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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Statistics
I don’t know about odd, but the crazies are out in force at this years mid-year lickfest between failed Climate Conferences in Bonn this week, with:-
Power to The People
Interesting how the rhetoric becomes increasingly desperate while increasingly South American in flavour.
150
The neo-Luddites are a strange breed. Incomprehensible really. I suppose they consider themselves virtuous? Deserving of a Darwin Award they stomp about, from one environmental conference to another, little realising that the luxury of their position is bequeathed to them courtesy of the very progress they decry.
Nonetheless, they have generally behaved with faultless predictability, providing a reliable harness for the Progressive Green Left, although the ‘civil society’ they crow about has long since been Gored to death by platitudes of inconvenience. We are far past that use by date.
Being reduced to ‘Volveremos’ though, that must be a gut wrencher.
100
At the end of Prohibition in March 1933, Mencken quaffed a tumbler of water and declared that he had not had a drink of water for thirteen years!
80
70 years since first engagements in the liberation of Europe this week
” Helmut Roemer was the first German soldier to face the Allied invasion of mainland Europe. …
….He was a guard on watch at Pegasus Bridge on the Caen canal in Normandy on the night of 5-6 June, 1944 when… large gliders landed ahead of him and disgorged British troops, their faces blackened. They opened fire. Roemer was not heroic – he shouted, let off a flare and ran for his life. ”
and happily he survived.
http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-27730193
100
That first engagement of the invasion was commanded by a Scotsman, Iain A Murray, lest the politicos in Holyrood seduce the resident populace into forgetting we’re better together, when it matters.
Wouldn’t Australia have to change its flag too if Scotland sails off into the North Sea ?
60
The celebrated Australian Correspondent Chester Wilmot was on that flight.
“On D-Day he flew into France by glider with the British 6th Airborne Division and soon earned fame as a correspondent covering many of Britain’s major operations. He was present at the German surrender in May 1945 and at the Nuremberg Trials.”
Here on Page 160 from the commander’s account of how Wilmot’s tape recorder copped a bit of shrapnel on the flight.
10
But only because he shouted “the climate is changing”, “the climate is changing”.
101
At the D-Day ceremony it appears that President Obama was caught chewing gum by some astute observers.
Tut, tut, Mr. President. Where are your manners?
Twitter is, “…chewing him up…” over it. Too bad the taste is so bad. 🙁
100
Our first black president, the one whose supporters are so eager to chant his praises, is just a damned nitwit without any respect for anyone.
112
I noticed the swagger, and the waves to the crowd, along the thinking of “This is all about me.”
HRH Her Majesty the Queen was the last to arrive, and it reminded me of when I was RAAF trade trainee back at Wagga Wagga in the late 60’s.
One of the young men on the Course I was on was an Englishman, and he used to cop an endless good natured ribbing from everyone, you know Ten Pound Poms etc, and actually he got here for free. He joined the RAAF in London and then sent him out here on the ship for free, so he got an ocean cruise to a warmer climate and a good job waiting for him on arrival. He said that was his little joke on the rest of us.
He just loved the RAAF, and was a really nice guy, took all the ribbing in good fun.
We used to all go to the movies on the base on midweek nights, and before each show started, they would play the National Anthem, when it was still God Save The Queen.
One night early on after our Course started, same same, movies, National Anthem.
As we all started to stand, Stu said in quite a loud voice ….. “good to see you Aussies standing for a Pom!”
Got his own back, en masse!
Tony.
70
When a leftist president loses support from Überleftist like the elitist Noam Chomsky, you know he’s a real danger to us all –
http://dailycaller.com/2014/06/04/chomsky-obama-determined-to-demolish-the-foundations-of-our-civil-liberties/
70
Tony,
You caught exactly the essence of Obama. When he announced the killing of bin Laden he said, “…my seals…,” not, our seals, as they really are. He may command them but they belong to the country. Very telling little slip of the tongue I’m afraid.
Narcissism all the way, do or die. But narcissist to the end.
20
A clear insight when the screen was split to just a gum-chewing Obama and Putin. When they both looked towards each other, guess who blinked first and quickly looked the other way? Classic body language said it in spades. Vlad just kept his thin smile, probably thinking, “gotcha, that wood duck, 0; me, another 10”. And perhaps, “We Russians broke the Nazi’s back at Stalingrad, while you would like to claim all the glory”.
Without doubt the only “leader” there chewing gum, a sure sign of sociopathic showing a disconnect with the event and a lack of humility or respect towards those who never came home 70 years ago, or since. A lame duck politician with no concept of what happens to people as a result of their “humanitarian wars”, yet keen to send plenty of “our boys” off as canon fodder to keep business flowing for the military supply chain complex.
One could surmise Obama probably wasn’t chewing gum as stress relief as he pondered over the outcomes of his policies, as the suicides and collatoral impact on families of military personnel increase. In this case, pollies of his ilk and other “elite”, 10; the normal law and consitution abiding populace, 0.
70
Obama only talks the talk.
Putin walks the walk.
10
I noticed that Roy, gross.
🙂
40
When confronted with “Where’s you taste”, Obama replied spearmint.
30
Fair wack of the sauce bottle.
Chewing gum is the least harmful thing he has done since coming to power.
50
I never thought of it that way before but you’re right. Perhaps we should make sure he’s so well supplied with chewing gum that he can’t do anything else. Chewing gum would be less expensive for the taxpayers too, a winning situation for the whole country. 😉
10
It is easy to obtain confirmations, or verifications, for nearly every theory — if we look for confirmations.
A theory which is not refutable by any conceivable event is non-scientific. Irrefutability is not a virtue of a theory (as people often think) but a vice.
Some genuinely testable theories, when found to be false, are still upheld by their admirers — for example by introducing ad hoc some auxiliary assumption, or by reinterpreting the theory ad hoc in such a way that it escapes refutation. Such a procedure is always possible, but it rescues the theory from refutation only at the price of destroying, or at least lowering, its scientific status.
Anybody think of an example ?
111
From the previous post and plagiarizing ROM and Rereke, Acid rain and Hole in the Ozone layer jumped out at me as they were actually debated at various times during my High School years.
