naked down Hunter street. No cameras.
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Back in Queensland a battle is looming between big coal and agriculturalists.
http://www.lockthegate.org.au/tags/central_qld
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I build stuff when the money runs low. You asked Geoff for assistance and I offered to help because I believe I can.
You believe the people of Newcastle are doing it bad now, imagine what would happen if the port was sold without the appropriate infrastructure not in place??
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KK,
I used to be a Manager in a Corporation of several thousand.
We did not have to learn to be good corporate citizens. We started that way and we kept that way.
At times, on the side, I helped decide the funding going for influence peddling, to use the present term. There was one payment only, some $2,500 one off to an Aborigine seeking preselection, to cover a sudden and perhaps contrived debt. That was it, over a decade, so far as I was aware.
The reality of Corporate dealings in a Blue Chip company is so little understood by the media that at times they invent fantasies that would embellish a sci fi novel. Don’t believe it and don’t speak ill of those you know little about.
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Hi Geoff
At the start of my working career I was employed in a great place that had the sort of corporate ethic that you talk about.
It was a great place to work at, a tightly run ship with outstanding people as managers, so it might come as something of a shock to you to learn that I am fully aware of that type of approach to life and business.
Even now after having been out of the place for 43 years I currently attend reunion lunches held quarterly to catch up.
At our plant there was a periodic replacement of the content of the cyanide baths and the contents were dumped into a hole in the ground just above the water table of the Hunter river.
I don’t feel any guilt or blame for having worked at the place and do not hold management in any less regard because of that practice; it seems that that was the accepted way of doing it – at the time.
If that was done now there would be repercussions because there are rules and laws covering that.
In the same way I don’t think you should take offense when mining companies outside your sphere of influence impose on the public goodwill.
You have obviously always done the right thing in the situations you were involved with but that does not allow the jump to say that all mining companies have the same ethical approach to business or that they behave well towards locals where they do business.
In a non mining analogy, here in NSW we are just being informed by ICAC proceedings about the interaction of politicians who control water supplies to the state and “lobbyists” acting on behalf of themselves and private cartels looking to make a quid.
I don’t think we should be surprised at anything that happens in politics; it managed to create Global Warming out of nothing!
There was nothing personal in my comments and I’m surprised that you took it that way.
The world is a big place and we aren’t going to fix all of the worlds problems but we can try and here on this blog is a good place to start.
KK
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KK, I am a little confused, exactly which coal from which mine is travelling THROUGH Newcastle? It is certainly not coming from the North or East nor from the West as the line is a terminus, and the majory mines I know of to the South are mainly dedicated to power stations at Vale Point and Eraring, the rest have a limited life and are not worthy of massive injections of money.
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Thanks for the inquiry Old44.
From what I see there is no doubt that coal trains are moving through Newcastle via Adamstown then Broadmeadow to the Island.
As to the reason I was astounded to read that it was to enable a mine at Teralba or thereabouts to reverse position of the locos.
This is all from memory from some time back so don’t hold me to the exact reason but it is happening.
Maybe the coal is going to a power station.
Whatever the reason this arrangement was cooked up between Bob and John and does neither of them any credit.
Apparently the mine was able to save a few bucks in not having to build a shunting facility but it seems like a hell of a mission to come all the way into town to reverse and brought a lot of stress, sleepless nights and anger to the locals.
This is 2014, surely big government and big business can be a little more people friendly.
KK
00
I think they are trying to create confusion and light fires on many fronts to try and make us try and divide up our efforts. They have very deep pockets for resources, our best bet is to constantly put forward solid science and let it all slowly sink in to the publics minds.
They are losing, so this is a desperate red herring of an emotional appeal to try and split the fight and create phantoms for us to chase…..don’t fall for it.
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To The Moderator
I notice that my last comment at 2.4.1.1.1 has been placed in moderation and as I have mentioned to Jo previously
I have no problem with material deemed offensive or off colour being deleted at the discretion of the moderator.
I’m not here to make life hard for anyone.
Unfortunately I took some umbrage at a reply to my comment 2.0 above when I received a lecture on the appreciation of profits
(2.4) which I could not connect with my original comment.
Still having trouble finding the link between my original post and the Reply at 2.4.
Comments about pollution control in non western countries such as India and China seem to have mysteriously triggered a response about profits which in turn triggered responses about local examples.
I am certainly NOT going to run down Hunter street.
KK
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KK,
Maybe posts are getting out of synch, but you disparaged corporate profits and I responded with a view. Then you commented about corporate influence buying and I gave another Geoffrey lecture.
Simple, ok?
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Hi Geoff
Thanks for responding.
I have looked over the original post and still cant see how it was anything other than a comment on third world approaches to business, principally China and India.
I can see how you may have related that to Australia but you would need to be trying real hard to get that interpretation.
Unfortunately when challenged I then gave another Keith lecture.
I think we are on the same page as I really like profits and understand they are the driving force behind most human activity.
In previous comment there was an impression given that you were in the North a long way from the Hunter and probably are a little unaware of the public comment here about the intrusion of mining.
For many the intrusion is real, and these are people, who are not green anti mining nutters, but just average people who feel unhappy about their treatment and somewhat scared.
OK
KK
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KK,
Peace pipe offered. No hard feellings.
I’ve never lived in the mining North, being head office most of the time. A 2 year stint in Perth and 1year at Mt Morgan.
We owned many companies over the years including Newcastle Wallsend coal.
At Mt Morgan, our company home was adjacent to the unfenced rail line, children aged 4 & 10, so I can sympathise, but not much I can do.
For 6 years I flew from HO to Darwin at least monthly as VP or Pres of NT Chamber of Mines, with Government interference,, ab affairs, wotrld heritage, uranium mining dominant themes.
Time to go back on thread?
Corporately my company was the biggest NT employer of local aborigines, with planned aid programs like school,. We also produced enough uranium to offset the fossil fuel production of several billion tonnes of CO2, if that means much.
So we did not help to kil black babies and in the eyes of the objective we considerably reduced GHG potential emissions.
For this twin effort, the most common form of acknowledgement is HATE, naked and unbridled. What a twisted world we have. Can you see why I twitch when I read what I know to be inaccurate?
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Hi Geoff, thanks.
I take it you have read my other comment above about my employment as a metallurgist.
Even there politics intruded on one occasion and I still have doubts about the wire cables holding up the Sydney Tower which resulted from that piece of stupidity.
After that I worked in another job which I enjoyed very much. Let me rephrase that: I loved the work but hated the job.
It had so much politically correct inspired drama attached to it that it crushed me and most of my male co workers.
I twitch at even the slightest reminder of past situations and have a constant thing gnawing at me, that I can never trust a government so I can relate to your situation.
Here in Newcastle we have had a constant stream of demonstrations about coal by crazies in canoes trying to stop fully laden ships leaving port.
Back to another thread.
KK
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When I was a kid in the 60s, the Rhine was biologically dead.
Killed by Ludwigshafen chemical companies, BASF the worst offender.
Environmental damage is never permanent.
China and India are causing transient damage that will be repaired once people
are no longer living hand to mouth.
20
Pollution – the release of toxic material into the environment – can be dealt with by existing methods and technology but all too often isn’t. Hence the world’s largest rubbish dump in the middle of the Pacific and the devastating effects on the poor of China and India, treated as collateral damage in the dash for modernisation by those countries. CO2 by itself is a pollutant only in the fevered imagination of the true believers of the Church of ecoloons. As to dead babies, the frenzied campaign to ban DTT as a way of eliminating the transmission of Malaria before an adequate alternative was developed has caused a humanitarian tragedy of untimely child deaths through Malaria out of all proportion to the limited negative effects of DDT. Such a holocaust, allowed to continue for decades without hindrance, suggests that there are some in high places content that dead babies stay a major product of sub-saharan Africa for the time being.
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There is a critically low level of CO2 below which no life on earth exists. As Dr. Patrick Moore quotes, levels at below 0.015% all plant growth would stop. We would all die. He argues that CO2 is critically low and the increases in CO2 are much needed for a hungry world. If it produces warming, that is welcome too, as it was so often in those times airbrushed from history, a time of great productivity and growth in society which gave us the Roman Empire and the Renaissance and the 20th century, along with the problems of overpopulation.
The question never asked is that if we could change the planet, alter climate, alter temperatures, what would we want? Should we? Could we even agree? Would heating one latitude produce more storms somewhere else? Should we be prepared to rebuild cities, as has been done so often through history. Remember a lot of Europe and Japan was totally rebuilt after WWII. What is missing from the debate is simply that, the debate. It is all gloom and doom and fear and give us your cash.
It is the final junction of the dismal science, economics with the depressing science, meteorology. Neither group have a great reputation for being able to predict the future at all, but together, they can demand your money and unquestioning faith in their picture of the future. This is a group which cannot predict the world temperature, did not predict the GFC and almost never get tomorrow’s weather right. So we have to believe they can see the future?
Still it would be wonderful to debate what we would do with the ability to change the world. Do trees change climate? Can we plant our way to higher rainfall? What would happen if we flooded Lake Eyre or built a fake mountain from black soil in the desert? Could we in Australia build a north south pipeline to bring fresh water south? Did the aborigines really halve the rainfall of Australia 50,000 years ago with their one gift of fire? In a rational world, these would be great questions for a panel on climate change. All I hear, all I have ever heard is shutup, hand over the cash.
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A good point that gets lost in between all the name calling mate. That if the level of Co2 gets to low the trees and plants that we all depend on stave to death. With the rest of us following there after. Thing is the very long trend over the last 100 million years or so is falling Co2 levels. Down from several thousand parts per million to about twice the bear minimum needed to just keep plants alive at a few hundred parts per million. We know that the Co2 levels was much higher in the past and that the world didn’t end, there wasn’t a runaway greenhouse effect that could wipe out all life as we know it. How because the Co2 was as high as 7000 parts per million long ago and it didn’t happen then so how can it happen at just 450 or so parts per million now. If you actually look the last time that Co2 levels fell as low as they are now, there was a extinction level event. The second biggest of the 5 know to of happened. Worst than the one that took out the Dinosaur’s.
As for rebuilding YES we will rebuild as we have done before and undoubtedly we will have to do one day again. Its a very good point that we should ask the question rebuild how? But who’s going to ask that and ask that of whom? As for your last point there my friend, you hit the nail on the head there. Its a prediction. A reading of the tea leaves, taro cards. What the Stars have said in today’s horoscope. Why people just don’t get that is beyond me. As for “just hand over the cash” well we must just be a little to used the handing over the money to those that are reading our palm’s now mustn’t we. I hope everyone had a safe Easter bye.
90
Wouldn’t it be a hoot if it turns out that the humans releasing the CO2 trapped in fossil fuels actually saved the world by raising it enough for plants to recover and proliferate?
90
Not being a science guy, I have a question.
What are the effects of elevated CO2 on a human (or animals in general)? Let’s say we have a room 30 feet by 30 feet totally enclosed and controlled and had a person live in this environment for 30-days and we kept the CO2 level at 7,000 PPM. Would this environment in any way be detrimental to the person inside doing regular things that we do daily?
31
http://seca.doe.gov/publications/proceedings/03/carbon-seq/PDFs/173.pdf
Take a look at this study, it may help.
30
Kevin: Thanks for this article. Although somewhat more technical than I like, I did understand how different concentrations in conjunction with different types of people would result in different reactions to each.
20
Hi Peterk, there is a sort of answer to your question.
Google CO2 in nuclear powered submarines. Not too much from Soviet sources, I think, but plenty from the US. These vessels routinely spend more than 30 days submerged with atmospheres up to 1,000 ppm CO2.
I think you’ll find there’s no appreciable effect on human performance.
Cheers, Mal.
60
Thanks LevelGaze…I googled your suggestion and came upon this article at WUWT
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/10/17/claim-co2-makes-you-stupid-as-a-submariner-that-question/
It appears that the US Navy feels that up to 8,000 ppm (which I am amazed at) is safe on a submarine and further down the article, Berkeley Lab scientists think 1,000 ppm is a concern. I would think the US Navy would have researched this thoroughly because of the stakes involved but the Berkeley guys want to study it more (I smell a rat…another we need more money to study this some more).
40
You use 40,000ppm CO2 at 25% reduced O2 for mouth to mouth resuscitation!
That being said birds have a much better one way respiratory system than mammal which suffer from dead space in the lungs.
30
Peter
I believe that the biggest problem is always when there is too little CO2 in air being breathed.
Too much is not really a worry, up to a point.
Recall that people breathing pure oxygen may have had problems and this is understandable from a physiological point of view because CO2 in the bloodstream acts as the “trigger” for the “next” breath.
Breathing pure O2 is very dangerous.
KK
20
I asked a colleague of mine, who is an ex-submariner and still an active diver, what he thought.
He said that nuclear submarines, on patrol in the Western Pacific, frequently spent months submerged, with an atmosphere containing very high levels of CO2 – well into the thousands of parts per million. The only detrimental effect was that the body has a reflex that makes you sweat a lot, when you live in a high CO2 concentration, so you have to keep rehydrating. You also think the temperature must be high, because you are sweating, even though it actually hasn’t increased that much, at all.
Apparently miners, working deep underground, experience a similar situation.
90
Quick he’s having a panic attack!
Pass the paper bag.
Over the mouth and breath deeply to calm-down!
I believe we all know the effects of a slightly higher CO2 level and it is not that bad.
🙂
70
Good for hiccups too!
60
Rereke I’ve worked underground, and one does perspire profusely. That’s not because of the CO2.
30
RW,underground miners sweat a lot because it is hot ,very hot in South Africa where the miners start their shifts wearing clothing containing ice packs which give them relief for few hours working a couple of kilometres down the shaft,not my cup of tea.
10
The deeper you go the hotter it gets.
10
PeterK April 21, 2014 at 6:47 am
At 0.7% CO2 at any pressure, Human reasoning is diminished from lack of O2 absorption.
At 30% CO2 and 70% O2, A human can survive, if he does not catch fire!, never to try that shit again!
20
From an earlier post:
The comment that we need to be reminded of how “intrinsically important CO2 is to life” is obviously intended to be about plants.
But it is also vital to Humans in that the CO2 in the bloodstream is a neuro-regulator and controls our breathing impulse.
Humans can tolerate a very large range of CO2 levels in normal situations with for example up to 8,000 ppm being experienced in
submarines at times as compared to current average of about 380 ppm in the air around us.
The breathing cycle adopted during singing results in enhanced levels of CO2 in the bloodstream and a feeling of well being.
At the end of life there is a pattern of breathing known as Cheyne-Stokes breathing and it is the reverse of that used in singing.
The result is to remove CO2 from the bloodstream and when that happens there is no CO2 left to provide the NEXT breath stimulus.
It is paradoxical that many call CO2 ; “that poisonous pollutant” when it is the basic stimulant for our being.
KK
Singing: sharp intake – long slow expiration. Accumulates CO2.
Cheyne – Stokes: Long slow inhalation – short sharp exhalation: accumulates Oxygen.
60
Okay then, let’s add some perspective to this, and I’m going to use electrical power as a reference here. We take it totally and utterly for granted.
Most of the still Developing World don’t have it at all, let alone the constant regulated and readily available, always there, supply which we all have here.
