I say, it’s lucky people who want to save the planet do it for the love of it:
National Post: The Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) has helped funnel almost $400-billion into emission-cutting projects in developing countries by allowing investors to earn carbon credits they can sell to companies and governments of richer nations that use them to meet emission targets.
I imagine they love $400 billion too.
This was just one branch of the great green-industrial-machine. (And yet skeptics are winning, she says wickedly, with hardly any money).
But those halcyon days are gone for the CDM — what was $30 per ton, is now 30c.
From 2003, developers flocked to register projects such as destroying heat-trapping waste gasses at Chinese chemical plants or installing hydroelectric power stations in Brazil, and made huge profits by selling the resulting carbon credits for up to $30.40 a tonne in 2008.
But interest has waned while countries wrangled over setting new emission goals under the United Nation’s Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), hammering credit prices down to unprofitable levels below $0.30.
There’s a tiny $200 million or so left ticking over in the accounts:
The latest UN financial statements show the CDM has operating cash of $148-million, on top of a separate reserve of $45-million, meaning the system’s administrators could continue at current levels almost until the end of the decade.
At its peak the UN CDM Fund employed 160 people to register and issue credits.
The CDM raises funds by charging fees to developers for registering projects and issuing credits, a relatively unique mechanism that helped it grow from a handful of staff in 2003 to more than 160 in 2013 as the number of projects mounted.
It’s all come undone so quickly.
In true bureaucratic style now that projects have fallen by 90%, staff numbers have slipped from 160 to 150.
Its accounts show almost half of the current annual budget of $32.9-million is to pay staff, which still number around 150 despite a massive drop-off in new projects seeking registration.
Previously it took 1.6 full time employees to approve and register one project per month. Now with productivity improvements each case only needs a full time staff of … 50.
UN data shows just three projects a month were registered on average this year, against 268 a month at the peak of activity in 2012. This means a staff of 10-20 people would be sufficient, said Axel Michaelowa, a University of Zurich climate policy academic and founding partner of consultancy Perspectives.
Hmm Jo thinks, but since CDM’s were by definition, pointless (because they didn’t change the weather), there is no net productivity difference whether they occur or not. Hence the total productivity of the CDM Fund has not changed. But it’s more efficient now that it has ten less staff.Make no mistake — the money has left the room.
But the climate puddle will drip on nicely anyhow:
Developed countries have agreed to mobilise $100 billion a year by 2020 to poorer nations, but the Green Climate Fund launched to help meet that goal had received donations of just $34 million by the end of 2013.
(Those dregs would fund skeptics to 2050.)
There is a still a long way to go. The promise of a $100-billion-dollar-cash-cow with no connection to reality is a Phantom Vested Interest just the same. It still has pulling power. The question is not so much whether we need to stop the UN CDM fund, but what we do with the entire UN.
Full story National Post.
When politicians “promised” $100 billion a year, it was other people’s money that was pledged. In this case it was not even the money belonging to the people of their own countries. Here in Britain we were told in 2009 that the fund was all Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s idea. By political “logic” that lets Britain off the hook – but not Australia or USA. 🙂
290
I say the most repugnant waste was 20mil blown by Julia Gillard to purchase Australia a seat on the UN Security Council.
442
ehhhh, possibly not JB.
Whilst I agree that it was a waste it is eclipsed in all respects by the extravaganza of the $100 million largesse given by Gillard to the University of Adelaide, her alma mater, where she now holds a visiting professorial appointment, a clutch of days before her political demise.
362
Now now don’t be too harsh that was to ensure her appointment and will be properly scrutinised in the future by Fair Work Australia… hahhahhaaahahahhaaaha
152
One has to laugh at the solitary red button pusher……the VC at University of Adelaide perhaps, or the Honarary Professor Gillard herself maybe or simply, just one of the Conversationalistas,
141
Yeah, I wondered about that one too.
71
I saythe most repugnant waste was20mil blown byJulia Gillardto purchase Australia a seat on the UN Security Council.FIFY
131
Think of where much of that money went. If I recall correctly, something in excess of 40% of the CDM money when to destroy bi-products in the production of HCFC’s by mostly Chinese companies. The price to destroy those bi-products was so good, I heard that they were being made just so they could get paid handsomely to be destroyed. The bigger sin than the size of the bureaucracy is the amount of money wasted by people who gamed the system.
341
The UN has a history of misusing and abusing funds. When you have such an organization that has virtually no oversight, it is bound to happen.
370
I know several people who have served the UN on several occasions – they both indeopenedently commented on the massive wastage of money by the UN.
And that ladies & gents is *our* money.
00
Yes, I have a feeling that China has “played” the UN….
… and done very well out of it.
Maybe not as well as many of the Green entrepreneurs who have bought mansions and big cars, and jet around the world to boondoggles, but pretty well nevertheless.
171
Might be an urban legend but I heard they not only made the chemical to destroy for carbon (sic) credits but it was actually so profitable they built new plants to make the poison!!!
20
The way I calculate it that’s $110,000 per bureaucrat per year.
Now, if they were doing something useful like teaching, driving a rock, nursing etc, they would be paid much less.
So it just goes to show that doing nothing useful and having a high opinion of yourself is very much more rewarding than real work. Politicians and climate scientists admirably prove this point.
These bureaucrats are kind of like pimps selling the same intangible stuff time and time again, while providing no long term benefit whatsoever to the buyer.
330
Rats! I have done it again, driving a truck not a rock.
100
“…driving a truck not a rock.”
So you want Fred, Wilma, and Pebbles Flintstone, along with their neighbors the Rubble family, out on the street, unemployed?
181
Whay about poor old Dino, and let’s not forget Bamm Bamm?
122
“Driving a rock”
Another memorable JoNova blog inspired classic comment that sums up the imponderable bureaucratic mentality to perfection.
Another bit of JoNova blogger’s humour to add to the classic from “RoHa” and “the Griss” reply in the Sea Level thread.
“I don’t like fish.”
“Do you mean to eat ?
Or is it personality clash of some sort”
80
He could have been a “speciesist” !
10
My personal favourite is MVs vision of a christmas light causing a masive whirlwind and sucking the entire ocean up a 1m x 1m column of atmosphere… brilliant – still luagh when I visualise that…
10
Perfection in parapraxis.
Nice one PM.
30
Let’s not denigrate pimps, at least their whores are peddling a service that is desired by the public. It would be a Good Thing, though, if the whores would unionize.
UN climate whores, not quite up to the social level of street walkers.
cheers,
gary
192
The was I calculate it is $220,000 by 150 staff $33,000,000 even better
10
The cost breakdown per bureaucrat looks something like this:
Salaries: $110,000
Junkets: $35,000
Boondoggles: $15,000
Paper clips etc: $3,000
Cell phones & Ipads: $15,000
Unaccounted: $22,000
Ultra-secret bureaucrat stuff: $20,000
Total per Bureaucrat: $220,000
Value Received per $100 of taxpayers’ funds spent: 0.01 cents
20
Peter,
Can I correct you on a figure?
Value Received per $100 of taxpayers’ funds spent is not approximately zero. It is negative. Maybe not nearly so negative as a few years ago, but negative nevertheless.
Even if emissions reductions schemes were to work, it must create harm by making existing energy consumption more costly. It would never work for three reasons.
First, there are no close cost substitutes for fossil-fueled energy. All are considerably more expensive and not nearly as convenient.
Second, the world is much bigger than the reach of the Kyoto mechanism. The extra costs of some put them at a competitive disadvantage.
Third, cost structures are nowhere near the theoretical world of Walrasian general equilibrium. In the real world emissions reductions create an unreality that benefit some, whilst crippling others. For instance, car producers that meet evermore stringent emissions criteria will benefit at the expense of those who don’t, and the customers who have more expensive cars as a result.
70
It amazes me that so many people in this world cannot understand the clear points you have outlined for why such schemes can not and will never have worked. I have tried explaining it this way to many people who seem incapable of critical thinking, as if some chemical had lobotomized their ability to weigh pros and cons, and instead enhanced that part of their brain where warm-and-fuzzy-doo-gooder Emotional dribble originates from.
After I go through facts and reality the replies go something like … “But, but, we have to do something for the kids … won’t somebody think of the children **”
I actually think it’s because people are incapable and unwilling to solve REAL problems in the world themselves, and as such think that a Taxed Qty on their consumables is an Indulgence that will allow them to sleep better at night with minimum effort spent in their own time, regardless of whether there is any substance in the claim that it helped anything.
It’s a Cult … simply a Cult, and CO2 Credits/Costs are the new Indulgences … the Faithful are the Gullible … and the Priests are all Hypocrites on high salaries and low hours worked flying jets around to junkets and squandering from slush funds here and there and taking bribes to endorse ‘science’.
Some things never change, let’s just call it the New Same-Old World Order!
10
More at NoTricksZone.
250
Item 5 its all come undone …?
Well naturally, this is the kleptocracy unhung.
Naturally there will be a “handling cost” associated with the UN’s help.
Could this be why the money raised for earthquake victims in Haiti did so little good.?
As with the poor countries leaders drooling over the prospects of climate indulgence funds paid by the west, actually believing that any funds will find their way past the UNs claws.
CAGW is an intelligence test.
Fools and Bandits stand in the spotlight together.
130
Spell check: Fools and Bandt….