I find that people who are so persistent in continuing to believe in false scientific theories are usually desperate and need to not only believe but belong to a cause that is usually against the mainstream grain, this is fine if applied within the scientific theory but gets very blurred when applied with political bias.
110
I think it is interesting that we got rid of all the CFC’s and still the Ozone Hole remained, exactly where it had always been, even before it was noticed.
But of course by then, the vapourous hand-wringers had moved on to Global Weirding, so the Ozone Hole was forgotten.
But since it is still there, and since it represents the only real victory the vapourous hand-ringers have ever achieved, I fully expect it to return, as a fall-back position, as the CO2 scam runs out of steam.
80
History channel ran a doco last night called “War on Witches”.
CAGW is is exactly the same phenomenon. EXACTLY!
It started with a book of nonsense in 1597 and for the next couple of hundred years innocents were blamed for everything undesirable. Needless to say, not only thousands of innocent women, but society in general suffered terribly. History does repeat itself.
140
It looks like the witch thing is going to pushed on us again. My mum brought it up yesterday as somebody gave her a book to read on the subject.
Not many people were executed for being a witch in Christian Europe. It was preached that belief in heathen nonsense such as women who rode about at night, hobgoblins and were-wolves, was one of the greatest of sins. Others accepted fantasies as sleeping with Satan and demons, possibly believing them to be metaphors for what common people could not understand: wanton sexual behaviour was bad for the community (people didn’t know about germs and how diseases spread and it was always the woman’s fault).
Many people were executed for being heretics and a thirteenth century decree cautioned to limit investigations to where there was clear heresy. There were more people executed for witchcraft in secular courts and Protestant countries than Catholic ones. It might be easy to count heretics as witches but there is enough evidence that the persecution of witches was the persecution of drug dealers. One of the few well documented cases was of a man who was accused of using witchcraft to seduce a young woman who later committed suicide. The idea that midwives were considered witches because they took work away from doctors is silly, but that they were persecuted for giving herbs to induce abortions is not.
The Salem witch trials were also interesting because there is strong evidence of LSD tripping through ergot tainted rye by victims, accused and the court who later regretted what they did. One of the tests for witchcraft used in that trial was giving the urine of a victim to a dog to see if the dog goes nuts.
50
Worst of all the male witchcraft deniers, they were accused of peaching warlocks.
.
🙂
( from fond memories of an old Benny Hill show)
30
I am absolutely convinced that witches exist.
I had a girlfriend once, who claimed to be a witch, and we had a long conversation on the subject, while we were driving north in England.
I demanded proof that she was a witch. Whereupon she put her hand on my thigh, and blew in my ear.
I turned into a rest area.
130
Boom Tish!
Did you hear about the two wizards that went poof? h/t Graham Kennedy.
30
A quick thought about the calendar and average monthly temperatures. There was no February 29 this year. This has the effect of making the post Feb months all occur a bit earlier compared to the seasons of a leap year. So is it a surprise that some monthly post Feb temperatures appear just a tad above average down under?
40
Well I suppose , ridiculous as it might seem, that would be somewhat more statistically significant than 1°C change in 100 years.
80
According to NASA 0.81℃ from 1850 to 2012, and more than half that BEFORE 1878. (Would James Hansen be downplaying global warming?)
0.39℃ in 134 years and 104 ppm CO2.
All these ridiculous claims are to distract from the figures.
100
… and from the warmest May EVVVVAAAAA downunder – I awoke this morning at 04:30 to find my staffy snuggled under the doona and a thick layer of frost outside at -3c.
This is the beginning of winter for us and it looks like there’ll be a few “two-dog nights” so I’ll need to get another staffy.
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James we have 2 fluffy hot water bottles also known as Maltese Terriers also affectionately refered to as “Fluppets” a morphing of Fluffy and Muppet. 🙂
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Yonnie, just gotta luv em don’t ya.
40
Their names aren’t Fluffy and Muppet as that would be embarrassing.
Their actual names are Portia and Biron 🙂
http://s1295.photobucket.com/user/Yonniestone/media/yonnie%
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Glad to hear they have proper names Yonnie. We had neighbours in England with a rather nasty-tempered black labrador called Muppet; pretty incongruous. It’s unusual for a black lab to be nasty…we’ve met only one other many years ago. They are usually lovely sooks.
There must be a dog somewhere that would suit ‘Fluppet’…
00
Incredible to think that PUP is still this popular in QLD.
Bob Katter doesn’t seem to be registering much anymore but at least the Greens and Labor are still battling to reach 40% of the vote.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/palmer_twice_as_popular_as_greens_in_queensland/
20
I see PUP is now polling at a bit above 13%.
They say you get the government you deserve.
People must want to be governed by a heddonist who turned a large, profitable resort into business disaster yet is canny enough to claim millions in losses from an enterprise which is now essentially a private property.
40
A certain environment minister is considering closing a nickel refinery down due to leaching toxins from tailings dams.
80
Been over at a left wing site trying to reason with them but it has been futile.
They reckon that Abbott is a puppet controlled by Gina Rinehart, Rupert Murdoch and the IPA. I have asked for evidence of this but all I received were links to other lefties perpetrating the wacky conspiracy theory. The hatred of Abbott and the right there is psychotic!
One author, who claims to be university educated wrote a thread on Australia’s debt position not knowing how the issuing of government bonds operates. Said that we should just keep printing money like the USA.
They do have climate change threads there. The usual “our children and grandchildren” emotive nonsense but so ill informed not really worth engaging.
I remember reading some graffiti when I travelled on the Cronulla line when I was a kid. “Beam me up Scottie, there are no intelligent life forms here.”
Regretting when the left gets their hairy palmed hands back on the levers of power in this country.
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I had a bumper sticker that said that.
00
Request for information?????
I’m trying to track down information about the atmospheric CO2 levels during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM). There appears to be no consistent information about the CO2 levels were during the PETM and CO2 levels appear to based on guestimates of 1,000 ppm pre PETM to 1,700 ppm post PETM. Is anyone able to confirm the CO2 levels during the PETM? The warmist have been using the PETM in their latest scare about ocean acidification when the cause of the PETM and the CO2 are largely unknown.
20
There is some information here –
http://www.fact-index.com/p/pa/paleocene_eocene_thermal_maximum.html .
Unfortunately I found many of their links broken.
