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Weekend Unthreaded
 Litchfield National Park, Northern Territory, Australia | Photo Jo Nova
7.8 out of 10 based on 26 ratings
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JoNova A science presenter, writer, speaker & former TV host; author of The Skeptic's Handbook (over 200,000 copies distributed & available in 15 languages).
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The nerds have the numbers on precious metals investments on the ASX
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Can anyone from Darwin area please post the effects of the volcano, if any. You know, like fancy sunsets or very cold weather. TIA.
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It may have weakened a little baby in the water, poor little El Niño may get a chill from this eruption.
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And without the ElNino, the poor alarmistas won’t even get a small temporary peak in the downward trend to crow about.
Poor little things.
Philip will go apoplectic ! 🙂
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On the other hand they will have the perfect excuse for why 2014 failed to be the hottest year ever!
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Darn, its not as if they haven’t made the past cool enough already.
I wonder how much cooler they can make it.
Are there even more “adjustments” in store ?????
Watch this space.
(and Hadcrut and Giss, and BOM) !
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red thumb.. is that you Philip, deary?
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They never step out of the dark into the sunshine. Wear it as a badge of honor.
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“Wear it as a badge of honor.”
You know I do 🙂
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No atmospheric optical effects so far – and unlikely seeing as main cloud is silica particles. Cheers from Malak NT.
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Speaking of optical effects: The World’s Most Sensitive Thermometer
A warmist’s dream come true.
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R3, I lived in Darwin for sometime and at this time of year the prevailing winds should be cooler from the SE,the monsoon blows from the NW roughly Oct-May. Any dust from the Sumbawa eruption should be heading North, Gunung Tambora on Sumbawa last blew up in a big way about 1830 and legend would have it that the magnificent landscape skies painted by JMW Turner were inspired by the dust effects remaining in the atmosphere after that eruption.
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The propaganda is clearly becoming pure religious dogma.
I have only watched the trailer for National Geographic’s “Cosmos”, but the narrator, one Neil deGrasse Tyson, declares “Global warming is real! The evidence is all around us! Rising seas, melting glaciers, forest fires, hurricanes! Climate change is happening!” He takes on all the trapping of an old-time fire and brimstone preacher.
One cannot but assume that this frenzy is in some way connected with the anti-American dictator in the White House preparing for his assault on the American populace.
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Surely you knew that it is now mandatory on all trailers for National Geographic programs.
Soon all progrm trailers will be like this.
/sarcoff
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You only have to look at how National Geographic Channel and the Discovery Channel are funded to see what the storyline will be. US Gov money. If there is ever a growing doubt about an ‘official story’ as told the the US Gov, you can bet that National Geographic or Discovery will produce a documentary ‘debunking’ any ‘conspiracies’ and reinforcing the ‘official storyline’.
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Yes that is a great pity. I used to have considerable respect for Dr Tyson.
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Did you see his body language as he was saying it. Looked like a lot of I’m telling you a porkie.
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He’s right – hurricane stats prove Climate Change(tm). The MagicGas(tm) we put out there over 60 years has very slightly warmed the cold, inhospitable parts of the world. This reduced the temp gradient, so in addition to faster plant growth we have a slow trend towards fewer hurricanes.
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Well said sir !! 🙂
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Rod,
National Geographic has become a shameful disgrace. Since their founding until global warming came along they stuck to their principles and documented the world and life as they found it without editorial comment. They had one of the finest journalistic acts in the world.
Then they were infiltrated by fools who think it wise to present theory as fact without any substantiation. And… … well, you know the rest. I will no longer watch their TV nor read their magazine. I suppose my personal one man boycott harms them not one bit. But it’s the best thing I have available with which to protest. Writing letters to the editor has about as much influence as sending the letter to the nearest rock.
How do we fight this? National Geographic is an institution and is about as authoritative a source of information as the general public can find. And they have turned dishonest.
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Why should National Geographic be any different?
Our institutions are corrupt.
Our corporations are corrupt.
Our political leaders, to a man, are corrupt.
The legal system is corrupt.
The mainstream media is entirely corrupt.
NGOs are all corrupt.
Our financial institutions are completely corrupt.
Those regulatory bodies charged with overseeing them are corrupt.
The UN/IMF/World Bank is systemically corrupt.
Our scientists are corrupt.
As I write this, I sense a common theme……….
And those who aren’t corrupt, are either paranoid, crazy, religious zealots, or too dumb and apathetic to notice.
That civilisation you “hate to see go to waste”, Jo, is on its very last legs. Lucky I’m an optimist.
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There is no good reason for them to be different, except for this one thing — dishonesty always bites you in the end (pun intended). People do eventually catch on to your fraud in large numbers when it starts to hurt them enough. And it’s hurting some people a whole lot right now.
Democrats facing reelection in November are running scared like I’ve never seen before, as are some Republicans.
You can fool some of the people all the time. You can fool all the people some of the time. But you can’t fool all the people all the time. The political wind has been changing. I hope it’s soon enough and strong enough to do the job.
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I watched the first episode because I am interested in cosmology ,I think I got about 15 minutes into it before deciding this was total bollix.
It was also appealing to an age ,I would estimate at 9 or 10, where the disney type “now watch what happens next children” sort of voice of fear and awe spoke of science like you were talking about toy story. Absolutely cringe worthy !
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New guessing game!
Try to predict what spin the warmists will put on the Arctic sea ice growth. If this NOAA prediction of 600 000 Km^2 above average ice extent by August is correct or under, they will need to do some pretty fast talking. http://origin.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/people/wwang/cfsv2fcst/imagesInd3/sieMon.gif
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Ice extent expands as Climate responds to Anthropogenic Global Warming, by forcing all of the man-made heat into the deep oceans.
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Obviously putting out high predictions now will be handy for headlines that say “Arctic Ice 20% below predicted!” and “Shock, Arctic Ice falls below expected limits!”
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Arctic summer ice extent is all about warm water from the south, not about CO2 or warm air.
Write that down, as you will need to remember it in the coming months.
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The latest and current at time of posting GWPF list of postings has a couple of very interesting items that have some spin off that Australia would be well advised to note.
First up is the troubled or more accurately the catastrophic outcomes of Spain’s ill advised entanglement with the renewable energy industry now being repeated increasingly across Europe.
_____________________
SPANISH LESSONS FOR OBAMA: GREEN ENERGY TRANSITION UNAFFORDABLE, MAY CRASH SOON
[ Translated from Die Welt ][ selected quotes ]
Only recently, Spain was widely praised as the champion of wind energy in Europe. What is more, all over the country new solar parks were built and renewable energy had become the main source of energy supply on the Iberian Peninsula. Those days, however, may soon be over. That’s because Spain’s industry ministry intends to drastically cut back on subsidies for “clean energy.” The whole country has to cut back, the industry ministry argues drily, and energy producers have to do too.
This argument seems irrefutable since the figures that are now assessed by the government are astronomical indeed.
The subsidies that are going to flow into green energy projects on the Iberian Peninsula amount to a staggering 200 billion euros. [ AUD$292 billion ] Approximately 56 billion euros [ AUD$81.7 billion] have already been paid out.
The lion’s share of this sum went into rather generous feed-in tariffs for wind and solar energy which, since 1995, have attracted numerous investors from both home and abroad.
The remaining 143 billion euros [ AUD$208.8 billion ] are due to be paid out in the next 20 years for green energy projects that have already been connected to the grid, foremost for solar farms.
Given these sums, it would appear that industry minister Jose Manuel Soria has come to the conclusion that the only option left is to put his foot down. He now plans to cut green subsidies for the energy sector by about 20 percent, to 7.5 billion euros[ AUD$11 billion ] per annum. The minister, however, has not reckoned with affected green investors who are up in arms and fighting the planned subsidy cuts.
[ more ]
_________________
The Spanish economy is ranked by the world bank as the 13th largest economy in the world, just behind Australia in 12th place.
Australia’s GDP is given by the World Bank [ 2012 ] in US dollars as $1,532,408.
The Spanish GDP in US dollars is given as $1,322,115
From this you can see the unbelievable and clearly unaffordable scale of the Spanish subsidies to the scammers of the renewable energy industry .
There is a very, very severe lesson in there for the Labor and Liberal politicians who are stupid enough to still believe that renewable energy is a viable source of power for an industrial age society.
Of course these figures and the Spanish and British and now German , Danes, Dutch even French plus the Scots [ whose prime Minister Salmond, is a fanatical wind freak ] , who have just had a huge power failure believed by most electrical engineers to be the results of major fluctuations in wind energy output throwing the grid phase locking out so much that the emergency systems shut the grid down rather than allow it to be substantially damaged.