30
Ah, but the UN has the worlds biggest threat known to a peaceful human life.
“The situation is so serious that we will have to send in UN Peace Keepers”
The survival from such action is extremly low
70
There seems to be plenty of money sloshing around for other studies…
Australian camels are shown not to be methane gas climate polluters…
more at:
http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0094363
Well thanks for small mercies…
130
Well, it’s good to see climate ‘research’ money being spent so wisely.
I will sleep much more soundly knowing that Australian camelids only produce 1-2% of the amount of methane as ruminants.
50
A date with Tom Cruise. Wow!
Naah, Mum’s doing a camel roast!
Tony.
70
And for all you visitors from overseas, and some of you Australian visitors who can’t remember back this far, here is the original TV ad I alluded to in the earlier comment.
The young lady answering the phone is Naomi Watts.
Camel roast doesn’t quite fit
Tony.
20
thanks for the referential link from the other side of the world 🙂
00
These UN guys didn’t get the ABC punditry memo. We don’t need to buy CDMs to stop global warming, all we have to do is stop eating meat. Meat the hidden culprit of climate change :
Tchya! Before poking fun at this I think I’m required to attempt a logical rebuttal first.
The livestock emissions are 70% of agriculture which is 14% of total emissions, so the livestock are only 10% of total CO2-equivalent emissions… and all the carbon that they emit came from the plants they ate which got their carbon from the atmosphere. So the carbon in their bodies and diet are part of the carbon cycle and don’t add any carbon to the total in the atmosphere. On top of that the rate of CH4 destruction in the atmosphere seems to speed up slightly during warm periods and thus it experiences negative feedback on warming. So with these formalities out of the way…
Remember, the first rule of Vegan Club is… tell everybody about Vegan Club!
~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~
Hey about that part of the article “developers flocked to register projects such as destroying heat-trapping waste gasses at Chinese chemical plants“…
I’m sure when I heard about that story the gas involved was a HFC or similar, and the Chinese company didn’t actually need it, they produced it and stockpiled it because they figured they would make more money from being paid to destroy it than it cost to make.
Turns out there’s other articles around the web which recount this story.
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2013/06/11/who-is-fooling-who-when-it-comes-to-combating-climate-change/ :
http://www.downtoearth.org.in/content/gas-game :
Wealth successfully redistributed to China and India!
230
I just love the opportunities for innovation created by the Green Renewable Sector.
80
This surely is a tossed up, f$#%ed, never come down world (to quote the King, Graham Kennedy from ‘The Odd Angry Shot). In the 80’s we had the USA lending billions to developing countries to build energy infrastructure all over the world and then in the noughties the UN tears it all down to replace it with a pyramid scam.
140
Gee whiz! The AGW Gravy Train has run out of pixie dust & MOMENTUM!
I guess the poorly disguised Fabian Wolves might have to get another vehicle
to haul their megalomania bandwaggons.
Whatever it is, you can be sure it will be big & scary & all OUR FAULT!
With any luck we will have our own Kevvy in the chair to tell us all about it./sarc
(WW3 perhaps?)
120
What to do with the UN? Abolish the whole lot, they are an absolutely superfluos body of money hungry do nothing. They are very good at lecturing and admonishing all and sundry in the west, useless at doing or saying anything about African politics, they waste more money in “administration” of programs that they actually spend on the targets, they have never ever stopped a war or a famine, never recovered hostages from terrorist, never deposed or got rid of a tyrant, (Mugabe, Idi Amin etc…) why do we keep on pouring money into it? Maybe because it’s a priced posting for “top” pubic servants and ex or failed politicians? Mmmm! Food for thoughts!
351
Peter,
The UN not only doesn’t actively remove or negate dictators, it actively promotes and facilitates them. These dictators are necessary to keep their populations impoverished and ripe for commercial exploitation. They can ensure a compliant puppet by pandering to their personal greed and desire for self- preservation, buying their complicity in encumbering the populace with unserviceable debt through the IMF in a dressed up protection racket. Nice.
161
….maybe the UN staffers are just engeneering their job protection scheme??
Cynical? You bet!
10
One of my friends refers to the UN as the “democracy of dictators”
10
“pubic servants”
Freudian slip? Spurred by the mention of climate whores upthread? 😉
90
No freudian slip there, that’s the correct spelling (in my books) have been doing so for years… You are the first one that has picked that up,Even the editor of the Australian never noticed or corrected the missing consonant…(maybe they agreed and didnt bother)
10
Pan-national political edifices, whether the UN or the EU are bountiful financial fountains reflexively enjoyed by the bureaucrats and technocrats that permanently infest their corridors. My guess is that this state of mind arises inevitably within those minions.
‘Spending someone elses money until it runs out’ fails to apply, because the corrupted bubble they inhabit is so far removed from real life, they might as well be in an alternate universe. The disconnect is absolute. The Climate Farce is one element of this. Hand wringing and whining while the Sudan rips itself to bits, or the Balkans implodes, or Rwandan autodigests, or for that matter, the Ukraine chokes are other symptoms.
And to think these clever folk aspire to jam Agenda 21 down our collective throats…..it’d turn out like a giant fungus….dead at the centre.
80
Peter @ #10
“Abolish the UN”
Nah! Too hard as too many smarmy lecherous parasites are leaching off anything that goes past in the UN and they will go to any lengths to keep the pig trough deep gravy train rolling.
Just convince the Americans to announce that they are revoking the U N’s diplomatic status and thus it’s diplomatic and taxation immunity at it’s New York headquarters.
And that the land granted in perpetuity to the UN in New York was being resumed by the American government but in return the Americans were buying and granting an island in it’s totality to the UN where it could operate as a separate entity free of any other national impositions and would be responsible entirely as owner and administrator of it’s own affairs on it’s own land .
Tristan da Cunha sounds to me to be a very suitable and idyllic island paradise that I am sure all UN diplomats and bureaucrats would be delighted to live and work on
131
ROM, for my money the Sentinel Islands (whose locals are noted for resisting attempts at contact by outsiders) would fit quite well. The collective could be dropped off in groups of say, fifteen, every week or so. It’d take awhile but I’m certain the locals would appreciate a measured and gradual influx.
41
Could they eat fifteen a week?
60
shhhhhh.
20
An obesity crisis developing in the Sentinel islands?
Now that’s a problem deserving of further study. I think the average UN parasite likely contains not only large quantities of HFCS, but also an excess of foie gras and Dom Perignon Champagne at $6,000 a bottle, which would make sorting out the direct aetiology of the islanders’ weight gain problematic. Still…..I feel some grant monies could be in the offing.
60
The UN bureaucrats may be fatted and well-fed but their meat-to-bone ratio is still quite low once you take into account all the skeletons in their closet…
70
…or the solid calvarium.
30
There cannot be any meat to bone ratio, last analisys shows that they are spinless, ameba style…
00
I read the first line and was already preparing a retort and then read my thoughts in the body of your post, although my idea doesn’t involve buying them an island. Diplomatically though, that is a better refinement of my 20+ year argument to throw the democracy of dictators out of the US by defunding them and – more importantly to us Americans – no more troops. Ever. As soon as those leeches said they needed their own military force beholden to no one but them they transitioned from a bloody annoyance to being a threat and a future enemy combatant.
And to finish on another US perspective, I would love to see the UN try to disarm Texans. I would buy that on pay-per-view.
00
Jo.. You say
“It’s all come undo so quickly.”
Maybe a correction needed 🙂
30
I see the green looters have quickly turned up at the tragic tornado sights gleefully stealing global warming lies.
121
Speaking of oceans drying up, consider this …
Fly a helicopter to the top of Mt Everest in summer (July) and lower a large drum of very salty water (heated to near boiling point and opened at the top) onto the surface at the start of a nice sunny day – as it would be above the clouds up there. We will assume there is enough salt to lower the freezing point to -10°C. In July, the warmest month, the average summit temperature is -19°C. Will the water freeze? Yes. So how good is the Sun at raising ocean temperatures below the clouds with all its direct radiation? How absurd is it to imagine that the 1cm thin transparent surface layer of the oceans is warmed to 15°C by direct solar radiation? How absurd then are all the models which use ocean emissivity in Stefan-Boltzmann calculations and expect to get the temperature due to absorption?
53
The only aircraft that could haul that weight to that altitude has got to be fixed wing. Choppers at that high have no lifting power.
10
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!
30 April: Reuters: World Cup visitors can have their carbon footprint offset for free
Individuals who score tickets for the 2014 World Cup in Brazil but worried that the jet travel required to get to matches will contribute to global warming can rest easy.
FIFA, soccer’s governing body, on Wednesday said it will cover the cost of programs to neutralize carbon emissions related to travel.
FIFA and BP Target Neutral, a not-for-profit carbon management program run by British energy company BP Plc, on Wednesday launched an online system where ticket holders worldwide can sign up to have their carbon footprints neutralized…
BP said it expects to have some 50,000 ticket holders joining the initiative.
The World Cup in continent-size Brazil will probably produce a record volume of carbon emissions for such events, mainly due to the traveling among venues, which in some cases are 5,000 kilometers apart.