It would appear that the man to seek is Robert Speijer,
and a search for – Paleocene-Eocene PETM Robert Speijer – in google scholar should be productive.
20
tom0mason:
Robert P. Speijer
PhD (Utrecht University)
Professor in geology and paleontology
KU Leuven · Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences
Author of 104 articles. Try Researchgate.
10
Try setting up your equipment at the Palmer Coolum Resort.
10
Geologic Time Scale 2004 (Gradstien, Smith, & Ogg) had some great paleochemical charts. Most libraries purchased copies of this initial work. The update (2012, by Gradstein et al) does not have as extensive a series of charts, but is still a good reference.
See if you can locate Berner & Kothavala, GEOCARB III; it is the most cited reference in the literature.
Hope that helps; if nothing else, look into InterLibrary Loan (if it exists where you live).
00
This http://www.cmmap.org/research/docs/jan12/cm-marat.pdf is a fairly comprehensive, easily understood paper on PETM. He covers a lot of points advocates for climate change often bring up.
00
how utterly dishonest is the following on the Obama/EPA carbon rules?
begins with Obama claiming “up to 100,000 asthma attacks and 2,100 heart attacks will be avoided”.
Green calls it “BIG” step, ANU’s Stephen agrees it is a “BIG” step. Climate Council’s Amanda brings up “extreme weather” that isn’t happening. Green says CC must be on G20 climate agenda; Amanda agrees any “credible” Govt must deal with CC;
Stephen says it will be in the G20 communique; Amanda later mentions how important it is that China came out the day after the announcement to declare they would put an absolute cap on carbon emissions:
7 June: ABC Sunday Extra: Climate Change Politics
PHOTO IMAGE: (CHIMNEYS, WATER VAPOUR)
US President Barack Obama has announced a bold plan to force power companies to cut emissions by 30 per cent on 2005 levels by 2030
It’s been called one of the strongest actions ever taken by the US to combat global warming.
There also been talk this week that China might act to cap its total emissions.
So with Prime Minister Tony Abbott already signalling that climate change will take a back seat at the G20, is Australia now lagging behind?
Guests:
Amanda Mckenzie
Chief Executive of the Climate Council
Professor Stephen Howes
Director of Development Policy Centre at Australian National University
Presenter
Jonathan Green
Producer
Serpil Senelmis
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/sundayextra/845-segment/5502448
30
We were at a family gathering for most of yesterday and last night. Our Son and his partner visited here and stayed with our daughter and her husband. We had a barbecue, and there were 11 people all up.
Had Wombok salad for the first time. Yum! I saw this bland deep dish of shredded cabbage, and thought OK, not really.
Then just before the barbecue food came on stream, I watched our Son’s partner put it all together. Crunchy noodles were added and mixed through, and then the dressing spooned over the top. Turned it into an appetising looking dish.
Plenty of food, hence plenty of seconds. I went back for more of that Wombok salad.
Yum!
That one’s a keeper.
Isn’t it great here in Oz when you can have an outdoor barbecue with cold beer ….. in Winter. Got down to 17C last night. I actually rolled down my shirt sleeves.
Tony.
Link to Wombok Salad
40
Some parts of Aus.
I wouldn’t want to bbq in the evening here in Central Vic. It was cold here last night and this morning…cold enough to wear an overcoat, scarf, gloves and boots! We have needed heating for weeks now and light the stove in the evening. And I’m a Pom who feels the heat!
50
I’m hearing you Annie here in Ballarat.
20
I always wondered why all those climate change refugees head North this time of year, they are here in droves in Broome where it’s icy cold at 16c early mornings.
20
Here is rural NSW it is windy and cold. With the trebling of electricity prices over the past 10 or so years I now absolutely refuse to use electric heating. Instead, I stoke up the fire and keep warm for less than half the cost. My so-called ‘carbon dioxide footprint’ would be much much less if electricity were cheaper, even if the electricity were generated by coal-burning power stations.
I read not too long ago that in Athens the government, in a shabby attempt to recover the cost of some of the debt they racked up, put up heating oil prices and tried to sell it as a carbon dioxide reduction measure. Impoverished Athenians did what any normal person would do: they started burning wood to keep warm and it has created a serious air quality problem in the city.
Interesting, isn’t it, when the Left say, ‘The carbon tax works, because electricity consumption is declining,’ what they should be saying is, ‘The carbon tax works because pensioners can’t afford to heat their homes and so are getting sick and dying.’ To the wealthy, the carbon tax is chump change. To the poor it makes the difference between life and death.
But as with everything the Left do it is always the poor who pay the highest price. Take non-selective immigration and the refugee intake. Do the inner city Left have to worry about who is taking over their street? No, it is only the poor who are seeing their neighbourhoods turn into violent ghettos.
But there is no hope for this country. The fools we put into office can’t see that although a $7 Medicare co-payment might be chump change to their mates, it is a life-changing issue for those who are economically marginal. The same applies to pension indexation. Think back to when the indexation rules were changed and you’ll recall that pensioners were going backwards fast on CPI adjustments. The CPI bears NO RELATIONSHIP to true living costs. It’s just a rigged index that allows government to deceive the electorate into thinking the rise in living costs is relatively small. And of course the politicians have the indexation of their own superannuation tied to changes in salary levels of serving politicians. Speaking of which, I recall hearing that one of the measures they are proposing is to cut back on the gold travel pass for past politicians. I suspect this was put up to con the electorate, knowing full well that it won’t get up. Last time this was mooted some retired politicians said they would challenge it in court. I’ve got a dollar that says the courts won’t take away existing benefits, and I’ve got another dollar that says the government knows this full well and is just putting it up to trick people into believing politicians are ‘making sacrifices’.
And that’s why Socialist Australia is stuffed. Labor gets in and throws money around to buy off the electorate just so that they can carry out their true agenda, which is to vandalise our society. Then the Liberals get in and they are just too damn stupid to understand that you can change the economy without hurting people – it was Work Choices last time and this time it is taxation. On top of that they are too cowardly to undo the Left’s destructive social agenda. They are a waste of a vote.