However nothing like plain common sense and others very harrowing and economy breaking experiences with renewable energy will convince the neanderthal [ apologies to Neanderthals ] Greens with their back to the caves policies in energy production and their other advocated similar stone axe wielding policies for the advancement of civilisation.
_________
Obama and his EPA and their collective stupidity [ He is of course a Chicago Democrat so what else is to be expected given the Chicago Democrat’s long history of blatant political and economic corruption. ] in trying to destroy America’s energy system by imposing the now clearly failed renewable energy regime on the American citizens in the name of him personally saving the planet from what we don’t quite know also gets a run on this GWPF site today.
_________________
And via the from the same GWPF source it seems the BBC are about to pay very big time indeed for their blatant and totally bigoted past bias against the skeptics amongst a number of other items and their refusal as a matter off intentional internal policy to refuse to allow anything of a skeptic nature to be broadcast by the BBC.
The Brits pay a license fee which goes to the BBC of 145.50 pounds per year [ AUD$261 ]
The ABC used to be paid for under a similar mandatory license fee structure but that was abandoned some decades ago.
The amount of this UK mandatory license fee / mandatory tax per household to support a non government quango amazed me.
Government to review all aspects of the BBC and future of licence fee
[ quoted ]
Every single aspect of how the BBC is run and paid for will be under review when its charter comes up for renewal, the Culture Secretary has said.
Sajid Javid said “everything” would be looked at, including licence fees and governance structures, when negotiations get under way.
Senior Tories have previously called the compulsory annual charge made to viewers out of date and warned it faces the axe but BBC executives insist a subscription system could end up costing more money.
Mr Javid said plans for the process of renewing the charter, which expires in December 2016, were being worked on.
He told Total Politics: “We will announce plans in due course. That will be a time to look at all aspects of the BBC: governance arrangements, licence fees and so forth. That’s where we plan to look at everything.”
The renewal negotiations will take place on the back of a torrid few years that have seen the corporation lambasted for its handling of the Jimmy Savile scandal, massive executive pay-offs and a Newsnight investigation that led to the late Lord McAlpine being wrongly accused of child abuse.
Conservative John Whittingdale, chairman of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, reportedly told senior BBC executives earlier this month that he did not believe the licence fee would survive.
Tory Party chairman Grant Shapps warned last year it could lose its exclusive right to the £3.6 billion raised by the licence fee if it failed to tackle what he believes is a culture of secrecy, waste and unbalanced reporting in the organisation.
The Government has frozen the fee at £145.50 for the rest of the charter period.
[ more ]
Prime Minister Mr Abbot , please take note re the ABC and it’s failure to provide balance in it’s reporting on a whole range of subjects including climate change plus a pronounced constant to the point of being nauseating, promotion of rabid left wing socialistic ideology and policies.
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The way things are going the legal bills will dwarf the subsidies.
No, Spain is in trouble. They signed too many contracts at exorbitant rates. Gemasolar was on $435 (€ 300) per MWh. Contrast that with wind contracts at €90 per MWh.
As Tony will tell you coal fired in Australia costs €26 per MWh (and that includes the Carbon Tax).
It doesn’t seem that there was any corruption, just rank stupidity by the previous Socialist government. The real disaster is the multitude of small players who took out mortgages to set up 3-10kW solar PV set-ups. Not only is the government cutting their cash flow and sending them broke, but they also want to charge them for being connected to the grid and the disruptions that causes.
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BTW, the left is pushing the meme that because Spain had a conservative / Right govt in 2011, this is proof that conservatives cause recessions and leftist govts save people from them. Spain’s collapse to failed state had nothing to with the hundreds of $billions that evaporated in worthless projects in their debt-funded chase for carbon glory. No, the key moment was the election of a Right wing govt to clean up after 10 years of socialist-Green fruitopia.
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And George Bush is still responsible for all America’s problems too. It would be high comedy if it wasn’t so tragic.
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Andrew:
the problem is a little more complex than black hats v white hats, but when times are good the voters often take a chance on the Socialists (e.g. Australia in 2007).
Many of the contracts were pushed, even negotiated, by various regional “governments” (sorry, forgot the Spanish). There was (and is) a strong element of rivalry between them. With the AGW hysteria in full flood and public and media approval the tendency for the second rate pollies was to sign up rather than examine. The same with house building. Like Ireland there was far too many new houses built for the demand. Result was developers going broke and banks failing with bad debts and unsaleable re-possessed and partly built houses.
The EU then got involved and Spain, like Ireland, had to take over the banks’s debts and the renewable guaratees. Nobody knows why. Perhaps the EU was terrified of a knock-on effect, for I have heard that most european banks are bankrupt in all but name.e.g.
German Consumer Agency Issues Open Letter, Warns Deutsche Bank Of “Dubious Renewable Energy…Burdens Of Over 1 Trillion Euros Feared”
By P Gosselin on 30. April 2014
The VzfK argues that the spectacular insolvency of Prokon, Windwärts, Windreich, Solar Millennium AG and many other dubious renewable energy companies leads us to expect further damage not only to capital investors, but also to shareholders of credit institutes due to the sheer grievances in the sector of renewable energies. The VzfK requests the Deutsche Bank board of directors to assure that the damage to Deutsche Bank AG, its shareholders, and customers be minimized through appropriate portfolio measures and credit decisions. Especially requested is a critical review of the credit engagement that has come under fire because of the corruption scandal in Thuringia and controversial wind projects in the Hochtaunus nature reserve by project developer juwi AG.
Referring to the federal government’s Council of Expert Advisors the VzfK expects the EEG renewable energy feed-in system has to collapse and that economic damage of at least triple-digit billions are to be expected. Already today consumers are groaning and German industry are burdened by ludicrously high costs compared to other European countries and internationally. Energy prices are often more than 50% higher than those in neighboring countries or in the USA. In other words: German workers, as electric power customers, are paying for a gigantic job destruction program. The EEG system is only forcing the chemical industry and other energy-intensive industries to move abroad.
– See more at: http://notrickszone.com/page/3/#sthash.QuzSUVcS.dpuf
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“…just behind Australia in 12th place.”
How the hell is Australia the 12th larges economy in the world?
The others must be dire indeed. We are just 4% of the world population.
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“How the hell is Australia the 12th largest economy in the world”
Yeah at the moment we are doing pretty well for ourselves..
But nevermind, the Greens and Labor want us in triple figures, where they seem to think we belong.
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Try 0.33% of the world’s population.
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Yep!
Australia; 22 million population
Spain ; 47 million population.
As I have posted before ;
We live in a Golden age in a Golden land.
We are a very privileged people who have become privileged because of the hard work and careful planning of those who built this country over the last 200 years when all around them was war and chaos and corruption on a scale that reduced those other countries chances of emulating what Australians have achieved in those 200 years.
And they worked and planned and built so as to try and ensure their kids and descendants had a better life than they did.
And we have.
We had LAW and it was applied fairly and equally to all men equal [ or almost.]
LAW applied equally to all prevented corruption on a grand scale so our ancestors could plan and build in the knowledge that what they had achieved for themselves would remain theirs . So they planned and built and we of this generation are reaping the full benefits today.
Over 25% of our population was born overseas and are immigrants to Australia.
We have absorbed and accommodated that immense number and percentage of foreign born without racial riots or extreme discrimination and little bloodshed of any sort and have done it for all 200 years of our settlement of Australia.
And that is a record few other countries can come near to matching.
We are far from perfect but we are far further down the track of civilised peoples than many other countries much, much older and with much longer histories behind them than ourselves.
Will it last? Who knows but at least we have history to guide us and to help correct us when it goes wrong ‘
When I see the stupidity of the left wing and and green wackos and assorted leaches on the Australian workers and business people who have become so fixated that their handouts are a RIGHT and not a privilege I really can’t describe my contempt for them.
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Climate Scientist Dr. Scott Denning on Climate Change National Forum.
Just in case you don’t know, the First Law of Physics basically says that if there is more energy going in then coming out that the internal energy will be greater, not necessarily hotter eg. gasses can expand or the atmosphere become more humid. It also says that if more energy leaves a system than goes in that the internal energy decreases, it does not necessarily get colder.
How can this be put forward as the cornerstone of AGW is beyond farcical. Does any sceptic contest the validity of the First Law rather than question the accounting?
I refrained from commenting on that blog because I’m happy if he continues. Pimply high school kids are going to think if that is as difficult as it gets that they might be a climate scientist for a few hours after school. This would be good for tax-payers as we wouldn’t need to pay adult rates.
They don’t need 30 main stream scientists for every Judith Curry, they just somebody, anybody, who knows what they’re talking about.