Let’s then just look at Africa, the whole of Africa, and compare it with just Sydney, a city with a population of 4.6 Million people, and the population of Africa is 1.033 Million, so that’s Sydney multiplied by almost 225.
The total power consumption for Sydney is 75TWH per year.
The total power consumption for Africa is 590TWH, Sydney multiplied by 7.9, and compare that with the population multiplier 225.
There are only 2 Countries in Africa with consumption greater than Sydney, South Africa and Egypt, 240TWH and 140TWH respectively.
There are 6 further Countries whose power consumption actually makes it into double figures, ranging from 12TWH to 42TWH, none even close to Sydney’s consumption.
The remaining 50 Countries total power consumption is just on 70TWH, which is less than for Sydney.
That’s 50 COUNTRIES consuming less power than one city, Sydney.
Because of this CO2 emissions insanity, we are not only denying them what we already have, but the suggestion is we need to stop our emissions, in other words to go back and live like those hundreds of millions do now.
This CO2 madness considerably shortens their lives because of no access to reliable electricity, in effect killing them at an age a hell of a lot less than we are now used to living to.
That makes me angry, that those who support this madness completely and utterly ignore this.
Tony.
532
Tony, you are not alone!
I try to rise this in the elections to the EU parliament in May. So far, no reactions. Suggestions for op-ed are turned down with. “Sorry we have no space for your text”
A link to an important conference in Mozambique. (I have given this link in an other post)
http://www.africa-rising.org/
One problem is that the IMF is governed by the developed world, so I am not sure what will come out of it.
Nothing is happening in the climate change science, so the more focus on the issue of electricity and clean water in popular bogs, like this one, the better.
110
Hi. If like me, you see the EU as an evil empire hell-bent on reducing 440,000,000 europeans to a condition of abject slavery, you will find support in the blog EU Referendum. I’m fairly certain the owner will give you blog-space. The IMF is staffed by Enarques in the main, so you are probably correct in your thinking. I’m happy to support your crusade in the UK if you wish to ask Jo to send me your email address so we can talk.
Regards, Kevin
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Tony, a great argument in defense of affordable, constant electrical power is that its opponents are only willing to do without it for one hour each year. And even then…not really.
90
Great post Tony; speaking of waste look at this.
Underground mines in the Valley are burning off CSG at a rate of 60000 litres per second; can you do an energy conversion for that?
70
A great article.
A must read, especially the insider comment about grant money.
I met the author at Lord Monckton’s meeting at Souths.
Just shows that Politics trumps Science.
KK
30
Tony you were doing really well right down to where you claimed that “CO2 madness just shortens their lives” ??? Care to elaborate how that connection works? You will be pleased to know that there are people who have been caring about this for a very long time
http://www.barefootcollege.org/solutions/solar-electrification/
And well before any carbon tax, and during the time when Australia was stuffing billions of dollars (Howard government) in the bank not a single dollar was spent aiding this effort. I think it is a bit self serving to now claim that Climate Actio is some how killing babies. This is really Jo Nova flipped out stuff.
015
“and the population of Africa is 1.033
Million, so that’s Sydney multiplied by almost 225″Typo.. 1.033 Billion.
🙂
30
“Increased living standards and life expectancy comes through industrialisation and with that comes pollution and with pollution comes emissions ”
Again, please.. there is pollution, which every country should be encouraged and helped to minimise,
….. then there is CO2, one of the MAJOR building blocks of life on Earth.
Minimise pollution, but while doing so….maximise the release of sequestered CO2.
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Both options are out of my control, anyone whom thinks that they can control either is bonkers! But wait…
60
But wait it gets worse.
I’m sure there is a “think” tank (for want of a better word) some where in the world.
Where global warmists/alarmists sit and think up alarm storys that will attract the attention of the biggest audience.
In the vain hope they will attract converts to the fraud.
Or at the very least shame us into mending our wicked ways.
It really has become tiresome. Especially over the last few months.
http://www.21stcentech.com/headlines-beer-threat-climate-change/
20
My score keeps rising.
I started this as a rumor about 2 years ago, and on a bet said that it would be scientifically publish within 5 years.
Now where are the papers on bread, and on cheese.
Yes, cheese which is the world’s most polluting foodstuff. Look it up from belching cows, to water pollution from whey, to all the microbials that make dangerous ammonia compounds, and the CO2 generated through the whole process and the cheese maturing.
Can you tell that this was started in a bar?
🙂
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Gross fact of the day, thanks to my cheese scientist sister.
Some of the compounds found in smelly cheese include………….wait for it……..Putrescine and Cadaverine
Sorry for sharing!
50
You can make home brew for 50c/L!
Lets just say the main cost in purchasing beer is profit margin and tax!
40
The EU now has 2.2 billion surplus co2 certificates valued???? at about 5 euros each. And Germany now pays about 20 billion a year for useless, clueless feed in tarrifs.
http://notrickszone.com/2014/04/07/zurichs-leading-daily-calls-eus-emission-trading-scheme-a-european-debacle-2-2-billion-surplus-certificates/
Of course Labor and the Greens want OZ to join this ponzi scheme idiocy and will fight tooth and claw to impose this deception on the OZ electorate and our economy. Change to co2 emissions or weather or climate or temp will be zip by 2100. Easily the biggest ponzi scheme con and fraud in our history.
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TonyfromOz: “This CO2 madness considerably shortens their lives because of no access to reliable electricity, in effect killing them at an age a hell of a lot less than we are now used to living to.
That makes me angry, that those who support this madness completely and utterly ignore this.”
Tony, I don’t think they “utterly ignore this” – I think they want this to happen – after all, these are the people who think it is perfectly ok to kill (our) babies….so why shouldn’t it be ok to kill all those little black/brown/yellow ones?
Evil walks this world – out in the open and without shame. I really fear for the future of humanity – or should that be, more accurately, “Mankind”?
90
We have had a new green dreamer visit with us recently, on a way back Thread.
Have a read what he has to say at the end of this Comment.
There is the mind of the Green dreamers.
Tony.
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Tony, I read that last comment! I have long believed that that is the intention all along. Population reduction while removing access to reliable energy vastly reduces the inevitable strife.
60
Actually, Richard, there is evidence to suggest that raising living standards by amongst other things providing cheap reliable energy causes a decline in births. Higher living standards begets smaller families as infant mortality falls. Also migration pressures ease as it becomes possible to live well where you are. It has been suggested that it would be possible to top out population growth at , I think, around the 9 billion mark.
81
Kevin, I agree. But I don’t think ‘they’ have the patience for that. ‘They’ believe the UN is already the global government. Russia does NOT approve. I won’t live to see the outcome but I expect to hear more about increasing starvation over the next year or so.
50
The future may come more quickly than you think….
51
The health and wealth of what was formerly called the Third World, now the “less developed countries” (LDC) in PC speak, is vastly better today than it used to be. Hans Rosling (of which BilB is a fan, apparently) has shown this very well with Gapminder some years ago:
http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_you_ve_ever_seen
I enjoy his talks because he demonstrates the great advances our species are making. Life expectancy and wealth in the LDC is akin to that in the developed world a century earlier and continually improving. Are there still great disparities, yes, but are they far better than a century earlier? Overwhelming yes.
Certainly doesn’t hurt when you have the likes of Gates and Buffett throwing their billions at LDC issues using pragmatic approaches to solve real problems. I have great faith in the human race. In Club of Rome, Fabians, CAGW’ers, etc … not so much.
Rosling has another great video on swine flu, for those that remember it … the parallels between Swine Flu hyperbloviation and CAGW in the media are quite apparent:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8bUtbODV-Q
10
There is not just evidence, Kevin, it is a fact. Look up Hans Rosling’s TED mind the gap presentation.
But equally we don’t need to use energy wastefully to achieve this. I don’t intend to reduce the things that I do with energy, I’m just changing its source, to achieve more while using less, and saving thousands of dollars each year in the process.
I’ll repeat this link to emphasize that this works for more basic societies as well
http://www.barefootcollege.org/solutions/solar-electrification/
011
You say that it is ‘fact’ is that in the same sense the IPCC says things are fact, or do you mean that they are scientifically verified fact?
40
I suspect the former, rather than the latter.
30
I hope you are not relying of the taxpayer to subsidise your efforts.
If you are “real” you will not take any money from the government to help purchase your solar panels.
Or will you rely on skimming some from the company you say you work for ?
20
I also expect to see evidence of particulate filters and other pollutant scrubbers on ALL wood and other fuel using appliances, otherwise you are just INCREASING your real pollution load on the environment.
You may however release the increased amount of atmospherically beneficial CO2 from the less efficient burning of said wood and other fuel.
10
This is what happens when even a small percentage of residences us wood for heating. !!
10
Griss, I’m of the mind set that wood burning (or any other personal source of heat like dung) to stay warm i.e. ALIVE is a human right. There is a push to ban wood stoves and wood heat and I am firmly against such bullshit. I resist any government restriction on my ability to STAY WARM!
A little wood smoke, even more won’t kill me as fast as freezing will. If you post that link for some other reason please explain. Otherwise be careful not to play into the hands of those that want us to be cold.
20
I totally agree that depopulation is their ultimate goal and they say so themselves all the time. This is the way they’ve decided to bring that about.
Moving on to electricity generation, there is absolutely no reason to conserve it whatsoever! We should be making as much as our modern society demands and it should be dirt cheap. It should be priced like most commodities in that the more you use the cheaper it gets. Does anyone go to Ford or GM and tell them hey, if you raise the prices high enough to discourage customers from buying your product, then you’ll save money by not having to build new plants? Get the government out of the way and let the power companies decide how they generate it. If coal is the cheapest then that’s what gets used. No subsidies, no wind or solar mandates, just cheap power. Modern smokestack scrubbers are definitely needed but CO2 mandates are a non-starter for the simple reason that it’s not scientifically proven or even reasonable to assume it will affect the earths climate in any significant way. We’ve been brainwashed into thinking that consuming as much power as we want or need is a bad thing for us and the earth in general. Nothing could be farther from the truth and a closer look at the lifestyles and consumption of the greatest proselytizers like Gore and Suzuki proves that they believe consumption benefits them greatly. Yet they want you to do with less and are actively campaigning to impoverish us all while not cutting back one bit themselves.
It is totally irrational for anyone to follow anything they say yet at the same time it’s being pounded into us every day in the schools, in advertizing, in brainwashing campaigns like earth hour and in economically useless endeavours like recycling glass and paper.
Cheap electricity brings industry back from overseas, puts money back in the consumers pocket where it belongs and will make our lifestyles that much more enjoyable. Anyone who would jack up the price of such a necessary utility should be tried for treason and crimes against humanity. There’s a reason we’re at the top of the food chain and the smartest creatures to ever inhabit the earth. There’s a reason we’re better and more important than maggots Dr. Suzuki. I won’t let you drag me down to their level by following your line of thinking.
201
Tony, I wonder how much coal, diesel, gas, mining, chemicals etc are used to provide our Green Dreamer with his boutique energy supply, especially his batteries. So often “sustainability” turns out to be an expensive middle class hobby – subsidised, of course.
As someone who lives in the scrub and with pythons in the roof and who still flushes the toilet from the bathtub, I say: Long live modern amenities and a centralised power grid to run them all. And if cheap reliable electrical power is good for me, it’s good for the world.
140
Its the other way around, Robert. Every Australian requires 15 cubic metres of fossil fuel to maintain our lifestyle. And two thirds if that fuel is wasted with the inefficiency of the equipment used to convert the energy.
Green Dreamer has reduced that fossil fuel consumption to half with his solar panels. The energy cost of his equipment is covered in less than a year from his fossil fuel share reduction. Equally important to him though was that he is spending less on energy and so has more to donate to save babies in Africa.
09
BilB, this is the article (by TonyfromOz) on solar you won’t read in the Fairfax Press:
http://papundits.wordpress.com/2011/08/19/rooftop-solar-power-reaches-grid-parity-with-coal-fired-power-well-not-really/
As a bush dweller I should add that there is a great deal of to-and-fro to get gas and wood by people with solar systems (had one myself). Solar can do an inferior job of running a TV but it’s none too flash on the heating and cooking. In fact, it doesn’t heat or cook. Don’t worry though. All these people have big 4WDs full of diesel to do the fetching.
On the other hand, while we wait for the Congo River and Chinese investment to power things up, “babies in Africa” would be helped greatly by any power supply which does not involve flame and smoke. To those not able to get on the grid in Africa, donate your solar panels. It means our Aussie coal wasn’t burnt uselessly in China to make the damned things.
50
What is the source reference for that statement? It is totally different from figures I have seen. I suspect you have taken the gross figure and simply divided by the population? If so, that will not an economically valid result.
What is/are the source reference(s) for that statement, including all direct costs at each stage in the supply chain, for each component? Including tariffs and subsidies.
The UN Statistics Division (UNStat) cannot give me any figures for anything related to this, for any period later than 2010.
30
My question to the greenies is who will make their batteries, windmills, and solar cells, and from what?
120
I replied to that comment by saying this:
Jason says:
That makes me sick. The history of mankind before cheap reliable energy was one of illness and disease, squalor and short miserable lives, poverty and inequality.
Cheap reliable energy has liberated the masses and elevated humanity to a level of life beyond the rotten tyranny of nature.
And here we have another smug elitist with his private electricity supply romanticising the horrible past and negating the benefits that cheap electricity provides to the rest of the community.
Residential use of electricity is 25% of Grid power.
The other 75% of electricity use is for social infrastructure; factories, hospitals, schools, transport, street lighting, etc; the things which sustain our society and community.
It’s all very well for smug elitists boasting about how they are above the fray and can live off the grid. But to say the rest of society doesn’t need grid power is a monstrous lie.
Greens and AGW alarmists have been advocating this lie for a while. For instance Beyond Zero Emissions, a typical ivory tower bunch of green spivs and academics devised their Stationary Energy Plan whereby Australia could convert to renewable energy by 2020. A critique of this plan was done by engineers Martin Nicholson and Peter Lang.
Nicholson and Lang showed that BZE was correct; Australia could convert to renewables; all it would take was a reduction in energy use of 60% based on today’s usage. 60%. Over half the week without power.
Advocates like BZE and this fool live in an ivory tower where they are Gods who can defeat AGW, which doesn’t exist, and are superior to the rest of us.
In fact Nicholson’s and Lang’s excellent analysis was wrong in a couple of key points; namely they worked on the capacity factor of green energy which is the actual power produced by green energy compared with the installed capacity which is what the green energy would produce if it were working 7/12. The capacity factor is about 20%.
But the capacity factor is an AVERAGE over a period usually a year. All that power could be produced in a couple of good months with little produced for the rest of the year.
The more accurate measure of green energy is the reliability point which is the % that the green power produces its installed or maximum power which is about 3%.
3%.
Nicholson and Lang also thought the conversion would only cost $4 billion. This is a gross shortfall; the FIT NSW scheme introduced by the previous corrupt ALP government was going to cost $4 billion by itself; but if something doesn’t work like green energy then there is no cost to be put on it.
Green power is irreparably unreliable and intermittent. It will always need the constant reliable fossil or nuclear back-up.
To say otherwise is to condemn humanity to the life they had before reliable power existed.
People who advocate this deserve the strongest condemnation.
111
Poor taste joke of the day (sorry)
Q. Why don’t we burn greenies to generate electricity.
A. Because they smoke too much!
71
Usually an illegal variety as well.
