The big news from this new study is no news — the public are more bored with climate change than ever, and the trend is down. The fever peaked in 2007, and the last great spike of interest was in late 2009 when ClimateGate finished it off. Though that’s not the way Anderegg sees it.
Anderegg infamously published the blacklist of scientists in PNAS, so we know he struggles with the scientific method. Here, flawed assumptions render the conclusions a wishful fantasy. Anderegg argues that ClimateGate was not a big deal, didn’t affect opinions much, and (yawn) climate scientists need to do better communication. He’s wrong. His study misses the major damage — by assuming that the public are a uniform block his research could never uncover that the real effects of ClimateGate were devastating and irreversible. The scandal changed the opinions that matter — those of the smart engaged thinkers and leaders. I noted at the time that ClimateGate had put a rocket under the layer of influential busy achievers like never before. Suddenly people who hadn’t taken much interest in the debate were fired into action by the fraud. The nodes of influence shifted — as I said in The ClimateGate Virus at the time: “Behind the scenes, well connected businessmen in California, surgeons in Sydney, lawyers in the UK, and top ranking physicists are emailing and linking up.” My site traffic rose like never before and now is even higher. Climategate brought in a new caliber of players. Recent survey’s back me up: the highest proportion of skeptics are in the upper middle class. The unskilled workers, the unemployed and pensioners are more likely to believe in “climate change” (whatever that means).
What followed in the next four years was that the money shifted out of the game, politicians lost their nerve (think of Kevin Rudd), people paid lip-service, but in reality, the faith was sliding as the opinion leaders melted away. By mid 2011 even the media abandoned the meme.
Princeton University and University of Oxford researchers found that negative media reports seem to have only a passing effect on public opinion, but that positive stories don’t appear to possess much staying power, either. Measured by how often people worldwide scour the Internet for information related to climate change, overall public interest in the topic has steadily waned since 2007. To gauge public interest, the researchers used Google Trends to document the Internet search-engine activity for “global warming” (blue line) and “climate change” (red line) from 2004 to 2013. They examined activity both globally (top) and in the United States (bottom). The numbers on the left indicate how often people looked up each term based on its percentage of the maximum search volume at any given point in time. (Image courtesy of William Anderegg)
I point out the assumptions and holes below:
Public interest in climate change unshaken by scandal, but unstirred by science (Environ. Res. Lett.)
The good news for any passionate supporter of climate-change science is that negative media reports seem to have only a passing effect on public opinion, according to Princeton University and University of Oxford researchers. The bad news is that positive stories don’t appear to possess much staying power, either. This dynamic suggests that climate scientists should reexamine how to effectively and more regularly engage the public, the researchers write.
Public opinion hasn’t changed? Hardly — a recent UK study showed 62% don’t believe in man-made global warming. Worse, the believers are more likely to be lower class, unskilled workers. The smart layer of society got the message in ClimateGate and that genie can’t be put back in the bottle.
Measured by how often people worldwide scour the Internet for information related to climate change, overall public interest in the topic has steadily waned since 2007, according to a report in the journal Environmental Research Letters. Yet, the downturn in public interest does not seem tied to any particular negative publicity regarding climate-change science, which is what the researchers primarily wanted to gauge.
Anderegg apparently can’t see that the last surge of interest coincides exactly with ClimateGate.
And if public interest is not tied to “publicity” that could be because the mainstream media are becoming less and less relevant. More people are finding out through word of mouth, and that spreads slowly but irrevocably, just like the long term trend on the graph.
First author William Anderegg, a postdoctoral research associate in the Princeton Environmental Institute who studies communication and climate change, and Gregory Goldsmith, a postdoctoral researcher at Oxford’s Environmental Change Institute, specifically looked into the effect on public interest and opinion of two widely reported, almost simultaneous events.
The first involved the November 2009 hacking of emails from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom, which has been a preeminent source of data confirming human-driven climate change. Known as “climategate,” this event was initially trumpeted as proving that dissenting scientific views related to climate change have been maliciously quashed. Thorough investigations later declared that no misconduct took place.
Thorough investigations according to whom? Anderegg? The investigations were obvious whitewashes, that didn’t investigate the scientific evidence or logical assumptions. One was chaired by Lord Oxburgh, who also chaired a windfarm company. They were not even trying to appear impartial.
The second event was the revelation in late 2009 that an error in the 2007 Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — an organization under the auspices of the United Nations that periodically evaluates the science and impacts of climate change — overestimated how quickly glaciers in the Himalayas would melt.
To first get a general sense of public interest in climate change, Anderegg and Goldsmith combed the freely available database Google Trends for “global warming,” “climate change” and all related terms that people around the world searched for between 2004 and 2013. The researchers documented search trends in English, Chinese and Spanish, which are the top three languages on the Internet. Google Trends receives more than 80 percent of the world’s Internet search-engine activity, and it is increasingly called upon for research in economics, political science and public health.
Internet searches related to climate change began to climb following the 2006 release of the documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” starring former vice president Al Gore, and continued its ascent with the release of the IPCC’s fourth report, the researchers found.
“The search volume quickly returns to the same level as before the incident,” Goldsmith said. “This suggests no long-term change in the level of climate-change skepticism.
Does search volume equal “belief”? I believe that gravity is real, my search volume is zero. I don’t believe the moon-landing was a hoax, and my search volume for that is also zero. Searches represent interest, not belief.
We found that intense media coverage of an event such as ‘climategate’ was followed by bursts of public interest, but these bursts were short-lived.”
All of this is to say that moments of great consternation for climate scientists seem to barely register in the public consciousness, Anderegg said. The study notes that independent polling data also indicate that these events had very little effect on American public opinion. “There’s a lot of handwringing among scientists, and a belief that these events permanently damaged public trust. What these results suggest is that that’s just not true,” Anderegg said.
No damage to public trust? Not so. What these results suggest is that ClimateGate killed off interest in climate change, but salaried social researchers are still producing blind drivel in peer reviewed papers about it.
A public with little interest in climate change is unlikely to push for policies that actually address the problem, Anderegg said. He and Goldsmith suggest communicating in terms familiar to the public rather than to scientists. For example, their findings suggest that most people still identify with the term “global warming” instead of “climate change,” though the shift toward embracing the more scientific term is clear.
“If public interest in climate change is falling, it may be more difficult to muster public concern to address climate change,” Anderegg said. “This long-term trend of declining interest is worrying and something I hope we can address soon.”
One outcome of the research might be to shift scientists’ focus away from battling short-lived, so-called scandals, said Michael Oppenheimer, Princeton’s Albert G. Milbank Professor of Geosciences and International Affairs. The study should remind climate scientists that every little misstep or controversy does not make or break the public’s confidence in their work, he said. Oppenheimer, who was not involved in the study, is a long-time participant in the IPCC and an author of the Fifth Assessment Report being released this year in sections.
On the contrary, this study should remind scientists that hype can only generate interest for so long, and that once engineers, geologists, lawyers, doctors, investors and business men and women have realized it was hype there is no recovery, no matter how many glorious, exaggerated, and full gloss reports keep being issued with prophesies of doom that few believe.
“This is an important study because it puts scientists’ concerns about climate skepticism in perspective,” Oppenheimer said.
Puts scientists concerns in perspective? Hardly. This is yet another meaningless report that tries to band-aid over the great sickness of modern bureaucratized science.
“While scientists should maintain the aspirational goal of their work being error-free, they should be less distracted by concerns that a few missteps will seriously influence attitudes in the general public, which by-and-large has never heard of these episodes.”
The damage to the brand name of science may never recover.
REFERENCE
Anderegg, William R. L., Gregory R. Goldsmith. Public interest in climate change over the past decade and the effects of the ‘climategate’ media event. Environmental Research Letters, May 20, 2014
The reaction of the AGW mob is inverse to the graphs of public interest. We have the Mann/UQ type legal offensives, the Lewandowsky/Cook fantasy studies and release after release of “reports’ of what the ‘models’ are suggesting all of which seems to be doom, schlock and horror, spoonfed to the designer pets of journalism reporting on global/local/’catastrophic’/any old climate change.
How many more times can the likes of Jerry Brown make a buffoon of himself over the likes of the flooding of LAX before it is nobler in the mind to just shoot these idiot, bloody messengers? That is the question.
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I yield to no
manperson in my low opinion of Thermageddonists, but I also believe in free speech. It ill behoves us to threaten violence to those we disagree with, even out of an overwhelming sense of frustration at their politically-based pseudo-scientific outpourings.If sceptics advocate violent solutions, the Enemies of Humanity can use that to justify their own daily abuses of the Curries, Novas, Moncktons and indeed all other dissenting voices to the climate scam. Best to think twice and register our disgust at Warmist antics more creatively.
281
Humour works. Just make fun of these “people” – they certainly give us enough material.
360
If the ABC was relevant, Part 32.
(The Repairman)
(SCENE: Front door of BRYAN’s home. Door bell rings. BRYAN answers door. It is JOHN.)
John: G’day. I’m here about the climate.
Bryan: What climate?
John: Your climate. Our climate. THE climate. I’m here to fix it.
Bryan: What’s wrong with it?
John: It’s buggered. Absolutely buggered.
Bryan: No it isn’t. I was using it this morning.
John: What for?
Bryan: For drying the washing out the back.
John: Spoken like a true layperson! What you witnessed was not the working of an healthy climate, but a clear manifestation of catastrophic global warming! Scientists warn that if current trends continue, solar drying of your clothing will cause it to be not only dried, but pressed and lightly toasted as well!
Bryan: You know what?
John: What?
Bryan: I don’t believe you.
John: You have to believe me!
Bryan: Why?
John: The IPCC, the climate science, the models…
Bryan: What about the models?
John: They’re excellent models. Very robust.
Bryan: What makes you say that?
John: They all reach the same conclusion – they agree with each other.
Bryan: They don’t happen to use the same input numbers, perchance?
John: There is a level of collaborative effort, yes.
Bryan: And they all use atmospheric CO2 level as a major input?
John: Of course.
Bryan: Why’s that?
John: Because atmospheric CO2 level is a significant driver of global climate.
Bryan: So what do all of these “robust” models conclude?
John: That atmospheric CO2 level is a significant driver of global climate.
Bryan: Funny that. You know what?
John: What?
Bryan: I don’t believe you.
John: But the climate record! The long term climate record!
Bryan: Which goes back how far?
John: As early as 1850 – the dawn of the Industrial Revolution.
Bryan: Even though global temperatures have gone down, as well as up, during that period?
John: The downward cycles were simply the earth’s natural variation.
Bryan: But the upward cycles are global warming?
John: Absolutely.
Bryan: No chance that the upward cycles aren’t natural variation as well?
John: Of course not! They wouldn’t be man-made then, would they? And anyway, the trend for the last 150 years clearly shows a long term warming trend, interspersed by some decades of cooling.
Bryan: Sort of expected, really.
John: Che?
Bryan: Sort of expected. If you’re coming out of a little ice age, then you expect things to be warming up. Otherwise you’d still be in the little ice age, wouldn’t you?
John: I think you’ll find that the little ice age (LIA) did not, in fact, occur. Plus, it was only a localised event of a strictly transient nature. The peer-reviewed literature clearly demonstrates a stable global climate up to the time of the Industrial Revolution.
Bryan: You mean the hockey stick? Don’t make me laugh!
John: This is no laughing matter, my good man. The peer-reviewed literature clearly shows that temperature was benign and stable until the intervention of mankind.
Bryan: You mean YOUR peer review literature? As reviewed by people who are paid to agree with it? As discussed in the Climategate© emails? As distinct from the geological, sociological, archaeological, oceanographic and historical evidence to the contrary?
John: That comment was not very helpful.
Bryan: Suit yourself, but I still don’t believe you.
John: What about the rising sea levels? You can’t deny the rising sea levels. Scientists believe that sea levels around the globe are rising due to the effect of the melting ice caps.
Bryan: Of course. And they’ve been rising for about 8000 years – just after the end of the last major ice age. Haven’t noticed anyone taking a walk from Russia to Alaska lately, have you?
John: The Barents Sea would be a bit of a problem, no.
Bryan: That’s because rising sea levels covered the land bridge a few thousand years ago. Well before SUV’s became fashionable, you’d agree? Looks like natural variation to me.
John: I reject your reality and substitute my own.
Bryan: You’re a loony!
John: No, I’m a Climate Scientist. And if you don’t believe me, just look at all the catastrophic climate events over the last 20 years. The droughts. The heat waves. The glaciers. The snowstorms. The floods. Can’t you believe your own eyes?
Bryan: So global warming causes droughts? AND floods? Heatwaves AND snowstorms?
John: The floods and snowstorms were only weather events, of course.
Bryan: Just like the decline or plateauing of the global temperatures these last 10-15 years, I guess?
John: You are being very unreasonable – I can see this conversation is not going to take us anywhere. The science is settled, the debate is over. I think it better if I left now, without fixing your climate.
Bryan: OK, but before you go I’ll just give you a demonstration of the Carbon Tax.
John: Jolly decent of you.
Bryan: Care to show me your wallet?
John: Sure. [Pulls out wallet from pocket.]
Bryan: Now, I’d like you to open your wallet, close your eyes and think nice thoughts about Gaia.