PS Scott, boiling water remains at 100°C as you add more energy to it. Thermodynamics is much more difficult than you think it is.
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I wonder how much energy is the extra growth of the biosphere sucking up.
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the Griss
And how much energy is expended in moving vast quantities of air around the globe.
How much energy when the mass of air is carrying a significant amount of water vapor? How much energy does it take to move a few thousand tons of water a few thousand miles? Or carrying desert dust thousands of miles? Or indeed volcanic ash and smoke.
And then similarly with the warming of bodies of water, from the shallowest seashore to the oceanic depths, and all the currents and movements therein. Sunlight powering the continuous movement of a few billion tons of liquid.
Of course all this energetic dissipation of heat to kenetic energy is faithfully modeled by the computers? That why the IPCC diagram shows the same energy leaving the planet as incoming as solar radiation.
Silly me it’s only infra-red radiation that matters, not the products of its effect on matter.
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the Griss @ #5.1
I wonder how much energy is the extra growth of the biosphere sucking up.
A pretty good question!
There have been a number of studies on the power consumption of the Internet based data facilities in the USA and world wide.
Probabaly one of the most up to date analysis [ July 2013 ] of the WWW’s total power usage is the below;
The Cloud Begins With Coal:
Big Data, Big Infrastructure and Big Power.
An Overview of the Electricity Used by the Global Digital Ecosystem
[ Definition used here ; ICT = Information Communications Technology ]
http://www.tech-pundit.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Cloud_Begins_With_Coal.pdf?c761ac
The information economy is a blue-whale economy with its energy uses mostly out of sight.
Based on a mid-range estimate, the world’s Information-Communications-Technologies (ICT) ecosystem uses about 1,500 TWh of electricity annually, equal to all the electric generation of Japan and Germany combined — as much electricity as was used for global illumination in 1985.
The ICT ecosystem now approaches 10% of world electricity generation.
Or in other energy terms – the zettabyte era already uses about 50% more energy than global aviation. This recent study (August 2013) by Digital Power Group includes interesting facts about the use of electricity by smart phones and tablets.
____________________________
The New York Times in Sept 2012 had a series on the Internet’s data centers which few of us realise the scale of this industry .
The Cloud Factories
1 / Power, Pollution and the Internet
2 / Data Barns in a Farm Town, Gobbling Power and Flexing Muscle[ 4 pages]
3 / Landlords Double as Energy Brokers [ 3 pages ]
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Yes, yes, but you miss the point … it becomes a hotter 100oC
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Does that mean it boils an egg quicker ?
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Yo, my little red thumb stalker.
Please let yourself be known so I can tailor my comments to annoy you even more. 🙂
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No, it will boil an egg faster.
You really do need to work on your grammer, little Griss.
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Vic, How will they know they have someone who knows what he’s talking about?
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That would require looking for affirmation outside of their clique. Its not going to happen.
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powerful documentary – would recommend it to anyone who is interested in the subject. i heard a former VA staffer say the pharmacy was the VA’s “cash cow”, & this documentary would seem to confirm this. Australia is mentioned a couple of times. at the end some of those in charge with conflicts of interest are mentioned.
2014: Citizens Commission on Human Rights: Documentary: The Hidden Enemy (1 hr 46 mins)
“THE HIDDEN ENEMY” DOCUMENTARY EXPOSES THE COVERT OPERATION BEHIND MILITARY SUICIDES.
In early 2013, the official website of the United States Department of Defense announced the startling statistic that the number of military suicides in 2012 had far exceeded the total of those killed in battle—an average of nearly one a day. A month later came an even more sobering statistic from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs: veteran suicide was running at 22 a day—about 8000 a year.
The situation became so dire that the U.S. Secretary of Defense called suicide in the military an “epidemic.”
Some have claimed that this spate of self-harm is because of the stresses of war. But the facts reveal that 85% of military suicides have not seen combat—and 52% never even deployed.
So what unsuspected factor is causing military suicide rates to soar?
According to the new documentary The Hidden Enemy: Inside Psychiatry’s Covert Agenda, all evidence points in one direction: the soaring rates of psychiatric drug prescribing since 2003…
In the face of these grim military suicide statistics, more and more money is being lavished on psychiatry: the U.S. Pentagon now spends $2 billion a year on mental health alone. The Veterans Administration’s mental health budget has skyrocketed from less than $3 billion in 2007 to nearly $7 billion in 2014—all while conditions continue to worsen…
http://www.cchr.org/documentaries/the-hidden-enemy.html
it always amuses me when CAGW-ers point fingers at sceptics for allegedly having conflicts of interest, when they should be pointing the fingers at themselves.
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” In early 2013, the official website of the United States Department of Defense announced the startling statistic that the number of military suicides in 2012 had far exceeded the total of those killed in battle—an average of nearly one a day. A month later came an even more sobering statistic from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs: veteran suicide was running at 22 a day—about 8000 a year
Some have claimed that this spate of self-harm is because of the stresses of war.”
They call it self harm, what BS. Any competent Shrink will admit that suicide
is but a symptom of clinical depression, with few survivors. It is the depression,
“I would rather die, than survive in a world of unbearable hurt.”
The US Military promotes such, many would fight and get hurt, to defend a country and government they appreciate. Unfortunately the United States has had no government for the past 40 years. And of course nothing to appreciate.
Many would love to go somewhere with something to appreciate. Is Oz up to it?
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Monday is a Public Holiday in Western Australia. Can we expect a slow news day?
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Hey, its WA.. always a slow news week 🙂
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No way Rereke … Perth mall is now a smoke free zone. Stick that in your pipe and… oh wait.
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Well my fellow “right-wingnuts”, we may get what we clamoured for, more deregulation.
If this goes through parliament then it will be a full scale test of quasi-Austrian liberal economics for tertiary education.
Christopher Pyne says universities will not get away with exorbitant fee hikes
Most astonishing comment had to be from VC Davis:
Nah, nothing new at all, only an education that gets the engineers a $70k/year job straight out of uni. If the return on investment for social sciences is less then whose fault is that? Not the hard hats. The days of sciences subsidising the
baristashumanities are nearly over.Only the rich will be able to get degrees! Wait, let me correct myself there. Only the rich will be able to get useless degrees. Because only the rich will waste huge amounts of money on a degree that won’t get them a high-paying job.
One thing I don’t understand… is why they’ve attacked tertiary education so soon in the rush to balance the budget. Surely there is way more unnecessary stuff the federal government does that could be cut before getting as far down on the hist list as tertiary education.
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The Pareto Principle hypothesises that approximately 80% of effects come from 20% of causes.
Apply that to Universities and you could say that 20% of students provide 80% return on investment.
In marketing terms, that could make o/s students the Target Market.
Especially if the Uni’s become Financial Controllers and Marketing Managers.
As in ‘popular’ Climate Science, money trounces ethics and PR manipulates truth.
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Did the present adult unemployment rate in Spain get a mention? It has been inexorably rising to a staggering 27% (2013). The dramatic effect of borrowing to subsidise “renewable” wind and solar is a major contributor to that shameful figure. And, of course, the resultant high cost of electricity driving out manufacturing jobs.
Sound familiar? South Australia is rapidly becoming the Spain of the South. Adelaide was called the Athens of the South (as if) but either way, Madrid or Athens, the picture is the same. Even as Weatherill and Rau (and the odious Rann of late) cry crocodile tears for the steady loss of manufacturing, they call in more wind farms to line the pockets of overseas “investors” and local cronies.
Minister Rau has now appointed himself not only the Development portfolio but the Planning one as well!
The stench is putrid.
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James @ # 9
If you would like to take a look at the Andrew Miskellies AEMO chart of wind turbine outputs as of yesterday, May 31st 2014, you can cancel out the other states and just leave South Australia’s wind turbine output graph for the last 24 hours there.
Name plate capacity as Tony repeatedly tells us means nothing very much as an indication of what a wind turbine actually produces in its generating lifetime or even as an average of what it produces.
South Australia’s wind turbines have a plated output of 1203 MW according to this AEMO graph.
Yesterday, the 31st of May, that whole 1203 MW of wind power at around a quarter of a million dollars plus a MW cost to build and get up and generating or about a conservative $4 billion for SA wind generation alone to get up and running, yesterday from about 4.30 pm until midnight, generated around a low of about 30 MW to a high just below about 50 MW’s.
Or in percentage terms the total of $4 billion plus dollars worth of wind turbines in SA managed to generate less than 3% of their plated capacity for some eight hours ongoing into today.
The rest of Australia’s wind farm output yesterday was just as ludicrous as an energy supply system in a modern sophisticated manufacturing and business society that needs and demands 100% dead steady stable electricity supply 24 /7 / 365.