Initial estimates have put total emissions of heat-trapping gases at 3.4 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e), compared to around 2.7 million tonnes in South Africa four years ago…
BP Target Neutral, which also worked on the program to partially neutralize the London Olympics emissions, is in charge of selecting those projects and will announce the chosen ones in June…
Brazil announced two weeks ago a program to swap publicity in the event for carbon credits…
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/04/30/carbon-worldcup-idUKL2N0NM2VW20140430
50
Riiight,
So they are going to make something that doesn’t exist, disappear? That is a neat trick.
50
?
30 April: UK Daily Mail: Sarah Griffiths: Forget global warming and melting polar caps – groundwater extraction is causing cities to SINK beneath sea level
Ground is dropping up to 10 times faster than the sea level is rising in coastal megacities, a new study says
Scientists at Deltares Research Institute in Utrecht studied subsidence in five coastal cities, including Jakarta, New Orleans and Bangkok
North Jakarta has sunk four metres in the last 35 years – a fall of 10 to 20cm per year and experts have called on governments to take action
Land subsidence is contributing to larger, longer and deeper floods
Total damage due to subsidence worldwide is estimated at billions of dollars a year and is set to increase
Dr Erkens, who presented the study to the European Geosciences Union, explained that the consequences of floods increase due to subsidence, as areas remain deeper under water for longer…
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2616714/Forget-global-warming-groundwater-extraction-causing-megacities-SINK-beneath-sea-level.html
40
I think we’ve been over this ground before- I still don’t know of the mechanism by which groundwater removal can cause earth shrinkage. There are enough reported cases for the phenomenon to have credibility, but clay shrinkage alone doesn’t do it because the water held within clay isn’t available for pumping. Permeable strata don’t swell as they become saturated.
50
Venice here we come!
00
30 April: WSJ: Press Release: Swordfish Financial, Inc. Purchases 1.5m Carbon Credits
Swordfish Financial, Inc. entered into an agreement to purchase 1,500,000 carbon credits from Green Giant Venture Fund’s Papa New Guinea Project (PNG). Sellers are the owners of the outstanding Carbon Credits of PNG project.
The Carbon Credits will be placed for sale through a broker dealer and sold to those of interest. Many reports disclosed the sale of Carbon Credits could sell as high as $11 for each credit. “This agreement was developed through much communication and research of the best assets and commodities to acquire which will help grow and expand the goals of Swordfish” said Mr. Clark Ortiz – CEO, Swordfish Financial, Inc.
Carbon Credits came from the Kyoto Protocol of 1997…
***Carbon credits are a vital component of national and international emissions trading strategies that have been stressed to lessen global warming. They provide a way to reduce greenhouse effect emissions on an industrial scale…
Many professional broker/dealers place the credit price north of $11 for each credit. “We believe this investment could places over $16,500,000 cash in Swordfish portfolio of investments. The credits will be listed with bonafide broker/dealers for the express purpose of delivering a return to the Swordfish investment” said Clark Ortiz…
http://online.wsj.com/article/PR-CO-20140430-912989.html
LOL:
16 April: PR Newswire: Swordfish Financial, Inc. Commits To Invest In A Series Of Oil Producing Wells
Swordfish will acquire 100% of Catalyst Operations, LLC along with designated wells presently producing and a series of wells presently in queue. “Our relationship with Mr. Moss, who is the CEO of Royal Oil, Inc. provides an on going relationship whereby Swordfish will continue to acquire positions in many projects. It has been our sincerest desire for us to build a relationship to fund and acquire production in this vertical,” says Mr. Ortiz…
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/swordfish-financial-inc-commits-to-invest-in-a-series-of-oil-producing-wells-255474231.html
20
“The money drying up.!”
I’ve been wondering if and when this would occur for sometime,
That question arose a year or so in my mind when on another forum a fairly rabid green type announced he was a fair part of the way through an “Environmental Managers” course at a University.
Now what the heck an Environmental Manager is supposed to do I haven’t the faintest but the universities apparently think that getting a degree as an aforesaid “Environmental Manager”or some other pseudo academically approved and consequently useless from a practical viewpoint, green orientated environmental based degree is a big deal
And it seems there are lots and lots of the Environmental Managers or similar type basket weaving level environmental degrees being churned out by the universities to meet the demand.
At least the demand the green suckers think is out there and the usual rapacious university money fiddlers aren’t about to disillusion those green suckers as long as they keep coming and paying.
So we have lots and lots of enviromentally concerned students doing lots and lots of university environmental and climate studies all to fill all those mythical , mirage like environmental and climate jobs that only exist in the imaginations of the green and climate catastrophe believers.
In the mean time the tradies who fix things and keep the country running so all those students and the academics who create those degree level pursuits and all the other and etc’s can get from their digs with it’s power and running water and phones and computers and sewerage and the roads outside to the university to study for those environmental and climate jobs that don’t exist and never will while those real world tradies who keep the world running are as scarce as hens teeth to find and get something fixed or built or created and are nearly as expensive as hens teeth when you do find and get them.
We really do live in crazy, mixed up times where those who create little or nothing and whose sole purpose in life and job seems to be to place as many impediments as possible of every type into the path of those who wish to create and accomplish something of value to and for themselves and of value to our civilisation are paid far more than those who create whole industries and keep the whole of civilisation and our own lives running smoothly and safely
100
You need to understand that when they say they are managing the environment, they mean they are “managing” someone else’s property without the owner’s consent, based on threats of force, to benefit their own values at someone else’s expense – what is commonly known as “theft”.
100
On the plus side “Environmental management” looks really good on your CV when you apply for a janitorial position.
70
Yeah well, I say – come the revolution when all the green, lefty environmentalists get exactly what they dream for – no more man made CO2, which in turn means no more industry, tradies or apprentices because there will be no more constant energy generation…
which 10 to 15 years hence will lead to failure and inability to maintain, repair and replace the wind turbines and solar panel technology that will begin to disintegrate…
leaving virtually all forms of electrically powered items such as internet servers and wireless networks useless…
the accumulation of human knowledge for the last 30 or so years will then be completely, utterly and disgracefully wasted and lost forever in things that no longer work…
luckily for the majority, because those green, lefty, socialists, AGW proponents that brought the world to this collapse were in fear the changing environment, lost the will and ability to adapt to the new earth without internet…
you know it is comforting to think that in some measure Darwin may have been amused.
40
posted for the fun of it!
VIDEO: 29 April: CBS Minnesota: Angela Davis: Lake Mille Lacs Residents Dealing With Walls Of Ice
With the month of May just two days away, trees should be showing some signs of spring, but trees along Lake Mille Lacs are showing signs of distress. They’re split and shoved by creeping ice.
“[The ice] will take them right out by the root. They’ll tear the roots out, and (move) rocks, tear up the whole shore line really – wherever it comes in,” William Anderson of Onamia said…
Over the weekend when it was windy, the ice crept up to the Highway 169 and heavy equipment had to be used to clear it, since it was blocking traffic.
“Mother nature at its finest. That’s what happens,” Anderson said…
http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2014/04/29/lake-mille-lacs-residents-dealing-with-walls-of-ice/
40
30 April: Marketwatch: Jeffrey Bartash: U.S. GDP posts smallest gain in three years
Scant 0.1% gain a residue of bad weather, but spring may revive growth
Growth in the U.S. economy almost came to a halt in the first quarter, a bout of weakness spurred by one of the worst winters in years…
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-gdp-posts-smallest-gain-in-three-years-2014-04-30
40
30 April: Forbes: James Taylor: 20 Years of Winter Cooling defy Global Warming claims
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) data, presented by the International Climate and Environmental Change Assessment Project, reveal this winter’s exceptionally cold winter was merely the continuation of a long-term cooling trend. The trend line for the past 20 years shows more than two degrees Fahrenheit of cooling in U.S. winter temperatures since 1995…
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2014/04/30/twenty-years-of-winter-cooling-defy-global-warming-claims/
80
Don’t you love the smell of napalm in the morning?
90
Depends – is it as toxic as carbon dioxide?
80
No – it’s victory.
10
the MSM is toxic.
this is in Scientific American. Huffpo/Media Matters/Salon all have beat-ups on this non-story already:
1 May: Business Insider: Lauren F. Friedman: Fox Denies Telling Scientific American Editor Not To Discuss Climate Change
Michael Moyer, an editor at Scientific American, was invited to “Fox & Friends” this morning to discuss “futuristic trends.”…
Things didn’t go quite as planned…
MOYER TWEET: Fox & Friends producer wanted to talk about future trends. I said #1 will be impacts of climate change. I was told to pick something else…
When we reached out to Fox News, they denied that climate change was the issue.
“We invited Michael on for a segment on technological and scientific trends we can expect in the future. We worked closely with him and his team and there was never an issue on the topic of climate change,” Suzanne Scott, SVP of programming at Fox News, said in a statement. “To say he was told specifically not to discuss it, would be false.”…
You can read Moyer’s whole story over at Scientific American …LINK
VIDEO: Here’s the full segment, as it aired.
Disclosure: The author has written for Scientific American
http://www.businessinsider.com.au/scientific-american-editor-climate-change-fox-2014-4
40
30 April: Huffington Post: Climate Change and Children: A Call for Action
by Courtenay Cabot Venton, International Development Economist
This post was co-authored with the Children in a Changing Climate coalition.