John: OK. [JOHN holds out wallet, smiling blissfully. BRYAN helps himself to the cash.]
Bryan: Thank you for saving the planet. [Shuts door.] And I still don’t believe you!
640
Oh Speedy, DELICIOUS!! ROFLMFAO!!
You must seriously send that to Bryan and John – I reckon they’d be just as likely to DO the skit!! (giggle, giggle)
30
Brilliant Speedy – had to share 🙂
20
Bering Sea. Unless John is being made out to be map challenged, on top of all his other challenges 🙂
Great sketch!
30
Thank you Speedy – spot on cue – your timing is impeccable.
50
YES! Rereke, exactly! Lampoon them, expose their imbecility, mercilessly satirise their ‘dignity’.
And always give them another piece of rope (hang, etc!) “Tis better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt”; let them talk and talk and talk – and refute them with facts, reduce them with humour, destroy them with laughter
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Neville, I have been saying for a long time, make them look stupid for they have no sense of humour. People devoid of humour are seriously dangerous with propaganda, bite their bum with their own BS ,they go into the baby position sucking their thumb and spitting venom. When they sue lampoon and ask for data, no sense of humour and no proof of their position, easy targets.
00
More than enough. 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂
Unfortunately, even as they get more and more ridiculous they still persist. How do we finish them off and be rid of their influence. Where I live they seem to have free reign to run the state and the country. 🙁
40
“Designer pets of journalism” – pure gold! May I borrow that phrase please?
00
Interesting set up isn’t. The cash cow is dying, so one to keep it alive is to write denialist papers about how sick she really isn’t. Old daisy might be half blind, on one leg, with emphysema, but no problem, we’ll just crap on to each other about what the problem really is and get money to do that, while we work out how to keep getting money out of daisy. It’s an imploding religion because it was tied to warming.
Amazing though the way it has fallen off the shelf. It’s now actually a conversation killer. The same middle class Australians who used it as a cause to parade their enlightened altruistic side have dumped it for stuff like same sex marriage. Tolerance is the new religion. Now wait for the solar panel thing to go sour!! They’ll wash their hands then.
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Matty
While I agree the cash cow for alarmist ‘research’ is in a terminal state, there are few visible signs of it dying any time soon, with the obvious exception of Australia.
The problem is that such huge damage has been done to the economies of the western world for absolutely no benefit whatsoever, except for the Chinese manufactures of solar panels and wind turbines. Alarmist nonsense is estimated to cost the world economy around $1 billion per day – and this is to solve a non-problem and even if it was a real problem, it is not something which we could do the slightest thing about, unless we wanted to volunteer to return to the living standards of the 15th century.
Many of the more dubious and dodgy politicians still believe there is much political capital to be gained from being seen “to save the world by taking action against climate change”; Obama is obviously one of the worst of these. Judgement Day for these muppets will come when the blackouts begin and energy poverty soars to even greater heights. Unfortunately, by then most of these muppets will be out of office, living on huge pensions and enjoying all the ill gotten gains of the international lecture/speaker circuits.
My own experience is that global warming/climate change/climate shift is no longer a topic of interest and the cries of Unicorn! Unicorn! from the alarmists are just ignored or treated with mild derision.
100
Peter – I wonder if Obama isn’t in a similar position to Shorten? I hear Bill doesn’t believe it but the trauma to his party will be great if he walks away. Abbott in some pain atm but when the tax goes in a couple of months the ALP will have to do some sorting out. They can’t possibly take it to another poll, but dropping it will cause a split. They will have to but, and when they do it will be politically dead as a dodo. Looking forward. All Obama has ever really done on climate is talk – is he appeasing the factions?
20
Not just Australia and America but also Germany;
Where the Germans so goes Europe eventually in this case
NoTricksZone
German Professor Fritz Vahrenholt: “Alarmism Being Put In Its Place…Doubt Getting Broader, More Public”!
By P Gosselin on 20. Mai 2014.
Varenholt is a biggie in German environmental and climate circles but also a maverick who goes his own way when he feels he has to.
50
Whether Barack Obama personally believes in CAGW isn’t the question we should be asking.
Far as I can tell, all he believes in is wielding power now and becoming the fifth face on Mount Rushmore later.
However, the ideological cover he adopted as a young man, to get ahead with those from whom he draws his main political support, has included CAGW since the 1990s.
He has a problem in 2014 on issues like Keystone XL, which pits factions in his party’s coalition against each other, and endangers Senators from states like Alaska, Arkansas, and Louisiana that the Democrats need to re-elect. I still think he will eventually decide to suppress Keystone, because he kind of likes to suppress enterprises not run by his cronies. But it will happen after the November election.
Meanwhile, draconian new regulations from the EPA are expected on June 2. Say bye-bye to a lot of coal-fired power plants.
It looks as though the general public is no longer paying much attention to CAGW. The second Lewandowsky survey (published in PLoS ONE) was done with a sample of American adults. Well-balanced, in terms of political attitudes. Average endorsement of the strongest CAGW proposition was 3.5 out of 5 (but it was stronger than average endorsement of a couple of weaker propositions). Fully 11% of those giving a 4 or a 5 to the strongest CAGW proposition also gave a 4 out of 5 to the climate change conspiracy item. Which doesn’t suggest a high level of engagement…
I wish the US was as far along as Australia on these matters. We all know where the Democrats are, and the Republican leadership in Congress still doesn’t want to defund anything. The next 3 or 4 years will be drawn out and ugly, politically.
40
Obama is not eligible for another term. If anything this gives him a lot more freedom to cut a new path through the political wilderness than most members of the political class who are constrained by the need to win reelection. His democrat colleagues are going to be needing a plan B soon as the catastrophist case continues to fall apart. Obama is in the best position to come up with one.
I am actually disappointed in him for wasting the opportunity provided by his current position and for choosing to double down on what looks increasingly like a bad choice when the best long term interests of his party and his country would suggest that he should be hedging his bets.
10
Global Warming / Climate Change = The New World Bubonic Plague
30
“Now wait for the solar panel thing to go sour!!”
Advancetek has soured a lot of the smug global warming convincees. Their house catching fire will not worry the bigger lunatics but many will be a bit bilious.
61
I expect that the end of government subsidies for putting them in will be the beginning of the end. Failure to provide the expected life and performance over that life will add another push toward the cliff if it happens.
We need only wait and watch. When the outfits installing and supporting the solar panels start to disappear we’ll know.
10
And as I was watching Fox News Channel this morning, what should appear but an add for solar water heating? Yep, coming soon to your house — a replay of the 1980’s solar water heating debacle.
Help, help help! I’m being held prisoner in a madhouse! 🙁
And I’m beginning to wonder if I’m mad myself. I cannot believe the past experience with solar water heating has been forgotten so soon. But it has.
00
On the subject of solar panels, I’ve noticed a serge in adds on FB the last week or so from solar panel related companies. A bit of a death throw, maybe?
51
Trouble is for climate modellers constructing hockey sticks, and for green elites peddling tipping point
doom, eventually that ol’ Mother Nature creeps up
behind them and bites them you-know-where…
It’s called in science, feedback loops and testing.
31
I’ve noticed how when you start using John Christy’s US Senate submission where he trashed the AR5 models by comapring them against actual data, it shuts the warmists up rapidly – not because I want to silence anyone ( that would be very unfair and just not cricket ), but becasue they just cant dispute it……
00
“Scientists”, in their attempt to discover if public “belief” is waning, show complete ineptitude; brutal irony and/or self-fulfilling prophecy?
292
Yes, Isn’t it great!
70
“This dynamic suggests that climate scientists should reexamine how to effectively and more regularly engage the public, the researchers write.”
Makes you wonder why scientists are concerned with regularly engaging the public, unless they’re interested with PR and activism.
50
I think that everybody has heard of the water on the stone parable where over long periods of time the incessant and continuous dripping and washing of water over a stone slowly but inevitably wears the stone away.
The climate alarmist science stone appeared to be monolithic in it’s structure, immovable in it’s status, implacable it it’s intentions, autocratic in it’s control of climate science, dictatorial and domineering in it’s control of climate politics and the media.
It was a stone which the alarmists the climatistas, the all controlling “climate nazis” as Roy Spencer has described them, which seemed to be fixed in place forever and could never in their wildest imaginations ever be moved or destroyed.
And yet that soft, clear, disorganised, unpredictable swirling, endless, relentlessly dripping and flowing of the skeptic stream has slowly but constantly brought doubt on, has dismantled and brought undone the climate alarmist’s claims to climate science and the claims of the climate nazi’s, those who policed the entire social structure of science and society to ensure conformity with the climate alarmist science dogma and theology.
That soft flowing skeptic stream has relentlessly worn away the underpinning credibility, the very foundation on which climate alarmist science was based in the eye’s of the public.
As that stone wears it becomes smaller and ever less monolithic until one day it also just starts the long roll downstream to join all those other small and getting smaller rocks at the very bottom, small rocks which sometime in the long distant past were also large immovable monolithic rocks of bygone ideologies and dogma’s that others also believed could never be moved or brought undone.
And still the skeptic stream flows on as it drips and washes and steadily grinds away ever more layers of what was once a great indestructible monolithic climate alarmist rock that presaged the destruction of the world to come.
50
ROM, Lovely and true. Beth-the-serf.
10
It takes such a long time to wear away a stone by dripping water on to it’s surface.
If only we could find little chinks, let the water of truth get in there, and then freeze it. It makes the cracks bigger and bigger.
Maybe that is what we are doing!
Hannibal broke large boulders even faster, when he crossed the Alps in 218BC. He light a fire under the boulders, then when they were good and hot, poured vinegar onto them, causing them to split lit asunder.
I would not mind lighting a fire under a few University Vice Chancellors.
10
Yes, and its one major reason why the warmists are now giving control of the internet to the UN so it can “police” it for our own “safety”….of course.
00
Many USA political and left wing media folks allowed Al Gore (even prior to his V.P. stint) to promote this religion and fill thousands of government positions with acolytes. The President and Jerry Moonbeam Brown are the most visible and vocal. Brown was caught in an outright blunder regarding the LAX airport and others continue to claim tropical storms, tornadoes, wildfires and so on are worse than ever. The ace reporters of the US msm believe these things to be true so do not bother checking. Many millions in the US are believers.
The lagging economy and the problems of health care have slowed the legislative solutions the Administration thought possible following the 2008 election. Now they try to get by decree what they could not convince the public it needed. The statements of the sort “If you like your X, you can keep your X …” have done enormous damage to this administration. We have congressional elections this fall – they will be interesting. Then the interminable presidential election will begin.
So while many may be “terminally bored with climate”, we can’t get it out of the system just yet. There is hope.
162
Media reports! MEDIA REPORTS! It is to laugh.
If the study is valid, all it shows is that the general public has caught onto the media.
A bunch of liars and sensationalists of no moral value.
Truly, they are worse than politicians for misrepresentation of the facts.
Begone to all of them and may they suffer in the hell of a thousand spits.
201
But we still have the likes of Jeffrey Sachs coming here to tell Aussies what to do.
According to this nong we haven’t got a budget emergency at all and we should be WASTING another 30 billion $ on CC and storage. Of course that won’t make a scrap of difference to co2 levels or climate or temp for thousands of years.
If CC and storage is a bummer we should just leave our coal in the ground, because we’ll eventually see temp increases of 4c to 6c.
Gawwwwrrrdddd give me strength.
http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2014/s4008770.htm
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Thanks for that link Neville.
Jeffrey Sachs is a World renowned economics professor, and hey, don’t you just love how people like this are trucked out for serious comment.
In this interview the esteemed professor mentions this when asked about electrical power options for the Countries in the World stricken by abject poverty: (my bolds)
Economics may be his forte, but when it comes to electrical power generation, he’s positively clueless.
Mali has a population of 15 Million people. The total power generation for Mali comes in at 520GWH per year.
That’s the same power consumed by Dubbo here in Australia, a city in central NSW which has a population of 30,000, which is 0.2% of the population of Mali.
There are times during the year when Bayswater will have all 4 units running and delivering power into the Eastern Australian grids.
That total of 520GWH which is ALL the power for the Country of Mali would be delivered by those 4 units at Bayswater in 8 days and 5 hours.
Oh, Professor Sachs, how kind you are to say Mali could benefit from a couple of solar panels.
People like this make me sick.
Tony.
331
What chance the Prof is a Keynesian? What chance he supports two broken and discredited delusions rather than just one. He may be Comical Ali’s last believer. Yes Prof, there’s no US forces anywhere in Afghanistan.
Throw away the key and weld the lock to be sure.
41
Keynesian? Doubt it; Sachs not that smart. Read rgbatduke’s high praise for Keynes on WUWT.
00
Agree completely. Don’t forget Jeffrey Sachs is the ‘economist’ who so destroyed Russia that hundreds of thousands he impoverished committed suicide in the 1990s.
20
“Jeffrey Sachs is a World renowned economics professor,”
. . . and a past pontificator of doom for Scientific American magazine;
. . . and one of the reasons I did not renew my subscription.
I hope his air ticket to OZ was one way!
30
What, not walking?