Renewable Energy Sources Are Just A Power Failure
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As I had a lot of trouble despite the flood of self congratulatory hype on the web from the wind industry I could not find an accurate figure on the cost per MW of installed name plate capacity of australian wind turbines.
So to correct my costings above of per MW of installed name plate capacity wind turbines. From How much do wind turbines cost?
The costs for a utility scale wind turbine in 2012 range from about $1.3 million to $2.2 million per MW of nameplate capacity installed.
This cost has come down dramatically from what it was just a few years ago.
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ROM:
A 2 MW turbine cost $A3.57 million to install in SA a couple of years ago. The talk of declining prices is because the makers of turbines are going broke. The sales are dropping and they need turnover. In the case of the Danish and Chinese makers there are subsidies/cheap loans etc.
The claim that they will get cheaper as
a) mass production starts and
b) as the turbines get bigger
is a load of floo floo. Firstly they are made by hand layup, the usual system in fibreglass manufacturing for large items (boats etc.) This allows for careful placement of reinforcement where designed. Also things like woven mat for greater stiffness (near hub) and mat containing hollow glass spheres in areas to add thickness with less weight (stiffer blades flex less, fatigue less). Going over to gun operation is marginally cheaper but slightly lower in quality. Vacuum or resin injection still involves placement of the reinforcement, but means more expensive moulds and equipment. The idea that they will somehow be press or injection moulded is fantasy.
b) is the second load of floo. The blades are thick aero-foils. They have to be thick and strong to avoid the turbulence and the wind speed differential between the top of rotation and the bottom. As they get bigger, they get heavier and more expensive. The blades also have to rotate more slowly to reduce the stress at the tips (it goes up as the square of the radius). That causes problems with the mismatch between the weight and the wind speed necessary to turn the blades.
In theory you use stronger materials e.g. epoxy and carbon fibre. But carbon fibre is brittle and not much good on its own for items under vibrational stresses. And more strength from epoxy requires high temperature autoclaving (150℃ ). So far more expensive moulds and equipment and ingredients.
The other point is that bigger blades need taller towers. Taller towers have to be stronger and have stronger bases. Apart from the cost there is the difficulty (add more money) to transport the blades and install them.
I suggest that in future the returns from wind turbine manufacture are going to be about the same as achieved by breeding unicorns.
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With a 50 year long flying background and a considerable acquired maintenance background in FRP gliders which the wind turbine manufacturing industry has pinched most of their advanced blade aerodynamics and FRP blade construction technology from I am in full agreement with you Graeme No3.
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ROM
re costs of turbines, these are not that easy to find, so I have taken the installed cost of a wind farm (which is usually boasted about) and divided by the number of turbines and then again by the capacity (to get cost per MW)
Make/Capacity year turbine cost per MW
Siemens SWP 2.3 2003 3.44 1.497
Siemens SWP 2.3 2008 4.104 1.784
Siemens SWP 2.3 2010 4.444 1.932
Siemens SWP 3.6 2009 12.5 3.472
Mixed 5MW 2008-2013 24.074 4.8148
Sway 10MW projected 47.16 4.716
All costs are in Euros. As you can see, they are getting more expensive with time and size. The Sway unit is said to be much cheaper than alternate designs of this size. I point out that this is advance publicity and that many units above 4.5MW have turned out to be more costly than originally projected. Hope this helps. Sorry about the formatting.
00
“Sorry about the formatting”
WordPress seems to remove any spaces more than one…
I think using dots or dashes between columns to position things might work. eg
—–Make/Capacity——year—–turbine cost— per MW
Siemens SWP 2.3———2003———3.44——–1.497
00
Well noted, ROM.
The best that could be said is that yesterday less of Australia’s wealth has been sucked out via REC’s and sent overseas or into union super funds.
It is a racket without parallel.
30
ROM,
people will say that this only for a Saturday, so hey, what’s the problem here.
The average total consumption for South Australia for the time 10AM right through until Midnight was around 1550MW per hour.
Wind power average for the same period 14 hours was around 35MW per hour.
So wind was supplying 2.25% of South Australia’s power.
Some would also use the usual cherry picking argument here. I really don’t care. What do you when there are days like this? Do you just ignore them?
Feed coal in the front end and the generator delivers its full power. Have gas fire the boiler and the generator delivers its full power.
Here you have to rely upon the vagaries of the wind, and when the wind doesn’t blow, electrical power to actually run the State still has to come from somewhere. Natural Gas, and the Victorian link, every other unit running from literally 8AM and it just doesn’t stop at Midnight like the graph does. It keeps going into Sunday after Midnight, and those other units are usually tasked for three or four hours a day at most, mainly during the week, because that’s when power consumption is higher, and more often than not they are not needed on weekends.
Wind fails, and they are needed, as shown here for 14 hours plus.
Tony.
50
Tony, a question for you or anybody else here with a background in grid power engineering.
What is the power consumption required to maintain a wind turbines standby or idling status when it is NOT generating power due to low winds or high winds outside of it’s operating envelope or other factors?.
I have seen various numbers ranging from about equal to a minimum of 13% of the turbine’s generated output [ which rarely reaches an average of 30% of plated generating capacity] to about 50% of it’s output.
This standby / idling / low or no wind maintenance requirements of wind turbines is NEVER revealed by the wind turbine industry as it is power drawn from the grid and therefore from other generators as in fossil fueled generators .
A wind turbine’s idling / standby maintenance power consumption which runs to many kilowatts drawn from the grid is buried in the total power consumption figures for the state or nation’s grid and is never, deliberately so, categorized separately as a part of the turbine’s power generation performance indicators.
The end result being that even those low turbine power generation figures provided by the AEMO are still often way too high in low wind conditions as they only reflect the power generated by the turbines but do NOT reflect and or include the power used by those same or other idled turbines due to no wind conditions when they are producing power at levels below what they themselves need to run and maintain their own various internal systems.
The following is from the Uni of Minnesota Vesta’s Reality Check [ “Vestas” is the BIG Danish wind turbine manufacturer ] a which has some good information in it.
____________
[ quoted ]
Power Consumption
I have long been trying to nail down how much electricity a wind turbine consumes. The wind industry seems quite reluctant to publish this.
As an example, in the V82 Life Cycle Assessment they lump all the manufacturing, operation, transportation etc. together into a 20-year lifetime total of 3392 mw-h, not willing to break it out.
Luckily, the UMinn’s reports include negative production numbers when the wind isn’t blowing enough to produce – about 3.5 m/s.
Each day they listed the minimum production, along with the minimum wind speed.
UMinn didn’t reveal the time increments, but fully 85% of the days during the 3 years had a negative-production period. I graphed the results:
[ U Minn Minimum Wind Chart ]
The above chart shows the minimum productions plotted against the minimum wind speeds.
As you might expect, whenever the wind speed is above the 3.5 m/s cut-in speed the turbine starts producing, but not getting consistently into positive territory until about 4.5 m/s.
Notice the results when the wind doesn’t get above 3.5 m/s – typically there’s a MINUS 50kw of production.
This is power that must be supplied from the grid just to keep the turbine in business.
And 50kw seems to be what the turbine uses to stay alive in good weather. In the winter it gets slightly higher – the highest negative numbers were in the 80 kw range.
So, finally, we have a measurement of just how much electricity they consume! 50 kw is quite a bit higher than my previous findings, which originated in industry statements and cash flow calculations.
Recall that the average Danish turbine produces about 376 kw (1650 * .228). So a V82 operating in Denmark consumes roughly 13% of what it produces.
No wonder they want to keep this quiet.
[ / ]
10
Q. They Shoot Humans, Don’t They?
JUNE 09, 2011
KILLING feral camels (shooting the animals from helicopters or four-wheel-drives) has been suggested as one activity qualifying for carbon credits under Labor’s proposed carbon farming initiative to cut ‘greenhouse gases’.
One camel is estimated to emit about a tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent a year, measured as 45kg of methane,
and they each eat about a tonne of vegetation.
* * *
APRIL 15, 2012
Tens of millions of pounds of UK aid money have been spent on a programme that has forcibly sterilised Indian women and men.
Many have died as a result of botched operations, while others have been left bleeding and in agony.
A number of pregnant women selected for sterilisation suffered miscarriages and lost their babies.
With officials and doctors paid a bonus for every operation, poor and little-educated men and women in rural areas are routinely rounded up and sterilised without having a chance to object.
Yet a working paper published by the UK’s Department for International Development in 2010 cited
the need to fight climate change as one of the key reasons for pressing ahead with such programmes.