***Children are among the most likely to suffer from the impacts of these events.
By the end of the decade, up to 175 million children are likely to be affected every year by the kinds of disasters brought about by climate change. This is an increase from an estimated 66.5 million children per year in the late 1990s. Children face heightened protection risks during disasters, including psychological distress, physical harm, trafficking, exploitation, child labour and gender-based violence…
Plan International, Save the Children, World Vision International and UNICEF, operating as the Children in a Changing Climate coalition (CCC), have successfully advocated that children are key stakeholders with value to offer for local, national and global risk reduction…
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/courtenay-cabot-venton/climate-change-and-childr_b_5226952.html?utm_hp_ref=green
From HuffPo profile: Courtenay is an economist, with a Masters in environmental policy from Oxford University’s Environmental Change Institute…
As an independent consultant, she provides research and advice to donors and NGOs on the economics of development (clients include UK DFID, GIZ, World Bank, UNDP, UNICEF, Oxfam, Red Cross, and Tearfund). She spent five years as a senior consultant for the global environmental consultancy, Environmental Resources Management, where she established a substantial practice in climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction advice to donors, governments and NGOs, as well as the private sector…
She has helped develop policy frameworks for climate change adaptation and mitigation, as well as financing options for climate change mitigation.
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The chattering class like Courtenay talk about delivering the message. Over and over. They hog the blog.
Good scientists deliver the goods, the data that are seldom mentioned.
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It is a huge tragedie unfolding just like Monckton said as well: how many lives could we have improved especially in third world countries with that vast amount of money? It is a total shame and green eco fascists should be hold accountable for these crimes aganst humanity
The idiot idea of deforestation to grow biofuel. We are lead by criminals on this poor world
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No tragedy in Australia. We divert such funds to much needed military equipment thereby keeping the world at peace and averting much human misery.
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The tragedy in Australia is that we diverted ten times the cost of that military equipment onto promoting a Carbon Dioxide Tax and Renewable Energy Schemes that were not only ineficient, but completely redundant and negligent, and based on fraudulent psuedo-scientific information peddled by confidence tricksters and disaster chasers.
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Our Royal Australian Airforce needs new fighter planes to replace 1988 model F18s and Lockheed Hercules cargo planes needed to fly supplies to disaster struck 3rd world nations. Our Navy did not have any serviceable ships to mount a relief effort to North Queensland after the most recent cyclone,supercilious comments about diverting money from foreign aid do you no credit.
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And being serious for a moment, here lies the difficulty in responding to idealists and party faithfull – don’t take this personally Gee Aye, but I use your response as an example:
It seems perfectly reasonable for Australia to spend hundreds of billions of dollars an a program to mitigate a harmless gas to the net planetary benefit of virtually nil for about 1,000 years according to Tim Flannery.
It is not perfectly reasonable to spend tens of billions of dollars on military hardware that may be necessary for the defence of Australia and the protection of its citizens in a world that has not seen more than a total of 18 years of peace since the the fall of Rome.
I do hope you’ll forgive me my observation based on 25 years as an intelligence officer/analyst with accumulated surveillance and investigation experience in a para-military branch:
That type of thinking is some sort of f###ed up sh#t right there.
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Snap! 😉
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No leaf-brain.. They are trying to make up for the lack of action in defence spending over many years.
A small step.. Or would you rather we remained totally dependant on a much weakened America to defend our countries borders.
The Libs have proven they at least have some idea how to defend our borders, unlike the gross incompetence of the previous lot of twerps.
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*** this says “with 1 more episode to air”. this was supposed to be 8-10 episodes! one can only hope “one” is the right figure.
29 April: National Review Online: Greg Pollowitz: Showtime’s Years of Living Dangerously Still Struggling to Attract Viewers
James Cameron’s celebrity-filled global-warming propaganda series is bombing in the ratings. Here are the Nielsen numbers from Sunday April 27:
At Showtime, NURSE JACKIE and CALIFORNICATION stayed at 0.2 (although the latter needed rounding up to get to that number), and YEARS OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY remained at a tiny 0.04 with 1 more episode to air***…
James Cameron: “This isn’t just about landmark television but about growing a global movement.”…
Pollowitz: A landmark failure more like it.
http://www.nationalreview.com/planet-gore/376847/showtimes-years-living-dangerously-still-struggling-attract-viewers-greg#!
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Poor James Cameron.. but I guess he did well enough out of his other FANTASY and SCI-FI movies.
This one was doomed to failure from the start. The plot is just SOOOO unrealistic compared to his previous works !!
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Yeah well isn’t he responsible for ‘Lost’ too – what a dud.
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that was JJ Abrhams I believe – Cameron is the dink that turned marines into indifferent native killers in Avatar
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and after Lost he did WAY better with Fringe. Great show.
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“Developed countries have agreed to mobilise $100 billion a year by 2020 to poorer nations..”
OK, I’m not a “developed country”, but I live in one. Did I miss the bit where I voted for a large chunk of my taxes to supply top-of-the-range Mercedes limos to Bugwanda? Anybody who thinks this money will end up anywhere else is unfeasibly naive.
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I have always wanted to visit Africa to look at the wildlife,do they have National Parks in Bugwanda?
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I am reliably informed, by those who have visited recently, that Tanzania is your best bet.
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Thanks I have a geologist friend who worked in Tanzania and he said the wildlife at the Dar Es Salaam Yacht club was hard to beat
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Yeah, Tanzania is OK, but nowhere near as exciting as Nigeria is, right now.
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As a keen photographer, I find that the happiest hunting grounds are found by AVOIDING national parks and their artificiality.
Bback in Oz, my work tok me to Kakadu about 50 visits. Luckily I’d been in the region for years before the park was invented and I know of far better places. Kakadu is bloody boring junk country, scarcely a permitted way to get high for a view, vista after vista of flat boring scrub with scarcely an item of interest hour after nhour. As exciting as eating wet cardboard for breakfast.
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Of course, avoiding the parks in Africa might get you eaten… or worse…
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Au Contraire Geoff, I have spent a lot of time in Kakadu NP from 1975 onwards, OK I know you were there before this . How come Joe Fisher and others who were early mining entrepreneurs were the first people who wanted to see the Park protected as it is now ? Maybe you needed to step out of the 4X4 drive to actually see the place before posting such a comment.
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Andrew,
Knowing Joe Fisher very well in the 1970-early 1990 period, having him on Committee for many years, of the NT Chamber of Mines with its monthly meetings for example, I do know that his vision was to include the eastern Escarpment country and its hinterland well into Arnhem Land Aboriginal Reserve. He had written plans showing proposed roads and they went into the better areas to which I referred above. He spoke many times and occasionally wrote afterwards of his disappointment that most of the eventual park was just the boring flat lands. And he wrote that he was disturbed by the way that places were made off limits to mere people of the ordinary type. While he was pleased that a park had been made, he was far from pleased with the result and its suffocating management.
You omit that a major factor in the creation of Kakadu was the prevention of the expansion of uranium mining & exploration. This is a subject I know well because I took then Federal Environment Minister Cohen through the Court system to the High Court (1986-7). When we looked like winning, the Feds amended the then words of the National Parks and Wildlife Act to include “No operations for the recovery of minerals shall be conducted in Kakadu National Park” or very similar words (here from memory). This is despite our possession of many exploration licences and granted mining leases. The Federal Government required that the granted leases be worked upon and that minimum agreed annual expenditures were met. The Federal Left hand did not know what the right hand was doing. The resulting fiasco cost our company alone probably close to a billion $ at today’s prices. No compensation was offered.
Kakadu was a series of marginally legal exercises ordained from the start and engineered by an import named Ovington who was given extraordinary powers that were conveniently not told to the public in full, chilling detail. This was one of the early exercises in giving a part of Australian Sovereignty to the United Nations, a disturbing trend that we tried to combat but failed.
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Thanks for your considered reply Geoff and I apologise for my somewhat less considerate reply to your post. There are two major undeveloped Uranium deposits,namely Jabiluka and Koongarra that are as far as I know ,are mining leases excised from the Kakadu Park that are actually within the Park boundaries and no doubt will be mined in due course…hard luck for the shareholders. There was some exploration going on near old Kapalga with less certain results. I do not want to contest your statement that Kakadu was expanded to stop these deposits being mined and to stop any further exploration, Ranger has shown that mining can be carried on without any adverse affects to the environment,also the original South Alligator deposits processed at the Northern Hercules Moline are more or less undetectable by enthusiastic modern environmental researchers.
However ,I do not agree with your view that there is nothing of value in the Kakadu lowlands,the wetlands are of value to the tourist industry,the Yellow Waters wildlife cruise is a major attraction that in my opinion is the best bet for a visitor with a limited amount of time to spend. You could think yourself in old England when looking at the view from Obiri rock over the East Alligator floodplains.Fishing and safari type hunting are also possibilities for economic activity.
I have assisted in field work in Kakadu assessing potential benefits from Forestry resources ,namely Sandalwood and Melaleuca Species for essential oil and wood production,which I know are miniscule compared to the benefits of mining . My point is that Mining ,Tourism and other activities can co- exist,politics unfortunately is in the way with noisy activists controlling the agenda.