30
Life before industrialization was for most people short, often violent, hungry, in poverty and so often with sickness.
Sounds wonderful?
I wish such a life on all greenies!
100
Cohenite:
I take it you have never met any Beyond Zero Emissions types. I met them on 2 occasions and I found them well meaning if completely ignorant. I agree they might live in an ivory tower, although my impression is on some cloud remote from the real world. No real knowledge of the subject, nor of global warming – their excuse.
I complained a few weeks ago about wasting 2 hours of my time listening to 2 who wanted a solar tower power station in Pt. Augusta to replace the 2 old brown coal fired plants. TonyfromOz demolished their claim, but they hadn’t checked the capacity of the Gemasolar design (20 MW ) and naively thought that this would replace a 250MW AND a 500MW plant. Nor had they realised that the reason these plants were still operating in summer was to meet the demand NOT supplied by all those ‘wonderful’ wind turbines and PV panels. They hadn’t realised that the Gemasolar plant basically shuts down for 3 months in winter, nor that it cost $A472 million to put out an average of 17MW over those 270 days. (and the electricity was sold at 11 times that out of Bayswater.
I tentatively costed supplying SA with these at about $54 -60 Billion, but at that cost I may have estimated the demand.
50
I’ve lost count of the number of people who have used this Gemasolar plant as an example to replace large scale coal fired power, well, any coal fired power plant really.
The average Capacity Factor for a whole year is barely 60%, but hey at 20MW (rounded) who cares.
Let’s actually pretend this plant lasts the full 25 years.
The total power it will generate for delivery to the Spanish grid over the whole total of those 25 years is the same as generated by Bayswater in 54 DAYS.
Tony.
100
Tony:
NOTE the 270 days running time. Winter doesn’t help the sun shine, even in the driest part of Spain. Even at the shorter running season they cannot maintain their nominal capacity.
Note also: their claim of 19.9 MW capacity was to put them in a higher bracket for a Feed In Tariff, around $435 per MWh. That has been reduced and may be eliminated as the Spanish government struggles with the economic mess. The spanish electricity grid has a deficit of $A46 Billion.
Try http://www.ewea.org/blog/2014/03/wind-energys-triumph-spain-ignored-government/ for a typical whinge in favour of renewables.
1. Wind supply X %
2. Wind cuts the price of electricity by 4% (ignoring the law of supply and demand which means a lower price for a sudden jump in supply)
3. Employment in the wind industry has dropped sharply.
4. He acknowledges the deficit but seems to think the system can continue.
5. Most interesting: He claims that Nuclear only costs $A26 per MWh but gets a FIT of $A76 a MWh, without mentioning how that justifies rates of $90 for wind and $266 for some solar. (I doubt the claimed cost for nuclear, most figures I’ve seen suggest it’s about double that cost, but why, if CO2 emissions are harmful, are the green avoiding a cheap, stable, reliable answer?)
10
Hi Graeme, I’ve had stoushes in the media with Mark Diesendorf who is the resident academic for BZE. That’s as close as I want to get to these people.
50
Probably wise to avoid them, you never know what you might catch.
I must say though that those I’ve spoken to have been quite nice but incredibly vague and ill informed. It doesn’t say much for Mark Diesendorf that he cannot present his case clearly even to his followers. Or perhaps the case is the hopeless case of crock which anybody with some common sense would think on reading it.
20
My only comment on this ethical maze is to repeat the recent plea of a Bangladeshi politician – apologies, I cannot find the reference – for more reliable power stations to be urgently built.
His principle reason is that when people have electricity, light and television, they make a lot less babies. And what Bangladesh urgently needs is a lot less babies.
Note the word ‘reliable’, that does not mean solar or wind power.
130
Here is a poor forecast for this coming years food supply.
http://www.longrangeweather.com/Article/details.aspx?ArtId=57
This will impact on Africa.
30
***with developed countries backing off, there’s no doubt the developing countries are coming under increasing pressure to buy into wind & solar. hope they have the strength to say no:
20 April: West Hartford News: Jim Shelton: Yale climate change summit focuses on energy future
The world’s energy future will be marked by massive urbanization, transformed utilities and a race to adapt to a changing climate.
Those are just a few of the revelations from an international climate change summit convened Thursday at Yale University. Dubbed “EnergyFuture 2030,” the day-long conference cast a critical eye at everything from government regulation to the impact of dwindling water resources on the power grid…
Pachauri and another speaker at the conference, Karen Seto of the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, helped write sections of a new IPCC report on climate change that has made headlines worldwide.
Those reports point to major urbanization in the next two decades, led by Africa and Asia. Globally, it’s the equivalent of adding 20,000 football fields of urban space every day through 2030.
***“I’m increasingly of the opinion that the developing countries have to take the lead,” Pachauri said. “Why should we follow a resources-intensive path to development? It would be utterly foolish to replicate what’s happened in the rest of the world.”…
Karen Hussey, of Australian National University, spoke of the role water will play in the future of energy…
The warming of the oceans also will have an impact on the power supply.
“It’s difficult to use water as a coolant when it’s already warm,” Hussey said…
Panelists lauded the emergence of new suppliers from the ranks of renewable energy companies. That will inevitably lead to changes in energy storage and distribution, government regulation and a transformation in the role of public utilities.
“Change is coming and you really have to get your arms around it,” Esty said.
(2 COMMENTS ONLY)
COMMENT by mememine:
Occupywallstreet now does not even mention CO2 in its list of demands because of the bank-funded and corporate run carbon trading stock markets ruled by politicians.
http://www.westhartfordnews.com/articles/2014/04/20/news/doc5351430e6a5be833111461.txt
40
Does this get the most fatuous remark on climate of the year award?
“The warming of the oceans will have an impact on the power supply. “It’s difficult to use water as a coolant when it’s already warm”, Hussey said.”
160
If it doesn’t win the award it will take some beating. It should also be entered in the “stupidest remark of the year” category. A hands down winner.
90
At this stage I’d limit it to “stupidest remark of the week”…
The AGW blethren are on a roll, there will be plenty more to come. !!
40
I agree, it was a dumb remark. However what is affecting power stations is the huge increase in jelly fish which clog cooling channel inlets. A number of power stations have had to shut down due to this problem.
15
then don’t swim near the inlet !!
70
Some of the most common and important jellyfish predators include tuna, shark, swordfish, and at least one species of Pacific salmon, as well as sea turtles, also known as leatherback turtles.
It’s not good that we are killing off these beneficial fish and animals.
Read more: http://www.jellyfishfacts.net/jellyfish-predators.html
31
But a cooling channel inlet will only be using water at the ambient temperature of the overall water source — lake, sea, etc., which will presumably have a huge thermal inertia.
The fact that jelly fish are clogging input vents indicates a problem with the physical design of the input vent structures, and the actual water current flows, rather than the temperature of the water per se.
20
They have got it all wrong!
Water vapour positive feedback is caused by human CO2!
Since evaporation would also cause water vapour positive feedback, it can’t have occurred prior to humans burning coal!
Since evaporation is used for cooling power stations, it is clear they could not exist without humans burning coal and producing CO2!
🙂
bonus points if you pick up the Double entendre thingy in the circular reasoning.
40
Well done!
Your UN-IPCC job application is in the post.
40
LOL! I guess he goes to the algore school of earth sciences. Must be thinking the water was heated by the “million degrees” just below the surface.
50
Ian says this:
I like Ian.
Now how can we UN-do the UN?
110
You can’t. The UN is like a virulent strain of Herpies. Once you have it, there is no effective cure.
Let us not forget. The UN was formed with the original intention of preventing war. It’s success in that field, has been replicated in every other field where it, or one of its many offspring, has become involved.
It is institutionalised ineptitude raised to an art form.
120
Great article Jo – in fact Africa is the new power house – the Chinese, who don’t give a shit about AGW, are investing heavily in Africa. The middle class in Africa now sport more mobile phones than the whole of the US! yes seriously – I speak to people who have spent their life in Africa and they tell me it’s a power house of energy production, business, manufacturing, agriculture, the African cities are now burgeoning into vibrant metropolises. It’s all good.
What they don’t need is Greenies pushing their sustainable barrow!
50
They are investing everywhere in the “third world”, and not just in Africa. They also have an active presence, both financially, and on the ground, in the Western Pacific. They are also investing heavily in Pakistan, by providing trade infrastructure, and through that initiative, reaching into the other “-stans”.
But they do care a lot, about the sustainability aspects of AGW, and are very keen about the move to wind and photoelectric power. They have the largest reserves of the rare earths required for these initiatives, and the least regulated extraction, refining, and manufacturing industries, in the world. Best to exploit that advantage now, before the EU and UN cotton-on to what is happening, and start muttering about sanctions.
70
And they have an interest in getting hold of lots of land in Australia. Why? Well, despite what some think the chinese are well aware of climate change. They have records indicating that the times of the “roman warming” and the “medieval warm period” were good times in China, whereas the colder periods were dreadful, with mass starvation, plagues and rebellions.
Those in power don’t want any of that. In the unlikely event of the world warming the expansion of the Hadley cells would mean more tropical rain extending southward. In the more likely event of some cooling for 20-30 years, or more, then the Hadley cells will contract (as there is evidence of it happening) and the winter rain band will move north, covering more of Australia and increasing farm yields in the south. In either case they will be able to ship food back to China to replace the loss of agricultural land south of Mongolia.
And for those who say it can’t happen, check where the Swan river starts…hundreds of km. further north than where there is water now.
20
I refrained from including Australia in my list of third world countries, because I understand that it is still a work in progress.
30
I wrote this a month ago. It’s on a similar subject… I call it Inhumane Monsters. http://johnbolton.ca/2014/03/07/the-right-opinion-march-7th-2014/
50
A medical metaphor might help to illustrate the problem. Much of what is written and spoken in the main stream media is about the diagnosis of potential climate catastrophe. Less is written about the treatment. Even if the diagnosis is correct, it does not mean that the proposed mitigation “treatments” (carbon taxes, carbon trading, switching to renewables, lifestyle changes) will (a) work and (b) have no harmful side effects. There is then having the competency to administer that treatment.
In medicine there are strong medical ethics, quality standards, proven skills, and independent checking procedures to ensure the best interests of the patient are served. In “climate science” the harm of the treatment programs are ignored, blamed on something else, or seen as a good thing.
140
Co2 mitigation cost 96c in the dollar.
The proposed solution is 25 times worse than the non existent problem!
50
Want to stop climate change? Happy to see black babies die?
Unfortunately for many “compassionate” greens, the answer to both questions is a resounding affirmative, whether they realize it or not (and many do). I have been railing against their anti-human crusade for years now with a focus on the devastating impacts their mitigation schemes promise to inflict upon the world’s poorest (the industrialized world does not go unscathed as well of course). Their philosophy of de-industrialization and de-population will undoubtedly kill tens of millions by design and will, as I noted in those posts, cut global wealth in half and prolong poverty indefinitely.
While most of the AGW sheep will never admit to this, or even acknowledge these repercussions as fact, the truth is they are pushing a very deadly agenda, a far more fatal prescription than any supposed disease we are inflicting upon ourselves through development. The irony of course, as you well know, is that most environmental concerns can be addressed by allowing for the natural development of wealth, the path of the Golden Economic Age we had been enjoying until the Neo-Luddite Sustainable Developers attempted to commandeer our future. But I guess most of us here know this was never really about helping the environment, but rather about power and control.
As an environmentalist myself for decades, nothing makes me angrier than seeing these fools, these wolves, wrap themselves in wool and attempt to claim the moral high ground already occupied, as you noted, by those who hold the skeptic position. The reality is AGW cultists are advocates of environmental and human destruction. As I have stated many times, they have hijacked the movement and have mutated it into some heinous, insatiable behemoth I no longer recognize or support. I am not a religious man, but while they seem to have reserved their seats in hell, I refuse to allow them to create hell on Earth as their agenda promises, at least not without a fight.
Mrs. Nova, you have done it many times and I commend your efforts, but please continue to expose their fake compassion whenever the opportunity arises. It bears repeating over and over and over again until the message truly sinks in. As you stated so beautifully, it’s time more skeptics unapologetically plant the flag in the moral high ground and call the fake compassion for what it is. There simply is no need to choose between clean air and development. As I quoted from the IPCC itself in my piece at The Air Vent:
Pollution abatement efforts appear to increase with income, growing willingness to pay for a clean environment, and progress in the development of clean technology. Thus, as incomes rise, pollution should increase initially and later decline, a relationship often referred to as the “environmental Kuznets curve.”
[There is a] long-established negative correlation between fertility rates and per capita income. Clearly, richer countries uniformly have a relatively low fertility rate. Poorer countries, on average, have a higher fertility rate.
Barro (1997) reports a statistically significant correlation between per capita GDP growth and the variables life expectancy and fertility in his analysis of post-1960 growth performance of 100 countries. Other things being equal, growth rates correlate positively (higher) with increasing life expectancy and negatively (lower) with high fertility, which confirms the view that the affluent live longer and have fewer children.
From a demographic point of view, the primary effect seen in [the figure showing the ‘negative correlation’] is interpreted as infant and child mortality decline with increasing affluence.
Cheers!
140
“… billions of the world’s population are determinedly kept from electricity, the most poverty-stricken still die of diseases we no longer suffer from and could eliminate in a few years, we now grow crops for fuel rather than food to starve the already hungry who get killed in food riots, the rich and greedy fill their already bulging bank accounts from out of the pockets of our own poor struggling with utility bills and the elderly freeze to death in their beds, because they can no longer afford to heat their homes.”
http://thepointman.wordpress.com/2014/04/17/a-journey-up-the-river-and-into-the-heart-of-darkness/
Pointman
120
Mods, did I get moderated here? What did I say that was so bad?
[bobl, I looked but didn’t find anything. ] ED
00
bobl, sometimes one arrant word will kick the dreaded auto-mod awake.
read http://joannenova.com.au/2009/02/guide-for-commenting/ and email the mods (its early morning in WA though)
10
The auto mod thingy must have caught something off Adam Bandt – it’s trying to quash my free speech. The machines are revolting…
Hope it isn’t fatal….
[Idiot mode OFF]
10
It’s pretty simple. This is why we fight them.
I know better than to take on the burden of saving the world. But I also know I can’t sleep if I don’t do what I can against “climate change”.
To change the subject slightly:
Carbon footprint is alarmingly important to more and more people, at least when asked about it. We have no way of knowing what they actually do. But what they say drives me right up the wall.
40
Great & timely post.
I attempt to be economical with words, but invariably fail, so I will reproduce a quote that says best what I want to say:
“It is an accident of history that that notion of global warming caused people like me to enquire as to what actually is going on with our climate. I am proud to have done my bit to push back against the darkness that ever encroaches on us.”
Also this quote from the same link:
“As for any politicians who have ever believed in global warming, or supported the carbon tax, or a carbon-constrained economy, there is no hope for them. They are either too stupid or incompetent to be taken seriously.
Merely recanting, at this late stage, won’t be enough. Make their lives hell too, just as they wished a diminished life on you.”
50
Oops.
Forgot link.
00
20 April: SBS: Eric Holthaus: How the US military is preparing for climate change war
Climate change could start the next world war, and he U.S. military is preparing for conflict, retired Navy Rear Adm. David Titley says in an interview with Slate.com
But in addition to the call for cooperation, the reports also shared an alarming new trend: Climate change is already destabilizing nations and leading to wars.