The document argued that reducing population numbers would cut greenhouse gases.
. . .
When will they knock on your door for your children’s children?
130
“One camel is estimated to emit about a tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent a year”
The real moronity of it, is that this is just recycled atmospheric CO2, like burning wood chips in Drax power station, or using biofuel.
It will make ABSOLUTELY NO DIFFERENCE to atmospheric CO2.
Sure, the camels are a PITA for the Australia outback and they probably should be culled or ‘harvested’, but to use the excuse of CO2 to cull them, is propaganda to the extreme.
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Been teasing warmists today. My account.
Must add that the Heartland gig was in winter, 2010. Where David and Jo spoke. Won’t bother linking to the leftist site…doesn’t deserve a mention.
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“Been teasing warmists today”
Fun pastime, isn’t it 😉
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Yo, Jo.
That’s a real nice pic 🙂
Looks like a nice canoe or kayak stream.
Not to rough, not too gentle………. just in between 🙂
81
From Chiefio:
”
← Tinkering Around With Nonsense Doesn’t Work
CO2 does not Black Body Radiation make
Posted on 26 May 2014 by E.M.Smith
From the “Oh Dear!” department of unsettling science…
It would seem that the basic notion of CO2 as an emitter of infrared radiation causing ever more “back radiation” to heat the planet with increasing temperatures, the very foundation of the Global Warming runaway greenhouse hypothesis has, er, “has issues”. Which is a polite way of saying it is deeply flawed.
It looks like the only thing with black body radiation is a real black body and that transparent things, like gasses, are not quite the same. In particular, CO2 likes to heat up instead of emit a photon. Now that also means they will tend to hold onto any energy input long enough to whack into one of the other gasses in the air and thermalize any IR they absorbed. Which in turn means that the bulk of the air (Nitrogen, Oxygen, Argon, Water Vapor) will be holding that energy, not the CO2. That, then, means we are are back to “hot air rises” and all the convective processes of the troposphere as “what matters” and that “back radiation” just isn’t going to cut it. All the calculation and hand waving based on “black body” and “back radiation” needs a bit of a do-over.
This paper is the key, but a bit thick to read:
http://ptep-online.com/index_files/2014/PP-38-05.PDF”
Not there yet, but another Nail in the Coffin of the Greenhouse Gas Effect theory.
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Chiefio;
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/
30
Not sure if Water Vapour should have been included in that list.
However it might help to explain why the observed spectrum of sunlight as seen from the ground amd also the Earth’s Infrared spectrum as seen from Satellites has large Absoption bands missing at the H2O and CO2 levels. And also why the corresponding Emission bands are so difficult to find by surface based detectors looking up.
20
As an American I rarely comment on the Australian blogs I frequent. While I have absolutely no objection to Aussies commenting on American politics I just feel uncomfortable commenting on Aussie politics. I do occasionally comment, however, and one of those infrequent comments led to the only time Jo or her mods have snipped me.
What I wrote referring to Julia Gillard is “She thinks she’s pretty but she’s not, and the thinks she’s smarter then she is.” Jo snipped the first phrase but left the second intact.
I have used this sentence many times on blogs without being snipped. The difference is I always gave the back story on the origin of the comment. Here is the back story: In 1991 I and my house mate of the time. Mary Lou, were watching Bill and Hillary on TV explaining one of the many scandals they have been embroiled in. Mary Lou had never set eyes on Hillary before. Her instant comment was: “She thinks she’s pretty but she’s not, and she thinks she’s smarter then she is.” Perfect description of Hillary and Julia to my mind.
Alas, Jo didn’t think so and snipped me. Apparently it is verboten to notice the physical attractiveness of women if you’re male. Not sure if the ban applies to females. I cannot resist saying that Jo trades on her attractiveness. See the photo on the upper right of her homepage.
The obvious question is why am I bringing this up so long after the fact. Obviously, because of the extra care I use in commenting on Aussie and, indeed, any non American politics the snipping irked me. I think Jo was wrong to snip then even without the back story and would be even more wrong to snip now with the back story. I will be interested to see what she does.
MOD ALERT FOR THIS POST!!!!!
60
I should make it clear in light of the previous comment that I worship the ground Jo Nova walks on, and read her blog everyday. It is my belief Jo is one of the most remarkable and important women alive.
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Mod must be asleep this time.
[No we are not -Fly]
Or maybe they liked the back story.
40
It is complicated. As I see it, noticing and commenting on a way that a woman looks, in isolation, and in situations where it is appropriate, is accepted as a compliment – most of the time – if you are lucky.
Where you possibly stepped over the line, was in linking a woman’s looks with her intelligence and/or her professional ability. A man might assess her looks, but that assessment is only a personal opinion, and had nothing to do with her ability to do whatever she does (some professions notwithstanding). It is an accident of birth, if you like.
Unfortunately, Australia has a long history of misogyny, which seems to be rooted in the way that the country was settled, and the class structure that was evident at that time. But those times have past, and Australian society is changing, to value people, of both genders, as individuals for what they can achieve. With some though, it is still a raw point.
It may not have been Jo who did the actual snipping. It may have been one of the moderators having a bad day. I wouldn’t take it personally.
One final comment: Jo has just changed her photo to one that is more recent. I have never met her, but that is probably the way she looks, today. I don’t think she can help that. But at least she is not hanging on to an airbrushed photo of a much younger person, as many American personalities do.
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And many, mostly male, australian candidates for election. Their photos are so manipulated that the actual candidate turning up at a polling station may have most wondering who he is.
10
Women’s Suffrage in South Aus was only a year behind NZ. It followed soon after federation for the whole country.
This would have been the same for both countries, a large rural population of settlers where the landowners did a lot of the physical work and that included the women. The various churches also provided charity schools for the both boys and girls before state education began in the late 19th century, which would be another reason for the minority objection to women getting the vote in these countries.
20
The church college I attended in Adelaide in the very early 1950’s was a co-ed college, one of only two in the state where the girls had identical education in mixed classes and similar disciplines and treatment as the boys.
We didn’t really know or care much that we were different to other schools although sometimes a level of jealousy at our presumed access to the other sex was evident in students from other single sex schools.
It was still a long way from the relaxed mixed sexes education system of today with a strict separation of the sexes outside of classes and outside of combined sports and teams of various types.
Separation was imposed just in case too much contact with the female sex somehow made us boys do things that might make us go blind amongst other unspeakables.
00
You were separated because sex leads to babies. I went to a Catholic co-ed school in the country and the number of unwanted pregnancies wouldn’t have been much less than the local state school.
10
I think Mary Lou was very perceptive.
Gillard and that Clinton woman have a lot in common. They were both militant feminists and extreme left activists in their student days. Both seem unable to tell the truth. And both are Hell-bent on the destruction of Western Civilisation.
But their physical attributes shed little light on their performance, and their intelligence, or lack of it, plays second fiddle to their determination to destroy.
When she was “young and naive”, Gillard was instrumental in an organisation called the “Socialist Forum”, which had distinct ties to the Australian Communist Party and later morphed into the Fabian Society.
I think it accurate to suggest that she has been successful in meeting her objectives. She set out to destroy the Australian Labour Party because it was not sufficiently Marxist for her liking, and to soften the Australian cultural identity and economy for the eventual surrender of sovereignty to the UN. A true “wolf in sheep’s clothing”.
So, given that perspective, do you think Gillard and Clinton share common traits?
20
Mary Lou was and is very perceptive except in her choice of housemates.
The point I am making is the comment is very different coming from a female instead if a male.
From the response I have apparently struck a nerve.
For the mods: When I suspect I am skirting the line I try to insert something in the comment to alert you guys (and gals).
[Point taken – Fly]
10
Prettyness is in the eyes of the beerholder.
40
Yeah…after one beer she not too pretty and after six beer she’s real hot!!!
[Calm down – or I will have to get my snippers out -Fly]
30
And we know what will get snipped 😉
10
http://americanthinker.com/blog/2014/05/scientist_confesses_he_made_up_polar_bear_population_estimates.html#.U4pLKmnUgh8.facebook
And so the uncovering of the warmist scam continues……
[We like it better when the links are closer to the actual story: http://polarbearscience.com/2014/05/30/iucn-polar-bear-specialist-group-says-its-global-population-estimate-was-a-qualified-guess/ ] ED
30
Bishop Hill has a nice take on polar bear numbers today –
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2014/6/1/guess-the-number-of-bears-in-the-freezer.html
00
[Duplicate]
10
Anyone familiar with this recent research? Appeared in Nature:
http://www.c3headlines.com/2014/05/extreme-drought-new-research-confirms-human-co2-not-causing-a-global-drought-increase.html
30
Now here’s a way to fund the ABC’s $1.22 billion budget along the lines of the proposals for the BBC.