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I have to add: I love that use of the word “mobilise”, so utterly meaningless in itself, except that it’s referring to picking your pocket on a championship scale. You know the experience, when you pick the wrong queue in the supermarket and the customer in front of you is the kind to whom the actual request for payment comes like a complete thunderbolt? And he (or – sorry, Jo – usually she) forages around for a means of payment… Isn’t the phrase you find yourself fishing for, “Mobilise your bluddy money, for heaven’s sake!”
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Space Ref: NASA Carbon-Counting Satellite Arrives at Launch Site
Press Release Source: Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Posted Wednesday, April 30, 2014
The observatory is NASA’s first satellite mission dedicated to studying carbon dioxide, a critical component of Earth’s carbon cycle that is the leading human-produced greenhouse gas driving changes in Earth’s climate. It replaces a nearly identical spacecraft lost due to a rocket launch mishap in February 2009…
The mission’s innovative technologies will enable space-based measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide with the sensitivity, resolution and coverage needed to characterize the sources of carbon dioxide emissions and the natural sinks that moderate their buildup, at regional scales, everywhere on Earth. The mission’s data will help scientists reduce uncertainties in forecasts of how much carbon dioxide is in the atmosphere and improve the accuracy of global climate change predictions…
For more information about the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2, visit:
http://oco.jpl.nasa.gov
and
http://www.nasa.gov/oco-2 …
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=43138
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the Griss said “Or would you rather we remained totally dependant on a much weakened America to defend our countries borders.”
I think defending yourself is far and away the best and least expensive option. Unless you are here in America and pay attention to such things then you would know: 1) Our current economic growth is stated as 0.1%, but there has never been an Administration as secretive, non-transparent, lazy and stupid as the Obama Administration. 2) The President and VP recently spent $US2.9 on two golf trips. 3) We have fallen behind China in economic power and trade.
In the meantime, defense spending soon will be less than any time since the pre-WWII 1940’s.
We cannot put an astronaut in space without paying Russia millions of dollars to ride on their rockets. 4) some 20% of our families work and about 47% take more from the US government than they contribute in taxes, fees, etc. With half the people living off the other half, and the taxpayer base shrinking, we have a very unstable system. And, this 47% will never vote for anything other than more socialism. 5) Some of out children now say the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag in Arabic and say one nation under Allah–and this is seen as diversity and healthy for the country. And so on and so on…
I think any country that thinks America has the resources or the leadership to meet out treaty obligations is delusional. We are broke, led by an adolescent socialist, and we cannot defend ourselves.
So the Grist is right, defend yourself.
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We here in Australia sympathise with you and yours, we too had an adolescent, socialist government until late last year:
1. That spent all the money and then borrowed far more than our small population of 25 million could hope to repay.
2. Made big promises for action on everything but did nothing (except continue to borrow and spend).
3. Attempted to muzzle the free speech and the independent media while unleashing government supported media and tax payer funded pet journalists to silence dissent.
4. The previous government squandered a once in a lifetime opportunity to capitalize on our mining boom and too the countries coffers from a credit position of $40,000 per head of population free and clear to a deficit cost for every man, woman and child of $40,000 per year just to service the loan.
At least you kept your 2nd Amendment rights, we can’t even defend ourselves should we ever have another incompetent and corrupt government.
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OK Leonard , I take your point ,but we badly need new fighter planes to replace our US built F18s,the best way we can do this is to buy into your JSF F35? program,you may not like your current President but at least he has not shut down this program. We might go it alone on a project to build new submarines although our last effort with the Collins class subs would make one think we need to consult with our allies before undertaking a new venture. PS the Collins Class Subs were not such a dud as many would have you believe and it was a Labor Govt that delivered this project.
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He shut down the F22 Raptor – he would love to gut our military R and D, and already had done significant damage to it. If we don’t get a better president in 2016, things will come blows before the 2020 election – gun and ammo sales have been through the roof here for the last few years and our Pres has decided that even the EPA needs firearms and over a million rounds of ammo. The fed literally caused a months long ammo shortage from the ridiculous amount they bought.
Things could go sideways here very fast. I say “could” rather than “will” only because I hope for the best – but I also plan for the worst.
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and the million rounds were just for the EPA, all told they purchased almost 2 billion rounds, and they aren’t for the military – they are small arms hollow points.
http://theulstermanreport.com/2012/08/19/obama-government-on-ammunition-purchases-move-along-now-nothing-to-see-here/
“Radio show host Mark Levin is suspicious. He commented:
To provide some perspective, experts estimate that at the peak of the Iraq war American troops were firing around 5.5 million rounds per month. At that rate, the [Department of Homeland Security] is armed now for a 24-year Iraq war. A 24-year Iraq war! I’m going to tell you what I think is going on. I don’t think domestic insurrection. Law enforcement and national security agencies, they play out multiple scenarios. … I’ll tell you what I think they’re simulating: the collapse of our financial system, the collapse of our society and the potential for widespread violence, looting, killing in the streets, because that’s what happens when an economy collapses. I suspect that just in case our fiscal situation, our monetary situation, collapses, and following it the civil society collapses, that is the rule of law, they want to be prepared. I know why the government’s arming up: It’s not because there’s going to be an insurrection; it’s because our society is unraveling.”
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/02/17/Feds-Buy-2-Billion-Rounds-Of-Ammunition
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Your current President like out previous two Prime Ministers here in Australia certainly seems divisive.
At least you guys have the Second Amendment.
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Hey Mortis
I’ll bet you watch the gold price pretty closely, wonder at the manipulation & why so much is on a one way trip to China.
We live in interesting times which could so easily get more so.
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There are more Americans than Iraqis.
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Spot on, and all that is still only the tip of the iceberg here.
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oops! Make that $US2.9 million.
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Commission of Audit released. Recommendation 34: CSIRO to have closer scrutiny.
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link
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Yes,dreadful waste of money on ,what by now,should be well accepted as deliberate fraud.
I just sat through that absolute snore-fest of propaganda,aimed at children,”Years of Living Dangerously”on you tube.Dreadful.Especially irritating is what I now term as the “G.W. Grin”,you know,smug and superior with a touch of pitying condescension.
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Sounds like scammers are scraping for the last money. Had a persistent caller, testing my eligibility for federal and state government solar rebates. She was obviously working from phone book information; and little more.
Asked about my QUARTERLY electricity bill … which is very odd indeed because in WA, households are billed every 2 months. Obviously not a “local” at all.
Then she said that as my house had a roof and because I used electricity, that I was eligible and that she’d have a supplier call me to talk about installing a solar system. I insisted that she not do so. I repeated the request more than 4 times.
I pointed out that any business that did call me with regards to solar systems in the future would have to deal with the telecommunications ombudsman.
The primary scam is that they pretend to be doing a “survey” (circumventing the do-no-call register); which is actually pre-screening customers for what would subsequently be “solicited” phone calls.
The secondary scam is that of PV system “rebates”, etc, which shift the cost of PV systems onto the electricity bills of those without PV solar; at the same time producing very little useful electricity.
And I’ve just been called again… less than an hour later … same company. Tried to get more details but they hung up after providing very little. THey usually do if you ask for their registered company name and ABN or ACN.
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Nigel Lawson and the Bath Lecture.
http://www.standpointmag.co.uk/node/5541/full
Nothing new here but hopefully it gets some large circulation and opens a few eyes.
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Bath, or more of a Cold Shower ?
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A reiteration of the facts , a re-statement of the position , = there is no global warming , if there was global warming that might be a good thing for a lot of people, even if global warming was taking place at the very reduced rate IPCC imagines, no calamity,no pain , beneficial to most of the world ,,,,but especially to the polar bears who are seriously sick of being cold.
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So you’ve actually interviewed Polar Bear representatives? 😉
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Well actually I spoke to a young polar bear who was making inquiries about his lineage, I had to convince him that he was indeed actually a polar bear , when I asked why he doubted what he had been told by his mother father and sister he replied
“Cos I,m F&*^%ing freezing!”
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Fair enough. 🙂
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Some money just keeps flowing …
30 April 2014
Ministers, business and civil society will gather in Abu Dhabi next week to prepare the “bold pledges” they have been told to bring to a Climate Summit to be hosted by Ban Ki-moon in September.
*Avoiding travel via fossil fuelled jets to exotic locations to save the planet is NOT one pledge.
. . .
So, they fly to Abu Dhabi for a free ‘knees-up’ to prepare to fly to another ‘knees-up’ in September in another part of the world, on the pretence of ‘saving the planet’.
Got it.
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To be fair Abu Dhabi is a seriously warm place most of the time , perhaps they will shut off the air conditioning , open the windows and declare “well how do you feel about global warming now suckers?”
Hypocrisy springs to mind , but to be fair , I would jump at the chance of business or first class travel to exotic locations , so that I could save the World.
My bold pledge would be , that in the event that our asses are going to freeze , I’m out there shooting the first polar bear I see!
Although not in Abu Dhabi obviously. Anyone have the inverted irradiated heat index on camel fur?
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Whatever you do, don’t mention the carbon(sic)
gavin@realclimate, 30 April 2014
“Every so often contrarians post old newspaper quotes with the implication that nothing being talked about now is unprecedented or even unusual.
In particular, in the Atlantic sector of the Arctic the summer of 1922 was (for the time) quite warm, and there were a number of reports that discussed some unprecedented (again, for the time) observations of open water.
It seems that the writers were more concerned with fishing than climate change though.”