That finding was highlighted in this week’s premiere of Showtime’s new star-studded climate change docu-drama Years of Living Dangerously…
In a recent interview with the blog Responding to Climate Change, retired Army Brig. Gen. Chris King laid out the military’s thinking on climate change:
‘This is like getting embroiled in a war that lasts 100 years. That’s the scariest thing for us,’ he told RTCC. ‘There is no exit strategy that is available for many of the problems. You can see in military history, when they don’t have fixed durations, that’s when you’re most likely to not win.’…
In a similar vein, last month, retired Navy Rear Adm. David Titley co-wrote an op-ed for Fox News:
‘The parallels between the political decisions regarding climate change we have made and the decisions that led Europe to World War One are striking – and sobering.’…
Holthaus: In short, climate change could be the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of the 21st century…
Earlier this year, while at the American Meteorological Society annual meeting in Atlanta, I had a chance to sit down with Titley, who is also a meteorologist and now serves on the faculty at Penn State University. He’s also probably one of the most fascinating people I’ve ever spoken with. Check out his TEDxPentagon talk, in which he discusses how he went from ‘a pretty hard-core skeptic about climate change’ to labeling it ‘one of the pre-eminent challenges of our century.’
Titley: ‘I like to think of climate action as a three-legged stool. There’s business saying, “This is a risk factor.” Coca-Cola needs to preserve its water rights, Boeing has their supply change management, Exxon has all but priced carbon in. They have influence in the Republican Party. There’s a growing divestment movement.
***’The big question is, does it get into the California retirement fund, the New York retirement fund, those $100 billion funds that will move markets?’…
Titley: ‘A lot of people who doubt climate change got co-opted by a libertarian agenda that tried to convince the public the science was uncertain—you know, the Merchants of Doubt. Where are the free-market, conservative ideas? The science is settled’…
Titley: ‘We need to start prioritizing people, not polar bears. We’re probably less adaptable than them, anyway.’…
***’I never try to politicize the issue.’…
Titley: ‘People working on climate change should prepare for catastrophic success. I mean, look at how quickly the gay rights conversation changed in this country. Ten years ago, it was at best a fringe thing. Nowadays, it’s much, much more accepted. Is that possible with climate change? I don’t know, but 10 years ago, if you brought up the possibility we’d have gay marriages in dozens of states in 2014, a friend might have said “Are you on drugs?” When we get focused, we can do amazing things. Unfortunately, it’s usually at the last minute, usually under duress.’
(This article is part of Future Tense, a collaboration among Arizona State University, the New America Foundation, and Slate.)
http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2014/04/20/how-us-military-preparing-climate-change-war
above is an edited, condensed version of this. ***what SBS doesn’t want Australians to know!
18 April: Slate: Eric Holthaus: “Climate Change War” Is Not a Metaphor
The U.S. military is preparing for conflict, retired Navy Rear Adm. David Titley says in an interview.
***Slate:Despite all the data and debates, the public still isn’t taking that great of an interest in climate change. According to Gallup, the fraction of Americans worrying about climate “a great deal” is still roughly one-third, about the same level as in 1989. Do you think that could ever change?
Titley: A lot of people who doubt climate change got co-opted by a libertarian agenda that tried to convince the public the science was uncertain—you know, the Merchants of Doubt…
Most people out there are just trying to keep their job and provide for their family. If climate change is now a once-in-a-mortgage problem, and if food prices start to spike, people will pay attention. Factoring in sea-level rise, storms like Hurricane Katrina and Sandy could become not once-in-100-year events, but once-in-a-mortgage events. I lost my house in Waveland, Miss., during Katrina. I’ve experienced what that’s like…
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2014/04/david_titley_climate_change_war_an_interview_with_the_retired_rear_admiral.html
20
I sincerely hope the US military is just putting this out to appease the idiots in Congress and the administration who actually believe it.
Let’s see: Islamic Jihadism, Iranian nuclear program, Russian expansionism, and climate change — which ones are the most likely to present serious problems in the next 5-10 years (about as far ahead as anyone can effectively look ahead)?
10
btw heard the last minutes of ABC local radio’s religious program with John Cleary last nite after the tennis. Cleary’s program so anti-govt, pro-labor, it should be categorised as “religious politics”. guest was knower-of-all-things-CAGW, Bill Leadbetter (see below).
of course, Brandis/CAGW came up and Cleary did manage to add that Brandis was criticising NAME-CALLING the CAGW sceptics.
Leadbetter let loose. CAGW sceptics reject the scientific method – conservative ideology, opinion matters most (or something), so what if they say the earth is flat or the moon is made of green cheese. that’s opinion, not science blah blah.
caller brings up Ian Lowe & Tim Flannery as truth-tellers. and so on and so forth.
ABC Local Radio: Bill Leadbetter
Bill Leadbetter is a historian, archaeologist and Education academic. Currently a Senior Lecturer in the School of Education at Edith Cowan University, he was trained as an Ancient Historian at Macquarie University, taught at Macquarie University and the University of Sydney and has published widely in the history of the Later Roman Empire and taken part in archaeological surveys of Roman sites in Turkey. More recently, Bill has also been working on the policy and pedagogy of History Education and, until September last year, was Senior Policy Adviser to the WA Minister for Heritage. In 2006, Bill was awarded a Carrick Award for Excellence in University Teaching and Learning.
http://www.abc.net.au/profiles/content/s2687293.htm
20
should have mentioned Leadbetter’s concern for his children and their children’s futures! LOL. no doubt he would approve CAGW being taught in the classroom:
20 April: NYT: Beth Gardiner: Setbacks Aside, Climate Change Is Finding Its Way Into the World’s Classrooms
LONDON — From Mauritius to Manitoba, climate change is slowly moving from the headlines to the classroom. Schools around the world are beginning to tackle the difficult issue of global warming, teaching students how the planet is changing and encouraging them to think about what they can do to help slow that process.
Strapped school budgets, concerns about overburdening teachers and political opposition to what in some places is a contentious subject have complicated the spread of lessons on climate change. Nonetheless, many nations are adding or expanding such offerings, convinced that young people must learn about a phenomenon likely to have a big impact on their lives.
Schools, advocates say, can play an important role in fighting climate change by teaching young people greener habits and creating a generation of voters who will back measures to cut carbon dioxide pollution.
To slow dangerous warming, “we need an overall change of mind and a change of action that relates to everything that we think and do,” said Alexander Leicht, of Unesco, the agency overseeing the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development, which ends this year…
Britain’s education secretary has zigzagged, with changes that environmental advocates say will reduce climate’s prominence in the national curriculum there.
In the United States, new science standards drawn up by 26 states and scientists’ and teachers’ groups call for introducing climate change to students in middle school and exploring it in greater detail in high school. That has stirred opposition in states like Wyoming, a coal and oil producer. Lawmakers there last month blocked funding for the standards, saying teaching climate change could hurt the local economy…
Irish schools, for example, cover climate change as part of a broad theme known as education for sustainable development, addressing social and environmental problems ranging from poverty to dwindling biodiversity…
That is true, too, in island nations such as Cuba, Indonesia, Mauritius, and Trinidad and Tobago. As part of a Unesco effort called Sandwatch, students visit beaches to measure their width, analyze wave direction, collect water samples, assess wildlife and gather other data…
Unesco has been involved in such efforts, assisting, for example, with a program intended to reach 67,000 teachers in Vietnam, and working on smaller training programs in nations including Brazil, Mongolia, Namibia, the Philippines and South Africa, Mr. Leicht said…
Britain’s education secretary, Michael Gove, partly reversed course last year after scaling back coverage of climate change in a draft version of a national curriculum taking effect in September. Still, the amended version would give less emphasis to the subject than the current curriculum, frustrating advocates like Esha Marwaha, a 17-year-old Londoner whose online petition urging a strong climate emphasis drew 31,000 signatures.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/21/business/energy-environment/setbacks-aside-climate-change-is-finding-its-way-into-the-worlds-classrooms.html?hpw&rref=education&_r=0
VIDEO: 19 April: ChannelsTV: Climate Change: Experts Advocate Domesticating The IPCC Report In Nigeria
The Nigerian Government has been advised to empower the department in charge of climate change in order to meet the challenges that rising temperature presents…
International Negotiator on Climate Change and Sustainable Development, Lekan Fadina and Environmental Activist, Desmond Majekodunmi were guests of Saturday morning programme, Sunrise on Channels Television to discuss issues of climate change and its dangers to mankind, especially to Nigeria…
The experts revealed that the world was running out of time, and Nigeria must do something towards taking measures on Climate Change because its life was at risk…
http://www.channelstv.com/2014/04/19/climate-change-experts-advocate-domesticating-the-ipcc-report-in-nigeria/
10
19 April: Missoulian: Free event on effects of climate change planned at SKC campus in Pablo
Montanans from all backgrounds will gather in 13 communities across the state to show strong home-grown support for immediate solutions to the climate crisis Saturday, April 26 from noon to 3 p.m…
Montana is heating up and the evidence of climate change is all around us: beetle-killed forests; larger and hotter wildfires; smoke-filled valleys threaten our health; melting mountain glaciers; less irrigation water for farmers and ranchers; fishing closures on blue-ribbon trout streams; and, weird weather events that damage property.
Clearly the changing climate is affecting our way of life and costing taxpayers millions…
***Local businesses and organizations will share information promoting green energy and climate solutions.
Lunch and music will be provided. The event is free and open to everyone.
http://missoulian.com/news/state-and-regional/free-event-on-effects-of-climate-change-planned-at-skc/article_d914220a-c81f-11e3-9f5a-0019bb2963f4.html
20 April: Shanghai Daily: Xinhua: Interview: EU hopes to strengthen cooperation with China on climate change
The two sides have been cooperating very intensively on climate change, EU Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard, who will begin a visit to China Wednesday, said in a recent interview with Xinhua…
***”We have started a cooperation project with the Chinese authorities on emissions trading this year and it is a very good example of how we can work together on climate change,” she said…
“Green growth is about maintaining and improving our quality of life while ensuring pollution does not undermine economic growth,” she said. “The green sector is one of the fastest growing industries with millions of new jobs being created. China and Europe can benefit enormously from that.”…
http://www.shanghaidaily.com/article/article_xinhua.aspx?id=213726
20
Pat:
Connie Hedegaard is being conned. Well known eco-looney with power meets Chinese. They politely tell her what she wants to hear (very polite people the chinese). She is free to go back to Europe and say China is on board and keep the green lunacy going in Europe. The Chinese will help by suppling wind turbines and PV panels, and any other stupid products the greenies dream up, while doing what they want to do. Which won’t be anything that will hinder (their) industry
30
what a laugh:
20 April: Monmouth University to Go Carbon Neutral in Honor of Earth Day
Written by Monmouth University
West Long Branch, NJ – Monmouth University will go carbon neutral on Earth Day and help students and area residents to do the same. On Tuesday, April 22, 2014, Hess Energy Marketing, a Direct Energy Company, is providing the University with Verified Emission Reductions (VERs) equivalent to the University’s energy consumption for that day. The carbon off-sets are the equivalent of taking seven passenger cars off the road for a full year.
On Tuesday, April 22, Monmouth University will host an Earth Day Celebration on the patio of the Rebecca Stafford Student Center from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. with Clean Water Action and several other University energy partners. The event will have music, giveaways, environmentally-themed games, and information tables. All are invited to stop by and get a free LED bulb, while supplies last…
http://www.ahherald.com/newsbrief/monmouth-news/17388-monmouth-university-to-go-carbon-neutral-in-honor-of-earth-day
00
Report: McKinsey & Co: Myths and realities of clean technologies
Don’t be fooled by high-profile setbacks. The cleantech sector is gaining steam—with less and less regulatory assistance.
April 2014| bySara Hastings-Simon, Dickon Pinner, and Martin Stuchtey
The world is on the cusp of a resource revolution. As our colleagues Stefan Heck and Matt Rogers argue, (For more on their argument, see “Are you ready for the resource revolution?,” McKinsey Quarterly, March 2014, which summarizes some of the ideas in Heck and Rogers’s new book, Resource Revolution: How to Capture the Biggest Business Opportunity in a Century, New York, NY: New Harvest, 2014.) advances in information technology, nanotechnology, materials science, and biology will radically increase the productivity of resources. The result will be a new industrial revolution that will enable strong economic growth, at a much lower environmental cost than in the past, thanks to the broad deployment of better, cleaner technologies and the development of more appropriate business models. But how do we reconcile this bold and heartening prediction with recent challenges experienced by cleantech, the general term for products and processes that improve environmental performance in the construction, transport, energy, water, and waste industries? Over the past couple of years, many cleantech equity indexes have performed poorly; in January 2014, the American news program 60 Minutes ran a highly critical segment on the subject.
***The former chief investment officer of California’s largest public pension fund complained in 2013 that its cleantech investments had not experienced the J-curve: losses followed by steep gains. It’s been “an L-curve, for ‘lose,’” he said.
So, is cleantech failing? In a word, no…
http://www.mckinsey.com/Insights/Energy_Resources_Materials/Myths_and_realities_of_clean_technologies
10
Well, well, well. Who would have thought it?
Full article at this link.
Tony.
20
face reality, McKinsey & Co:
19 April: The Economist: Coal: The fuel of the future, unfortunately
A cheap, ubiquitous and flexible fuel, with just one problem
WHAT more could one want? It is cheap and simple to extract, ship and burn. It is abundant: proven reserves amount to 109 years of current consumption, reckons BP, a British energy giant. They are mostly in politically stable places. There is a wide choice of dependable sellers, such as BHP Billiton (Anglo-Australian), Glencore (Anglo-Swiss), Peabody Energy and Arch Coal (both American)…
***Just as this wonder-fuel once powered the industrial revolution, it now offers the best chance for poor countries wanting to get rich.
Such arguments are the basis of a new PR campaign launched by Peabody, the world’s largest private coal company (which unlike some rivals is profitable, thanks to its low-cost Australian mines). And coal would indeed be a boon, were it not for one small problem: it is devastatingly dirty…
But poverty kills people too, and slow growth can cost politicians their jobs…
America’s gas boom has prompted its coal miners to seek new export markets, sending prices plunging on world markets…
In Germany power from coal now costs half the price of watts from a gas-fired power station. It is a paradox that coal is booming in a country that in other respects is the greenest in Europe. Its production of power from cheap, dirty brown coal (lignite) is now at 162 billion kilowatt hours, the highest since the days of the decrepit East Germany.
Japan, too, is turning to coal in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster. On April 11th the government approved a new energy plan entrenching its role as a long-term electricity source…
A $5.2 billion taxpayer-supported clean-coal plant in Mississippi incorporates all the latest technology. But at $6,800 per kilowatt, it will be the costliest power plant yet built (a gas-fired power station in America costs $1,000 per kW). At those prices, coal is going to stay dirty.
http://www.economist.com/news/business/21600987-cheap-ubiquitous-and-flexible-fuel-just-one-problem-fuel-future
20
A couple of points on this whole sad subject.
First is that it is not just the citizens of the undeveloped world that are being severely affected by the craziness and total lack of any empathy of the well off, highly paid, utterly selfish, self serving narrow minded alarmists, greens and the radical left intelligentsia that are concentrated in the universities as well as their running dogs in the political spectrum and in media circles.