Introduce a voluntary annual subscription fee. I calculate that to be about $55 for each Australian, but let’s exclude children and the poor, so call it $100 per subscriber per year.
If the ABC delivered on its charter to deliver fearless independent reporting, I would be happy to subscribe. But while it delivers highly opinionated news reporting and promotes “F” intensive comedy, it wouldn’t get my money. If it wants to be a leftist mouthpiece, let the left pay for it.
The charter of the ABC is as follows under legislation:
6 Charter of the Corporation
(1) The functions of the Corporation are:
(a) to provide within Australia innovative and comprehensive broadcasting services of a high standard as part of the Australian broadcasting system consisting of national, commercial and community sectors and, without limiting the generality of the foregoing, to provide:
(i) broadcasting programs that contribute to a sense of national identity and inform and entertain, and reflect the cultural diversity of, the Australian community; and
(ii) broadcasting programs of an educational nature;
(b) to transmit to countries outside Australia broadcasting programs of news, current affairs, entertainment and cultural enrichment that will:
(i) encourage awareness of Australia and an international understanding of Australian attitudes on world affairs; and
(ii) enable Australian citizens living or travelling outside Australia to obtain information about Australian affairs and Australian attitudes on world affairs; and
(ba) to provide digital media services; and
(c) to encourage and promote the musical, dramatic and other performing arts in Australia
Shame on Mark Scott and the ABC board that they are clearly not delivering on their charter.
30
At The Conversation there is an article
Rising sea levels will be too much, too fast for Florida
The author, a Geology Professor, predicts sea levels will rise 1.25 to 2m by 2100. He top-sliced a NOAA report from 2012. The UNIPCC AR5 upper prediction sea-level rise of less than a metre by 2100, and has low confidence in projections above that. These views are similar to, but slightly moderated from views held in 2008.
The Professor is also Chair of Miami-Dade Climate Change Advisory Task Force. A regional planning report had sea level projections above those of UNIPCC in 2007 and 2013. Given that South-East Florida has huge swathes of low-lying areas, this Professor’s extremist views may be causing unnecessary stress, and reducing property and land values, for hundreds of thousands of people.
I have documented the details of why these projections are extremist at my blog.
http://manicbeancounter.com/2014/06/01/sea-level-rise-extremism-of-professor-wanless-and-possible-consequences-for-miami-dade/
30
Those sea levels better get a ‘leg-up’.
April 11, 2012
Digging up history: Archaeologists pinpoint age of buried Calusa canal in Naples
“For the first time, archaeologists announced Wednesday that they have carbon-dated wood and soil samples to more closely pinpoint the age of a canal that once ran for almost a mile through present-day Old Naples to connect the Gulf of Mexico and Naples Bay.
… experts estimate the canal could have been dug between A.D. 1200 and A.D. 1400, archaeologists said.
It was a modern-day water line project that gave archaeologists their first glimpse of the long-buried canal, Carr said.”
. . .
More historical evidence sea levels are not rising to doomsday levels.
20
Apparently they mean Naples ,Florida! I was a bit confused at first.
20
I am not surprised. My reaction was “WTF!”
20
Jo,
FYI
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2014/06/01/le-chatelier-and-his-principle-vs-the-trouble-with-trenberth/#comments
30
Thanks,
Quite a long read, but interesting. At least if you are as obsessed with the errors of the greenhouse gas effect theory as I am.
Chiefio seems to conclude that CO2 is a Cool Gas ( ie it it causes atmospheric cooling).
40
Last week William Connolley aka Stoat joined in the comments to the West Antarctica article. Mr Connolley is famous as a serial editor of Wikipedia, making it very pro-alarmist, and having helping to ensure a strong adverse bias in the articles pf any in the skeptic community. He even edited the entry of our host Joanne Nova. Shortly afterwards he got banned.
As well as turning up here, Mr Connolley also tried to comment at Pointman’s website, where comment moderation is in place. Pointman, who at a score to settle, had some fun, then published an hilarious article about the exchange.
http://thepointman.wordpress.com/2014/05/29/the-scorning-of-william-connolley/
60
And now you have cross referenced, and so Pointman is still getting hits – great stuff – Connolly is such a dweeb.
60
Connolly will also be forever known as the man who ruined Wikipedia, and led to it’s [near] downfall.
60
The WC…. All you can do is keep flushing.. Eventually it will sink.
52
Anyone know what’s up with the Tim Blair and Andrew Bolt blog pages? I’ve been getting “access denied” errors for the past 24 hours. I’m in the USA and just wondering if everyone else is having the same problem or if it is something country specific.
Here are my bookmarked links.
http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/timblair/
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/
20
Looks like the websites are being reworked, with new addresses.
At http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/opinion you get “access denied” when you click on the individuals blogs, but you can access the latest articles.
At http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/opinion you can access the blogs. For instance http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/opinion/andrew-bolt
30
Thanks for that, Kevin.
I am already feeling the first pangs of withdrawal though. Hope they get them back on line soon.
10
Looks like the format of the Andrew Bolt web page has changed – kinda reads like a newspaper rather than as blog posts.
I don’t really like it very much. I can’t read Tim Blair, but good old Piers Akerman is still original – so far.
All in all – not a fan.
Michael Smith News is still unchanged for anyone interested in following the AWU/Gillard/Wilson Royal Commission.
00
Now there’s the oddest thing – Andrew Bolt Blog works fine from home and in the old format, and so does Tim Blair.
00
Different browsers, or different browser releases?
00
Same browser different links.
00
But I also work in an environment which is very workplace surveillance dedicated including all e-mail, intra-net, internet and other devices activity so browser settings are out of our control – I actually think half of us are employed to watch the other half who are employed to avoid being watched.
00
Thanks Bob, the old links work just fine.
00
Sunday, May 25, 2014
Just a few weeks from now, scientists from across the globe will gather in the town of Les Eyzies in the Dordogne to commemorate one of the most important – and fortuitous – events in the study of human origins.
They will congregate to mark the 150th anniversary of the discovery of the Madeleine mammoth, a small piece of ancient art that provided unequivocal proof of the deep antiquity of Homo sapiens.
Its discovery was also an act of extraordinary good fortune, it transpires.
“On the day the engraving was found, two of the world’s leading palaeontologists happened to be at the site,” says Jill Cook, an ice age art expert at the British Museum. “The piece had been fragmented and workmen carrying out the excavations would never have realised this.
They would have simply dumped the bits into a bag and forgotten about them.”
Evidence had been mounting throughout the 18th century that our planet was incredibly old and that life had existed on it for a very long time – much, much longer than the figure of under 6,000 years that Bishop Ussher had derived in the 17th century for the date of the Earth and all living things.
For example, in the 1840s, scientists had begun to realise that rock and gravel deposits found in the Alps and other regions had not been laid down by the flood but were the leftovers of the glaciers and giant icecaps that had covered much of Europe.
Today, we know these events as ice ages, but at the time the period was simply called the reindeer age, because remains of these north dwelling creatures were being found at digs in southern Europe, an indication of the intense cold that must then have enveloped the continent in the distant past, it was argued.
THE MAMMOTH THAT TRAMPLED ON THE HISTORY OF MANKIND
10
Nicholas Steno.
10
Here’s the kind of PR and BS the solar industry is putting out. This is real time monitoring of the solar energy generated at my local park, complete with fancy graphic work and all the Environmental benefits listed in real time.
You can also get a page with the meters for each park in the district, also in real time.
You may especially “appreciate all the information under the , “Why Solar?”, tab. Notice how they mix real useful applications for solar with the completely unreal. One shot shows the solar panels that provide power for railroad signaling out in the Arizona desert. This is an application with low power demand and batteries can be charged with little difficulty for night use. And the railroad has safety at issue as well as revenue so they closely monitor everything. The park district needs to run even on the most overcast day with a heavy rainstorm going on. Good luck going solar, California.
I didn’t ask what the park district had to put out to get this system but I suspect it’s next to nothing compared with the real cost in return for a commitment to buy all the resulting power at below utility rates. And to guarantee they could buy every last kWHr the installations were intentionally sized for 80% of the daily load at each site. I have that in writing in an email from the park district contact who replied to my questions.
I doubt that these installations are capable of supporting S-Power so I wonder who is actually paying for all this hardware and monitoring and I suspect the taxpayers are the ones feeling the bite.
00
PS: Notice all that data about, “When will oil run out?”
Scare’s the pants off the ignorant who vote these fools into office repeatedly. But I’m thinking there’ll be a change someday in the not too distant future with corporations like Toyota leaving California for Texas.