Conservative commentators have been lamenting the fact that people don’t seem willing to give up their handouts. They suggest that we all need to have more of a sense of doing what is ‘right for the country’. Well, since they obviously don’t understand the problem, let me explain it to them. They are saying to people – look, we know we have crapped on you with the carbon tax; we know we have crapped on you with non-selective immigration; we know we have made your suburbs and inner cities violent; we know we have created inter-generational welfare dependency and we know this has led to gangs of disaffected youths trashing neighbourhoods and taking every opportunity to engage in other forms of socially destructive behaviour; we know that we are spending your money to lease a $32,000 a month apartment for the Australian ambassador to Italy; we know we are appointing our mates to plum jobs and to the judiciary; we know we have censorship laws in place and so you’d better not complain about what a s–thole we have made this country, or else; we know we have made petrol prohibitively expensive and only a third of the tax we take goes to roads and the rest is just splashed up against the wall; we know that children are being brainwashed in schools about global warming and revisionist history rather than being taught vocational and life skills; we know that because of our welfare, immigration, youth, education and policing policies you worry that tonight your teenage child might be bashed to death in town; we know that because of us you worry that if you instead hold a party at home it will probably be gatecrashed; we know that people can choose welfare as a lifestyle and that people who CHOOSE to be single parents can live very comfortably at your expense while you are struggling EVERY SINGLE DAY to deal with children, work and living costs; we know we have made you pay the $25 million legal bill for illegals to appeal decisions, and we know we are making you pay for their smokes and mobile phones and resettlement money; and we know that the leftist judges that we appoint are letting off certain classes of foreign born people when they commit violent crimes – but, hey, how about doing it for your country and paying $7 every time you take the kids to the doctor?
The Liberals just can’t see what utter fools they are. Or are they, too, just in it for themselves and don’t give a damn about what happens to our country?
Let me conclude this rant by saying two things. The first is for the benefit of conservative commentators. Many ‘single parents by choice’ serially enrol in education courses so that they can get subsidised child care. It gives them the means to offload their kids for a day here and there. They either don’t turn up to the courses, or ring in sick or show up for a while and then quietly disappear. It has NOTHING to do with improving employment prospects. When working people see this happening while they are struggling with a job and child care costs do you seriously think they are going to be happy about the likes of Medicare co-payments? The government is hurting poor working people while letting freeloaders carry on as before.
The second issue concerns this absurd medical research proposal. As with everything government does, most of the money will just be splashed up against the wall. But let’s look at the real reason it is being done. It is twofold. First, the Abbott government wants to take away any opportunity the opposition has to attack the government for reducing health spending. Remember Labor’s incessant chant that ‘Abbott ripped $2 billion out of health spending when he was health minister under the Howard government’? Second, since the Abbott government (thankfully) announced some (far too) small cuts to agencies that have been complicit in the GW scare, Labor has started to attack them as anti science. Throwing all of this money at medical research takes the wind out of their sails on that score. Pathetic isn’t it. Billions wasted because of political manoeuvering.
71
Barry, the only thing missing from your excellent comments were:
– The paid parental leave thing
– The knights and dames thing
– Tax payer funded pre-marriage counselling
– And most importantly, wanting to mess with the Constitution because the PM has a personal fetish for indigenous affairs.
00
Right on, Barry. All the words I’ve wanted to say since hearing Hockey’s strange | ‘budget’, cut and paste job from their auditor’s report. Totally disillusioned by this gvt., after hoping something more ‘real’ would appear after the last election.
00
Double thumbs up!!
00
While your rant is poignant in principal, it seems to ignore the obvious role played by the
FascistsGreens and theCommunistALP. When Joe proposes a budget that only kisses the tip of the iceberg, the senate remains poised to block it and the ignorant masses whine and moan.And as far as your rant about the Medicare co-payment goes, you ignore the fact that most of us have been making a co-payment much large than that all the time. When the price of commodity is zero, the demand is infinite.
You could make much more of a difference if you were to support the measures proposed by the current government than ignoring the insincere obstructionist wails of the opposition.
10
mistakenly typed 7 June for the Sunday Extra program. of course, it is 8 June. how come ABC can continue to make the falst claim about China putting a cap on carbon emissions when, even if they couldn’t fact-check it for themselves, they must have seen Reuters & other corrections FIVE days ago?
3 June: NYT Dot Earth: Andrew C. Revkin: Behind the Mask – A Reality Check on China’s Plans for a Carbon Cap
BEIJING — Having covered China’s stance on global warming since 1988, I’ve gotten attuned to the need to tread carefully when something is said that feels like a shift in the official position of this greenhouse gas giant…
Here’s how things played out. An adviser to the Chinese government on climate change was quoted by Reuters as saying the following at a Beijing climate-policy conference on Tuesday:
“The government will use two ways to control CO2 emissions in the next five-year plan, by intensity and an absolute cap.”
The story quickly pivoted to how significant this would be given the context of President Obama’s move and informal climate talks starting on Wednesday in Bonn, Germany…
The Guardian quickly followed Reuters with “China pledges to limit carbon emissions for first time,” a piece canvassing climate campaigners but offering no reinforcing input from the Chinese government.***
I consulted with The Times’s Beijng bureau. Christopher Buckley, a reporter [based in Hong Kong] who in 2011 had covered China’s emissions plans [and similar pushes from advisers to adopt a cap] while with Reuters, spoke with He Jiankun, who told him repeatedly that he did not in any way speak for the government, or the full expert climate committee…
Here’s Buckley’s translation:
“It’s not the case that the Chinese government has made any decision. This is a suggestion from experts, because now they are exploring how emissions can be controlled in the 13th Five Year Plan…. This is a view of experts; that’s not saying it’s the government’s. I’m not a government official and I don’t represent the government.”
A Reuters reporter told me tonight that a correction was being posted [it’s here], but not before other newspapers – including USA Today with a piece on China’s “emissions pledge” – built on the report…
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/06/03/behind-the-mask-a-reality-check-on-chinas-plans-for-a-carbon-cap/
10
not jonathan green this time, but nonetheless a tale of two Greens!
“modest”, nuclear, fracking, US Greens!