It is also the lower earning and poorest of citizens in some of the most advanced and developed nations that are being forced to live severely deprived living standards imposed entirely by the aforesaid selfish, self serving, empathy deprived and arrogant elitist green / intelligentsia cliches through their running dogs in the political process.
This article from the NoTricksZone blog shows just how wide spread and insidious are the forces that are attempting to forcibly change the world and it’s citizens into a culture that fits their cruel ideological beliefs and which would allow them to rule unhindered or that is what they would like to believe.
Historic reality recorded from past such situations shows that instead of a long dictatorial governance by these groups, immense and violent opposition would inevitably arise instead and the human suffering and environmental destruction would be immeasurably greater than if we just got on with adapting to climatic circumstances as mankind and life has done since time immemorial.
However as we well know such radical groups are incapable of thinking this through and are totally blinded by their mental intransigence and inability to accept there might be other far kinder empathy supporting, more effective paths to follow in both human affairs and environmental aims.
More Germans Getting Their Power Cut Off Because They Can’t Afford Paying Sky-High Green Electric Bills
[ quoted]
Just a few days ago, the IPCC WG III report claimed that CO2 emissions could be curbed with little pain involved. Well, go tell it to the more than 300,000 Germans who have had their power shut off in a single year because they no longer can afford skyrocketing electric bills. And these people live in a rich country!
And imagine what expensive power means for poor, developing countries. In such countries it’s nothing short of widespread catastrophe and grinding misery.
The online site of German news television station NTV writes of a threatening energy poverty taking hold in Europe and that”more and more people are unable to pay for the electricity that they consume. More than 300,000 German citizens are going to have their power shut off each year.”
NTV cites a report from German nation daily Die Welt, which writes German power companies turned off the power for 321,539 people because of non-payment in 2012, up from 312,500 people in 2011.
The reason for the high prices? NTV writes:
A reason for the increased number of power shutoffs is the rash expansion of renewable energies, which lead to higher energy prices.”
Two years ago NoTricksZone reported on an article also from Die Welt who claimed that 600,000 households were getting their power cut off. The figures on power service cutoffs vary broadly. Whichever figure is correct, the scale of the social disaster is immense no matter how you look at it.
It’s time to make energy affordable and attractive for every socioeconomic level, and not a luxury good for the upper classes.
Also read: max-planck-institute-economist-energiewende-bordering-on-suicide-unimaginably-expensive-folly/
[ end quote]
60
I’ve looked at the arguments and the comments. It turns out that the real baby killers are the “Fossil Fuels for Ever” brigade.
The only person in the entire compendium other than Geoff Sherrington, who anecdotally identified several businesses that used their profits for good humanitarian works, was Green Dreamer who fitted out his house with solar panels to save $1400 per year from unnecessary electricity bills and therefore had free cash available to donate to good causes in Africa to save babies.
Most others are content to wastefully consume fossil fuels at an ever increasing price and rate so have no free cash available to help the babies of Africa, or anywhere else.
Conclusion: Those who utilise renewable energy are not only environmentally responsible, they are good humanitarians too.
I know that this will be a bitter pill for Fossil Fuel Gluttons to swallow, but there it is, not only are they using up Petrol and Diesel 4 (South Africa) to 60 (Zimabawe and most every other African nation) times faster than most Africans depriving them of access to affordable fuels for farming and feeding their babies, they are in the process wasting money that could otherwise be used to feed the poor.
FOSSIL FUEL FATTIES don’t give a damn about the babies of Africa.
020
A curious argument, BilB, I’ll counter it.
Let us suppose that very high fossil fuel-derived electricity prices are due in significant part to the uneconomic enticements and concessions given to those who use “renewable” power (and this in fact is glaringly obvious to anyone who does even cursory research into the matter). Let us then suppose (also true) that the initial cost of installing solar panels is prohibitive for the majority of the population.
It logically follows that in fact the majority can’t donate spare cash to Africa because they don’t have any left. Thanks to the stupidity and cupidity of politicians and the opportunism of the panel owners, whose donations appear to be some kind of guilt money. Who’s killing African babies now?
I like WUPWT, but I sometimes wonder about Anthony Watts. Some time ago he fitted his Californian home with a big solar system and justified it solely on economic grounds, cheerfully acknowledging that he was now being heavily subsidised by most of the rest of the population. He considered he was making a point, and there was no ethical conflict in also making a healthy profit at other people’s expense. His argument, like yours above, sits very uncomfortably with me.
Anyway, Watts isn’t the matter at hand here. Have you any observations to offer to my counter-argument to yours?
Forgive me if I’ve misunderstood your post, and you were just playing the sarcastic devil’s advocate.
Mal.
70
Good try, Level Gaze, and I appreciate your candor. For starters the carbon price part of your electricity bill is about 3 cents per unit, and it has only been in place for a year. Hardly economy crippling. The real cost increase on your electricity bill was the profit free for all enabled by privatisation. Wait until the full sell off has taken place and you have compulsory time of use smart meters applied, the only place to hide from shower of new charges and fees will be under your own solar panels.
Yes, (to answer your specific question, Mal) there are residual costs from the over generous incentives put in place to stimulate Solar PV installations, but these do not feature in the electricity price as far as I am aware so are outside of the subject. They are crippling you from a taxation perspective instead.
I don’t cost anything out including grants or concessions. As far as I am concerned such things are short term and not sustainable so should not figure in any cost justification. One of the biggest costs in Solar PV is the installation, and as far as I am concerned this should be near zero. A system should not cost more than a couple of hundred dollars to install and I design with that objective in mind. If you google self install you will find an increasing number of systems in the US. I have a target budget of $6000 (retail) for the system I am building which will be a 3 kw electric and 4.5 kw thermal system, no batteries. If I am able to achieve that then I would judge PV as being affordable to most at $120 a week for one year minus the immediate electricity payback from installation. Alternative this could be put onto the mortgage where the PV increases the value of the property and the electricity savings increase the mortgage repayment rate and reduce the term. Every home owner can afford that.
So there would be cash for Africa after 4 years, which is far better than now. I think that my position holds up.
And to answer Tony’s following Jibe. Yes I am a FOSSIL FUEL FATTIE so far and I don’t feel the slightest bit good about it. I am going on a crash Fossil Energy Diet in the next few months.
012
Well, thank you for the “good try”, much appreciated. I’ll return the favour – your answer is also excellent but I sniff creative accounting here (recently watched the Enron movie so I’m suspicious of everything.)
I checked my most recent electricity bill. It’s $506.57 for the quarter. The total greenhouse gas emissions to produce this energy is 2.01 tonnes. The current Carbon (sic) Tax is fixed at $24.15 per tonne and since this cost is passed directly to the consumer that component of my bill is $48.54. This is a 10.59% (not 3%) increase in the electricity price, due entirely to the Carbon Tax, as far as I’m concerned.
The cost due to “gold plating” of the grid is an entirely different matter, also worthy of forensic examination.
I hope your calculations for your panel installation costs don’t embed a 300% error. Let us all know how it goes.
Cheers, Mal.
90
Not to mention levees for RETs and to pay for your neighbours solar etc…
Don’t forget that BilB works for a company that manufactures components for use in solar technology, so he has a vested interest in selling alarm.
60
I identified 3 cents per unit, Mal, (not 3 per cent) which you correctly calculate to be over 10%. Easy mistake to make, I make plenty myself trying to read too fast on small screens.
And yes Heywood I did leave off the 1.5 cent per unit for the RET. Bad Bil. Be sure to notice, however, what happens next when both of these components are removed. The price will stay the same, and we will have a clear winner in the greedy stakes.
07
BilB
Yes I did misread your post on the 3cents/unit (how do they define a unit?) and I apologise for that. Anyway you cut it, this Carbon Tax has added more than 10% on everyone’s electricity bill no matter how small or large. I don’t think that’s not crippling as you suggest. If it does this to a household budget, what do you think it does to an entire economy in competition with the rest of the world?
I’m only debating your “Hardly economy crippling” here but there is much more in your original comment that is contentious.
Anyway, for what it’s worth, I hope your solar panel installation goes to plan and if it does please come back and let us know, because we are all keen to learn from real life experience.
All the best,
Mal.
50
Actually, Mal, electricity is a tiny part of most business costs. A few percent of gross turnover would be common. So 10 percent of a few percent is a very small cost. Most businesses have a measure of discretion in their product sale price. Usually 5% would be an easy give away to achieve a sale, now compare that to 10% of 3% or 0.3%. The increase in the electricity price is a non issue for most businesses.
You can test this figure fairly easily. Australia’s has a 1.5 trillion dollar economy. Electricity retail sales are around 50 billion dollars and 10% of that is five billion. So the maximum impact of the carbon price is ( 5 divided by 1500 times 100 ) percent, or 0.3 percent.
The answer is that there is no huge impact on the economy. The exchange rate has a far higher impact on a daily basis.
06
Oh, and a unit is the standard energy measurement term for 1 kilowatt hour.
Kind regards
05
Hi BilB
I suspected “unit” meant a kilowatt hour, but I couldn’t readily find a reference to confirm this. No matter.
Whichever way you cut it, that 10% plus on my base electricity bill is money I no longer have to inject into the local economy (or donate to Black Babies if we wish to parody the issue) and since I’m probably a pretty average consumer that means the same for the general population.
That’s a considerable and underestimated hit to Australia’s economy, we see already the shifting of industries to lower cost countries. This effect is vividly observable in California, the state with severe greenhouse initiatives, losing its industries en mass interstate.
Australia faces significant economic challenges and problems – after all, it’s a highly competitive world these days. The last thing we need is more self-imposed lead in our saddlebags, so I’m not nearly as sanguine as you.
Neither you nor I are professional macro economists, that much is obvious. So we are both arguing from a limited base of knowledge and expertise. I think we’ve debated each other to a standstill now and the interest and action have moved downthread. Let’s agree to disagree and call it quits.
I have to say, you’re a pretty good advocate for your position and I’m surprised you didn’t get more thumbs up, if just for the rhetoric. I certainly have enjoyed this exchange, thank you.
10
So does that mean that public ownership of the means of production makes it more economical to produce something? According to this theory, full communism would actually make society more physically productive – everything would be cheaper?
Oh no, looks like we’ve run into blatant foolery there, unless of course you care to defend that proposition?
If not, please specify by what rational criterion you distinguish how public ownership of the means of production makes something more, versus less economical?
That or just admit you’re displaying complete economic illiteracy that disqualifies you from the debate on AGW policy on the ground that you obviously don’t understand what you’re talking about.
Go ahead. What is that rational criterion please?
50
PeterH,
The way that the electricity production ownership was managed did in fact make electricity cheaper under public ownership. I don’t know the full history but one of the key elements to this was that in the late seventies and early eighties the NSW government bought up all of the coal reserves in the state. With this control they were able to minimise the cost of fuel for electricity the thinking being to give manufacturing a low cost energy advantage. There were other features to this, for instance in the building of the high voltage cabling, and the use of public funds to build the power stations.
No doubt this threatens your Libertarian base beliefs, that taxes can be used for the good of all efficiently, but I sure you will recover eventually and possibly as a better person in the end.
07
BilB
Yes it does threaten my libertarian base beliefs, and if you could prove what you’re asserting, you would be onto something. Unlike you, I don’t evade disproofs, I actively seek them, which is what I’m doing.
However so far all you’ve done is assume that what you said is true, without evidence or reason, while evading my questions that prove your belief is irrational.
How do you know? Merely comparing consumers’ electricity bills under private and public ownership won’t answer, because unlike private owners, the state can hide loss-making activity and subsidies in the general tax bill – and does it all the time!
Show how you took account of total costs without double standards favourable to government?
Then how do you know you’re right?
Correction: The NSW government confiscated all the coal reserves in the state, and paid what they unilaterally decided it was worth. (I know because I was working in the NSW Coal Compensation Board at the time.)
How do you know it wasn’t because they didn’t pay market price for the coal they had just confiscated?
See how what you’re suggesting is that the State, by taking over monopoly control of the means of production, makes things more economically?
By the way, why shouldn’t the State’s behaviour, be condemned as monopoly price gouging according to your standards?
See how you’re not comparing apples with apples? See how you’re just assuming that government has a magical power to increase whatever-you-want-to-call-the ultimate-welfare-criterion, without stipulating the relations of means to ends that supposedly makes this possible?
What thought have you given to the possibility that you’re putting forward an irrational belief system?
Please consider:
1. If government taking over the means of production supposedly makes production more efficient, then please admit that you believe full communism would make society more physically productive?
2. But if you admit that full communism doesn’t make society more physically productive in general, but assert it’s true in the case of electricity, then why? What is the magic in electricity? Please explain the rational criterion by which you distinguish how public ownership of the means of production makes something more, versus less economical?
If you can’t do it, just admit it; don’t agonize with more evasions. “The truth will set you free”.
I say it’s an irrational belief system, but by all means prove me wrong. However mere vague assertions on your part, of contingencies supposedly favourable to your beliefs, without evidence or coming to grips with the issues as a matter of reason, only prove my case, not yours.
50
Peter Hume, nice series of challenges for bilb. I am waiting patiently for his reply.
20
If panel failure and degradation rates are included (seldom) the subsidy and the green feel-good glow are all that’s left.
The best of them have about a 12% failure, worst are…
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/60865
Title and subtitle:
Solar Panel Degradation
Growing scandal at the heart of the solar power industry
By Jack Dini, Friday, January 31, 2014
40
Bilb says:
Bilb, I support your doing this. Every able bodied person should do the same thing for 30 days each year. Please update us regularly.
That would at least toughen us up for the upcoming bad times if Greenies and supporters of agenda 21 get their way.
11
Just insulting gibberish, BilB. It has been recognised for quite a while that African countries could survive a serious drought if not for corruption and war. Condoning this $billion dollar fraud makes you a baby killer, BilB because the money could have better been spent on preparing them for the droughts and floods that have happened before and will happen again regardless of our fossil fuel use. And cheap power plays a big role in this.
Intelligence and honesty will save them, not feel good gibberish.
80
Oh BilB,
Maybe you need to read Comment 5 and contemplate what it means.
And BilB, I hope you live totally off the grid, and subsistence farm your own home, because if you have a job, then you rely on fossil fuel, from one second before your alarm goes off, to go to work using the train, to comply with all traffic control and lighting, to work at your job, to come home again, to eat your evening meal and watch the Tele and then go off to bed again.
I hope you never have any need for a hospital.
I hope you don’t send your children to school.
I hope you never shop for groceries, or anything else for that fact.
I hope you don’t have the water supply connected to your home.
I hope you don’t have sewerage.
Because BilB, if you do have any of these things, then you’re just another of those ….. and let me use your own words here
Tony.
141
As Bilby furiously peddles his bicycle to provide enough power to fire up his computer..
of wait..
….where did the bicycle and computer come from?
Better not let those third world countries discover the wheel !
92
Post 33;
Hmmm!
Quoted ; BillB’s Conclusion: Those who utilise renewable energy are not only environmentally responsible, they are good humanitarians too.
Nothing like a bit of ignorance and self righteousness to make one look like a fake is there BillB?