Don’t they get it? Pulverising the crania of the masses eventually generates en masse punchdrunkeness.
There should be a law against propaganda induced narcosis.
Wait a minute, that’s their line isn’t it?
20
Another visionary Plato on the hill with top down solutions,sigh … Five Year/Ten Year Plans? Great
Leaps Forward? Yer know what happened. Humans just
aren’t good at predicting, there be black swans out
there, hey, but we are adaptable. Sachs should read
Nassim Taleb’s ‘Black Swan ‘ and ‘Anti-fragile.’
http://www.amren.com/news/2013/09/the-not-so-great-professor-jeffrey-sachs-incredible-failure-to-eradicate-poverty-in-africa/
40
Meanwhile, it will be difficult to exceed the activist hype which got the whole process started to begin with! How will they ever get the public, news media, and govts. more scared the next time??
activist? biased?? Here are a couple of the figures from Oppenheimer & co. selling the creation of what became UNFCCC and IPCC.
(first figure is 3 ranges of projected global temps., lower figure is 3 ranges of projected sea level rise)
Oppenheimer et al. 1987, figures on pp. 4-5
[the salvation of the “low” scenario was only if govts agreed to take drastic actions promptly in late ’80s/early ’90s]
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new juicy bit, btw, speaking of activist scientists, compare and contrast to Bengtsson ……
Peter Gleick is listed as one of the 1987 workshop participants! (see Oppenheimer et al. 1987)
(Appendix I, p.44)
no wonder he goes nuts over this stuff, it really is his life’s work and he takes all dissent or opposition quite …. personally …. and seriously.
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There are a few names familiar to the lay observer in the ‘Sources of Information’ section namely Hansen, Jones and Wigley.
50
According to the upper scenario, business as usual, we should be at least 2C above 1987 and that prediction could not have anticipated the strong economic growth of China.
60
They won’t, at least not for a while. If you look back at history, there was a “great moral imperative” for each generation. The Great Depression, The Great War, and The Second World War.
I had the Cold War, my kids have Climate Name-du-jour, and their kids will have something else.
The best thing we can do for our kids and grand kids is to hammer home this cyclic trend, so they can see it for what it is, when the next Great Big Hairy Monster rears its head.
Those who cannot understand history, are doomed to repeat it.
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I agree…society seems to being trained not to question, whereas I prefer to be bulldog-like in pursuing answers.
Kids need to be re-calibrated to question and demand answers. The warmists and edicators are all socialists – socialism can only exist if its its not challenged or questioned.
Kids also need to learn to develop a thick skin – a lot of their peers will be trained to be drones, so thinking will be seens as a form of “un-coolness”. There in lies a problem, but I think if we couch it in terms of “thinkers have more options in life”, they will go for it.
I foster a no holds barred questioning of stuff in our home – ( almost ) nothing is off limits. Also kids to expect people will react ( possibly angrily ) when you question their beliefs, and not to be scared of that.
If you watch the warmist approach, they often throw huge ammounts of righteous indignation ( aka bluster & BS ) at you to see if they can scare you off. It dont work Herman….thats why they are flat out scared of sceptics, as we inadevetedly threaten their whole power structure….
The Daily Bell calls the internet the “Internet Reformation” as it allows massive learning and also questioning of entrenched power.
00
figures linked above are from this 1987 report which led into the creation of UNFCCC and then IPCC:
http://www.princeton.edu/step/people/faculty/michael-oppenheimer/Villach-Bellagio-WMO-report.pdf
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Skiphill, It is well that you have gone back to Genesis. If you want to see how far it has come look at the annexe to the report of the negotiating committee from the April Berlin meeting. The UNFCCC commits all parties to doing whatever to keep (post industrial) warming to 2.0c. Subsequent to achieving this it is proposed we reduce the rise to 1.5c by, post 2080, achieving negative emissions! This requires new technology – perhaps by reducing CO2 to black carbon, compressing it into lumps and burying it. Yes, they really do want us to cool the earth!
The Kyoto replacement must be negotiated in Lima in December for agreement in Paris 2015. Currently the stance of the developing nations is that they will continue to grow whilst the developed nations (Annexe 1) will take up the entire burden for past sinning.
Obama wants an agreement as his legacy – no wonder he is trying to sell the idea that the US can, unilaterally, control its own “extreme” weather.
I bet that, after a classic brass monkey winter, not many yanks know that the president wants a cooler USA.
141
Oh nice, I am in Lima. Will have to organise a little protest.
50
Was just in Lima, had a place in Lince for a short period. Awesome city. Have moved north now to Quito, so I’d be happy to come down for a little sit in. I’m sure it wouldn’t be to hard to get a few locals involved, knowing how much Peruvians love a protest. Hehe.
40
I was in Lince for one month before finding a permanent apartment in Jesus Maria…. hope we bump into each other some time (you can ask Jo for my contact details).
Exactly!
30
If the general public stop and work out the scientific claims and mistakes that have been made on their behalf it will firstly be seen as absurdity and secondly after the penny drops on the direct hit in their wallets taken for an imagined dangerous issue that was debunked from the start, it will be anger and plenty of it.
Then again CAGW could take so long to be outed as a scam/hoax by then the real criminals would have covered their tracks so well it would only leave true cult followers as easy targets for public outrage, and there’s no justice in outcasting cripples and beggars.
171
Most people are TOTALLY ignorant on the subject.A suggestion to an agitated student the other day that carbon dioxide is a trace gas in the atmosphere met with a haughty”fill a plastic bag full of the gas and put it over your head”.I mean unbelievable! Off next year to start her secondary teaching career;who’s going to debrief the poor beggars.
291
Hi Jo,
Early in your script you refer to pensioners and their beliefs. This one is certainly a skeptic!
91
Jo is the equivalent of a terrorist lamenting the use of violence.
Where are your published papers correcting the science, Jo?
(Where is your rebuttal to the blog post she made?) CTS
248
Change your avatar’s name to Jester, it’s more apt.
322
You are too kind, Kevin. Fester is more apt.
272
Hey, Uncle Fester was a cool dude.
Please do not be rude to Uncle Fester by linking him to this nurk.
150
–
Chester is haunted by thieves and terrorists; he’s been too long at skepticalscience!
190
Hmmm, yes. Chester is one of my favourite cities, with its its river, its canal and lock flight, its Rows, its cathedral, its Roman wall and its rat-infested beer-gardens. What’s not to like?
70
Chester
I see you are ranting yet more prefossilized coprolite again.
Scientist should be doing politically unbiased scientific studies. Researchers should always allow their data and methods to be verified.
If there is one thing that the leaked emails taught us is that too often it has not always been so.
292
Thing is tomo, what Cook does could NEVER be classed a science. !
211
So Chester at the end of the day how do you feel about using your computer as Masking such an aggressive personality which is obligatory to the social structure you have found yourself in?
232
Chester,
If, “Jo is the equivalent of a terrorist lamenting the use of violence.”
Then, Chester is an equivocator violating the use of science.
262
I doubt that Chester has ever been anywhere near any science to abuse it.
212
Where are your published papers correcting the science, Jo?
Scientific Truth and Published Papers are not synonymous. Scientific Truth exists, to be discovered and publicly debated, without need of formal, published record.
Having something recorded is convenient, but having it privately reviewed by like minded individuals, does not make it truth, (e.g. Phrenology, Phlogiston, Allatis (bloodletting), et al), as general society is starting to realise.
The net result of the Climate Scare will be the devaluing of the Formal Peer Reviewed (“peer” meaning, of same status and of like mind) Scientific Record, and with it, the standing of scientists, in society, yet again.
Brilliant stroke of stupidity, from the climate team.
330
Didn’t you come across 500 odd papers correcting
the sciencewhat is speculated, Chester?80
Chester, being in control of a brain, means that you are meant to use it in a logical manner. If you can only spout BS that has been implanted in your brain with propaganda in our wonderful institutions of learning, you have failed in life. My advice [SNIP, keep it friendly.]
00
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20
A good interview with Judith Curry by Quadrant magazine. And she is spot on.
https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2014/05/chatting-climate-heretic/
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Great interview.
Also loved Kilez More, maybe there is hope for the younger generation yet.
http://youtu.be/AybBEuIpy44
What a very thoughtful and talented young man, “think for yourself”, these days it seems like a revolutionary concept. Neville Kennard would have approved I think…
“Being curious may bring you back to the conventional wisdom, or it may not; but at least you’ve arrived there of your own accord and not just followed the crowd. Be a sceptic, a contrarian, an iconoclast even, if you have the where-with-all for it. Most don’t, so it will never be a crowded field.” Neville Kennard
http://jennifermarohasy.com/2012/06/eulogy-neville-kennard-had-unconventional-wisdom/
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Chester, you owe the lady an apology. She is in no way equivalent to terrorists. On the contrary, she is a supporter of reason, real science, and honesty in reporting scientific findings and their meanings.
321
Leonard,
you need to realise that Chester does not understand even one of those things you have mentioned.
Reason, real science, and particularly honesty are totally foreign to him.
251
***revenge politics at its worst?
21 May: AFR: Joanna Heath: Keeping carbon tax could avert controversial budget cuts: Garnaut
***And Clive Palmer told TheAustralian Financial Review on Tuesday that his party’s voting position was up for review.
Professor Garnaut, the architect of the Rudd and Gillard governments’ climate policies, argues that keeping carbon pricing and abandoning the $2.55 billion emissions reduction fund would reduce the budget deficit by between $12 billion and $19 billion over the next four years, depending on the European carbon price.
On Tuesday night, he told an audience at the University of Melbourne that is about the same as the $12 billion to $18 billion in budgetary savings that the Greens and Labor have pledged to oppose in Parliament.
“Retention of carbon pricing would more or less precisely fill the gap from Senate rejection of some budget measures,” Professor Garnaut said…
Mr Palmer, who will control four votes in the Senate from July 1, said he and his senators had not yet decided whether to support the repeal of the carbon and mining taxes.
“We’re considering everything at the moment because we haven’t reached a final determination, on balance, in terms of what [the government] is achieving,” Mr Palmer told the Financial Review. “We’ve seen in Parliament in the last six months an obstructionist Senate. We’ve got to weigh a couple of things up and we’ve already said publicly we will not pass the mining tax [repeal] if the government repeals the benefits to the orphans of dead servicemen.”…
http://www.afr.com/p/national/keeping_carbon_tax_could_avert_controversial_GUxwmdmZun3nDS9dPy7ufL
Australian reports only Garnaut’s AFR claim:
21 May: Australian: Staff Reporter: Carbon tax can save budget pain: Garnaut
His comments come as it appears close to $20bn worth of budget savings could be at risk of rejection in the Senate.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/latest/carbon-tax-can-save-budget-pain-garnaut/story-e6frg90f-1226924847162
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So Clive wants to go against what he PROMISED before the election..
Is that right?
40
Will this worm have enough guts to force a double dissolution, and risk putting Short-a-brain in as PM..
How stupid is Palmer.????????
Only time will tell !!!
I suspect he is just “all mouth”.
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naturally, The Conversation has Garnaut, with fighting words, & somewhat bizarre use of the word “reconciliation”:
20 May: Michelle Grattan: Business-environment conflict now intense, Garnaut says
Delivering the John Freebairn lecture in Melbourne, Garnaut said it had become difficult to place scientific assessments at the centre of policy in Australia in recent times…
“The difficulty is compounded by an extraordinary fact – that the four business leaders who have been given the most senior advisory roles to the current Commonwealth government share a strong view that the science is wrong on the most important of the environmental issues under current discussion – climate change.”
Garnaut did not name the business leaders, but was obviously referring to Dick Warburton, heading an inquiry into the renewable energy target; David Murray, in charge of the financial system inquiry; Maurice Newman, chairman of the Prime Minister’s Business Advisory Council, and Tony Shepherd, who headed the Commission of Audit.
???“We can expect trench warfare …
***Garnaut – who was advisor to the Labor government on climate – said the Abbott government’s move to repeal the 2011 carbon laws and replace them with an ineffective Emissions Reduction Fund did not make sense to anyone who understood the implications of modern science on climate change…
???Garnaut said the rest of the world was “moving awkwardly towards much less carbon-intensive economic activity just as Australia is talking about moving the other way…
He said Australia needed to restore broadly supported arrangements for reconciling business, economic and environment objectives.
“Reconciliation requires honest science in a central place in official policy.”
http://theconversation.com/business-environment-conflict-now-intense-garnaut-says-26988
21 May: The Conversation: Australia has nothing to fear from deep global carbon cuts
by Frank Jotzo (Director, Centre for Climate Economics & Policy/ANU), & Anna Skarbek (Exec Director, Climate Works/Monash)
Disclosure: Frank Jotzo is in charge of grant funding from the Australian Research Council and the Australian government. ClimateWorks Australia and ANU lead the Australian component of the UN ‘Deep Decarbonisation Pathways Project’.
ClimateWorks Australia and ANU lead the Australian component of
the UN ‘Deep Decarbonisation Pathways Project’.
What we need to do is get the transition started soon, and to do it in the right way…
The good news is that in Australia we have every opportunity to make a drastic turnaround of our carbon emissions while maintaining the nation’s prosperity.