6 June: Green Party of the US: Green Party: Obama’s new EPA rules are a modest start, U.S. must convert to a clean-energy economy
The president’s plan also promotes more nuclear energy and natural gas extraction (fracking), which the Green Party opposes because of the danger they pose to public health and security…
Greens joined environmentalists in criticizing the new plan’s reliance on an inflated 2005 baseline for the 30% reduction, calling it far too modest and a capitulation to industry lobbies…
http://www.gp.org/press/pr-national.php?ID=708
the only response to Obama’s announcement on the Aussie Greens website!
7 June: Australian Greens: PM Abbott must get real on climate or risk damaging US relationship
“No wonder his only support is coming from the world’s 20th biggest polluter, BHP…
Tony Abbott must put climate change on the G20 agenda and reverse his decision to abolish carbon pricing and undermine renewable energy,” said Senator Milne.
“Australians want it, President Obama wants it, and people the world over deserve it.”
http://greens.org.au/node/5078
10
I’ve come up with a fun new game. This week I have been asking people to guess how much the earth has warmed in the last 150 years. It gives a numerical value to the alarmism felt by the man-on-the-street (or woman). The results so far are:
4-5 degrees
15 degrees
25 degrees.
To be fair, there is some argument. Some sources say 0.7, some 0.9. I stick with the median: 0.8.
This would be an excellent large scale survey. Try and get a grant for that one. Ha ha.
90
I should have read the thread before commenting. What I say links with Manfred and Graeme 3’s comments. Despite this, at least I am on-topic.
20
Hey ?? how can you be on topic , in the “Weekend Unthreaded” 🙂
10
My favorite is to ask what is the planet most powerful ‘greenhouse gas’. Nobody ever gets it, or my reply of dihydrogen monoxide.
80
To be fair, a 0.8 degree average rise is absolutely massive, especially since the vast bulk of that has accrued in the last 50 years – a rate of warming faster than at any time in the last several million years barring massive volcanism or bolide impacts – and with no convincing forcing mechanism other than increasing C02 concentration.
114
RUBBISH !!!!!!!
1. The warming from 1915-1945 was almost exactly the same as from 1977-2007..
and the latter included large Urban Development, massive data manipulation and a series of strong solar maximums
There is IN FACT absolutely ZERO CO2 signal even in the massively adjusted GISS and HadCrut climate record.
RSS shows a downward trend since 2001. And apart from the 1998 Elnino jump , there has been ZERO warming over the whole of the satellite record.
Steve, you have been sold a LOAD OF STEAMING B***S***.
132
…….And you ate every last spoonful of it !!
82
Actually , to not include the 1998 ElNino , which was a TOTALLY NON-CO2 event, the 30 year period we ought to use is 1968-1998.
Only when the NATURAL jump from the ElNion is considered, is there any warming at all in the satellite record.
Notice that whenever an alarmista puts forward a trend, they always includes that ElNino.
82
And Steve, just for you.. Here are those 2 trends.
Now remember that in Giss, the 1915-1945 was “adjusted” about evenly, but in 1968-1998 period, the early part was actually “adjusted” downwards significantly (to create a trend)
Also remember that from 1968-1998 there was considerable urban expansion, as well as being in the latter part of a series of strong solar peaks,
YET THE TREND SLOPE IS STILL THE SAME.
There is NO CO2 SIGNAL.. NONE, NADA…… ZIP !!!
72
If I’d said the last 100 years would that negate your verbiage or would another pile merely take its place? My point stands, a 0.8 degree rise (which disregards the gigantic amount of stored heat in the oceans over the last 17 years) is virtually unprecedented over this kind of timescale without an obvious, violent forcing mechanism. Which raises two interesting questions:
1.) What is causing this temperature change, if not C02? (Hint: the vast weight of evidence suggests C02)
2.) How on Earth are we going to adapt to a temperature change orders of magnitude faster than evolutionary or even cultural change works? (Somewhat rhetorical)
3.) What is it about right-wing ideology that causes such a vehement rejection of evidence that should precipitate a change in worldview? (Mostly rhetorical)
210
3) I have voted Labor up until the last election.. I am not right wing.
2) There has been NO TEMPERATURE CHANGE over this century, and
1) any that might have happened previous is easily put down to DATA ADJUSTMENT, UHI and a series of STRONG SOLAR PEAKS.
It was also WARMER during the Medieval Warm Period and the Roman Warm period and the Holocene OPTIMUM, all of which were times of massive prosperity.
It was the colder troughs between that man had great trouble coping with.
The Dark Ages were a time of pestilence and famine.
It is the Dark Ages that you and your like would have us back in.
CO2 is ONLY BENEFICIAL to the world, and ABSOLUTELY NO PROOF that it causes any warming, just rhetoric.
If you think there is proof.. show me the paper that it was published in.
Arguments from ignorance saying that the slight “adjusted” warming could only be from CO2 are purely that…
ARGUEMENT FROM IGNORANCE.. … its all that you have…….you have NO EVIDENCE.
If so.. post it.
91
I will leave it to the Griss to answer, except that I feel the need to respond to your point 3, with several observations:
3a) You assume a “right-wing” ideology is required to reject your “evidence”. This assumption is not valid. Scientists in the Russian Federation do not subscribe to anthropogenic climate change, because their temperature records (which have not been tampered with) show no evidence of warming. The same applies to Chinese records. It seems that climate change is a phenomena that is restricted to the West.
3b) It is incorrect to accuse us of rejecting evidence about climate change. We have yet to see any empirical evidence that climate variations are entirely anthropogenic in nature. Of course you may point to a correlation between the level of CO2 in the atmosphere, and the mean temperature, but correlation says nothing about causation. It is a chicken and egg situation, of which causes which. If we look at relative time scales, changes in global temperature (from multiple causes) results in an outgassing of CO2 on a faster timescale than that required for CO2 to raise the global temperature on its own. This was “the great lie” in Gore’s travelling road show, which underpins the fundamental belief that is the basis for all of the other discussions around climate change. To prove anthropogenic climate change, you first need to prove that Gore was correct, and then show the mechanism.
Hardly a rhetorical question, is it?
110
“you assume a “right-wing” ideology is required to reject your “evidence”. ”
Excuse me RW, but Steve has NOT posted any evidence. !
He doesn’t have any !!
61
Being of open mind, I have no idea what evidence Steve has.
But he did claim that, “right-wing ideology … causes … a vehement rejection of evidence”, so I presume that he has something that constitutes evidence in his mind. However, I did place the word “evidence” in inverted commas, in my response, because I sincerely have my doubts.