10
So what do you guys think? Does the claim that Co2 has increased 30% accurately represent the change from 300ppm to 400pm? I think it does not describe the difference accurately. I think this is intentionally misleading to the general public.
Thoughts?
21
We could look at it as an “availability to plant life” number.
At about 200ppm (roughly), it becomes essentially unavailable to plants….. ie they die.
So lets take that as the approximate zero point of availability.
So a change from 300ppm to 400ppm is a 100% increase in CO2 availability to life’s major building block.
This is GOOD !!!!!
52
Excellent reply there, Griss.
The biologically useable atmospheric CO2 has doubled in availability over the last 50 years hence the now well recognised “Greening” of the planet including shrinkage of the world’s major deserts such as the Sahara over the last couple of decades .
How Fossil Fuels Have Greened the Planet
51
How on this earth anybody would be so bloody ignorant and stupid as to give a red thumb for pointing out something that is actually increasing the amounts of entirely natural plant life and therefore life of every description, all of which life depends totally on CO2 using plant life, is way beyond my understanding of a visible intelligence at any conceivable level.
But I guess some mothers do have them, sad as that may be
51
One could say that might be accurate for a spot in a volcanic area in mid Pacific.
My understanding is that the composition of Earth’s atmosphere is not perfectly homogeneous, and that the the presence of a trace gas can be a varying quantities depending upon proximity to emitters of carbon dioxide such as swamps and other rotting vegetation. Experiments in Iowa in the 1940’s demonstrated that this varied dramatically over the course of a day. I believe that those experiments illustrated concentrations of 400 PPM in the pre-dawn hours.
For a local example, recent measurements by Hydro Tasmania suggest that the decomposing vegetable matter in Lake Gordon and Lake Pedder (that feed the Gordon hydro-electric power station), produce more CO2 than a coal-fired power station of similar capacity.
40
Brian Cox once pointed out that CO2 levels doubled up and down over just 24 hours in the rain forest. I think that was his last broadcast on the BBC.
00
Brian Cox is a BBC wunderkind.
He has discovered something that Dyson Freeman said some time ago i.e. the growing cornfield almost depletes the Atmospheric CO2 overhead. If not for the wind growth must stop!
I doubt that Brian Cox, being a wunderkind, has read Dyson Freeman.
00
No. It should be 33.33%
😉
01
We are talking about the “available” carbon point of 200ppm being the effective zero point.
300ppm is 100ppm above this,
400ppm is 200ppm above
therefore we have doubled the “available” carbon.. ie a 100% increase.
12
And the biosphere is LUVIN’ IT 🙂
12
maximum coverage – much of it fact-free – from the CAGW-friendly NYT, to support the White House’s pronouncements this week. all these plus much more on this page!
1 June: NYT Opinion Pages: Room for Debate: Can the Market Stave Off Global Warming?
Is cap and trade the best chance for stemming climate change, or are other methods needed? …
The Only Feasible Way of Cutting Emissions
by Robert N. Stavins, Albert Pratt professor of business and government at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and the director of the Harvard Project on Climate Agreements…
As climate change has become an increasing concern, cap and trade has most often been the instrument of choice. The first and largest example is the European Union Emissions Trading System…
Strong Limits and Government Funds are Best
by Doreen Stabinsky, professor of global environmental politics at the College of the Atlantic, and a consultant to governments and nongovernmental organizations on agriculture and climate change…
Europe Shows It Can Work, With Strong Limits
by Stig Schjolset. head of carbon analysis at Thomson Reuters Point Carbon, a provider of news and analysis for commodity markets…
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2014/06/01/can-the-market-stave-off-global-warming/cap-and-trade-is-the-only-feasible-way-of-cutting-emissions
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1 June: WSJ: Amy Harder: EPA Power-Plant Proposal Will Seek 30% Carbon Dioxide Emissions Cut by 2030
Plan Sets in Motion Main Piece of President Obama’s Climate-Change Agenda
The Environmental Protection Agency will propose a draft rule on Monday seeking a 30% reduction in carbon-dioxide emissions by 2030 from existing power plants based on emission levels from 2005, according to two people who have been briefed on the rule, setting in motion the main piece of President Barack Obama’s climate-change agenda.
The rule, scheduled to be completed one year from now, will give flexibility to the states, which must implement the rules and submit compliance plans to EPA by June 2016. States can decide how to meet the reductions, including joining or creating new cap-and-trade programs, deploying more renewable energy or ramping up energy-efficiency technologies.
Each state will have different percent reduction standards, and the national average will be 25% by 2020 and 30% by 2030, these people said…
http://online.wsj.com/articles/epa-power-plant-proposal-will-seek-30-carbon-dioxide-emissions-cut-by-2030-sources-1401650325
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Oh, ho ho ho. You just have to laugh here, and here I mean out of control, rolling around the floor laughing, pain inducing laughter.
This is so far out there in the realms of ridiculous statements, and is in fact IMPOSSIBLE to achieve: (My bolding)
Note how this is not whole of Country wide reduction in emissions, just being aimed very deliberately at the electrical power generating sector, coal fired power as the main target, with Natural Gas Fired power as a secondary target.
So then, let’s look at that 30% reduction figure, based on 2005 data. (for just the electricity generating sector)
The total CO2 emissions from that sector in 2005 were 3.8 Billion Tons.
The total CO2 emissions from that sector NOW, in 2014 are 3.7 Billion tons.
That’s a current reduction of 3.6% ….. in nine years.
He now has 16 years until 2030, the date for this reduction.
Since 2005 coal fired plants have been closing, nearly all of them time expired and of tiny to small Nameplate Capacity. The total power ACTUALLY DELIVERED from those closed plants has been replaced, in MORE than its totality by new Natural Gas Fired plants, so it’s been a sideways move to another CO2 emitting power generation source. Natural Gas emits less CO2 so that accounts for the 3.6% overall reduction.
So, in effect, right now, they have to stop ALL new power generation plants which emit CO2, because, using what is happening now as an example, then the actual reduction might be as high as a further 4.8% reduction, resulting in an overall reduction of 8.4%.
Now, using that 8.4% ACTUAL, that effectively means the closure of a further 21.6% of existing CO2 emissions.
Because Natural Gas is replacing coal fired power, then that figure of 21.6% reduction IS aimed directly at coal fired power. (and hey please don’t tell what is actually happening here, that coal fired power, with less plants, is delivering more power, in fact it has risen for the last 2 years, 5% in 2012/3 and 5% in 2013/14 so far)
So, a reduction of 21.6% in coal fired power takes out one fifth of the whole coal fired power fleet, a removal of 355 TWH from the grids across the U.S. which comes in at around 9.5% of ALL U.S. electrical power generation.
Now, while 9.5% sounds like it could be doable, please don’t make me laugh.
Wind and solar power have ramped up considerably since that target date 2005, in fact by a factor of TEN, in other words ten times more power delivered than in 2005. In that time, coal fired power has been replaced in MORE than its totality by NG plants, so in fact wind and solar power have not replaced ONE coal fired plant, and hey, who bloody cares, they can’t supply power on the same time basis as coal and NG anyway. And do I need to say again that NOT ONE large scale coal fired power plant larger than 800MW Nameplate has closed since I started writing about this in early 2008. And hey, even if you do have the mistaken belief that it could be supplied from renewables (ramped up by a factor of ten in 9 years) both wind and solar power currently deliver 183TWH, so they need to double existing totals by 2030, another thing that WILL NOT happen, and again, hey, who cares, 7 hours a day versus 24 hours a day power delivery. It’s meaningless.
This is just so absolutely ridiculous.
And for all you renewable power urger trolls out there, hey ….. PROVE ME WRONG. Look at what has happened over the last nine years. Magic Bullet, fairy dust, blind belief that something will turn up.
Give me strength.
Tony.
Source EIA – Total power generation, coal and NG generation, coal consumption, NG consumption. and renewable power generation for wind and solar power.
POST SCRIPT – Australia’s total power consumption is around 235TWH.
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2 June: SMH: Bloomberg: Obama’s carbon curbs nullified by expanding China, India
“It’s not a magic bullet,” Alden Meyer, director of strategy and policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said in an interview…
And while making electricity creates 40 per cent of the greenhouse gases in the US, cutting it as Obama proposes will not come close to meeting the global reduction scientists say is necessary to reverse warming. For one thing, the amount of the US cuts would be replaced more than three times over by projected increases in China alone…
Were US emissions cut to zero, “global emissions would continue to increase,” Robert Stavins, director of Harvard University’s Environmental Economics Program, said in an e-mail. “So, the direct impacts of the new power plant rules on atmospheric greenhouse-gas concentrations will be small.”