(SO SIMPLE?)It might sound like a daunting task: we need to fuel our industry, transport and buildings with energy that does not emit carbon, and make use of our land for sustainable agriculture and carbon forestry…
???Coal would probably have a much smaller market, as our trading partners would demand less of it and much less coal would be used by Australian power and industrial plants…
But we need to get started on doing all of that, and more…
http://theconversation.com/australia-has-nothing-to-fear-from-deep-global-carbon-cuts-27009
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21 May: Australian: Leo Shanahan: Faulty solar part ‘caused office blaze’
A FAULTY circuit breaker of a type installed in more than 25,000 rooftop solar panels in NSW and Queensland was responsible for a fire at an office block in Sydney that forced the evacuation of 20 people.
Fire and Rescue NSW has confirmed that a fire at a Parramatta office block late last year, during which a solar PV system caught alight, was caused by the same Avanco-branded DC isolator that is the subject of recall orders by NSW and Queensland.
Originating in the switch room for the solar PV system, the Parramatta fire triggered an automatic fire alarm about noon on December 13, and led to the evacuation of at least 20 people. There were no injuries…
Commissioner Robert Vellar said up to 3740 isolators were sold to 19 distributors in NSW.
“Testing has revealed the switch’s enclosure is not adequate as it allows in moisture that may cause sparks and in some cases fire,” he said.
“Although NSW Fire and Rescue has responded to only one incident linked to the faulty switches, 57 similar incidents have been reported in Queensland.”…
Mr Vellar said that while Fair Trading issued a warning that the isolator should be turned off following the Queensland recall of 27,000 of the isolators on May 12, an official recall could allow customers to pursue legal rights.
He said consumers should not attempt to replace the switches themselves.
“If you think you have a faulty isolator switch on your solar panel system, contact your installer and arrange for an inspection,” he said…
Mr Hungerford (Advancetech/TRO Pacific Holdings) has not returned requests for comment.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/state-politics/faulty-solar-part-causedoffice-blaze/story-e6frgczx-1226924558495
once again, the briefest of pieces by ABC in Queensland, nothing to see here, not interested:
19 May: ABC: Andree Withey: Solar parts distributor goes into receivership
On its website, the company rejects findings by the State Government’s Electrical Safety Office that two of its Avanco branded DC isolators are faulty…
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-05-19/solar-parts-distributor-goes-into-receivership/5462200?§ion=news
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still can’t find any Fairfax coverage of the Advancetech affair – but they have this:
***first a plug for “booming” business:
20 May: SMH: Beau Donelly: Rise in consumer complaints over solar power
Complaints about rooftop solar panels have jumped markedly as more Victorians have taken up cheap offers in the ***booming green energy market.
The number of people contacting the state’s consumer watchdog about solar electricity systems increased from five a month in 2007 to 183 a month this year.
Largely about faulty units, poor installation, service delays and difficulty in cancelling contacts, the complaints have pushed solar power systems into the top five products reported to Consumer Affairs Victoria, alongside furniture, white goods and clothing.
The more serious complaints have been made over sales of defective equipment and failure to honour contracts – allegations that led the watchdog last week to issue a warning about Melbourne supplier Sunburst Solar…
It follows prosecutions of two solar companies earlier this year, one of which was fined $60,000 for consumer law breaches.
The increase in complaints has come as the popularity of solar systems has surged. Driven by government incentives, the falling costs of solar panels and rising electricity prices, more than 126,000 systems were sold in two boom years.
(SO BUSINESS IS NOT BOOMING) Sales fell in 2013 as government incentives were wound back. But calls to the watchdog remain as high as they did during the peak, with more than 2000 a year.,,
Ms Noone said consumers reported difficulties connecting their system to the grid and alleged the company provided faulty panels and inverters, failed to reimburse shortfalls in feed-in tariff incentive payments and could not be reached for warranty claims…
Sunburst issued a statement through its lawyers saying it was committed to addressing any complaints. ”Sunburst Solar is not aware of any client with an outstanding complaint or issue relating to any installation or agreement … and would encourage any client with such a grievance to contact the company, at which point a solution and rectification will be forthcoming,” it said.
ASIC records show that Sunburst chief executive Robin Grainger is a director or shareholder in a series of other solar or energy companies. There is no suggestion any of the other businesses have acted inappropriately.
The Consumer Affairs warning follows legal action against two solar companies earlier this year.
Solareco Pty Ltd was fined $60,000 last month for making false representations and Ballarat-based Bailey Designed Engineering was forced to close after losing a series of legal battles over faulty equipment.
Ms Noone said solar suppliers flooding the market in recent years led to some aggressive marketing tactics, misleading practices and substandard products, but was not a reflection of the whole industry. ”We’re not saying it isn’t a reputable industry, but certainly it’s relatively new,” she said.
http://www.smh.com.au/national/rise-in-consumer-complaints-over-solar-power-20140519-38k8b.html
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of course, this gets the full ABC treatment, with AUDIO!
20 May: ABC Rural: Matt Brann: Carbon credits from culling feral animals hits the dust
Plans to cull feral animals in exchange for carbon credits has been gunned down by the latest policy change to Australia’s struggling carbon market.
Dr Tim Moore from NetPositive has spent years working on a methodology for culling feral camels in exchange for credits under the Federal Government’s Carbon Farming Initiative (CFI).
He says when in Opposition, Environment Minister Greg Hunt was supportive of the proposal, but that support appears to have been lost.
“The Federal Government has released amendments to the Carbon Credits Act, which in small print at the back, says the Federal Government no longer believes that removing feral animals for an emissions reduction purpose is viable or important to Australia’s international commitments,” he said.
“So those opportunities have been removed from the legislation and I think that’s a bad decision to be completely honest
Audio: Troubles in the carbon market(ABC Rural)
“The Federal Government knows feral animals create methane and emit methane, but they don’t think the emissions reduction fund, is a way to use markets to solve the problem of feral animal management in Australia.”
Without a financial incentive to cull, Dr Moore believes feral camel populations will explode…
“One of the problems the carbon market is facing is the uncertainty created by constant changing of government policy positions.
“It’s making it very difficult to make long term investment decisions,” he said…
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-05-20/feral-animal-carbon-credits-hit-the-dust/5462872
40
If he seriously believes feral animals should be culled then apply for a grant to get it done instead of hiding behind some spurious claim that global warming and climate change has anything to do with it.
30
I might add – we have some of the purist genetic strains of camels in the world and we export them to ME countries whose flocks are now becoming totally inbred.
One of the best steaks I’ve ever had was a camel fillet served in a restaurant in Alice.
40
meant to emphasise the poor choice of words – LOL:
“feral camel populations will explode”
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Don’t let the terrorists find out you’ve a load of unexploded feral camel or there could be trouble…
50
21 May: News Ltd: Qld solar tariffs under threat
QUEENSLAND homeowners who use solar panels could be worse off under laws that will no longer guarantee them a feed-in tariff of eight cents.
Laws due to be passed on Wednesday night will mean the responsibility for paying the tariff will switch from government-owned distributors to retailers after June 30.
And consumers will have to negotiate directly with their retailer for the price they are paid.
The Queensland Competition Authority will set a tariff rate for Ergon Energy customers in the immediate future, given the very limited competition outside the southeast corner.
Energy Minister Mark McArdle says the changes will lift the cost burden from the network businesses, making the scheme fairer for all Queensland consumers…
“It will put downward pressure on electricity prices,” Mr McArdle told parliament.
“Feed-in tariff payments will not be cross subsidised by consumers, making the arrangement far more sustainable over the long term.”
Electrical Trades Union state organiser Stuart Traill says the 40,000 consumers on the eight cents feed-in tariff will have little to no bargaining power with large energy corporations.
“They will be worse off, and a lot of them will be pensioners,” he told AAP.
“And there will be job losses in the solar industry because there will be less incentives to move to solar now.”
Mr Traill added the plan was ill considered, and the returns would be minuscule compared to how much could have been saved if the 44 cent feed-in tariff had been reformed.
The 44 cent tariff, paid to some 284,000 people who were first to sign up to the scheme, will remain unchanged…
Shadow Treasurer Curtis Pitt said the opposition would not oppose the bill but said the Newman government had broken an election promise..
http://www.news.com.au/national/breaking-news/qld-solar-tariffs-under-threat/story-e6frfku9-1226925963793
how to reform the 44 cent-ers!
20
no amount of “FIXING” can save this rubbish:
21 May: Business Spectator: Reuters: UBS slashes EU carbon price forecast
Swiss investment bank UBS slashed its year-end EU carbon price forecast by 23 per cent due to the weaker-than-expected market impact of the bloc’s plan to cut the supply of carbon permits…
Analysts at the bank now predict front-year EU Allowance (EUA) prices will end the year at around 10 euros per tonne, down from a previous forecast of 13 euros.
With prices at around 4.70 euros on Tuesday, the updated view still represents a more-than 100 per cent premium on current levels…
Under the EU plan, dubbed ‘backloading’, the bloc will this year withdraw 400 million carbon permits from its market in a bid to lift prices back towards double digits.
A total 900 million units are scheduled to be withheld from government sales in 2014-2016 and released at the end of the decade.
UBS said EUA prices remain subdued due to several factors including a mild European winter, lower-than-expected emissions under the scheme in 2013, and reduced hedging of forward power sales by utilities…
UBS said that the crisis in Ukraine has also shifted EU politicians’ focus away from reforming the European carbon market…
He added that success by Eurosceptic parties at this week’s European Parliament elections was unlikely to cause delays to proposed reforms.
***”The likely rise of the ‘tea parties’ is not a significant threat to EU carbon policy in our view, thanks to a solid majority of established parties close to the political centre,” he said, referring to the politically conservative Tea Party movement in the United States
http://www.businessspectator.com.au/news/2014/5/21/carbon-markets/ubs-slashes-eu-carbon-price-forecast
***what an extraordinary thing for UBS to say, surely! go the Europsceptic parties.
40
People just cannot maintain a state of anxiety forever. Its genetically programmed into us to respond to things that sound believable and may present risk, its just a survival instinct.
If Grok the caveman tells Trock the caveman to look out for the sabre tooth tiger on the way to the water hole, Trock is going to look out, he may even ask a couple of other cavers to accompany him, its just makes good sense. But if Trock visits the waterhole day in day out for two weeks and never even sees a tiger turd, hes going to assume the danger has passed and start concentrating on something else, like why that glacier is getting closer for instance.
The mistake AGW alarmists have made for about 20 years now is they seem to believe that yelling the same threat louder, or increasing the sea level rise prediction by a few metres is going to perpetually keep the serfdom terrified. Its almost an irony that some extremely smart scientists have been unable to recognise such a basic human trait will eventually work against a scare campaign that perpetually fails to realise its threat. This high school level reality of homo-sapien behaviour has utterly eluded the likes of Flannery, Cook, Mann, Oretski etc. They sincerely believe that you can scare all of the people all of the time. The fact that the large percentages of believers falls into low socio economic demographics, the young and the uneducated makes perfect sense. Its the same demographics that take up religion, follow mediums and astrologists and play lotto. When you see those bumper stickers “magic happens”, for some, it really does. For the rest of us, its called natural events, science and technology.
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” Arthur C Clarke
So while us sceptical types are oft dismissed as self interested, luddite, change resistant, technophobic, unscientific has beens, we are a fair bit smarter than those who operate under the provably flawed notion that people are not only immeasurably stupid, they are childishly simplistic and easily manipulated by fear in a way that can be sustained indefinitely. While this is of course true of some, even they will eventually notice the sky is still in the sky and not on the ground or wrapped around their ears. Simply ramping up the Armageddon language into the realms of the preposterous will not work for ever and it is not working now.
http://personalliberty.com/real-weapon-mass-destruction-climate-change-barack-obama/
Always keep in mind, this entire debate revolves around 2 extremely simple premises.
1. Cow farts change the weather
2. Money can change it back
Remember that and you will always be relating to the issue with the exact level of seriousness it deserves.
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Safetyguy66, you’ve written pretty much what I was going to. The public, myself included, were initially fired by the first stories about CAGW and then the smarter people kept their eyes open for signs it was happening at the rate the stories predicted. Nothing much happened. Many people weren’t alerted until Al Gore’s movie came out, almost a decade after global atmospheric warming had stopped. Instead of more persuasive arguments following up, many of the claims made by Al Gore turned out to be false. Warmists are now resorting to pointing to weather events as proof of CO2 catastrophe which becomes laughable when the weather event is cold related.
Catastrophic movies were welcomed as a way to wake the public up to AGW but in truth they raised unrealistic expectations. The timescales portrayed are ludicrous, even under worst case predictions. People were waiting for sea level rises of metres not millimetres. The solutions offered in movies are also deceptive. AGW if it is substantial will not be solved by one scientist making some brave but quickly resolved actions. Dodging fossil fuel funded goons or bloviating right wing politicians are not the biggest barrier to acting on CO2. It turns out that people themselves are supposed to do the most work and suffer the biggest hardships to make a difference… assuming all those efforts do work, which is far from likely.