60
😉
31
Steve:
There is NOTHING unprecedented about the temperature rise. See Multiple, Intense, Abrupt Late Pleistocene Warming And Cooling: Implications For Understanding The Cause Of Global Climate Change
June 2, 2013 by Dr. Don J. Easterbrook on WUWT.
80
“gigantic amount of stored heat in the oceans over the last 17 years”
MORE UTTER B***S***.
92
Seriously, is this the best the alarmistas can give us?
Parrot based nonsense ramblings!
Come on, which of you guys is play acting as “Steve, a brain-washed climate alarmsta moron”…..
.
.
.
.
is that you RW? fes up !!
22
Griss, I am shocked and hurt, that you would think that I would be so shallow, as to confess to something like that.
40
Oh Poor RW.. did I hurt your feelings…. diddums. 🙂
I thought you NZ guys were of slightly sterner stuff than that.
10
Read what I typed – read it slowly – use your finger as a pointer, if it helps.
40
Chuckle, I ALWAYS read what you type, RW 🙂
20
Steve:
1) Totally irrelevant. One does not have to be able to provide an alternative theory when disproving the current one. It’s not a code of science or anything other than basically a logical fallacy. The rightness or wrongness of the theory is only based on data, not having an alternative.
2) I guess the answer is: If the change occurs in a hour or so, yeah, we’re toast. However, over the course of basically 200 years, no crisis really becomes apparent. Plus, this is a model, not a fact. We really do not know how much the temperature will ride or drop.
3) Right-wing ideology rejects bad science, as do some left-wing views. Blaming the failure of the theory on politics is to abandon science and admit the theory is wrong. Nice admission there.
20
” guess the answer is: If the change occurs in a hour ”
Gees, a change of 0.8C in an hour… Don’t know if I can cope with that. 🙂
11
Okay, Griss, really cute. Guess it was too far to search back to “a temperature change orders of magnitude faster than evolutionary or even cultural change works?” . I’ll try to remember to paste in the quote to which I am answering. Just as an aside, it’s not a .8C temperature change in an hour, it’s a temperature anomaly from the global average and I’m pretty Steve’s more on the 4 to 5 degree band wagon. Which translates to major disaster for reasons still unclear to many of us.
10
Gees, its ages since I was called “cute” 🙂
01
To be fair, Griss is right.
Anyway, you sort of make my point. 0.8 has some significance, as does the 0.0 of the last 17 years. But those in the general public who believe your side do not, on the whole, understand the science. While 0.8 is significant but not to be overplayed, 5-25 degrees is the guesswork of a member of the public who has believed the scare, but not been told the objective facts.
70
And how much of that tiny 0.8 C is real ???
Unfortunately, with the fabrications that are Giss and HadCrut.. we may never know.
102
All the “Official” records show some warming to around 1880 (if they start earlier).
A cooling to 1905-1910 followed by warming to 1940-44.
Another cooling to 1964 – 1974 followed by warming to 2000, then a plateau.
If you Google Global temperature and images you will be able to make your choice. These will vary depending on the date they were made. Don’t forget that changes are minimal in the Tropics and become greater the further you go North.
It is plain that there was some warming from 1850 or before and this extended to 1878-1885. Rapid melting of the glaciers in Europe and some other places supports this a bit. Bordeaux had a series of ‘classic’ vintages in the 1860’s indicating extra warmth (before phylloxera wiped them out).
From ~1880 there was cooling, with glacier advances in Iceland and Canada causing talk of “a coming ice age”. However southern Australia seems to have had a very warm spell, possibly associated with the Federation drought. Whether this cooling was as deep as shown is questionable, as plumbers in England ~ 1910 started installing water pipes on the outside of houses, exposing them to possible freezing, but apparently without it happening, i.e. no mobs of angry householders.
By 1919 rapid melting was reported in Arctic regions and by the late 1920’s they were able to grow barley and oats in Iceland for the first time in 400 years. The 1930’s were quite warm as shown by many temperature records set then. Yet Guy Callendar’s first paper in 1938 met resistance from scientists who hadn’t noticed any warming in the previous decade.
From the mid 1940 to maybe the mid 1970’s there was some cooling, supposedly followed by rapid warming and the current “warmest years ever”.
We will never know what really happened as the records have been changed, adjusted, revised and “disappeared”. A quick look at the NASA GISS one I downloaded showed 1964 at the same temperature as 1850, so there had been NO Warming in 114 years, but all of it after that time, which coincided with the rapid increase in CO2 emissions. A warming cycle with no warming! (until convenient).
There must have been some warming as glaciers have retreated, e.g. the Grindlwald in Switzerland retreated back to its known location in 1240 (but not as far as in 1205). Several Alpine passes have opened up for the archeologists to explore previous cycles.
Both Bordeaux and northern Italy have had more good years than in 1950 to 1970.
The tree line in Canada and Siberia has advanced north, and farming has been possible at higher altitudes in Norway than for hundreds of years. Enthusiasts have started growing grapes again in Holland and Denmark, and ‘re-opened‘ a winery in Latvia.
Generally, Europe has had a number of warm summers (for what that is worth for Pepys reported 1660,1665 &1666 as warm summers in the depths of the Little Ice Age) in the last 40 years.
You may find the recorded positions of Glacier Bay (Alaska) of interest.
http://soundwaves.usgs.gov/2001/07/fieldwork2.html
20
Thing is. Graeme,
Glaciers have been retreating for far longer than there has been a sufficient rise in CO2 to have had any warming effect.
I for one DON’T want to live in a little ice age.
And if AGW is actually true (yeah, as if!), it is the cold places that will warm up. The warm places are regulated by the atmospheric pressure gradient.
Hand up those from Siberia that don’t want a warmer winter !!! 🙂
I’m sure Steve must be from Hobart or Canberra or somewhere else that is luvly and warm during winter.
Come on Steve, where do you choose to live (a state will do).
52
The Griss:
It is unlikely that Hobart or Canberra will be swallowed up by a glacier in the near future, regrettably in one case.
Do you remember David Bellamy claiming in 2005 that 90% of the World’s glaciers were expanding?