__________________________________________
“UC San Diego News Center”
Potent Greenhouse Gas More Prevalent in Atmosphere than Previously Assumed
Compound used in manufacture of flat panel televisions, computer displays, microcircuits, solar panels is 17,000 times more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide
61
And furthermore, burning wood for heating and cooking releases far more CO2 per energy unit than a well controlled coal fired power station, not to mention all the particulate matter and other real pollutants.
But he first has to go and gather the timber in his 4 wheel drive.
He also has to rely on external electricity supply, particularly in winter, just to operate the basics like fridge and lighting
Sorry Bilge, but you can live in isolation with your increased pollution output, but the general population got past that stage at least a century ago.
20
I meant, the general population in developed countries, of course.
Many third world countries are still at the high pollution output stage, but since their life expectancy is far less because of it, that doesn’t matter as much to the green dreamer, does it.
20
Great argument BilB and my hat is off to you, and you are to be applauded for this post – so… how much do you donate to help the babies of Africa?
50
Touche, JB I wondered who would say that. I donate communally, so how much do we donate?
29
You grace people with your presence?
40
BilB,
Give me an honest answer to a very SIMPLE question.
Do you own or drive a car or EVER used public transport.
If YES (to any of the above) – don’t be a bloody hypocrite and just tick off to some other blog where they welcome BS!
Cheers,
42
It is fraudulent to use the word “we” to include people who disagree with you, and whose contributions are taken under compulsion.
What voluntary donation do you make? And admit that you support the communal killing of thousands of people through AGW policy.
60
The way your solar system pollutes the world YOU should pay everybody else for your selfishness.
$200/person thank-you.
40
By what logic do you arrive at that claim, tomo?
04
BilB
You STILL haven’t answered my question at 33.5.1.2
I can then assume from your inability/avoidance in answering me that your answer MUST BE YES.
In that case you have PROVED yourself to be a hypocrite! Thanks for letting us all know.
Cheers,
20
see http://joannenova.com.au/2014/04/want-to-stop-climate-change-happy-to-see-black-babies-die/#comment-1434171
Read and inwardly contemplate.
10
Yes I had a look at that, tomo. The information also says that the NF3 is being replaced with F2 which does not have the environmental risk. In its place it has toxicity for humans so requires different handling techniques.
The sum total is that now that it is a known problem it will be resolved. The amount in the atmosphere is extremely small and it does wash out of the atmosphere eventually. The thing will be to reduce or eliminate the use of this chemical. I found the tech sheet from the company that manufactures these specialised chemical compounds. It is worth a read.
04
You ‘donate communally’ – is double speak for ‘not at all’
40
Not true JB. My business has donated a lot of money (some $20,000 over ten years) to a local charity. I have not, however, donated to Africa but I have a friend who does that
http://psfasociety.blogspot.ca/
feel free to donate a classroom. This is an excellent cause making a real, visible and long term difference. If I am able to help here it will be in the form of solar equipment.
15
For the right price I bet. Another clue of your vested interest in AGW alarmism.
30
And only if the government will subsidies it.
30
subsidise.. typo, sorry !
10
BilB, thumbs up for local charity. Solar installation at a price is good because you can’t go broke making a profit and if you do well then you help support your local employment and your local businesses, and everyone benfits.
20
“My business has donated a lot of money (some $20,000 over ten years) to a local charity.
And so you and your business should! After all you are helping to run a big polluting ponzi scheme on the back of peoples’ unfounded fears of the future so your ‘business’can afford to give more.
see
http://joannenova.com.au/2014/04/want-to-stop-climate-change-happy-to-see-black-babies-die/#comment-1434171
Read and maybe contemplate if you are really doing good or just making yourself *feel* good.
20
Nice to know that the poorest people in australia subsidise the rich through their electricity bills so that they can have cheap energy and feel good about a few dollars spent on the third world.
80
BilB:
Who is this Green Dreamer you claim to admire. I am unable to find any comment under that name, do you mean Jason who commented about 14 blogs ago, about life in the bush?
He doesn’t use much electricity, but then with a wood burning heater, solar hot water (backed by a lpg burner) and a well insulated house why would he? He didn’t rely entirely on solar panel, what with a micro hydro scheme and a petrol generator backup.
It’s a typical green dream, a few acres of well watered fertile soil, a “sustainable” house and “independent living”. He made no mention of how he got his money to buy and build, nor his source of income. But many of us lack the resources or the inclination (outside of daydreams) to do the same. Oh, to be young, healthy, wealthy and care free!
Nor did he mention donating money to children in Africa. I suppose he does; had you asked you may have found out that many of the commentators here do likewise.
40
Green Dreamer is Tony from Oz’s buddy, Graeme No.3. Go back and read his posts to pick up the link.
Green Dreamer didn’t mention donations but then neither does anybody else.
07
I think you should re-read TonyfromOz’s post if you think Green Dreamer referred to a buddy of his. The mention of donations to Africa came in your post. Don’t expect to post waffle (euphemism) on this site and not get pulled up for it.
You don’t seem to have grasped that Jason’s reduced use of electricity came from burning wood, running a hydro-generator and a petrol generator, LPG gas back-up for solar hot water. He doesn’t mention what source of heat he used for cooking, wood or gas? I presume that he buys things like salt, pepper, sugar and flour as a minimum.
The hydro set-up shows continuous running water, the wood fire(s) a few acres of trees (possibly more if there are deer there), the glass installation would have cost money, and his rural location that the deer and other wild life would be raiding his vegetables and fruit trees (so makes growing a bit more necessary). With a regular income it would seem a desirable life style if you were young, healthy and so way inclined, but don’t hold up using so much resources by one person as sustainable, nor available to more than a minority of the population.
I am not sure which of the “green living” magazines you read, but there are enough people leading, or wanting to lead, that life style to keep 3 circulating. It is a common wish/dream among the upper classes dating back over 20 years. See LevelGaze’s post at 33.7.2
Wishful thinking is free, reality comes at a cost. That is what this post by Jo means.
40
Sorry; “dating back over 200 years”. See the Ladies of Llangollen.
20
I have visited a home, such as you’ve just described, in rural Tasmania, built by a not-so-young lady infected by the green dream, and previously quite sensible.
It was, at most, 2 acres on a slope on a wooded hill with some scraggy planted crops looking not at all well. The dwelling was constructed randomly from materials either found or scrounged. There was a log heater, a ramshackle solar system with clapped out deep cycle batteries which had been discarded from fork lift trucks or the like, LPG and petrol backup generators, frequently used especially in the cruel Tasmanian winter, and a constant need to call her scientifically trained engineer friend to keep the whole decrepit mess in some sort of temporary running order and keep her alive. It severely tested his patience, but he did it for old times sake. And the whole structure was not, of course, insulated.
She seemed happy, and I suppose the setup was good enough for someone content to live out the rest of her life in scholarly contemplation without too much attention to personal hygiene or how much trouble or expense she put others to. But it was hardly even subsistence living, possible only through the welfare state and the strained kindness of friends. It certainly was no contribution to the society she was, if pushed to admit, indebted to and was a far cry from the kind of person she had been several years before. I suppose some judgmental people might call that selfish.
60
And of course if 4 million people wanted to live that way .. yeah right.. that’s going to work.
This is the IDIOCY of the green dream.
It might work for a few people who like to live in isolation, but for real society.. not a chance in 10000 years !!!
The green dream , is a FOOL’S dream.
60
If solar panel failure and degradation rates are included (seldom) in the subsidy and the green feel-good glow are all that’s left.
The best of them have about a 12% failure, worst are…
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/60865
Title and subtitle:
Solar Panel Degradation
Growing scandal at the heart of the solar power industry
By Jack Dini, Friday, January 31, 2014
60
There certainly is an issue there, tomo, but “The best of them have about a 12% failure” is not what I read in the article. The best was 15 panels failed in 2.8 million, the worst was really bad and all Chinese. The message is that panels can be built to last but when people cut corners for profit the result is poor quality and dissatisfaction. It is a watching brief to see how this develops. I prefer the Japanese panels or the US solar devices, depending on which type of system is being built.
04
Been doing a bit of thinking on the constant references on this and other skeptic blogs to the percieved beliefs that the alarmists / greens and radical left intelligentsia are hell bent of taking control of the lives of all citizens on the planet if they think they can do this.
And the impression is that they do actually believe they can and will be able to achieve this aim using the so called global catastrophe of climate change as the reason for the forcing of national entities to sign away their national self governance to a [ grossly corrupt ] UN controlled body because of the supposed threat to the planet from the CAGW.
A CAGW meme and well promoted apparent destructive threat which is to be used and is being used as the vehicle in the attempts to achieve this global governance control.
Now whether the skeptics are right in this or not, there is little doubt that some of the most radical leftist elements in the greens and university intelligentsia are hell bent on trying to achieve this global governance in any case and are prepared to use what ever means they can to achieve this.
A typical and totally evil and destructive of an untold number of lives, concept and outcome of both the extreme left and extreme right where “the end justifies the means”.
And for those who know their history of the first half of the 20th century it is a quite familiar pattern that is being followed today by the radical and socialistic left including elements of the democracy’s political elite, some elements of the left media and most notably from the highly paid, well off, socialistic radical leftist intelligentsia from a number of the west’s most prominent universities.
The period pre WW2 was when the rise of Communism began across the developed western world and also in some of the less developed world of the times.
With the success of communism in Soviet Russia from 1917 on the Soviets created the Comintern, the Third International, a communist organization (1919–43 ] which Stalin dissolved in 1943 due to the adverse propaganda when he needed all the help the west could give while fighting the German Third Reich.
Communism and it’s concept of world governance by the proletariat in the form of the Comintern, the People being represented of course by a tiny elitist power wielding group who spoke on behalf of the Proletariat and who if challenged immediately destroyed that opposition under the guise of being “Enemies of the People” penetrated into just about every level of western society of the times including many Unions which became dominated by communists.
They came to close to power mostly by foul means [ “the end justifies the means “] in some of the western democracies including Australia from inside of the Labor Party. The anti communist Catholic based Democratic Labor Party split from the Labor Party over it’s communist connections and thereby destroyed Labor’s and the well hidden communist structure inside the Labor Party quest for power for some 23 years in opposition.
The communists were very entrenched in the increasingly radical leftist intelligentsia within the universities particularly in Great Britain.
And this led to the likes of Donald McLean and Guy Burgess and others in the UK who as prominent members of the Cambridge and Oxford university based intelligentsia turned in their grossly misplaced idealism to spying for the Stalin’s Soviet Union even when the west was supposedly an ally of Stalin’s Soviets .
In the USA there were the a number of university trained nuclear researchers plus a whole gamut of the elitist professionals in top government positions who were recruited by the Soviets in their endeavors to weaken and destroy the democracies and to assume global leadership and global dominance for communism under the control of Stalin’s Russia.
You can get a good view of the Soviet espionage activities from the various Wiki articles on the same subject
The point I make in all of this is that it is the parallels and similarity of the operational techniques of the current radical leftist environmental and climate catastrophe groups are remarkably similar to the operational techniques of the radical elitist groups and university trained intelligentsia along with elements of the media and political spectrum from the 1930’s.
And it is the same strata of the intelligentsia and greens and media and political elite as in the first half of the 20th century who are also now the most prominent proponents of trying to undermine our democratic forms of government and bring in a totalitarian form of global government under the guise of a global climate and environmental emergency of potential catastrophic consequences.
Not all that dissimilar to the same line of argument used in a political scenario prior and immediately post WW2 by this same university intelligentsia, it’s running dogs in the media, the left controlled unions, a section of the political elite and the numerous communist front community organisations [ greens current operational methods are a repeat ] penetrated by the leftist radicals and used by them to create civil strife and civil disobedience with the aims of bring down and replacing a a democratically elected governments and then using force to impose their power.
Its all been done and tried before within a period of just two or three generations, some 75 years ago.
And the repeat we are now seeing in the nefarious guise of the need and carefully created psuedo demand for world control and government due to the claimed and totally unproven, potential climate and environmental catastrophe facing the planet is just another artifact of the identical radical leftist green and university intelligentsia designed to transfer total control and power over all of mankind to their elitist groups.
The radical left and the university intelligentsia of the 1930’s likewise dreamed of having total control and implementing their saving of the planet from the that nefarious capitalism, a democratic capitalism where the populace was free to follow it’s dreams was to be replaced by an elitist imposed dream of a populace forced for it’s own good to follow the dictates of those university and green intelligentsia who in their unparalleled levels of sophistication and knowledge knew, [ and still know [ /sarc ] first what is best for the global environment and secondly, what is best for all of the many billions of humans on this planet.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of today’s radical left’s push for power is the way in which the same radical elements of western society in the universities and the media and in the political structures are implicated in trying to destroy democracy.
Yet those countries who were under that communist socialistic yoke for some four generations, Russia, Eastern Europe, Poland, east Germany, the developing world such as China knowing and having experienced the full brunt of the totally corrupted power of that supposed idealistic control of the people for their own good for four generations, are now amongst the most vociferous opponents of any such control as is being wished for and is again being attempted to be imposed on the global populace by the radical left green intelligentsia of our western societies in the name of Saving the Planet.
Everything changes.
Nothing changes
121
Gosh ROM,
… after the Labour government to itself to shreds with internal squabbling and bickering your attempting to mount an argument for some global leftist conspiracy? Get real.
The fact is that most people on the planet are peaceful, community oriented, and care for their neighbours. That by definition makes them leftist Liberals. No conspiracy, it is just a natural state. I suggest you read the work of Robert Sapolsky.
On Thursday a young courier came to the factory with a parcel of electronic components. He had an accent so I asked him if he was South African. No, he laughed I am Montenegran by origin and born in Australia. But my parents he continued are Motenegran by birth. So i asked him what his parents thought about what was happening in Europe right now. He said.. Well….he thought for a bit, and then said…
You know, we really all should just be able to get along together!
112
BillB ; 34.1
quote; “The fact is that most people on the planet are peaceful, community oriented, and care for their neighbours”.
That doesn’t explain organised crime, the Hutu / Tutsi Rwanda genocide of 1994 and in the very early 1970’s [ my brother was there in western Tanzania as the machine gunned bodies were unloaded from the back of trucks ]. The Turks genocide of the Armenians in the very early 20th century., the Japanese killings of possibly as many as 20 million plus Chinese and SE Asians because the Japanese believed they were the far superior race and far more intelligent and far more advanced morally than those animals that looked liked humans they are killing
Is most noticeable that the demands from the alarmist camp to which you so obviously make known you belong to, are the ones who are stridently demanding that some very nasty strictures be implemented against the skeptics.
Your camp is demanding and is doing so in many, many reported instances the complete censoring of the skeptic’s comments.
You in your camp are demanding trials and jailing and even calls for the trial and death penalty for skeptics.
Your cult of alarmist believers has made videos of blowing to pieces little school kids who just dare to doubt the global warming faith such as the 10,10 video.
All this and much more has come from those in the camp of the believers like yourself who just like those Hutus, Turks, Pol pot, Japanese with their quotas of Chinese to be killed by each japanese soldier and German Einsatzgruppen and of WW2 all believed they were as a class and believers far superior morally to those low life heathen who refused to look, act and believe like they believed.