Another insightful article by Joanne Nova, the curious thing is how these simple truths about human understanding are being misinterpreted by the psyche brigade. Instead of advising the warmists where they’re going wrong, the people ‘experts’ are reinforcing the climate community’s false assumptions. Why advise that the problem lies with communication when the most passionate believers don’t act like they believe CO2 is a problem and very valid questions go unanswered?
80
“So while us sceptical types are oft dismissed as self interested, luddite, change resistant, technophobic, unscientific has beens, we are a fair bit smarter than those who operate under the provably flawed notion that people are not only immeasurably stupid, they are childishly simplistic and easily manipulated by fear in a way that can be sustained indefinitely.”
It is a simple matter of intellectual and psychological projection on the part of the catastrophils. If they look in a mirror, they become invisible. If they look at someone who disagrees with them, they see only the true core of themselves. Being unwilling to accept the truth about themselves, they project it outward upon just about anyone who happens to be in the way. They are what they project.
60
They haven’t made any mistakes.
The whole thing was started in the first place with the idea that it would see their careers out, and mostly it has. These bright young mavericks are now tired old farts, planning to eke out their very generous pensions on the lecture circuit preaching to the very few people who still agree with them.
40
Qué?
“Climate change™” is a pseudoscientific term to explain everything from the balding of hedgehogs to footpath erosion.
140
And now apparently more female turtles than male ……….will the pain never end? Damn you CO2 !
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/may/20/more-sea-turtles-will-be-born-female-as-climate-warms-study-shows
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So more female turtles means more very tired male turtles and eventually more baby turtles. resulting in a growing turtle population and more turtle soup. Where’s the problem?
80
Nowhere to put your beach towel.
70
Don’t mock turtle soup!
150
Best pun of the day and perhaps of the year!
70
Now the US military is on board, I think the all female slumber parties are the least of the turtles problems.
http://theconversation.com/us-military-strategists-warn-that-climate-is-a-catalyst-for-conflict-26744
20
20 May: Guardian: John Vidal: Shell hits back at ‘carbon bubble’ claims
Oil and gas company publishes 20 page document telling investors that climate laws will not leave it with ‘stranded assets’
Shell has hit back at claims that its multi-billion dollar investments in tar sands, fracking and other unconventional oil and gas exploration will create a “carbon bubble” which may backfire catastrophically because of expected global climate change legislation…
“We do not believe that any of our proven reserves will become stranded. While the ‘stranded asset’ notion may appear to be strong and thought-through, it does have some fundamental flaws and there is a danger that some interest groups use it to trivialise the important societal issue of rising levels of CO2 in the atmosphere,” he wrote.
Shell claimed that the methodology used by its critics was wrong because it failed to acknowledge that global energy demand was likely to increase with population growth and with increasing global prosperity. “As GDP rises in China and India… energy demand will increase on this journey,” said Traynor…
“Energy demand growth, in our view, will lead to fossil fuels continuing to play a major role in the energy system – accounting for 40-50% of energy suply in 2050 and beyond. The huge investment required to provide energy is expected to require high energy prices and not to the drastic price drop envisaged for hydro carbons in the carbon bubble concept”.
Research from Friends of the Earth Netherlands (Milieudefensie), released today, argues that the “super-major” oil company has many long term, high carbon projects in the pipeline which will become highly vulnerable when international law starts to constrain the burning of fossil fuels to limit temperature rises…
Geert Ritsema, head of the energy campaign at Milieudefensie. “Shell may not decide to take the 2C limit seriously, but the rest of the world does. The Netherlands, the EU, the G8 and the UN have all set this as official climate objective. And because global reserves of fossil fuels are five times too large, Shell will have to write off the most expensive and most CO2 intensive reserves first.”
Research by the Carbon Tracker initiative and the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics (LSE) has shown BLAH BLAH BLAH…
“By ignoring the carbon bubble, Shell is pulling a bigger confidence trick than those who brought down the financial system – they are trying pass off a losing situation as being a sound financial investment to their investors,” said Friends of the Earth climate campaigner Asad Rehman in London.
***“If they continue to downplay the carbon bubble, Shell jeopardises ordinary peoples’ hard-earned pension pots and leaves billions of people facing devastating climate change,” he said.
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/may/20/shell-hits-back-at-carbon-bubble-claims
***still co-opting “carbon bubble” to mean the opposite of what they are actually hoping to bring about, namely a carbon dioxide bubble of derivatives for the bankers & other financial cowboys, at the expense of the Baby Boomers Retirement funds. John Vidal, don’t pretend u don’t know it.
40
Amidst todays’ truckload of patpourri we find this hilarious gem:
The climate has an objective! Are you listening, Climate? You’d better keep to our schedule.
ROFL
When the world naturally cools over the next 25 years are The Netherlands, the EU, the G8, and the UN all going to give themselves a Nobel Prize for succeeding, or give themselves a hiding because they didn’t achieve their +2° target?
Probably the Nobel, followed by a Well Earned Break.
60
calling Ross Garnaut:
21 May: South China Morning Post: Cheung Chi-fai: Sun sets on joint Hong Kong-Shenzhen solar project
The first-ever collaborative project between Hong Kong and Shenzhen to create solar cells for power generation will come to an end this year after a subsidiary of American chemical giant DuPont pulled out.
The project’s end came with the announcement from DuPont’s local subsidiary, DuPont Apollo, that it was stopping production in the region of silicon thin-film modules, which are used in solar cells.
That dealt a blow to cross-border efforts to establish the region as a hub for the research, development and production of solar power technology…
DuPont Apollo had aspired to become one of the world’s top three providers of thin-film photovoltaic modules by next year…
DuPont Apollo chairman Chuck Xu Chengzeng cited a flagging market for the decision to pull the plug on the project.
“The state of the silicon thin-film solar module market segment has changed dramatically in recent years and market conditions for this segment continue to deteriorate,” he said…
About 100 scientists and engineers would be transferred within the group or paid to leave, a person with knowledge of the operation said.
The production facility in Shenzhen, which came into full operation in 2010, will be suspended but the person believed the factory might be modified for new uses.
http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1516775/sun-sets-joint-hong-kong-shenzhen-solar-project
50
I approve of this post 😀
Truth is that the public are simply bored with the issue and/or more concerned about the economy. It is difficult to maintain political interest in a topic for any length of time, especially over years or a decade. That coupled with decreasing attention spans due to the constant stream of inanities from the MSM.
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So true Bulldust,
The every day mum & dad don’t give a stuff about CAGW screamers on the ABC, Guardian or Fairfax
They have heard constantly about polar bear extinction, grape vine growers moving to the Antarctic, extreme events of snow, hail, rain, drought,heat, cold, diphtheria, colds, happiness, sadness and ALL the rest of the garbage the Gang Green Gaia lovers can’t wait to sprout.
Not bored, simply peeved off with the constant lies coming from the mouths of the Flannery, Gore etal etc that now just give everybody the runs.
This year has seen the biggest change ever in my demographic (contractors, builders etc) to one of almost hatred of the bullshiite spewing from their reports, TV reports and propaganda.
BORED STUPID, PEEVED OFF & utterly SICK to death of the lies
120
Shush! The next thing we will see, is a raft of peer reviewed papers “proving” that decreasing attention spans are caused by Climate … something.
110
Just visited the idiots at SKS
Well, what a bunch of short attention spans, the comment rate has dropped to an average of 10 per article with some on ZERO
CAGW causes drop in comments
CAGW causes SKS to shut website
Even the devout are being affected by climate change
The extreme drop in attention span is serious
CO2 ppm above 400 is the cause, meanwhile the crops are booming
130
Working on an ARC grant there Rereke?
80
No, at least not at the moment. I am busy researching the correlation between climate change and the number of paperclips purchased, per annum, by the Public Service. Tricky issues of causation, around that.
60
The causation is obvious my dear friend.
1) Paperclips are made from steel.
2) Steel is produced from iton ore and coal (and some other stuffs) in massive CO2-belching blast furnaces.
3) Civil service needs paperclips to collate all the papers on climate change policy.
4) Return to step 1).
It’s a vicious feedback loop and probably the key driver the IPCC has overlooked for decades now.
20
I actually read a post by a warmist somewhere who was claiming headaches and lack of sleep caused by excess CO2 in the atmosphere….
40
what could go wrong???????????
20 May: Risk.net: Alexander Osipovich: Renewables advocates praise US solar securitisations
In a major breakthrough for renewable energy finance, California-based SolarCity has issued the first securities backed by distributed solar assets. But many hurdles remain before solar securitisation can truly take off, Alexander Osipovich finds…
In the transaction, it bundled together the revenue streams from about 5,000 solar panel arrays it had installed on people’s rooftops, issued securities backed by those revenues, secured a BBB+ credit rating from New York-based Standard & Poor’s (S&P) and sold them to investors, raising $54.4 million. In April, SolarCity followed up with a second deal, worth $70.2 million, and it is presently working on a third…
Although relatively small, the two SolarCity deals – which have tenors of 13 and eight years, respectively – have been applauded by advocates of renewable energy. Enthusiasts hope they will pave the way for future solar securitisations, bringing down financing costs for developers and encouraging greater consumption of solar power. “The two SolarCity deals are very significant, and I think they will have a seminal effect,” says Ronald Borod, a Boston-based senior counsel with law firm DLA Piper. “Now that the first two deals have been printed, there’s a lot of interest on the part of both issuers and the investment community in getting additional deals into the market.”…
Market sources say other securitisation deals are in the works, with about five or six potential issuers, such as SolarCity’s California-based peers Sunrun and Sungevity. Such firms have popularised a new financing model in which homeowners or businesses pay developers to install solar panels on their rooftops in order to reduce their electricity bills. The developers are either paid through leases, in which customers gradually pay off the cost of the solar array, or through power purchase agreements (PPAs), in which customers pay for the power that the solar panels produce…
Still, huge hurdles remain before distributed solar securitisation goes from being an oddity of financial engineering to a mainstream investment opportunity. “We definitely expect more transactions, similar to what SolarCity has done, but it’s going to take time,” cautions Marshal Salant, a New York-based managing director at Citi and head of the bank’s alternative energy finance group…
In preparing its debut securitisation deal, SolarCity sought to put its best foot forward, assembling a pool of only top-notch solar leases and PPAs. On a scale of 300 to 850, the average Fico score of residential customers in SolarCity’s first securisation transaction, from November 2013, was 762 – well above the average US consumer and reflective of an “exceptional borrower”, according to the creator of the Fico scale, the Minneapolis-based Fair Isaac Corporation (Fico). Residential customers in SolarCity’s April 2014 securitisation deal were even more exceptional, with an average Fico score of 767.
Still, after scrutinising the two offerings, S&P classified both of them as BBB+, putting them squarely in the bottom half of possible investment-grade ratings, which range from AAA to BBB–.
“There are a lot of potential unknowns,” explains Xilun Chen, a New York-based director in S&P’s structured credit ratings team and a primary analyst in the team that assessed both SolarCity transactions…
Chen says a key issue weighing on S&P’s rating of the SolarCity transactions was the lack of historical data on the performance of solar leases and PPAs, which only began to gain critical mass after the US emerged from recession in 2009. That makes it hard to predict whether SolarCity’s customers will continue to pay for their solar installations when times get tough…
***Similarly, it is unclear how SolarCity’s residential solar leases will hold up when the homeowners who initially signed them sell their houses and move out. Many of SolarCity’s customers signed leases with terms of up to 20 years – longer than the average American stays in his or her home. S&P assumed the new homeowners who move in afterwards would seek to renegotiate their predecessors’ SolarCity leases for a lower rate…
SolarCity expects to improve on its BBB+ rating in future issuances. “As a new asset class, this was basically the best rating we could have been granted,” says West Owens, director of structured finance at SolarCity. “We believe the assets deserve an even higher credit rating based on their attributes, and in the future, we expect the quality of the cashflows and credit to bump the rating even higher as the rating agencies see more transactions and the existing transactions perform.”
As evidence, Owens notes that SolarCity got better pricing in its second transaction from April 2014, which had an interest rate of 4.59%, than in its debut transaction five months earlier, which earned a 4.8% interest rate.
Some observers say solar developers are facing tough scrutiny because of fallout from the subprime mortgage crisis of 2007–08, when it became clear that many AAA-rated mortgage-backed securities were underpinned by low-quality mortgages sold to high-risk borrowers. DLA Piper’s Borod says the rating agencies – which came under harsh criticism for the subprime debacle – have been drilling deep into the origination practices of developers such as SolarCity to make sure nothing unseemly is happening in their dealings with customers. “People are on their guard to make sure that we don’t repeat the subprime mortgage market,” he says. “The rating agencies are going to be doing their job on that issue.”…
***Although SolarCity says it is going through the ratings process for its third securitisation deal, other solar firms may be taking a different route and not bothering with getting a credit rating at all. “There are a lot of details – processes, procedures, and documentation – that need to be worked out, deal by deal, to get a rated deal done,” says Citi’s Salant. “In addition to rated deals, we expect to see some deals that are not rated, as there are big institutional investors out there that really want the product; they are looking for yield and don’t need the rating.”…
With only two publicly rated deals to date, the market for distributed solar securitisation is clearly still in its infancy. But specialists in renewable energy have high hopes that it will soon develop into a gangly teenager. “We see a lot of potential for growth in this space,” says Joseph Salvatore, a New York-based senior research associate with Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF), a unit of data provider Bloomberg…
Salvatore says only about 2.5% of eligible small-scale solar capacity in the US has been securitised – a tiny sliver of the whole. He estimates that, if the penetration rate rises to 50% by 2020 and 90% by 2030, issuance will reach an average of $3.2 billion per year. Admittedly, that is tiny compared with other asset classes that have been securitised. By comparison, $87.5 billion of automobile ABSs were issued in the US last year, according to the Washington, DC-based Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association…
Salvatore: “When you’re putting together an ABS, one of the most important things about doing that is ensuring standardisation of underlying contracts.”