~ ~ ~
PS. I didn’t mention carbon(sic) levels in 1922 once for a comparison. I think I got away with it.
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But James, can I not recall that the wishes of the people were measured and so the policy action was the majority wish. (Or maybe my memory is failing).
Some things we older folk remember fondly, like the times when more people worked productively. Not like now, when a large % of the workforce is paid extreme $ to tell other people what to do.
There were times when the cycle of accusatioj, indictment, trial, outcome, punishment, rehab was largely allowed only by the constabulary, the judiciary and prison administrators.
Last time I counted, more than a decade ago, these ‘coercive powers’ had been adopted by a motley lot of 600+ so-called authorities, from the Greyhound Racing Board to the AFL to the Cat protection society and many more. In USA some sporty types are being judge, jury and hangman, wanting a $2 million fine from a team owner who cracked a few off-colour jokes. By whose authority, I wonder.
Now I have some pipsqueaks who tell me thay will fine me if I do not agree to have a Smart Meter installed. Ii have no idea of their imaginary source of power (the coercive one) but it will be interesting to explore how I am supposed to pay an undisclosed price for the compulsory purchase of a meter that seems to have a real cost of about 20% of the compulsory ask and a primsary purpose to restrict my power use when IT most ned it.
I’m not objecting o a smart meter installation, I’m objecting o a planned rip off where a few known carpetbaggers have made hundreds of millions of personal dollars with the illegal backing of a superfluous mob of Feds named the Australan Energy Regulator or similar.
The whole affair has a stench I can smell from Canberra to my Melbourne home.
Similar in many respects to the grand theft of carbon abatement schemes.
When, oh when, will the Coalition have the humility to admit to being suckered and fix global warming sxcams. They used to have the makings of a good Party. Now, PUP leads in glojbal warming credibility by a country mile.
Sorry if I sound a bit pissed off. I could give example after example of trumped up Johnnies who imagine they can force people to give them money or power aginst their wishes. They prey upon he scarce $ of the elderly, comonly, do high are their ethics. They are often from the Government and are there to help. Ho ho.
E&OE please. Some hacker is nearby with a radio transmitter trying to hack auto security systems in he car park nearby. Interferes with the wireless link from my modem to my tablet. The bastard. I suppose he is counted as contributing to he Gross National Product. My worry is that he will knock out my pacemaker & kill me.
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Geoff, it is sad when the only credible party to lead the abandonment of the Carbon Tax is led by an alleged multi- billionaire who simply wants to wring it out in order to have the tax retrospectively removed so that he is not forced to pay some 8 mil dollars of it his conpanies currently owe the people of Australia.
The Smart Metre rip off at the front end is nothing compared to the continued rip off as the energy provider tracks your energy use calculating it mostly at peak consumption rates so that you will change your power consumption habits – so that if every household changes their power consumption habits then they would be all in new re-set peak times necessitating all to change back again.
Julia Gillard’s Carbon Tax – a master stroke concept:
1. Tax the energy producer to force them to go to a greener energy source that is actually less efficient and more costly so that consumers will use less thereby cutting CO2.
2. Higher prices force consumers to use less and reduce the standard of living so subsidise the consumer for the rise in energy costs so that there wont be a backlash at the following election.
3. The energy providers lose turnover as demand decreases due to higher prices so they calculate the subsidy handed out to the consumer and raise energy prices commensurate to the extra disposable income afforded by the government subsidy in order to maintain same gross profit regardless of the decrease in sales of units to satisfy stockholders.
4. Perfect circle money taken from energy company for green scheme reimbursed to consumer as subsidy to compensate for green scheme then paid back to energy company by consumer in increased charges because consumer used less product…
As I wrote previously – that is some f###ed up sh#t right there.
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James,
We sing to the same tune. You jumped a few verses ahead. Good comments. Geoff.
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Who are they exactly, Geoff ? Seriously … and what geographical area, please ?
“Smart Meters” are the thin end of the wedge for unilaterally turning off
the power when some remote person decides you’ve used enough for the day
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Subjective to check on my other computer that is down, from memory it is United Energy seemingly contrating to AGL who send me bills. Doncaster, Melbourne region.
…………..
There is a massive and expensive problem because there are so many players at so many levrls. In this more or les vertical structure, each lower compamy adds its percernt profit to the charges of the one above and this compounding grows rapidly on your power bill
For inexplicable reasons, a Federal body like the Energy Regulator seems to have ordered a MINIMUM markup at some stages. I might be wrong because the paper trail and the money trail sem to have been made deliberaterly hard to follow. I have had NO answer to a number of inconvenient questions to a number of these bodies or Companies.
Sometimes it is hard to telll if the actual entity (the one who would be sued) is private or public. Sometimes well.known names like AGL seem to offer themselves as a respectable front. Companies do not often do this for free and guess where tghe ultimate money source is?
Of course much of the stuff up originated frtom efforts to conceal the enormigy of the error in adopting eindmills and solar whern any ‘,prior prudent asnalysis ould have hown thm hoperles or asll but some niche markets.
The related topic is how fast those with inisde running have become very wealthy indeed in a very short timr. Your money and mine has been transfered by compujlsion into tneir pockets. They seem to have exerted next to no effort.
Who are the Mr Bigs here. Who, in Gocenment areas, is corrupt in the process of enablement of what is properly named theft?
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If that’s the case I can point out some worthwhile work for both the millions and the bored staff. California’s streets and highways have potholes enough to keep them from getting bored for years. Maybe it’s time for a career change. And at union pay rates the money is pretty good too.
Problem solved. 🙂
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If only… …but not much hope. 🙁
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Not really. They do not make good pothole filler. 😉
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A more than 98% drop in demand (from 268 applications per month to 3 applications per month), but a reduction of just over 6% in staff (from 160 staff to current 150 staff)? Not sure where else that would fly but within such an organization. I suppose if applications drop to zero per month on average (a 100 percent drop from current levels) they will have to reduce staff by about another 10 or 11 employees. That will leave them just 139 to 140 staff to manage a dead exchange that produces nothing and never has produced anything of value. 100% consumption of what is left of funding seems to be the only goal that remains.
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Sounds like the financial future of the Australian Climate Council following the initial injection of about 1 mil of donations from green supporters – I expect that the donations will dry up soon enough when the greenies realise the donations are:
a. not tax deductible
b. not government subsidised
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what a disgrace:
2 May: AAP: Low-carbon energy key to Africa
Low-carbon energy is the quickest and cheapest way of providing electricity to the 70 per cent of people in sub-Saharan Africa without access to power, analysis suggests.
UK businesses could make the most of a STG12 billion annual investment opportunity to provide the energy revolution Africa needs, according to think-tank Green Alliance.
Large-scale renewables projects are boosting jobs and energy, with solar schemes bringing 4,000 jobs to Ghana, a doubling of Kenya’s geothermal capacity by 2030 and an increase of eight per cent in Ethiopia’s wind power capacity…
The report estimates that half of the region’s new capacity will have to be decentralised if it is to meet the UN’s goal of universal energy access by 2030, and that renewable technology is cheaper and more environmentally friendly than diesel generators.
The operating costs of powering a school or a clinic with energy from solar power or wind, backed up by batteries, is less than half the cost of diesel generators, according to the report, which is backed by Christian Aid, Greenpeace, the RSPB and WWF…
The analysis was published ahead of a speech by shadow business secretary Chuka Umunna, in which he will set out Labour’s commitment to low-carbon trade.
He said: “The green economy presents huge opportunities for dynamic and innovative British businesses to export overseas and increase energy access in regions such as sub-Saharan Africa through renewable technology”.
“We are clear that Britain must be a world leader in the low-carbon economy. This is key to growing the high-skilled, better paid jobs we need as well as powering development across the globe that benefits all.”…
https://au.finance.yahoo.com/news/low-carbon-energy-key-africa-050106546.html
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So do these African folk just go back to traditional methods when the sun don’t shine and the wind don’t blow?? A new class of “running reserves”? Or do they have diesel genny sets that are inconvenient to mention?
Heard a lung cancer specialisst on the radio yesterday. They now recognise a worryingly high incidence of a form of lung cancer caused not by smoking, but by breathing fumes from cooking systems using some types of bio fuel.
Reading between the lines, a smoky hut with terribly poor people burning animal dung because the energy sophisticates of the world block the installation of energy generation systems that we take for granted.
Is this humane, to save the world from CO2, or is it mass murder?
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What a disgrace is an absolute understatement here.
Let me show you what callous heartless ba$tards the UN people who propose this really are, and here I’ll just use the 3 Countries mentioned in pat’s link, Ghana, Kenya, and Ethiopia.
1. Ghana. Population 26 Million, more than the whole of Australia. Total power generation for consumption is 12TWH. That’s the same power consumed in the Gold Coast/Tweed region of Australia, which has a population of 600,000 people which is 2.3% of the population of Ghana.
2. Kenya. Population 44 Million, twice that of the whole of Australia. Total power generation for consumption is 8TWH. That’s the same power consumed in Newcastle here in Australia, which has a population of 420,000, which is 0.95% of the population of Kenya.
3. Ethiopia. Population 93 Million, which is 4.23 times that of the whole of Australia. Total power generation for consumption is 5.5TWH. That’s the same power consumed in Woollongong here in Australia, which has a population of 285,000 people, which is 0.3% of the population of Ethiopia.