He got jumped on by every warmist, all screaming with outrage. A quiet voice from one glaciologist said “well, he’s wrong…it’s not 90% but 98% to the end of 2004.
Reason 90%+ of glaciers are in Antarctica and they were (and are) expanding. This is caused by global warming!!!!
Glaciers in NZ, Chile (Patagonia) and other places were also lengthening until the end of 2004. It was supposed to be due to the 1998 el niño and warm 2003 evaporating more water and it falling as snow on the glaciers. Now that some are shrinking is due to global warming.
A Glacier’s gotta do what a glacier’s gotta do.
01
Isn’t that 0.8C of data manipulation by BoM etc.
70
Far more than that.
take Wangaratta for eg..
The adjustment is close to 2ºC over a century.
Basically every site has been adjusted to a positive trend of about 0.8ºC +/- 0.1ºC even if the trend what negative, (and a large proportion were)
I think they call it “Homogenisation”..
Its just one big FUDGE to CREATE a fake/fraudulent trend to support the CAGW agenda.
52
Steve,
you said “vast bulk of that has accrued in the last 50 years – a rate of warming faster than at any time in the last several million years barring massive volcanism or bolide impacts
That’s because temperature adjusters, a special branch of the climate scam crew, have only just been employed. However thay are perhapse the most industrious of all the scam artists.
70
Actually , most of the pre CAGW temperature colding started happening after about 1990. NCDC and Hansen collaborating with Jones over at Hadley…
… then one of Jone’s students got into BOM, and went ‘Mr Freeze’ on the Australian historic temperature record.
Before then, the past , particularly around 1940 was actually rather warm.
Australian records from around 1910-1920 show a series of very much warmer years.
These VERY WARM years have been adjusted way down and/or expunged by BOM, but still exist in old press and data.
Here’s some examples of REALITY and the adjustments that BOM has made…
a)… Echuca http://imageshack.com/a/img801/638/wo47m.jpg
b)…Wangaratta http://imageshack.com/a/img62/8606/ryi8.jpg
c)…Benalla http://imageshack.com/a/img585/7364/sh6l.jpg
72
And here is what “pre-adjustment records show”
The black is the original NH temperature record, the red is where RSS would now sit in relation to that.
Note that 1940 and 1998 are just about at the same value.
And here is some NOAA sea surface data pre-adjustment.. Notice how similar it is. !
That 1940’s peak that Tom Wigley wanted to get rid of sure is prominent, isn’t it 🙂
22
Steve,
Judith Curry has pointed out that models of some alarmistas show that the anthropogenic global warming was only 0.18°C and that the rest was natural variation. A few people have shown that most of the warming more closely fits a natural oscillation rather than a steady rise. The same warming prior to 1940 as in the 80-90s sort of gives it away.
That 0.2-0.3°C that doesn’t fit a sine function and steady warming from the LIA is about as much as the extra warming from homogenization; black box adjustments that don’t really make sense.
Have you ever taken note of the 95% confidence intervals even on the dubious hockey stick? They are bigger than 0.8°C.
20
Dear Steve,
I read your post carefully…
My question is:
On what do you base your belief of the Earth’s norm?
I stand by my previous observation.
00
ABC/Fairfax/Guardian/Greens -how ignorant are you?
3 June: Desmogblog: Steve Horn: Days Before Obama Announced CO2 Rule, Exxon Awarded Gulf of Mexico Oil Leases
On Friday May 30, just a few days before the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced details of its carbon rule proposal, the Obama Administration awarded offshore oil leases to ExxonMobil in an area of the Gulf of Mexico potentially containing over 172 million barrels of oil…
The U.S. Department of Interior’s (DOI) Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) proclaimed in a May 30 press release that the ExxonMobil offshore oil lease is part of “President Obama’s all-of-the-above energy strategy to continue to expand safe and responsible domestic energy production.”…
Secretary of Interior Sally Jewell formerly worked as a petroleum engineer for Mobil, purchased as a wholly-owned subsidiary by Exxon in 1998…
http://www.desmogblog.com/2014/06/03/days-before-obama-announced-co2-rule-exxon-rewarded-gulf-mexico-oil-leases
Obama-friendly Counterpunch realised back in 2013 what MSM admitted this week – nuclear & fracking would be the CAGW winners! where are u on this, Christine Milne?
5 March 2013: Counterpunch: Obama’s Department of Fracking and Nukes
by KARL GROSSMAN
With the nomination of Ernest Moniz to be the next U.S. secretary of Energy, President Barack Obama has selected a man who is not only a booster of nuclear power but a big proponent of fracking, too. What happened to Obama’s call for “clean” energy in his 2013 State of the Union address?…
Moniz, a physicist and director of the MIT Energy Initiative, heavily financed by energy industry giants including BP and Chevron, has long advocated nuclear power…
Likewise, when it comes to hydraulic fracturing or fracking—the process that uses hundreds of toxic chemicals and massive amounts of waste under high pressure to fracture shale formations to release gas captured in them—Moniz told the Senate Energy Committee in 2011 that the water and air pollution risks associated with fracking were “challenging but manageable” with appropriate regulation and oversight.
Fracking also can also lead to radioactive contamination…
Erich Pica, president of Friends of the Earth, declared after Obama’s nomination of Moniz on Monday, that the group “has grave concerns about Mr. Moniz’s history of support for both nuclear power and fracking.” Pica described Moniz’s support of nuclear power despite “the unfolding catastrophe” of Fukushima as “frightening.” On Moniz being “a big booster of fracking,” Pica said this has been “seemingly without due regard for the environmental and public health risks and impacts.”…
Nevertheless, in Washington Monday, Obama, describing Moniz as a “brilliant scientist,” said: “Most importantly, Ernie knows that we can produce more energy and grow our economy while still taking care of our air, our water and our climate. And so I could not be more pleased to have Ernie join us.”