The industry is working to make that happen, with a little help from the US government…
Another factor that holds back growth in the US solar securitisation market is the prevalence of so-called ‘tax equity’ structures. The US government’s main policy tool for promoting solar power is the investment tax credit (ITC), which gives the owners of solar installations a tax credit equal to 30% of the cost of the installation, although that rate is set to drop to 10% in 2017. Solar developers find it difficult to take advantage of the ITC by themselves, because they generally do not have any meaningful profits to which they can apply the 30% tax credit. So they often partner with a large, well-capitalised investor, most often a bank, for a tax equity deal. In such an arrangement, the bank and the developer will jointly own the solar installation – which could be a large utility-scale solar plant, or a pool of small rooftop arrays – and the bank will provide the financing that the developer needs to acquire the installation, put it in place and maintain it. In return, the bank can take advantage of the ITC…
According to DLA Piper’s Borod, distributed solar securitisation will not take off until developers have figured out a structure that allows the two forms of financing to coexist in harmony. “The elephant in the room is tax equity,” he says. “The majority of these projects were financed using tax equity, and when tax equity is in place, then you have to go back to whoever the tax equity investor is and try to get them to agree to all the terms of the securitisation. And that’s very difficult.”…
*******Ultimately, the success of solar securitisation in the US and elsewhere will depend on whether investors, particularly large players such as pension funds and insurers, want to buy solar ABSs. Market participants say the investor appetite is there, particularly in the current environment of rock-bottom interest rates. It also helps that solar ABSs can be marketed as socially responsible, they add.
“Investor interest is very high at the moment,” says Citi’s Salant. “There are a lot of discussions going on about how to enter renewable energy. Pension funds, insurers and other institutions want exposure to the space, and we’ve been working on getting the professional money managers comfortable with solar ABSs. There are a number of them out there who want to see the product.”
http://www.risk.net/energy-risk/feature/2344897/renewables-advocates-praise-us-solar-securitisations
40
Wow!
Toxic solar bonds…You are right, what could go wrong.
20
The latest climate buzz phrase: ‘Climate Chaos’ is coming to a media outlet near you.
You heard it here first, folks.
80
Ha-ah! You can get away with changing the branding once, but you can never get away with changing it twice. If that happens, it will signal the death knell.
50
fortunately, this is behind a paywall, but the opening line tells us all we need to know about this little scam!
21 May: UK Times: Ben Webster: Plan to store foreign carbon emissions in North Sea
Britain could earn billions of pounds by charging other countries to store their carbon emissions in disused oil and gas fields under the North Sea, according to a report by MPs…
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/business/industries/naturalresources/article4095658.ece?CMP=OTH-gnws-standard-2014_05_20
50
It makes you want to hang a shingle out front and start selling carbon abatement certificates don’t it?
All that easy money being thrown around and here we are working against it. What’s wrong with us?
50
I guess a lot of folks are quite convinced that we have a selection of world class politicians running Australia.
Well don’t get all het up about folks because from Pat’s “Times” article above at # 15 it would seem that our politicians are really substandard in the political stakes.
After all Abbot’s about to get rid of most of the carbon c**p and taxes if he can swing it and thats a big, big strike against him in the world of the carbonistas and the academic climate nazis .
For comparison just look at what those go getter pommie politicians intend to do to save the planet and haul in truckloads of filthy carbonised lucre while they are at it.
They are going to somehow strip all that nefarious carbon out of the atmosphere and bury in in their depleted North Sea oil and gas fields.
Now thats being progressive compared to those real sookie next door Norwegians.
After all they are only eleven hundred Km’s from the UK and they are in the same North Sea oil and gas fields as the poms but they put their tail between their legs and have now slunk off after spending a mere AUD$1.3 billion of their tax payers hard earned since 2007 on trying to capture and store that nefarious “carbon” in those North sea gas and oilfields. Those Norgiies are slackers I would say to give up on such a lucrative opportunity which those canny pommy politicians now intend to take maximum advantage of if you believe them.
Top class oppurtunity seeking politicians those poms. Leaves our mob for dead in finding opportunities like capture and storage of carbon.
Just wondering; Do those pommy politicians ever have any sort of literacy test see if they can actually read anything at all.?
Some of them can of course spell “wind turbines” and “Money” and have the intelligence to link the two with their bank accounts where they are very good at adding up.
Sigh!
Guess we will just have to put up with our lack of carbon opportunists in our government.
50
BREAKING NEWS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Melbourne has broken a 42 year record of consecutive days above 20 during May, no excuses were given for this record breaking warm spell………………..
However its all about to end with rain predicted for the whole of next week, once again no excuses were given for this change in weather.
120
“Plus One”
60
this could be a bit of a beat-up & UK has far stricter aged pension rules than Australia, but it still shows how Govts plan to get the Baby Boomers retirement monies one way or another.
true, the system is broke, but grabbing the money at the expense of the scientific method in the case of CAGW is something worth fighting against. thank u jo, for this forum:
21 May: UK Daily Mail: Tony Hazell: Revealed: why millions WON’T get the £155 new state pension they’re expecting
As many as four in five older workers could miss out on the full flat-rate state pension of £155 a week when it is introduced in 2016…
The current state pension of £113.10 is paid to everyone who has 30 years’ National Insurance contributions…
The level for the new pension has yet to be set, but it’s expected to be £155 a week when it starts in April 2016. Just like the current pension, what you get is based on National Insurance contributions — though you’ll need 35 years instead of 30 to get the full payout…
***Public sector employees will pay more National Insurance, but are protected from changes to their pensions for 25 years under a deal struck with the Government…
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/pensions/article-2634215/Why-millions-WONT-155-new-state-pension-theyre-expecting.html
30
Believe me it’s only the brain damaged pensioners who believed the thieving socialists that global warming was real.
50
Graham,
That is not fair. A lot of public servants believe that global warming is real. Not all of them are pensioners.
40
Sadly Rereke; public servants are forced to deal with whatever they are told to deal with, weather they believe it or not they are expected to do their jobs.
So please don’t blame public servants on mass. Just he ones at the top.
For some strange reason “failing upward” seems to be common in both the public service and politics in general.
30
Sadly, the Reverse Peter Principle is at work. In any bureaucracy, people are promoted proportionally to their inability to perform the duties of their positions. The most incompetent are pushed to the top and the most competent either soon escape from or are pushed out of the madness at the earliest possible moment.
The Three Laws of Bureaucracy
The first law: The bureaucracy must survive at all costs. Actually doing its assigned task is the quickest way for it to cease to exist. Hence competency is treated as a poison and failure is the sweet nectar of the gods.
The second law: if there are a few competent people within the bureaucracy, they are of little effect. They can accomplish only what the nature of the system permits and nothing more. They too can only fail. Any momentary success they have will soon be neutralized by the system producing an equal or greater opposing failure.
The third law: It is always a mistake to bring a bureaucracy into existence. Nothing good can come of it and it is all but impossible to get rid of one. In any event, the public costs always exceed the public benefits by a wide margin.
80
Lionel,
Around this area.
I was at a management course where the “Pyramid Principle” of management was being explained. Basically many indians, grades of managers and one chief.
One of the participants remarked “So that’s how it works. I thought it was like a vegetarian’s dunny – the turds rise to the top”.
30
But they ARE brain damaged…..
20
Jo, please tell the Age. They refuse to give up.
40
I was thinking about a post along the lines Jo has just presented.
There are all sorts of interesting historical analogues and comparisons going back centuries to what is now well underway in the decay and collapse of the great global warming / climate change scam.
One of these is the major transitions between technologies and how they affect the way in which organisations, Governments, bureaucracies and individuals react and interact with one other
If I can work up enough enthusiasm I might get around to a post on my thinking sometime.
We are well into such a major transition right now and it explains the decline of the MSM and the savage reaction against the closeted world of science which has never faced any public exposure on the scale it is now facing due entirely to the communication revolution we are now transiting into.
Simply it is the global revolution of direct personal communication which has only got under way since the mid 1990’s when the internet and then the mobile phone / cell phone finally started to take hold of the public consciousness.
We can stand around on the street corner of the internet and talk and discuss the latest gossip and events such as right here and now, just like those of my generation did after church or in the pub or in those casual meetings along the street or at a sale.
and we no longer are doing it about people and events within the district but we are now doing it on a global scale where even Somalia which is acknowledged as having no effective government have in place an entrepreneurialy established rudimentary but effective mobile phone system over large parts of Somalia.
The world of science, formal, rigid, hierarchal, bureaucratized and inflexible is at a total loss in trying to both deal with let alone understand or handle the sudden and almost complete and still expanding exposure of it’s inner workings, its faults, its fights, its lack of firmly based science despite its public claims otherwise across most discipline, it’s two facedness and etc through the medium of the world wide web to the whole of the public and political sphere and even to science’s opponents who are in it for their slice of the limited public money pie.
All of which was previously hidden behind science’s many veils of arrogance, hubris, ignorance of the public expectations, superiority, isolation and closeted , single mindness and expectations of the bended knee from the public at large regardless of status or demonstrated science attributes
More perhaps later on this.
Meanwhile as most know although probably rarely think of it, organisations and companies and corporations have finite lifetimes.
The average length of a large corporation’s life time in the USA is 40 years.
Even in simple items like clubs and etc there is generally a finite life time.
One of the mistakes all of us make is after spending a good part of our lives creating something be it a business or sport or a hobby club and etc, is to expect our kids to take up where we have to leave off due to age and etc. We are deeply disappointed and sometimes worse when the kids show no interest or even express disdain for our lifetime spent creating something along with all those aging members friends of ours.
The kids are just like we were when we started on that building of a sport or hobby or business edifice. They will go and create their own clubs and groups and spend their own lifetime doing what they want to do and so to your distress and disappointment as life’s shadows grow ever longer, your favorite little club or business and group that you helped create slowly fades out of existence and even out of the community memories
There have been a lot of studies done in the business field on the stages in a corporations or organisations life.
One of the better known corporation life stages is the business advising Adizes Institute , Understanding the Corporate Lifecycle
The life cycle of the global warming faith doesn’t follow exactly the business life cycle as propounded by the Adsize Institute but it still has parallels as does the green movement which itself may well be facing a declining influence around the world as it’s excesses that are needed to maintain it’s highly public profile start to create ever more enemies and ever stronger backlashes.
Tasmania comes to mind here.
There are ten stages listed for the Adsize corporation life cycle. The simple graph shown has roll over panels. which provide a short explanation ; [ expanded explanation through the link at the bottom of each panel ] of each stage.
Stage 1 ; “Courtship”; Right at the beginning first stage you can probably fit Hansen in 1988 in there quite easily.
Stage 2; “Infancy” would include Jones , Briffa Santer, Trenberth and etc plus the big build up of those by now racing to get in on the science scam.
Stage 3 ; “Go-Go” the big build up of the required science, the establishment of the CRU
Stage 4 ; “Adolescence” the establishment of the IPCC and the acquiring of influence and power within the MSM, the politicals and the bureaucracies.
Stage 5 ; “Prime” The power and influence established; the Hockey stick that frightened the world or at least some of it, and firmly placed the global warming science mafia in what seemed an impregnable scientific and political power base.
Stage 6 ; “Stable” Mid 2000’s on . Unchallengeable even though the Skeptic sphere was by now starting to organise in it’s highly disjointed and low key way.
Stage 7 ” Aristocracy” Climate gate and Copenhagen came but they thought they saw it off with the “science is in” and “Trust us” and “unprecedented” warming and climate catastrophes to come every where unless “somebody did something”.
Stage 8 ; Early bureaucracy; Perhaps a bit further along but recent events are exactly in line with these latter stages in the life of the Great Global Warming Scam and Fraud.
Stage 9 ; Bureaucracy; Bogged down and they fight. Umm! Looks very suspicious starting right now with the Bengtsson affair plus Cook and UQ, plus!
Stage 10; Death!
50
wow:
WUWT: Climategate as belief system tipping point
From Quadrant Online:
Doing science by consensus is not science at all, says the climatologist all the alarmists love to hate. Not that the enmity bothers Judith Curry too much — and certainly not as much as the debasement of impartial inquiry by which the warmist establishment keeps all those lovely grants coming.
When climatologist Judith Curry visited Melbourne last week she took the time to chat with Quadrant Online contributor Tony Thomas…
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/05/21/climategate-as-belief-system-tipping-point/
70
In the Guardian, Damian Carrington is crowing about Anderegg’s study.
However, the study itself shows its colours early: the opening paragraph lists both Cook et al. (2013) and Oreskes among the authorities for its claim that an overwhelming consensus of experts agree that “human emissions of greenhouse gases are the dominant driver of recently observed climate change.”