And that is just like the alarmists and the rabid leftist and academics of the university intelligentsia and rabid left media and left wing politicals, all of whom have participated at various points in judging, condemning, censoring, suing, firing from positions in institutions and denigrating constantly any who dare to question or doubt their beliefs that a catastrophic climate disaster is under way.
And all this is so similar to the events that led to those who were killed in those holocaust type events perpetrated by the various racial and political groups on each other, all without any perceivable or proven evidence that what they believe is the reality and not some self virtuous mirage created by deluded minds and intellects who have no tolerance or empathy for anybody but themselves and what they believe.
And so it is with the CAGW cult, no proven evidence, no perceptible changes from the natural climate, no weather events that haven’t occurred innumerable times without number before over the history of the Earth, nothing except a a belief that is created in warped minds that are incapable of examining and admitting that Nature is far more complex and far more subtle than they will ever understand or are capable of contemplating in their tiny mentalities
In short it is your mob BillB and as you are a part of that mob, you one day along with a host of other believers will be held responsible for all of the vicious legacy you and your mob of deluded intelligentsia and greens and leftists are perpetrating onto the peoples of the world.
161
And you call me an alarmist, ROM. Wow! you really should lay down before you pop a vein.
114
Is that really the best you can do, BilB?
An eighteen word “response”, that says: a) You felt a desperate childish need to say something, in response; and b) You actually had nothing to say, because your world view is not only very narrow, it is also extremely shallow.
Pathetic!
80
You are only displaying the typical failure of all leftist so-called liberals to understand the nature of the State they worship, which is that group in society claiming a legal monopoly of the use of force. ALL State action is based on this fact, and to that extent, it is simply ignorance or dishonesty to claim that State action is “peaceful”. State action is the monopoly organisation of violence, by definition.
The current killing of millions of people in the third world through AGW policy by nasty spoilt well-fed comfortable fatuous up-themselves middle class leftists is not “peaceful” – it is imposed by force. Left-(non-)liberals support political violence and threats – “policy” – in preference to voluntary action, which they don’t support precisely because they know it would mean going without computers, and cars, and capuccinos, and electricity. It would mean practising what they preach, which they are opposed to. They support instead the use of aggressive violence – via the State – to impose the costs of their wants on other people – people who are poorer than them!
It is this aggressive hypocrisy that defines left-liberals, and thus socialism is the most violent belief system in the history of the world; the ignorant or dishonest self-representations of socialists notwithstanding.
71
The handbag-swinging going on in the ALP after chucking-out time is a fight about means, not ends. I regret to inform you that the ALP is small potatoes in the global effort to implement Agenda 21, but no doubt this particular claque of wrong-headed ideologists will all-too-quickly come to some sort of accomodation and start to pollute the political life of Australia once more.
30
The most violent and intolerant humans on the planet seem to be those of the socialist left trying to shut down free speech in all its forms in order to force the majority to follow your utopian dream of a carbonless world – to coin my own phrase – “where slavery is the coin of corruption and corruption is the mechanism of the State”
40
For reference on the views of the intelligentsia and political left from the very highest UN positions and their views on Democracy and national identity;
Quoted From the Czech string theory physicist, Lubos Motl’s The Reference Frame blog.
Also WUWT and other skeptic blogs
UNFCC boss: democracy is “very detrimental” for war on AGW
[quoted]
Chinese communism is the best decision-making system.
The chairwoman of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change Ms Christiana Figueres of Costa Rica has concluded that “the political divide in the U.S. Congress has slowed efforts to pass climate legislation and is very detrimental to the fight against global warming” while “China is also able to implement policies because its political system avoids some of the legislative hurdles seen in countries including the U.S.”.
30
The UN, like all left-leaning political organizations, is not about letting people rise to their highest potential, but reduce everyone to the lowest denominator. To a level that makes them easier to manage.
Leftist the world over wish to “level the playing field” by moving everyone down to the lowest available level. This process excludes the leftists themselves because they know they deserve better. Ask any UN bureaucretin.
61
The AGW true believers are unpleasantly close to the Pol Pot end of the spectrum of human society.
We need to remind people just how bad Pol Pot really was and what his pastoralist vision, “back to nature” really involved.
93
I’ve noticed a resemblance to Pol Pot as well. I keep hoping that I am mistaken.
63
Note that two people were willing to vote down my comment but could not articulate a response.
41
Hunter,
That is a badge of honour.
Many warmist come here (machoism, being an underlying trait of their belief system), and say nothing, because they have nothing to say.
They express their frustration by hitting the thumbs-down icon. If they are really angry, they will hit the icon very, very, hard indeed, just to emphasise their annoyance.
Keep hunting.
30
Let’s not forget those (very few) who’s comments have been so utterly boring and totally devoid of meaning, science or common sense , that Jo final had to put them into permanent moderation , even after their name changes etc.
I suspect one of two of them STILL read this forum every day as a form of “feel-good” masochism.
20
The sheeple were just following orders.
(you have a thumbs-up from me)
10
If I and my peers are to continue living comfortably in a greens managed climate controlled world with fewer and fewer opportunities for individuals to experience western civilization’s success there has to be dead babies somewhere. The other choices are: Plan A – a world government must take away my life’s earnings and those of my peers and cast them around the feet of the chronically poor, ensuring we’re all poor, or, Plan B – they end the irrational and misguided green agenda that mandates poverty as a means to reduce consumption thus allowing us all to succeed.
Plan A is the plan of choice, obviously, and is the direction we’re going. A world where millions of babies are killed before they draw their first breath is a world that doesn’t care if the green agenda results prematurely in the drawing of their last breath if it leads to the success of Plan A. Collateral damage for a noble cause. It just isn’t an issue if it saves the world for what ever the something is they fear we’re losing with the status quo.
30
The writer’s conflating air pollution and CO2 which only helps to confuse uninformed readers.
Lack of cheap electricity causes dangerous air pollution in the form of cookstove smoke: “Biomass fuel use has been found to be associated with tuberculosis, cataracts, low birth weight in babies of exposed expectant mothers, and other health conditions … solid fuel use may be responsible for 800 000 to 2.4 million premature deaths each year” WHO 2004.
40
Also, take into consideration that with ADVANCED industrialisation, real pollution is actually decreased.
Modern coal fired power stations put out very little real pollution, especially compared to those of several decades ago.
Industrial development leads to LESS real pollution.
The current third world countries actually have the very good possibility of skipping most of the “high pollution” stage of development that came with the industrial revolution.
The technology exists to avoid it.
CO2 emissions ?… NOT A PROBLEM.. purely beneficial to the biosphere and human survival.
31
You would think that after 17-18 years with no discernible warming, Global Warming skeptics would no longer be called skeptics!
It is strange to be called a skeptic when there was no evidence in the first place and it is patently absurd for this incorrect label to be used. The people pushing the Global Warming bandwagon have nowhere to go. If Tim Flannery says the heat is hiding somewhere, it hardly matters and you cannot come up with explanations in hindsight now. It is too late. The infallible models were all wrong. The planet is no warmer, the seas are not rising more than ever before and the climate is not changing. Claiming every weather event is proof when global warming theory predicts less severe and fewer hurricanes anyway. As for claiming bushfires as proof, they are usually lit by man and if they are more severe, that is a consequence of the massive rains which Tim ‘Hanrahan’ Flannery promised would never fall.
So we need a new name for skeptics, something more related to the fact that the warmists are wrong today and so they were wrong 20 years ago. Perhaps the vindicated, realists, scientists, sensible, the right all along, the winners? Then everyone on earth wins when another doomsday cult with its money hungry leaders is proven utterly wrong and stupid, when the rapture doesn’t happen and the shape shifting space aliens do not appear after all?
Now can we have the money back? Perhaps Al Gore can donate his billion dollars and many houses, especially the one on the waterfront in San Francisco for the good of the black babies? Perhaps Tim can give up his beach house to a refugee family? Perhaps all those people on government junkets who traveled in first and business class and in limousines at Copenhagen and Durban and Doha and Rio can make a donation to a cause other than themselves?
50
The skeptics don’t need naming. They are the normal. The phenomenon that needs naming is the behaviour of the CAGW followers. The herd instinct, the hive mind at work and many other facets. I’m sure they’ve all been exhibited & studied many times before although the way they came together here, that was a doozy.
30
Perhaps Climate Realists? You have to have an ‘ist and in balance with Warmists and Alarmists.
10
A Marxist’s device is to brand your opposition with a prejudicial label as in ‘denier’, just like ‘Holocaust Denier’. However they really hate being called warmists.
To accept the names people give you is to accept the intended derision and baggage of the name.
However a Climate Realist is clearly an adult view and it counters the infantile, fantasist, unfounded, illogical, emotional and political views of the warmists.
The Penny Wong phrase the ‘Science is in’ is a phrase which does not exist in real science. ‘In what?’ should be the standard response.
21
The IPCC report can be criticized, but it can’t be treated with the contempt mentioned in the article.
17
“The IPCC report can be criticized, but it can’t be treated with the contempt mentioned in the article.”
I do not quite agree, composting before anyone got to read a single word of that dross dressed as scientific opinion is what should have happened. By not publishing (the UN-IPCC report) so much would be saved, and nobody would be condemned to suffer (and maybe die) by the ineptitude and gross incompetence of the UN.
71
Further to the above but behind the Times paywall, Matt Ridley has a good review of the state of play on the climate debate in the aftermath of the IPCC reports.
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/article4068299.ece
Yes the UN and OECD combined amount to the best output of the ‘University of the Bloody Obvious’ and for that they MUST be treated with contempt, ridicule, and the butt of any joke.
51
From website Carlos has linked to
If you are forty years old, you have seen a 0.4%deg;C rise in temperatures on average, globally (from dodgy collation of temperature data). There has been no increase for nearly 15 years.
Within that time, the average global temperatures have risen over +0.6°C on average in 1998 and dropped to the late 70s level about seven years ago. You have also most likely experienced 40°C changes over the course of a year.
This is an illusion and disgraceful agitrop, not science. And ironically, there is also an article titled
20
Interesting to note population getting more mention in the comments. Global population in 1940 was around 2 billion. Was apparently only 1 billion in the 1890s. I think it just past 7 billion in 2012 and is forecast to hit 8 billion in 2020.
I used to read a lot of Isaac Asimov in the 1950s and remember reading his claim that global population was doubling every 35 years.
The figures I mention above indicate a current population doubling about every 40 years. Not quite so bad but this would imply a global population level of 16 billion by 2060.
Given the current deliberate dismantling of the industrialised world economy I see hard times ahead for those black babies. Not enough time for them to develop the technology needed to survive in such numbers. Simply handing over first world industrial capacity to third world countries is not going to work.
Wishful thinking is not going to solve this problem but there are factions who believe if they acquire enough power they will ensure their own survival. Go figure.
20
Richard:
recent thought (I dare not call it computer modelling) has indicated a slow down in the birth rate and a high of 8.5 to 9 billion humans. The population in Europe, the USA, Japan etc. isn’t even replacing their population. The crowding in Europe is from immigrants. This has led to forecasts of a moslem takeover as they outbreed the west; somewhat fanciful as the birthrate in North Africa and the Middle East is also dropping. Africa has less than half the population density as Europe.
At any rate what is the problem? If 740 million people can live in Europe, there will be plenty of room once global warming melts the Antarctic ice, which we are told will happen real soon. [sarc off]
20
A good source which I have book marked and have used for years which uses the CIA’s fact book for it’s population statistics plus a whole host of other national statistics is the Index Mundi site.
Just browse through the “Charts and Maps” section for a whole variety of nation’s data and statistics.
The “Color coded Comparitive World maps” drop down menu at the top > Thematics – Population > World > Demographics > Population Growth Rate > select “Bar chart graph” from the lower part of the screen page ; is quite striking due to the number of countries with negative population growth rates.
The demographers are now beginning to believe we may not even reach the 9 billion global population by about 2040 -2050 as global population growth rates are decelerating so fast as can be seen in the ” Country comparisons and historical data” graphs on this site.
Russia the big bear in the population woods has a negative population growth rate of minus 0.48% or nearly half a per cent per annum which is a heck of a rate of population loss for a large nation with some 142 millions, behind Bangladesh with it’s 161 millions all with in an area 147 570 sq kilometres.
Tasmania is a total 68,401 sq kilometres in area and Victoria is a total of 227,010 sq kilometres or about 53% larger in area than the 161 million populated Bangladesh
30
Thanks for the link Rom. Interesting.
Been reading the discussion generated by comments from BilB.
I wonder how well people will get along when they are starving. Already, here in Pembrokeshire, West Wales, there has been the odd incident of vegetables being removed from allotments.
We grow some food for ourselves in the garden. Looking forward to a better crop of apples this year. Lots of blossom. MUST NOT have a late frost now! Installed security lights to warn of any nocturnal prowlers. Only cats so far. 🙂
10
Population growth is an indicator of national wealth – the more wealthy a nation, the slower the growth, such that the west generally now has a declining population; that it is increasing is because of immigration.
The reason that those in poverty have more children is to ensure that some of those children will reach adulthood; the infant death-rate in poorer countries is high. Look back to Victorian times in the UK, when a child was often not named until aged 7; once that age, it had proven its viability, was above the most hazardous age, and was less likely to die – note: less likely, not unlikely – so could be given a name – and a job.
As the wealth of the world does increase, so the birth-rate will fall; and probably already has fallen quite considerably, cunningly hidden by a falling death-rate. It is possible that your grandchildren could grow up in a world where the population is plummeting, even if wars have not helped the process along. As it is, I feel that the politicians of today are actually increasing the likelihood of conflict, as they seek appeasement of each and every extremist faction that appears. When it does come, it will not be pleasant; I just hope that we will still have properly-trained armed forces to help cope with it, and defend the huge majority who do not wish death upon any who disagree with them.
20
what’s good for the Stakeholders, ain’t necessarily good for the public:
20 April: Irish Independent: Nick Webb/Roisin Burke: Windfarm owners were paid €10m not to produce energy
Energy suppliers paid up to €10m last year to wind-farm operators to power down, freedom of information documents supplied to the Sunday Independent reveal…
The cost of broken or shut-off wind turbines was up to €10m in 2013 and could be passed on to Irish consumers in their electricity bills, communications between EirGrid and the Department of Energy suggest. “The suppliers can, of course, pass this cost on to their consumers,” an EirGrid executive said in an email on the subject to a senior civil servant at the Department of Energy…
However, that cost looks set to soar as the power-down rate of 3 per cent for 2013 is estimated to rise to 10 per cent in 2014, according to EirGrid, suggesting a cost to conventional energy companies of over €30m and a knock-on cost to consumer energy bills. An EirGrid graph on wind curtailments shows them rising 50 per cent further by 2016, which would cost utility companies €40m.
Irish wind-farm operators receive payouts from other electricity providers in respect of “constraints” or “curtailments” where a transmission or distribution line is down for maintenance or where there is a local fault, or when there is high wind at a time of low-energy demand (for example, in the middle of the night) and turbines are shut down due to over-capacity. The same policy is applied internationally.
European energy regulators decided last year that wind farms would receive compensation from the energy market for these shutdowns and it is part of government policy as a way to stimulate the wind energy market.
http://www.independent.ie/business/irish/windfarm-owners-were-paid-10m-not-to-produce-energy-30200656.html
10
Egad!
FEDERAL MP Clive Palmer has strongly indicated his party won’t support the Abbott government’s climate change direct action plan, labelling it a “token gesture” and a waste of money.