According to the World Resources Institute in Washington, 1,200 coal-fired plants are proposed globally, with more than three-quarters of those planned for India and China alone. If all are built, which WRI says is unlikely, that would add more than 80 per cent to existing capacity…
Spur investments
All of this doesn’t mean Obama’s effort won’t matter…
The regulation in the US, once it is fully implemented in the coming years, could spur investments in carbon-capture equipment or other technology that reduces carbon pollution, said Armond Cohen, the president of the Clean Air Task Force, an environmental group supportive of Obama’s effort. And once those technologies are introduced in the US, they can spread.
“You start creating markets like this, and investors pile in,” Cohen said in an interview. “The real significance of this rule may not be in the US, it may be in China or Indonesia.”…
“The poorest countries in the world are those most impacted by climate change,” said Michael Wilkins, managing director of the credit ratings agency…
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/obamas-carbon-curbs-nullified-by-expanding-china-india-20140602-zrumd.html
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1 June: Aljazeera America: Renee Lewis: Green energy investment set to ‘explode’ after Obama unveils carbon cuts
“If you’re working in the solar or wind industry, you should feel very happy right now — those are the industries growing faster than the rest of economy,” Mike Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club, said. “It’s clear that those are going to be the industries to work in, invest in, and watch. They’re about to explode in terms of growth.”…
The new rules could bolster an industry that has already benefited from a flow of new cash, and new demand.
Warren Buffett, the billionaire owner of Iowa utility MidAmerican, announced a $1.9bn investment into wind farms earlier this month. The utility plans to generate almost half of its electricity by wind power by 2017…
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/6/1/obama-carbon-epa.html
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“Green energy investment set to ‘explode’ after Obama unveils carbon cuts…”
Do they ‘explode’ before, after, or during the time when energy prices will ‘necessarily skyrocket’?
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there’s a sting in the tail!
2 June: Guardian: Rowena Mason: Queen’s speech: infrastructure bill to let developers off zero-carbon pledge
Bill would exempt all small housing developments from new green standards and allow builders to pay their way out of full obligations
The coalition has effectively abandoned a pledge to make all new homes “zero-carbon” by 2016, as new legislation in the Queen’s speech would not apply to housing built in small developments and companies would be allowed to buy exemptions from new green standards.
Ministers have repeatedly watered down the goal of making sure all new housing does not create any carbon emissions and the new infrastructure bill would hand another gift to developers in an effort to encourage the construction of more homes…
Where the developer chooses not to go “zero-carbon”, they can build a home with emissions 44% lower than 2006 levels and make up for this by contributing to alternative green schemes at a rate of between £38 and £90 per tonne of carbon to be saved…
Liberal Democrat sources said the party was pushing for developers to have to pay at the highest end of this scale and claimed that the bill would not have happened at all without their influence…
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/jun/02/queens-speech-infrastructure-bill-zero-carbon
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One day in the future all these junk tales about climate will be out of the news. How will that happen? Will the UN declare it all a mistake and disband the IPCC? Will our favorite climate toxicologists make an international public apology? It will end, but how? Any ideas? Is there anything we can do to speed it up?
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1 June: Bloomberg: Tom Zeller Jr: Obama’s Carbon Rules Can Boost the Economy
(Tom Zeller Jr. is a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT, studying the intersection of politics, science and energy policy. Zeller spent 15 years as a staff writer and editor at the New York Times, National Geographic magazine and the Huffington Post.)
When the federal government moves to clear the air, fossil-fuel interests hyperventilate…
But as the debate heats up over the EPA’s new greenhouse gas rules — and there will be substantial debate — it’s worth keeping the end-times wailing of the fossil-fuel lobby in perspective…
Some key points:
Pollution, including CO2, costs a lot, too…
A recent analysis from the Natural Resources Defense Council estimated that new greenhouse gas limits on power plants could reduce electric bills for U.S. households and businesses by as much as $37.4 billion by 2020, and create more than 274,000 jobs.
Sure, the NRDC isn’t exactly an impartial observer, but then neither is the API or the U.S. Chamber…
They brought it on themselves. Lest we forget, American businesses and their Republican patrons in Congress worked double-time to water-down and then ultimately kill the passage of comprehensive cap-and-trade climate legislation back in 2010..
Americans overwhelmingly support tough pollution rules. Whether its curbing cross-state pollution from power plants, reducing the amount of mercury and air toxins that they produce, or limiting the amount of planet-warming gases they emit, polls routinely show strong support among American voters. In a survey published by Yale University last week, 64 percent of respondents said they supported strict lints on carbon dioxide from power plants — even if it meant electricity rates would be higher…
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-06-01/obama-s-carbon-rules-can-boost-the-economy
i doubt very much that Zeller believes the NRDC prediction, that this Yale survey reflects public opinion or even that CAGW is real!
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New mineral shows nature’s infinite variability
Tuesday, 22 April 2014
A University of Adelaide mineralogy researcher has discovered a new mineral that is unique in structure and composition among the world’s 4,000 known mineral species.
Dr Peter Elliott has described ‘putnisite’, found in a surface outcrop at Lake Cowan, north of Norseman in Western Australia.
“Most minerals belong to a family or small group of related minerals, or if they aren’t related to other minerals they often are to a synthetic compound – but putnisite is completely unique and unrelated to anything.
“Nature seems to be far cleverer at dreaming up new chemicals than any researcher in a laboratory.”
~ ~ ~
Further evidence of “Open-Ended Resourceship”.
This insight reorients the peak-oil debate.
“If resources are not fixed but created, then the nature of the scarcity problem changes dramatically.
For the technological means involved in the use of resources determines their creation and therefore the extent of their scarcity.
The nature of the scarcity is not outside the process (that is natural), but a condition of it.
There is no law of conservation of value; value is continually, routinely created by the market process.
And this value creation does not deplete–just the opposite. “
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Missed this quote (from many) from the ‘open ended resourceship’ link:
The total supply of any mineral is unknown and unknowable because the future knowledge that would create mineral resources cannot be known before its time.
Human ingenuity and capital investment under a regime of economic calculation can lead society to new combinations of minerals—or minerals and non-minerals—to perform the same (or better) economic services over time.
The process can even morph between goods that are considered depletable (in the natural science sense) and ones that are considered nondepletable, for example, between crude oil and agricultural oils (ethanol, biodiesel).
. . .
Who knows the future of ‘putnisite’?
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Solar roadways!! – this will make Tony internally hemorrhage.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlTA3rnpgzU#t=341
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Hmm,
No mention of the battery backup required to run the lights in those panels at night, or under adverse weather conditions. Flooding would be interesting, and what would Moose pee do to them, I wonder?
Guess I am just a skeptic …
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Almost Twelve and half million views!
Umm, and the cost is …..
Internal hemorrhage, but only from laughter.
Tony.
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Ah! America, the land where the streets and roads are paved with gold or was that solar panels.
Same thing actually only a gold paving would still be worth somewhere around it’s original value after a decade or so.
Worth of solar roadways after a decade or so ? Why ask?
If durability testing of the solar roadways is required we have a few highly experienced Hoons around here we would happily export to the USA as very experienced testers of road surfaces, various makes of vehicles and local policing techniques.
We could have volunteered Lewendowsky to do the psychiatric testing on the promoters but he has left Australia fortunately.
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“we have a few highly experienced Hoons”
Yep, once covered in a good thick layer of car rubber, I’m sure how well the solar bit will work.
But maybe, like wind turbines, they can draw FROM the grid to keep them working.
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I sure wish I could sell horse feathers to the Federal Highway Administration. I’d never have to work again. I’d get rich! I’d also be selling the biggest joke I’ve ever seen. There’s that little problem of nighttime and overcast days, stormy days they don’t mention.
I’ve got to hand it to them though; when they dream they sure do dream BIG.
I wonder what the price tag for this is going to be. Or should I ask that question?
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I’m NOT sure how well the solar bit will work. !
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Someone asked about the power consumption of idle windmills.
I don’t have any data on the windmills in Tasmania at hand. I doubt that it is measured.
However this article suggests a parasitic load of 86 kW for eight idle machines and ten kW for five idle machines.
This article I suggest is a slight exaggeration. Blade heating for anti-icing of course is only required in some locations in winter, and is a reasonably new feature. Other arguments are posed in this article.
Bear in mind that a fossil fuelled power station has a considerable parisitic load as well. While prudent operators work diligently to keep this minimal, it is typically about 3% of rated output for a CCGT plant, and more for a coal fired facility with induced draft and forced draft fans, coal crushers, etc.
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