Rubbish from the get-go.
70
http://www.uq.edu.au/news/article/2014/01/uq-climate-change-paper-has-whole-world-talking
Beaten by a paper on Sudoku?
John Cook, the quiet and humble scientist?
Oh dear . . . 😉
90
Everyone has to see this vid…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOX5ehfFF7I#t=120
Bottom line: Middle eastern money funding Hollywood activism against US energy development.
This is seriously shocking stuff!
50
Appears to be a sort of sting operation, demonstrating the all too eager willingness to use middle eastern money to undermine America’s (and Canada’s) energy industries.
…should anyone be wondering about the ethics/morality of Hollywood activists.
30
[quote] Published on May 20, 2014
James O’Keefe Premieres “Expose: Hollywood’s War on US Energy” at Cannes Hollywood celebrities caught on hidden camera accepting money from “Middle Eastern oil interests”
CANNES — In a blockbuster new video, Project Veritas has exposed the truth about the dark funding behind Hollywood’s anti-fracking messaging machine.
New York Times Bestselling Author and Project Veritas founder and president James O’Keefe debuted the latest investigation at a “premiere” in Cannes, France on Wednesday.
In the investigation, an undercover journalist from Project Veritas posed as a member of a Middle Eastern oil dynasty and offered $9 million in funding to American filmmakers to fund an anti-fracking movie.
In video from a meeting with Ed Begley Jr., Mariel Hemingway and Josh Tickell, a Project Veritas investigator disguised as “Muhammed” offered $9 million for an anti-fracking film. “Muhammad” clearly states: “If Washington DC continues fracking, America will be energy efficient, and then they won’t need my oil anymore.”
In the same conversation, Begley and Hemingway accept the funding and agree to hide the source of funds for the anti-fracking movie. Hemingway agreeing that those who will know the source of the funding are “only at this table.”
Ed Begley Jr. is an outspoken environmental activist and current Governor on the board of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science (the organization that brings us the OSCARS every year.)
Mariel Hemingway is a Golden Globe- and Oscar-nominated actress.
Josh Tickell is a Sundance Film Festival Winner and the director of environmental message movies “Fuel”, “The Big Fix” and “PUMP”.
Team Begley even submitted a video of Oscar-nominated actor Mark Ruffalo offering his unwavering support for the fictitious anti-fracking film project.
The meeting came about after a series of discussions with Josh and Rebecca Tickell. A Project Veritas journalist posed as an ad executive seeking to broker a deal for his client (“Muhammed”) to fund an American-made anti-fracking film.
In a phone call to Tickell, the ad executive states: “My client’s interest is to end American energy independence; your interest is to end fracking. And you guys understand that?”
Tickell’s response: “Correct. Yes, super clear.”
Tickell makes it clear on the tape that revealing the source of funding for an activist film can undermine its credibility. Tickell notes that the movie “Promised Land” undermined its own message because it was labeled as being funded by Image Nation Abu Dhabi. His advice: “So rather than putting that [the source of funding] up front, don’t mention that.”
In a follow-up call with Josh and Rebecca Tickell, Rebecca Tickell assures our investigator: “We would never tell about where the funding is coming from. That would be really awkward for us.”
Josh Tickell: “We’re confident that we can keep this zip locked, you know tight, air-tight forever. If we don’t protect who is kind of funding this thing, if we have to disclose that or that becomes a necessary part of it, the whole enterprise will not work.”
Project Veritas founder and president James O’Keefe stated Wednesday:
“This latest investigation shows the dark side of Hollywood’s environmental movement. Hollywood is willing to take and conceal money from Middle Eastern oil interests in order to advance their cause of destroying American energy independence.”
The raw video can be found at http://Youtube.com/VeritasVisuals
Project Veritas is non-partisan and does not advocate for political candidates or parties. The purpose of Project Veritas’ investigations is to expose waste, fraud, dishonesty and self-dealing.[/quote]
50
No doubt, Skeptics have noted the irony!
Our Leaders previously attempted to settle science via the Church holding court.
But today…in our more secular world, the SCOTUS will do this divine work?
If only.. we could demand the Judges take off their robes, and do this work naked.
40
I pulled up Anderegg and Goldsmith’s paper.
Beyond the two graphics that we’ve seen, it’s a snoozefest.
The money quote, if there can be said to be one:
No kidding.
60
In case this hasn’t been posted already
“Climate-Change-The-Biggest-PR-Fail-In-History”
http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/05/20/Climate-Change-The-Biggest-PR-Fail-In-History
10
Think about what they were trying to peddle. I can’t say that I was a proper sceptic before Climategate but I was suspicious that it was a PR stunt for Big Nuke when I first came across it in the mid-80s, in year 11. That they got this far is A+ for PR.
10
Mark Steyn:
Forest of Sticks
“The numbers of people seriously worried about “climate change” are as flat as the handle of Mann’s hockey stick …
The way to get those numbers up is through persuasion and argument, and seeking common ground with partial allies.
Instead, the cultists demand 100 per cent ideological purity, and blacklist, sue or call for the imprisonment and execution of anyone who fails the test.
You can bully Lennart Bengtsson, you can sue me, maybe one day you’ll be able to jail and hang us.
But you’ll be as far away as ever from persuading the millions of ordinary citizens desensitized by two decades of shrieking hysteria.”
. . .
Bring on the Mann!
20
Maybe the clincher is here:
Australian 22/05/14
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/policy/subsidies-for-clean-energy-to-hit-21bn/story-e6frg6xf-1226926300631#
Huh? Isn’t that roughly $1000 for each of us if calculated on the “small” billion or $1,000,000 on the large one?
I advise against investing in PV with FIT as it could lead to a major reaction eg wholesale rock attacks on solar panels etc.
I was thinking of installing a non feed-in low voltage system, but the best roof area faces north and is visible from the street …
30
Hopefully we are now going to focus on the fraud.
That will get folks interested.
Subsidies for clean energy to hit $21bn by 2020
That is Australia alone!
Now we are talking money that can ‘make a difference’:
UN-FAO;
The world only needs 30 billion dollars a year to eradicate the scourge of hunger
Add the green environmental pogrom on poor, uneducated people of colour, and apply Suzuki’s latest claim about jailing climate criminals …
Bring on that debate!
20
Should have added my favourite quote:
“As for any politicians who have ever believed in global warming, or supported the carbon tax, or a carbon-constrained economy,
there is no hope for them.
They are either too stupid or incompetent to be taken seriously.
Merely recanting, at this late stage, won’t be enough.
Make their lives hell too, just as they wished a diminished life on you.”
21
Warning!
Put down any drinks before reading on …
Record rains made Australia a giant green global carbon sink (link to the conversation)
Add+ 400ppm carbon(sic)
Equals= The benefits of carbon dioxide supplementation on plant growth and production within the greenhouse environment have been well understood for many years.
21
Comment @thecon from
Andrew Glikson
Earth and paleo-climate scientist at Australian National University
“An important article.
The accelerating rise of CO2, reaching the unprecedented rate of 2.95 ppm/year between April 2013 (398.35 ppm) and April 2014 (401.30 ppm), is leading to an increase in climate variability and climate extremes, with strong positive feedbacks (draughts and fires) alternating with negative feedbacks (greening of arid regions). Increases in climate variability and climate extremes are not good news for agriculture”
. . . .
So, natural climate variation is NOT good news for agriculture?
Quite so, only in climate science, what “goes down, must go up”.
21
Jo’s demographic – right wing, male over 50, grumpy and past it. Popularity – well porn is also popular. No accounting for taste.
Post #706 on “that it’ all over” but she’s still here. Surely on rational allocation of resources you’d have moved onto articles about medical research by now.
Meanwhile handjive believes in mirrors but no smoke. Pity it will all burn away eh? What comes down also goes up (in smoke).
212
‘… well porn is also popular.’
–
Tiresome’s demographic!
71
He’s just another “driveby pot shotter”, bullocky!.
Probably the on duty SkS troll
Not enough grey matter or gonads to stop and actually discuss and rationally debate.
As with all the driveby’s species just watch out that you don’t get covered in their spittle .
61
Has anyone got some coackroach spray ?
51
ROM,
Until Tiresome’s post, above, there was, to my knowledge, no evidence linking porn to believers of the climate change orthodoxy.
It is, therefore, a point worth noting!
31
But bullocky, the link is there.
If as the warmists predict it gets warmer and warmer the porn stars will wear less and less.
Err! Is that possible?
31
We can but hope …
31
ROM, your logic is impeccable!
–
No doubt, the maxim -‘The Emperor has no clothes’- has a special significance for the Climate Change Followship – as we have seen, time and time again.
31
probably 24/7/365
He certainly has no other knowledge.
31
Hi Tiresome.
Happy to have a conversation with you.
Can you be more specific on the smoke & mirrors?
Thanks.
41
Maybe Tiresome won’t be back so …
If Tiresome is implying that this greening will burn with the wrath of Gaia;
1. Australia is a land where flora & fauna have evolved to rely on bushfire to reproduce.
Any intensity in bushfire can attributed to green inspired illegal burning mismanagement of bush density.
2. in 2012, Australia was declared drought free, with carbon(sic) levels @400ppm.
What will cause the next drought?
51
There is clear evidence from WA that deforestation is the most probable cause of rainfall decrease in the Perth region.
I saw another incidence only the other day that showed how clouds in the Amazon (iirc) formed over the wooded area but not over the rivers and cleared areas.
There seems to be a good link between plant abundance and rainfall, with causation in both directions.
With CO2 enhancing plant growth, there should obviously be LESS drought.
51
The Griss
It isn’t that simple. In semi arid and arid regions (rainfall below about 600mm and mostly summer storm rain) evapotranspiration potential is well beyond rainfall. So it doesn’t matter what type of vegetation.
And this means that the chance of deep percolation is minimal and hence the lack of dryland salinity in Queensland despite the Beattie beatup.
Different in mediterranean areas.
20
Well Handjive
Gaia ? Nope – simply that apart from rainforest Australian bush burns. Funny that. Bit wet, big growth, followed by a big burn. The growth tends to go up in smoke. Unless you’re overgrazing the crap out your land and can’t get a fire to take.
Green inspired mismanagement – yes the Come By Chance, Muckadilla, Turkey Creek, and Coen greens branches are highly active aren’t they. Those darn greenies all over the whole land mass.
What will cause the next drought – well ENSO if you look out the window.
11
Hi Tiresome.
My apologies for doubting your return.
Thanks for your time.
ENSO.
Carbon(sic) is currently @400ppm and there is only an El Niño alert from the BoM.
This would seem to demonstrate carbon(sic) has NOTHING to do with El Niño, nor his much loved sister, La Niña.
Smoke & Mirrors?
The tone your original comment is puzzling.
AlGore fits your demographic. Bill McKibben. Joe Romm. Will Steffen. Tim Flannery. Lewandowsky.
But, good luck to you.
00
“Carbon(sic) is currently @400ppm and there is only an El Niño alert from the BoM.
This would seem to demonstrate carbon(sic) has NOTHING to do with El Niño, nor his much loved sister, La Niña.”
Handjive – why would this demonstrate anything – the available hypotheses (and you brought it up) (a) are atmospheric CO2 concentrations don’t influence ENSO, (b) are responsible for ENSO, or (c) have some impacts on ENSO. Your assertion seems like some disconnected random comment. Is this sort of trivialization the core of your reasoning capabilities. Heaven help us.
As for Al Gore etc well perhaps so. But a cursory wander through the authors of the current climate literature would suggest otherwise. Face it – this unrepresentative backwater of the blogosphere is overrun by angry, male, right wingers over 50. It’s a whole syndrome in itself.
01
I suppose your demographic is Pol Pot Youth Group.
21
Until the entire research grant application and peer review process’ are opened up to public scrutiny it will continue to be a dog.
30
This post from Rick Cina at WUWT is probably one of the best I’ve seen on SLs and lack of correlation to increase of co2. He includes many links to support his claims. Well worth a read.
Rick Cina says:
May 20, 2014 at 10:26 pm
No Correlation Between Man-Made CO2 and Sea Level Rise Acceleration
According to the latest IPCC report (2013), sea levels rose at a rate 1.7 mm per year, or at a rate of 6.7 inches per century, between the years 1901 and 2010.
If Antarctica is melting faster because of man-made CO2, we should have necessarily seen a steep acceleration of sea level rise in the scientific record since about the 1950s to the present, as anthropogenic CO2 began it’s steep rise in the late 1940s, early 1950s, as shown on this epa.gov graph:
http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/images/ghgemissions/TrendsGlobalEmissions.png
But we don’t see that. Instead, peer-reviewed scientific papers tell us that, from the 1950s to the 2000s, sea level rise rates have slowed, or decelerated.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2006GL028492/abstract
The rate of sea level change was found to be larger in the early part of last century (2.03 mm/yr 1904–1953) in comparison with the latter part (1.45 mm/yr 1954–2003).
So, from 1904 to 1953 (50 years), CO2 ppm levels increased by ≈15 ppm, and sea levels rose by 2.03 mm/yr.