The amount of power these wonderful new renewable power plants will add is around the same as would power the homes in Kawana, the small suburb of Rockhampton where I live.
These people are a joke if they think this is achieving something.
pat mentions that this is a disgrace. I mention that they are cruel heartless callous ba$tards.
Both statements are gross understatements.
Tony.
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Tony @ #40.2
“These people are a joke if they think this is achieving something.
pat mentions that this is a disgrace. I mention that they are cruel heartless callous ba$tards.
Both statements are gross understatements”.
____________________
All of the above my sentiments exactly but expressed far more sharply and far more more succinctly than I could ever muster.
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double disgrace!
30 April: Business Green: Sir David King: “Climate change is not the biggest challenge of our time, it’s the biggest challenge of all time”
Former chief scientists (sic) refuses to sugar-coat climate risk assessment – political and business leaders should listen
“Climate change is not, in the Foreign Secretary’s words, the biggest challenge of our time, it’s the biggest challenge of all time.”
Those were the words last night of Sir David King, erstwhile chief scientist and current Foreign Office adviser on climate change. He was speaking at the annual Chairman’s Dinner for the Carbon Trust (a rather delicious vegetarian meal, since you ask, in consideration of the planet and waistlines), where King responded to a question I posited about arguably his most famous intervention in the climate change debate, namely his 2004 assertion that climate change was a bigger threat than terrorism.
Is climate change still a bigger threat than terrorism, I asked, and assuming the answer is yes, can you envisage a warning that would convince politicians to take the steps needed to tackle the threat? It was, I’ll admit, a slightly unfair question, given no one has yet worked out what it will take to get our political class to deliver climate action commensurate with the scale of the threat. But it was a useful reminder to hear one of the world’s leading scientific figures reassert that climate change is a threat nonpareil, an existential challenge to the global economy and our way of life.
King’s chilling assessment of the scale of climate risk brought to a close an evening in which he had been remarkably upbeat about the prospects for both an international climate change treaty and an effective response to the climate threat…
***He was similarly optimistic about encouraging progress from clean technology developers and financial markets. He described the “carbon bubble” hypothesis as critical to shaking financiers out of their chronic short termism and hailed the emergence of low cost renewable energy and energy storage technologies as the breakthrough that makes a genuinely low carbon economy viable….
http://www.businessgreen.com/bg/james-blog/2342417/sir-david-king-climate-change-is-not-the-biggest-challenge-of-our-time-its-the-biggest-challenge-of-all-time
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Pat:
“hailed the emergence of low cost renewable energy and energy storage technologies as the breakthrough that makes a genuinely low carbon economy viable”
So, where are they? Sir David King is supposed to be a scientist and he has not got a clue about energy**. By new low cost batteries I can only assume he means lithium phosphate types; their energy density and recharge times make their use in vehicles wishful thinking, not modern engineering.
The lithium-titanate battery may recharge faster but its energy density is even lower. The zinc/cerium battery resulted in its developer going into liquidation years ago. The zinc air types have high energy densities (the zinc air types are the non rechargeable, short life ones used in hearing aids). IF they ever get the rechargeable types going …imagine going into the service station and loading 20 Kg. of metal.
**He knows [stuff-all] about global warming; he’s the prat who claimed that present temperatures were higher than they’ve been for 5 million years! Even Michael Mann hasn’t tried that.
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lengthy. for TonyfromOz & other interested parties:
1 May: Carbon Trust: Industrial renewable heat
What are the opportunities for renewable heat technology in industry? Renewable heat is key in supporting industrial prosperity in a sustainable, low carbon economy. Joao Lampreia looks at the current state of renewable heat in each of the five main industrial sub-sectors, and further opportunities for its use.
(Joao is an analyst in the Carbon Trust’s Policy & Markets team, working with government agencies mostly in Brazil to provide advice on how to structure low carbon programmes and policy strategies.)
https://www.carbontrust.com/news/2014/05/industrial-renewable-heat
Carbon Trust: Our Board
Chair, The Carbon Trust
In addition to his role as chair of the Carbon Trust, James is chair of the Conservatoire of Dance and Drama and chair of the advisory board of the Grantham Institute at Imperial College and LSE. James retired from Shell in April 2011 after 7 years as Chairman of Shell UK…
Tom Delay
Chief Executive, The Carbon Trust
Tom was appointed as the first Chief Executive of the Carbon Trust in 2001. Tom has extensive experience in the energy sector, with 16 years in commercial and operations roles at Shell, before moving into management consultancy with McKinsey and the Global Energy Practice of A.T. Kearney prior to joining the Carbon Trust…
ADVISORY PANEL….ETC
https://www.carbontrust.com/about-us/our-board
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Don’t bother reading Joao’s report. I wonder if he has ever worked in a factory, NO, I lie. I feel quite confident that his exposure to factories consists of short guided tours.
Re-use waste heat! Re-use waste process materials! CSR was doing this before 1900 and they weren’t orphans. Common sense tells you to reduce your costs.
It is becoming very clear that these “AGW Believers” don’t live in the real world but in a dream where their wishes are paramount.
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should have attributed the Business Green article to James Murray.
was concerned that there was no link to the Carbon Trust dinner statement. however, the Dinner was recent, & there are some amusing tweets about it here:
Twitter: the carbon trust
https://twitter.com/thecarbontrust
still trying to find any other coverage, or a video or transcript. not easy.
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Twitter: Sir David King
The Foreign Secretary’s Special Representative for Climate Change and Chair of Future Cities Catapult.
https://twitter.com/Sir_David_King
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Video: Why you should be a skeptic
A healthy dose of skepticism is needed to be an informed consumer of science.
This video gives a few tips on what to look for.
(via popularmechanics)
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“Peer review alone, though an important step in establishing scientific credibility, is no guarantee of accuracy” that comment alone should get Popular Mechanics BANNED from the University of East Anglia, and a lot of other places too.
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only lists future events, cannot access past ones:
Carbon Trust: Events
https://www.carbontrust.com/about-us/events
should have said SCROLL DOWN for “Dinner” tweets at this one:
https://twitter.com/thecarbontrust
am giving up – for now – on looking for any video/transcript of Sir David King’s speech. evidently, “the biggest challenge of all time” is to be kept from the public! LOL.
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2007 Exxon wanted a carbon tax? yet more Big Oil in on the CAGW scam? surely not. Sierra Club ok with fracking? tell that t the CAGW followers. READ IT ALL – INCREDIBLE:
1 May: Bill Shireman: How two ExxonMobil and Sierra Club lawyers agreed on a carbon tax
Climate experts David Bailey and David Bookbinder were once at odds with each other. They worked on opposite sides of the tracks — Bookbinder was chief climate counsel for the Sierra Club, and Bailey served as climate policy manager for ExxonMobil.
“I was considered delusional for trying to work with him,” Bookbinder recalls about when he first decided to sit down with Bailey.
Through a mutual respect for each other and an agreement about the way things work on Capitol Hill, they formed Element VI Consulting, a Washington, D.C.-based service that offers advice and insights to organizations interested in U.S. climate policy. United specifically over a carbon tax, Element VI offers carbon assessments, risk reduction via better information and solution design for those interested in tackling our nation’s climate issues, which they believe can be resolved through a carbon tax.
Bill Shireman, CEO of nonprofit Future 500, sat down with these two odd bedfellows recently to find out how they overcame their perceived differences to work together to form Element VI…
***David Bookbinder: When we first met in 2007, Exxon had called for a carbon tax. I thought cap and trade was not going anywhere in Congress, so I reached out to David Bailey, who was their climate chief, to start talking about a carbon tax…
Bookbinder: Bailey and I seemed to click. What started as apprehension grew into a strong bond over many meetings and baseball games. Our views on climate are not halfway between ExxonMobil and the Sierra Club — we have one common view: how to deal with climate change as efficiently as possible…
Shireman: You said that you’re out of the advocacy business. With two such diverse backgrounds, who is it that you provide this advice to?
Bookbinder: We tell the truth, regardless of where you fall on the spectrum of interests asking us the questions. Our mission right now is to distribute accurate thinking about what is going on. We aren’t in the business of advocating anymore — we’re in the business of reading the realities of the political system: how things will or will not work, understanding the climate debate and where it is going, understanding the undergrowth of incentives and subsidies between the federal government and the energy industry, and approaching the issues from a business and public policy point of view…
Shireman: David Bookbinder, since leaving the Sierra Club in 2010, you have represented natural gas interests in a variety of federal regulatory matters. How would you respond to those who say that natural gas is damaging to the environment?…
Bookbinder: From a climate perspective, natural gas is better than coal. From the environmental perspective, shifting to natural gas makes it more difficult to transition. The first is reducing carbon fast and getting people to accept that reducing carbon right now is important — renewables can’t be done in as short of a timeframe. Second, the political power of coal needs to be broken in order to make climate progress. The third reason is the short-term environmental benefits of switching to gas are tremendous. Mining for coal, transporting it, the human cost (black lung numbers, brown lung, silicosis — the miners are still dying, so we can keep the lights on), coal washing, coal cleaning. And when you burn coal, you create huge amounts of pollution: toxics, particulates, coal ash. In contrast, gas has the problem of fracking, which is small compared to these things. You can hedge mightily against the fracking, but you can’t solve coal ash and mountaintop removal…
Bookbinder: We think there is a 50 percent chance Congress will look at carbon tax seriously by 2016, and a 30 percent chance they’ll pass one. They’ll be looking for revenue stream, not for environmental benefit; it’s hard to ignore $1.2 trillion in revenue.