The Palmer United Party leader and mining magnate said the money allocated for the policy should be used for pensions, which could be under review in the May budget.
Mr Palmer said the rights of pensioners were more important and had greater priority than “a token gesture to addressing carbon issues”.
. . .
Clive Palmer speaks more common sense than Australia’s Attorney General, George Brandis.
Beware a politician defending freedom, United Nations climate style.
20
Clive Palmer is a dangerous buffoon but I agree with him on this point.
30
Further evidence there is no difference between Lib/Labor UN-IPCC climate science when PuP can say this.
10
Palmer is playing a game of intimidation because he fears his nickel mine might be closed down because the tailing dams are overflowing and could cause an environmental catastrophe.
I believe Palmer is on very shaky economic ground and would not shed a tear if he is bankrupted and kicked out of his seat.
Palmer represents Palmer and he is using his party to seek revenge with Australians becoming collateral damage!
00
So long as he helps get rid of the carbon dioxide tax first (and the mining tax), I have absolutely no problems with him blocking the direct action plan.
20
Stop Press:
Carbon(sic) tax & Direct action redundant:
Scientists think they can control weather with lasers
10
Just to note that this article appeared in the Irish Independent, NOT the Irish Times, as it says on the header.
There is zero chance of this article appearing in the latter where censorship of non-AGW thoughts is ruthless, even to the point of encouraging letter writers to contradict any skeptical views expressed on downright ignorant climate articles.
30
And just to confirm what I said, read these two letters!
http://www.irishtimes.com/debate/letters/reporting-of-climate-contrarian-views-1.1768148
20
Where can I find calculations of global temperatures, rainfall and cloud albedo that a) include the steady increase in IR absorption from the steady increase in CO2 and b) show no or minimal increases in temperature?
I’m not looking for critiques of the conventional models, I’m looking for independent quantitative calculations that show *why* temperatures have almost stalled while CO2 continues to rise.
10
Good luck tell us if you find any.
As all the conventional models have high forcings for CO2 that counts them out then.
10
There are professors in the Green movement who preach that Australia should, because of its “fragile ecology”, shut down agriculture altogether.
Australia feeds about 60 million people.
If Australia shuts down its agriculture 60 million people will go short of food. And the price of food in Australia will rise by much more than the price of power did under Greens policies.
50
The Green Troll on this site today is extremely annoying
The biggest killer of Black Babies is one of his idols of the GREEN fringe.
Prof Ross Garnaut has put more poisons, heavy metals & pollution into the rivers, oceans and ecosystems in WORLD, than any other single man or Company in Australia.
Yes, Bilby, have a look at some of the GREEN environmental heroes you worship.
They are criminals far worse than any fossil fuel companies that you despise so much.
I would like to post links to some of the photos from OK Tedi River & the Fly River, but they make me sick even opening them.
CO2 is a means to money only for you Bilby, nothing more nothing less.
Oh, Bilby, would you like me to show you photos of the BLACK babies that have died in Papua New Guinea?
41
To the ‘progressives’ dead babies are a way of keeping score. They even kill them before they are born. With 55 million babies killed since the Roe vs Wade decision, in America alone, Mao has been overtaken.
21
21 April: AP: Dina Cappiello: Study: Fuels from corn waste not better than gas
Biofuels made from the leftovers of harvested corn plants are worse than gasoline for global warming in the short term, a study shows, challenging the Obama administration’s conclusions that they are a much cleaner oil alternative and will help combat climate change.
A $500,000 study paid for by the federal government and released Sunday in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Climate Change concludes that biofuels made with corn residue release 7 percent more greenhouse gases in the early years compared with conventional gasoline…
“I knew this research would be contentious,” said Adam Liska, the lead author and an assistant professor of biological systems engineering at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. “I’m amazed it has not come out more solidly until now.”…
But an AP investigation last year found that the EPA’s analysis of corn-based ethanol failed to predict the environmental consequences accurately…
Last year, for the fifth time, the EPA proposed reducing the amount required by law. It set a target of 17 million gallons for 2014. The law envisioned 1.75 billion gallons being produced this year…
“The study says it will be very hard to make a biofuel that has a better greenhouse gas impact than gasoline using corn residue,” which puts it in the same boat as corn-based ethanol, said David Tilman, a professor at the University of Minnesota who has done research on biofuels’ emissions from the farm to the tailpipe…
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_BIOFUELS_GLOBAL_WARMING?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-04-21-04-02-59
10
So much for all the horrors to come by 2100 predicted by all the barking mad Labor and green loonies over the last few decades.
Matt Ridley uses actual UN and IPCC numbers and projections to find that everyone will be fabulously wealthy compared to today. And that’s a projected 10 to 12 billion people by 2100.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/matt_ridley_no_need_for_lentils_to_avoid_warming_doom/
This just backs up Lomborgs’ work ten years ago, included in his book “Cool It.”
11
***over to you, TonyfromOz:
16 April: Clean Technica: Joshua S. Hill: Could Airborne Wind Energy Take Off?
A recent study led by the University of Delaware has bolstered the idea that airborne wind energy could be a beneficial addition to the existing energy mix, stating that such generation mechanisms tethered to the ground “have the potential to generate huge amounts of electricity.”
Specifically, there are very fast winds located within jet streams at a certain altitude which would be ideal for airborne wind turbines, able to produce several ***terawatts of electric power annually…
“There are prototypes, but no one has a commercially viable product ready for market yet,” said Damon Vander Lind of the Google-backed Makani Power. “This means that widespread deployment in farms is still a few years out.”
Christina Archer is one of several being interviewed in a new documentary on airborne wind energy,
VIDEO: AWE July Production Preview…
The study, published in the April issue of the journal Renewable Energy, identified numerous locations for optimal deployment of airborne wind turbines globally where these jet-like winds occur relatively frequently and at an altitude efficiently reachable. Backing the analysis is data spanning 21 years provided by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), which helped identify such locations — including three notable examples; the US Great Plains, the oceanic regions near the descending branches of the Hadley cells, and the Somali jet offshore of the horn of Africa…
(Joshua S Hill I’m a Christian, a nerd, a geek, a liberal left-winger, and believe that we’re pretty quickly directing planet-Earth into hell in a handbasket! I work as Associate Editor for the Important Media Network and write for CleanTechnica and Planetsave. I also write for Fantasy Book Review (.co.uk), Amazing Stories, the Stabley Times and Medium.)
COMMENT by arne-nl: Please, get the units right. If you want to write for CleanTechnica, learn the difference between terawatts and terawatthours.
Probably the author meant to say that there is a capacity for several terawatts. That will generate (depending on the capacity factor) about ten thousand terawatthours, more than double the US electricity consumption.
If the author meant to write terawatthours, then we can ignore this article, since that is only a 0.1% fraction of the annual US energy consumption.
http://cleantechnica.com/2014/04/16/airborne-wind-energy-take/
20
No Tony, don’t go there, it’s a leg pull.
Well, intrigued Tony did go there.
How can I explain this and even attempt to try and sound serious? (not easy, I assure you)
First ….. several, umm Terrawatts. ONE Terrawatt is 500 large scale coal fired power plants of 2000MW. Ten Thousand TerraWattHours is indeed more than double the total U.S. power consumption, and if this form of power generation ever (EVER) generates that amount of power, then, and only then will I apologise for saying how stupid this really is.
What they have now is ONE small unit capable of generating 30KW, on a short time basis, very very short time basis.
Here’s the process.
They launch this little plane type thing and place it into the wind, attached to a tether so the little thing flies around in a really big circle, you know, somewhere up there. Oh! Keep in mind that they hope to place this into the Jet Stream, umm, up there, and keep in mind that the jet stream is between 7 and 12 KILOMETRES up, so, umm here we have a really really long tether.
The little propellers then turn and the 4 attached wind turbines then generate the power and here’s the really good bit.
That generated power then, umm, travels back down the tether to the distribution point back on terra firma, and from there on to the grid.
Still with me?
30KW so far, from 4 small generators.
The largest wind turbine is so far around 5MW, but the average land based turbines are around 3MW. A typical 3MW generator, and it will also need a Constant Speed Drive and other equipment for generation, so now the weight is up around 300 tons.
So, let’s pretend we can actually lift that weight by soaring, because the propellers are not for drive as it just soars up there like a kite, and then soars around in the wind. Lift that weight, say two of them, one on each wing for balance, so around 600 tons, say the weight of one and a half Boeing 747’s.
So, once we, umm generate the power, it then travels down the tether, 6MW of generated power down a tether anything up to 12 Km long.
So, pretending we can actually lift that weight on a kite wing to that distance and generate the requisite power, and it stays up there in full operation 24/7/365, this will see a delivered power of 52560MWH per year, in other words running flat out constantly, ever second of every day.
So, for 10,000TWH, we only need 190,260 of these wonderful new units, that’s if you can lift that weight on the wind in the first place, and keep it up there flying huge circles in the jet stream.
Oh dear!
Open mouth, change feet.
Tony.
40
Very impressive.
Evidently, they’re working on a 600KW flying kite wing now, so if they get that up and running, they’ll only need 2 million of them, at 24/7/365, but it looks like they can be reeled in so the number goes up to around 4 million Plus now.
The power travels down the tether. Give me strength.
Go and look at their site at this link.
Scroll to the bottom, and they even include the ubiquitous ….. supplies 300 homes.
Tony.
20
1I ignored it.
1. It’s been hyped before (just add money)
2. It flies in the jet stream, like aeroplanes, and the airlines won’t like that.
3. If it looks like working the greenies will want to ban it (interfering with nature, unknown health effects etc.).
They might as well label it as the blue norwegian wind turbine.
20
Ah yes! Marvellous idea.
Graeme’s got that one right , the Blue Norwegian Wind turbine.
Now we do have to have a good sized ship as the anchor point for each of those jet stream wind turbines [ which I reckon I saw as being promoted at least twenty or thirty years ago or longer soon after the power of the jet streams was realised ] when they are extracting power from the Southern Ocean jet streams which are the world’s big gorillas in the jet stream cage.
And that would entail a few thousand ships splashing about in the few thousands of kilometres of global circumference way down in those roaring 40’s storm packed Southern Ocean latitudes, all steaming or whatever ships do, at a great rate of knots trying to keep up so as to keep their wind mills somewhere near the shifts in the tracks of those southern jet streams
Hmm!
I wonder if the power from those ships jet stream turbines would be enough to propel those ships fast enough to keep up with the jet stream shifts and changes?.
Obviously a carefully thought out and much researched means of generating huge amounts of power all thoroughly researched before they dashed off to the media with their next really big earth saving idea.
[ big, big /sarc]
Some of these scientists are very, very smart people indeed if they stick closely to their specific research interests.
Outside of that they are as dumb as horse s**t and can barely tie their own shoe laces.
20
We need Cartoons by Josh to create a cartoon about ‘airborne wind energy’!
20
btw Google/Makani weren’t just Google-backed, as CleanTechnica should know:
2013: CleanTechnica: Google Buys Makani Wind Power (Kite Power Company)
Makani Power has received a number of awards and grants over the years, including a $3 million dollar grant from the Department of Energy’s ARPA-E program, and $20 million in venture capital funding from Google…
http://cleantechnica.com/2013/05/24/google-buys-makani-wind-power-kite-power-company/
in fact, they got $6 million of taxpayer money:
Makani Power
ARPA-E Award:
$6,000,000
http://arpa-e.energy.gov/?q=arpa-e-projects/airborne-wind-turbine
10
Can someone tell me where
http://www.c3headlines.com
is? I cannot reach it anymore
It was a splendid site with a lot of debunking the CAGW nonsense
20
Reinder van Til
C3 Headlines seems to have gone missing unfortunately and temporarily I hope as I also regularly used it as a reference source.
30
It is back! I am glad. I thought the site was silenced
10
Here is a hot one!
Peter Wood is president of the National Association of Scholars.
But these are my personal opinions and I preside over an organization that takes no official position on climate change.
“Gradually I have found myself more impressed with the arguments of the climate change skeptics–the reviled “deniers”–than with the Michael Mann school of hockey stickology or the IPCC striptease in which it discards its pretences to “settled science” a glove at a time without ever getting down to bare truth.”
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The ABC trots out another non-scientist to claim the climate science is settled:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-04-22/lloyd-brandis-misses-finer-points-of-free-speech/5402706
Amazing how so many outside the field are convinced, or at least so they say, that the field is so certain, so settled, so fixated. Sounds like dogma to me…
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If you are willing to lie to aid your orchestrated theft from the many to enrich your cliche, the incidental deaths of a multitude of poor brown people will simply be a bonus.
Konrads comment on Pointman’s site speaks for me.
Everyone of these klutzes from the Cult of Calamitous Climate seems to be certain that the catastrophic population explosion is imminent.
The death of poor brown people, just not at their hands, seems not to bother them at all.
CAWG is an intelligence test.
Help save the internet, because it must be destroyed to save the asses of our professional parasites.
Or is that to save the Asses, who infest our bureaucracies?
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thanx for the responses re airborne wind energy.
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Morning all.
Stalin once said something to the effect that a single death is a tragedy, whereas a million deaths is a statistic. It seems to me like a recurring theme how socialist-style thinking reverts to this high level intellectualism which divorces itself from reality and the reality of its own actions. They love all “humanity” – but hate individuals who differ in their views. Their intentions are always phrased in the best of intentions, but the consequences are always the same.
Millions and millions of individual tragedies – in China, in Russia, in Cambodia, in North Korea. But to the socialists, they are simply collateral damage in the battle for the Utopia they wish to impose on us.
Cheers,
Speedy
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[…] http://joannenova.com.au/2014/04/want-to-stop-climate-change-happy-to-see-black-babies-die/ […]
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Arrgh.
I can’t beat down my pedantry enough to not make this observation.
Sorry everyone.
From the discussion, we all understood exactly what Jo meant.
But I believe the dichotomy she wants to leave us with is “So what do you want? Clean air or LIVING babies?
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I believe that Jo was being ironic in that statement ,displaying the juxtaposition of logical fallacy, the answer would be both !
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The UN is largely funded by the USA, the OECD is largely funded by the USA.
What do these two entities have in common ?
The OECD sets out to harmonise tax throughout the Western World (FATCA,DODD FRANK).
The UN and it’s subsidiary quangos like the IPCC,set out to rationalise tax distribution from the richest to the poorest of people on a larger scale,simply put ,” you got it we want it.”
If you can assure the world that disaster can be prevented on a global scale by allowing the UN to pass world wide laws, then we are halfway to modelling the ridiculous USSR model that existed pre-1993.
I am not a conspiracy theorist , but basically you have a green movement suborned and taken over by left wing extremists who will do everything to achieve an imitation of the USSR (failed) era.
The fact that they have been trying ever since the 80.s with scant regard as to how the USSR model failed is indicative of the mindset.
Until America asserts its domination of the UN , or disbands it as the entirely useless piece of shit that it is , then we will continue to suffer the platitudes of power driven, greedy despots who will vote for whatever fills their Swiss bank account the fastest.
America is failing the World in good leadership and needs to shape up , enough of the green crap , enough of the hands across the Ocean bullshit,stop playing the Game of Thrones and let us , the public have a serious discussion about the way forward.
Global Warming Scares are no longer working !
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