From 1953 to 2003 (50 years), CO2 ppm levels increased by ≈75 ppm, and sea level rose by 1.45 mm/yr.
Thus we can conclude that sea level rise decelerated by 40% during the same span of years that CO2 levels were increasing by 500% (15 ppm to 75 ppm), an inverse correlation.
This establishes a strong lack of correlation between CO2 amplification and sea level rise acceleration.
And if there is a lack of correlation between CO2 amplification and sea level rise acceleration, then it cannot be said that CO2 absolutely causes sea level rise acceleration. Further, it may be concluded that man-made CO2 does not cause accelerated rates of ocean heating, ice sheet and sea ice melt, or surface temperature heating.
Further peer-reviewed papers (abstract summary highlights) that have determined a deceleration trend since anthropogenic CO2 emissions began rising:
http://multi-science.metapress.com/content/q7j3kk0128292225/
For the last 40-50 years strong observational facts indicate virtually stable sea level conditions….contradicting all claims of a rapid global sea level rise, and instead suggests stable, to slightly falling, sea levels.
http://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.2112/JCOASTRES-D-10-00141.1
The analysis reveals a consistent trend of weak deceleration at each of these gauge sites throughout Australasia over the period from 1940 to 2000.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378383912000154
However, long term tide gauges, recording sea levels worldwide, as well as along the coastline of Australia, and within the bay of Sydney, do not show any sign of accelerating sea level rises at present time.
http://multi-science.metapress.com/content/k3xg21881l4k0161/
The paper shows that locally and globally measured data, collected over short and long time scales, prove that the claim of sea level sharply accelerating is false.
http://www.eike-klima-energie.eu/fileadmin/user_upload/jaeger/Moerner_Parker_ESAIJ2013.pdf
We revisit available tide gauge data along the coasts of Australia, and we are able to demonstrate that the rate may vary between 0.1 and 1.5 mm/year, and that there is an absence of acceleration over the last decades.
http://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.2112/JCOASTRES-D-10-00157.1
We analyze monthly-averaged records for 57 U.S. tide gauges in the Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level (PSMSL) data base that have lengths of 60–156 years…and 25 gauge records having data spanning from 1930 to 2010 are analyzed. [W]e obtain small average sea-level decelerations.
http://multi-science.metapress.com/content/575k5821r2w23t73
Morphological and stratigraphical observational facts in the Sundarban delta provide data for a novel sea level reconstruction of the area. This sea level documentation lacks traces of a global sea level rise. This implies totally new perspectives for the future of Bangladesh. No longer are there any reasons to fear an extensive sea level inundation in the near future.
30
We see ZIP correlation between increase in co2 and CAGW yet we will have to pay an extra 21.6 bn $ in 6 years to support Labor’s mess. Billions wasted for no change to climate or temp or co2 levels at all. Just ask Germany and the EU who have wasted 100s of bns Euros for the same stupid result.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/billions_more_green_waste_killing_jobs_and_hiking_your_bills/
21
“Recent survey’s back me up”
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
http://www.angryflower.com/bobsqu.gif
And are those surveys any more trustworthy than Anderegg’s or Cook’s?
30
The public are not terminally bored with climate change. They are fed up.
50
Jo just noticed your new page banner “Skeptical science for dissident thinkers” LOL very wry 🙂
Nice photo too but why use one from 20 years ago? (fawn,fawn) 😉
10
Dissident thinkers! How apt!
I think “dissident voter” “dissident un-conformer” “dissident taxpayer” could also be valid.
Nice banner pic Jo. Very elegant.
10
first, the US Ambassador, now the EU lot telling us what to do:
VIDEO: 22 May: Sky News: Ambassadors criticise climate policy
A number of European ambassadors to Australia have criticised the government’s approach to climate change…
Europe is disappointed with Australia’s decision to drop climate change from the agenda for the G20 summit of world leaders to be held in Brisbane in November.
Ambassadors, including those of Italy and Sweden, made the rare public criticism at an Australian National University forum. However, a European Union official has told Sky News the EU is confident the issue will end up on the agenda at the G20 after intense lobbying of Australia by international governments.
http://www.skynews.com.au/news/national/2014/05/22/ambassadors-criticise-climate-policy-wp-lvo.html
10
If you google ‘Climategate’ today, you get few useful results. It’s the Guardian and Wikipedia on one side, Delingpole and Forbes on the other. The story of Climategate needs to be on one sensible, readable website which shows up in the first page of the Google results. This is probably the best for now: http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/climategate/history/climategate_timeline_a1_full_size.pdf
20
20 May: BizJournals: Duane Shimogawa: One of Hawaii’s first major solar energy installations is shut down
Greg Barbour, executive director of the Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii Authority in Kailua-Kona, which runs the Hawaii Ocean Science & Technology Park where Holaniku was located, said that its lease was recently terminated.
The four-acre utility-scale solar farm, which was spearheaded by Hawaii entrepreneur Darren Kimura, consisted of about 1,000 solar-thermal collectors with a total capacity of 2-megawatts***…
The project’s demise stemmed from Sopogy Inc. recently shutting down its operations.
The company, which was founded by Kimura about a decade ago, is currently in the middle of an insolvency proceeding under which its assets are being liquidated….
“It’s really unfortunate,” Barbour told PBN. “In the last 10 years, there has been downturns, but we didn’t lose any companies [during those years]. This is the first one that we did [lose].”
He also pointed out that the project was nearing the end of its 10-year lease, and that it had a good run.
“We’re a place for research and development projects, so not everybody is going to succeed,” Barbour said. “We have secured the property and we’re trying to decide what to do with it.”
Some options include leasing the land to another solar-thermal energy or solar photovoltaic developer, he said…
http://www.bizjournals.com/pacific/blog/morning_call/2014/05/one-of-hawaiis-first-major-solar-energy.html
28 April: Hawaii Reporter: Sopogy’s Demise is a Huge Victory for Honest Engineering and the Taxpayer
BY PANOS PREVEDOUROS PHD
Sopogy was told by numerous engineers that their Kona projections were absurd and violated the second law of thermodynamics. Sopogy proceeded anyway with their original plan.
My multi-year effort was particularly painful because this incompetent technology had received the 2009 Blue Planet Foundation Award and my own Dean sat at the board of directors of BPF when this award was made. Keahole Associates, an Oahu venture of Sopogy, was promoted in University of Hawaii, College of Engineering literature.
Here is some of the 2009 hyperbole…BLAH BLAH
***The most factual evidence suggests that throughout its existence, Sopogy generated 0.1 MW! This is roughly equal to 50 modest solar installations on residential rooftops. It took $20 million (yes million) of Hawaii technology tax credits to accomplish so little…
Then in 2011, Sopogy won the APEC 2011 Hawaii Business Innovation Showcase award for Honolulu.
Throughout this period Sopogy CEO Darren Kimura was the energy darling of Governor Neil Ambercrombie. The Gov would not grant me an appointment to talk about energy issues for Hawaii despite repeated requests. Of course his energy point man, Bryan Schatz is so pro “renewables” that logic and cost are not an issue.
Despite everything being stacked in favor of Sopogy, I summarized the analysis and warned DHHL that they should be cautious about this type of power plant and investment. The local media ignored my article. Only the Hawaii Reporter printed my opinion.
In January of 2013 the Hawaii Venture Capital Association gave Sopogy the 2012 HVCA Deal of the Year Award for a deal that (thankfully) went nowhere!
All these august bodies failed to do even minimal due diligence. For example they simply could have looked at HEI’s Securities and Exchange Commission filings which list the power they purchase from power sources other than their own. Sopogy’s Kona power plant appears nowhere…
Many well-known people such as Governors Lingle and Abercrombie, Chancellor Virginia Hinshaw, Blue Planet Foundation’s Henk Rogers, and Hawaii’s only billionaire Pierre Omidyar have Sopogy egg on their face. But given that this is Hawaii, the Sopogy scandal will likely die off quietly and the charlatans will have the last laugh.
http://www.hawaiireporter.com/sopogys-demise-is-a-huge-victory-for-honest-engineering-and-the-taxpayer/123
00
Off topic. WUWT has a story on the ice loss of Antarctica.
The University of Leeds press release has
The actual abstract has
It adds up to 160 ± 50 Gt/yr (square root of the sum of the squares). In other words, the uncertainty of the measurement is more than a quarter of the estimate. Considering that the previous estimate was worse, did it really double?
80+50=130, 160-50=110
Also, the 134 Gt is roughly equal to 140 cubic km. This was lost from an area of 1.4 million square km, which works out to be 0.1 mm that came off the top. More likely to have evaporated rather than melted and gone into the sea.
Previously, satellite altimetry was reported as being to measure with about an inch of uncertainty, 25 mm or 250 times the loss of ice. Even if it has improved 1000 fold, the ice-shelf is not flat.
40
Make that 0.1 m. Possible to measure if the ice sheet were flat. Which its not.
10
This may deserve its own thread — this new video expose won’t help any public respect for the ‘Greens’ so obsessed with ‘climate’ that they would embrace secret funds from “Middle East oil” to make an anti-fracking movie!
Anti-fracking fanatics get seriously PUNK*D
[emphasis added]
20
also this discussion of the video:
activist Greens caught in secret sting video
20
“This may deserve its own thread”
Just came across this on Climate Change Dispatch,came here to post a link myselfif others hadn’t, Definitely deserves exposure.
20
just noticed my previous comment is in moderation:
21 May: The American: Benjamin Zycher: California’s New Solar Plant: Burning Up Taxpayer Money, Land, and Wildlife
(Benjamin Zycher is the John G. Searle scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.)
While the federal government receives net payments for electricity-related oil and gas production on federal land, the net subsidy for the new Ivanpah solar plant is almost 300 times greater.
The Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System in the Southern California Mojave desert began operations in February, and it is huge. How huge? Let us count the ways:
Huge costs. The Ivanpah capital cost is $2.2 billion for 392 megawatts (MW) of gross generation capacity (potential power output per hour). (That 392 MW is a number not comparable to 392 MW of, say, gas-fired capacity, because of a sharply lower “capacity factor,”discussed below.) Accordingly, the nominal capital cost per kilowatt (kW, one one-thousandth of a MW) of capacity for Ivanpah is about $5600, a figure that ignores some costs that are important but hidden. In comparison, the Energy Information Administration publishes estimates of the capacity costs per kW for coal, combined-cycle natural gas, nuclear, and on-shore wind capacity: respectively about $2700, $885, $4800, and $2075. For solar thermal plants in general, the EIA estimate is about $4750. (Bear in mind that these figures are for capacity costs only; they exclude fuel, operations and maintenance, and other costs.) The per-kW capacity cost of Ivanpah is well over twice that of wind power, which cannot compete economically without the federal production tax credit, guaranteed market shares, and other subsidies…
Lest you suspect that this unflattering comparison suffers from some sort of frontloading bias or the like, consider the EIA estimates of capacity costs per megawatt-hour (mWh) of power generation on a “levelized” basis (smoothed over the expected lives of the facilities): about $195 for solar thermal, $60 for conventional coal, $15 for natural gas, and $71 for nuclear. The EIA estimate for on-shore wind power is about $64, again an implausible figure. That the estimate for solar thermal facilities is three times that for wind is telling given that wind power is not competitive.
We can derive our own estimate of capacity costs per mWh for Ivanpah from some of the project details. BLAH BLAH…
Huge subsidies. The project received a $1.6 billion loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy…
Because Ivanpah began operations before 2016, it qualifies for the 30 percent investment tax credit as an optional replacement for the production tax credit of $11 per mWh, thus increasing the present value of the subsidy. This makes the subsidy independent of the actual amount of power produced. Ivanpah qualifies as well for accelerated depreciation (an assumed five-year life) and a depreciation “bonus” of 50 percent in the first year.
The net effect on tax revenues is more likely to be negative rather than positive.
Precisely what are the taxpayers getting in return for this? The usual arguments in favor of subsidies for renewable energy are deeply flawed, as are the rationales offered in support of the subsidies for Ivanpah specifically, a discussion of which is offered below…
http://www.american.com/archive/2014/may/california2019s-new-solar-plant-burning-up-taxpayer-money-land-and-wildlife
00
Skiphil –
check out the travel listed by the Tickell’s (from your Veritas link) at the following honeymoon registry site! what giant carbon footprints!
travelersjoy: Honeymoon Registry of Rebecca Harrell & Josh Tickell
bottom: Carbon offsets for the jet fuel we burned!!!
http://www.travelersjoy.com/0000019620
00
What a great comment from a guy on this thread.
“I was working in the electronics industry in the early days of custom integrated circuits. Design faults were very expensive in time and money, so designers would circulate final designs to colleagues and test engineers with promises of rewards, like a pint of beer, for every problem discovered.
I can’t imagine a climate scientists doing that with their models and data.”
And this is where climate science has gone spectacularly wrong. They HIDE their data and procedures, BECAUSE that are AFRAID they have made mistakes.
10
What, test your product? That’s…that’s…well…un human, un Australian, un American and intolerable. Do you realize that doing that might actually get something right? We can’t tolerate that kind of behavior in this new progressive world. No, no, no,no. no… …no…
Don’t even think about it. They
persecuteprosecute you for that.00