Shireman: What is a ballpark estimate for how much a carbon tax will cost?
Bailey: The key is to start it slow and low, and increase it along an automatic forward path, to get it to the $25 to $30 per ton range before the end of the decade. When we looked at the science of climate and the numbers for cost, a carbon tax shift was the most logical decision. For any businessman to say that any tax is a good idea is paradoxical, but we need to do this, and the right way to do it is to do it as overtly and as transparently as possible, with as clear of an incentive as is possible…
Bailey: Congress will only reach for a tax when they run out of alternatives. That will eventually happen. It seems to me there is no way around it. The question is: When?
***It might happen when they reach a “Come to Jesus” moment on the deficit. That would be triggered when the deficit becomes a political imperative, due to rapidly rising interest rates or bond failures. When Congress comes to the point that it must choose between eliminating the mortgage interest deduction or establishing a carbon tax, it will choose the carbon tax. It’s easier to admit to the voters that they must do something to save the country than it is to take away their home mortgage deduction…
http://www.greenbiz.com/blog/2014/05/01/exxonmobil-sierra-club-united-carbon-tax
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23 April: Macleans Canada: Andrew Leach: How Canada’s incoherence on climate is killing Keystone
In the absence of ambitious climate policies, Edmonton and Ottawa have decided on an ambitious program of wordsmithing.
(Andrew Leach is the Enbridge Professor of Energy Policy at the University of Alberta, where he teaches courses on energy markets, energy investments and environmental policy. Leach’s primary research areas are climate change policy, oil sands regulation and clean energy innovation and policy.)
For example, when Alberta released its Climate Change Strategy in 2008, it committed to a set of targets which were based, although not publicly, on a policy—there was even a wedge diagram of what that policy would achieve. That policy included, “an escalating economy-wide carbon charge increasing from $15/tonne in 2008, to $30/tonne in 2020, $60/tonne in 2030, and $100/tonne in 2050 and a strict regulation that all large, new industrial facilities are required to incorporate carbon capture and storage by 2015 wherever possible.” Don’t believe me? See the Report of the Alberta Auditor General (PDF, p. 99) on the subject…
Unfortunately, what Alberta had the political will to implement was a $15/tonne charge on large industrial facilities which applies only if they exceed their allowable emissions intensities. The ambition of their targets was an order of magnitude above the ambition of their policies. The same is true at the federal government level. Modelling work consistently concludes that, in order to reach the targets to which the current government committed at Copenhagen (a 17 per cent reduction in emissions relative to 2005 levels by 2020), policies equivalent to an economy-wide carbon tax of $100/tonne or more would be required—ambitious targets, indeed. Again, the government in Ottawa has shown nowhere near the same ambition when it comes to setting policies. Some meaningful policies including an effective ban on new coal plants and stringent regulations on new cars and trucks have been implemented, but the government’s own modelling clearly shows that we will fall far short of our commitments unless aggressive new policies are implemented across the economy in short order…
***We talk about emissions reductions, when what we really mean are reductions in the rate of growth of emissions. Our government representatives tell us that they are still committed to their targets, when their own modelling tells them that their policies won’t even get them close. When our government talks about growing oil demand, they cite scenarios for fossil fuel consumption consistent with global emissions growing far beyond the levels to which they committed jointly with other countries in international climate change negotiations. A new policy for oil sands emissions at the Alberta or Federal level is not going to solve any of these problems, because the ambition simply isn’t there…
How could Canada solve this problem?…READ ON
http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/how-canadas-incoherence-on-climate-is-killing-keystone/
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Nigel Lawson has the right idea.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/05/01/nigel-lawson-cool-it/#more-108499
There’ll be a few exploding warmist brains if they read that ! 🙂
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Gotta luv that closing line.
“Global warming orthodoxy is not merely irrational. It is wicked.”
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That presuppose they actually use their brains. Even a parrot can repeat what it has been told.
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I think Joe Hockey just stated the Government’s position eloquently on windmills and renewables:
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/age-of-entitlement-over-for-business/story-fnmbxr2t-1226903028028#
(Use Google search for paywall if needed)
To quote:
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Here is the podcast.
There has been a few battles going on behind the scenes this week. The green rubbish was always going to go. Firstly in the budget and a lot more after the CO2 tax is repealed.
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I must admit I find wind turbines to be quite lovely landscape features. I think Turner would have painted them.
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He did.
This one generates around the same amount of power too!
Windmill And Lock
I bet you did this for a stir MattB, because ‘quite lovely landscape features’ is about the best thing which can be said about them, and even that’s a stretch.
More like a blot on the landscape, incidentally, the title of a wonderful 6 part BBCTV series from 1985 starring David Suchet in a comedy role, the series titled Blott On The Landscape, which had this wonderful theme song.
Tony.
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i am old enough to remember watched blot when it went to air the 1st time thanks Tony.
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One turbine was interesting.
Five turbines were a photo oppurtunity
10 turbines are an abomination upon the landscape and serious health hazard to twenty percent of those who are forced to live in the vicinity of those towering and futile monuments to the utter infantility, banality and stupidity of those who worship the green gods of their febrile imaginations and who long for the appearance of Hades to prove their beliefs.
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Turner did, Windmill with Rainbow, Turner painted beautiful landscapes that encompassed the natural colour of the environment while embracing man-made objects that had the characteristics of function and grace.
Sadly facts show that our wind turbines built for enormous profit at the expense of the tax payer are greatly deficient in stated function and have all the grace of of a claymore cutting swathes through flocks of protected bird life.
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That may be your aesthetic, Matt.
But it doesn’t coincide with that of thousands of tourists no longer visiting or staying at the German North Sea coast or the villages in formerly rural landscapes that have been industrialised by wind farms.
Even the protected landscapes have been despoiled by the destructive behemoths; having been given exemptions by “envrionmental” agencies because they’re “saving the planet”.
Germany has a substantial and growing network of local individuals mounting opposition against further wind turbines. They are gaining a lot of traction, especially in communities hit hard by loss of supplemental income from tourism.
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“quite lovely landscape features”
Of course they are. Absolooootly Luvly !!
That slow gracefully sweep as it bring yet another endangered avian species splattering to the ground.
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This sort of corporate welfare is just as bad as any other form of so called welfare rorting.
Take a look at the (thankfully now failed) Solar Dawn project, for Chinchilla in Queensland.
The up front construction cost was $1.2 Billion, and the former Federal Labor Government gave them (not a loan, but an outright up front payment) $456 Million, and the former Anna Bligh Labor Government kicked in with $75 Million from Queensland, all up, a total of 45% of that construction cost.
The project failed when incoming Premier Campbell Newman pulled the plug on the Queensland gift of $75 Million, which tells me in stark capital letters that this project was a flop from the outset if it couldn’t find replacement money of that amount, only 6.25% of the cost.
The plant would have had a Nameplate of 250MW, making it seem quite large, but with no heat retention capability, its hours of operation would have been around 6 hours a day, averaged across the whole year, for a total yearly power generation for consumption of the same power as delivered by Bayswater in 11 days.
When Governments GIVE this sort of money to special selected projects, then that is Corporate Welfare writ large in my opinion.
Tony.
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Unfortunately the poll at the bottom of this article sums up the problem:
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/retirement-age-rise-to-70-by-2035-joe-hockey-announces-20140502-zr318.html#poll
Despite lifespans expanding rapidly in the last century, people still feel entitled to an never-changing retirement age of 65. With that kind of mentality is it any wonder governments face an uphill battle rectifying budget deficits?
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As you know, the Miles-Chinchilla area is the nominal geographical centre of the Surat Basin for seam gas and thermal coal developments
The Surat seams have particularly high permeabilities and porosities, making them prime targets for controlled pumping of CH4 (please, those who think Gasland is a documentary, restrain from splattering your coffee around)
Yet a (thankfully now failed) solar panel unit was attempted in the middle of it
Genuinely insane
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You are talking of the people who think switching a power station to burning imported wood chips which results in a 26% increase in CO2 emissions is a WAY OF REDUCING EMISSIONS.
Oh, and the power station was built over a coal mine (now not operating).
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http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/05/02/German-Green-Energy-Policies-On-the-Verge-of-Failure
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Jo, I think you have ‘had a little too much to think’; the Thought Police have been informed. Common sense like this is not welcome in Idiocracy, you could get lynched by the newest generation of Public School graduates for making remarks like this that challenge the new religious doctrine of Idiocracy.
I heard the other day on our lovely Govt Funded ABC or SBS (whats the difference) that the Sherpas that were recently killed on Mt Everest were victims of MELTING GLACIERS!!! It’s now not safe to climb 8+kilometer high mountains because of CO2 … what is the world coming to when it is no longer safe to climb Mount Everest? CO2 has really gone and done it this time… however they were killed by a big mound of snow and not a glacier, but this is a small technicality in the big, big world of ‘scientific’ proof (read: spin) … The UN speaks, and the Plebs OBEY! All hail the Lord of Misrule!
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