It’s not as if Obama wasn’t warned about Moniz…
And it’s not as if Moniz was unfamiliar to Obama, or Washington. He has been a member of both Obama’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and Obama’s Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future…
Obama’s stance as president on nuclear power has been a change from his position as candidate Obama. “I start off with the premise that nuclear energy is not optimal and so I am not a nuclear energy proponent,” Obama said campaigning in Iowa on 2007…
Nevertheless, in his first State of the Union speech he spoke about “building a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country” and kept repeating that pitch…
(Karl Grossman, professor of journalism at the State University of New York/College of New York, is the author of the book, The Wrong Stuff: The Space’s Program’s Nuclear Threat to Our Planet. Grossman is an associate of the media watch group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR). He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion.***)
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/03/05/the-department-of-fracking-and-nukes/
the Obama Illusion lives on at ABC/Fairfax/Guardian/Greens Australia.
i know some CAGW sceptics are pro-nuclear & pro-fracking, but i am not, as u know, PLUS i’m merely pointing to the utter hypocrisy of the “progressives”.
also, i am pro-COAL and pro the scientific method being rescued
from the clutches of the CAGW ideologues.
40
Obama “allowed” the permits to go through for political reasons. He’s doing calculus, not of the climate change variety, but of the political variety.
00
James O’Keefe releases part two of his Hollywood sting.
60
Hat Tip to Fiji Dave for this little gem.
There’s a new Solar Farm just opened in Fiji at Vuda, Lautoka.
It is a (smallish) 67 KiloWatt Plant.
The journalist covering the opening wrote the article, and I know he’s only a journalist and not really on the ball when it comes to electrical power, but you think he might have checked first before writing this little gem: (my bolds here)
Yikes!
Remind me never to go there for a holiday. As Dave mentions ….. “The midnight sun in Fiji is particularly fierce!”
This 66KW system will supply 100MWH of power over a full year, giving it a Capacity Factor of 17.3%, around average for a system like this. This averaged out across the whole year means the plant is supplying its power for on average a tick over 4 hours a day.
The reported 100MW every hour for a year gives the plant a Capacity Factor of 151,515%, meaning the plant supplies its full rated power for, umm, 36,363 hours of every 24 hour day
Link to article
Tony.
80
“36,363 hours of every 24 hour day”
😆
You had me fall off my chair in laugher! The other half thinks I’ve flipped…
🙂
50
A 66KW system? My backyard fire pit generation system puts more than that out when it is smouldering!
60
Tony: Isn’t it amazing than whenever you read about these types of projects be they solar or wind, the costs associated with them are not currently relevant.
50
You need to make allowance for the fact that a Pacific hour is not the same duration as an hour in other parts of the world.
I lot of project managers have discovered that a Pacific hour can be several days longer than a standard hour, due to the effects of weather, and the quality of the fishing.
70
Rereke:
I knew a Sales Manager who made a business trip to the Cook islands. Only after he had been there for 2 hours did he find out that the aeroplane turned around and left after 1 hour. He was FORCED to stay there for a WHOLE WEEK. That was his story.
60
Tony, RW. 🙂
20
Last week on local media there were many touting the unseasonal “heatwave” that was occurring.
Will Steffen ,Mike Bailey, Christiana Figueres and a host of other luminaries.
The reality was that for several hours in the middle of the day it was warm and apparently a search of met records proved that this was the warmest May-June ever. Since records began about 100 years ago or whatever.
Despite this great heat wave it was funny that there was no sight of anyone sleeping outside on the front lawn in their underwear because of the unseasonal “Global Warming”.
Apparently it wasn’t “that” warm.
🙂 KK
72
black roads can add as much as 12 degrees Fahrenheit
http://venturebeat.com/2014/06/07/want-to-cut-heat-in-the-city-paint-the-roads-white/
40
White is just too dazzling and besides the government has plenty of that ‘institutional biege’ to cover most of the country.
40
Insofar as urban streets are mostly covered by autos, why not just paint them all white?
http://www.insuranceage.co.uk/IMG/760/182760/car-park-motor-fleet.jpg?1309360793
40
TonyfromOz & others might find this quite interesting in the bigger scheme of things!
11 Dec 2013: NPR: Megatons To Megawatts: Russian Warheads Fuel U.S. Power
Plants
by Geoff Brumfiel
Here’s a remarkable fact: For the past two decades, 10 percent of all the
electricity consumed in the United States has come from Russian nuclear
warheads.
It was all part of a deal struck at the end of the Cold War. That deal wraps
up today, when the final shipment of fuel arrives at a U.S. facility…
The origins of the plan lie in the early 1990s. At the time, Philip Sewell
was working for the U.S. Department of Energy. The Soviet Union had just
disintegrated, and Sewell’s job was to find ways to collaborate with the
former adversaries…
But inside these crumbling buildings, the Russian government stored the
uranium from thousands of decommissioned nuclear weapons. It seemed like
practically anyone could walk off with stuff for a bomb.
Sewell and his colleagues wanted to get rid of this uranium. So they decided
to try to persuade the Russians to sell their surplus to the U.S. After all,
the stuff was just lying around.
Initially, the Russians refused. “It was a matter of pride, principle and
patriotism,” Sewell says. “Even though they didn’t need that excess
material, [and] they didn’t have the money to protect it, they didn’t want
to let go of it.”
But in the end they did let go. For one reason: money…
So, in 1993 the deal was struck: The Russians would turn about 500 tons of
bomb-grade uranium into nuclear fuel. The U.S. would buy it and sell it to
commercial power plants here.
Khlopkov says it was a win-win. “This is the only time in history when
disarmament was actually profitable,” he says.
Very profitable. The Russians made around $17 billion. Sewell’s government
office was spun off into a private company – the United States Enrichment
Corporation – and made money from the deal too. And the U.S. power plants
got the uranium at a good price.
But all good things must come to an end, says Matthew Bunn at Harvard
University.
“Russia is a totally different place today than it was twenty years ago,”
Bunn says.
“As the Russian government is fond of saying, they’re ‘no longer on their
knees.’ ”
Still Bunn says this deal will go down in history as one of the greatest
diplomatic achievements ever.
“I mean, think about it – 20,000 bombs’ worth of nuclear material, destroyed
forever,” he says. “[Bombs that] will never threaten anybody ever again.”
The last shipment arrives today at a US storage facility. It will be sold
off to utilities in coming years. So when you turn on the lights, feel good.
Your bulb may be powered by what was once a bomb.
http://www.npr.org/2013/12/11/250007526/megatons-to-megawatts-russian-warheads-fuel-u-s-power-plants
wondering if this could somehow be related to ending of the above deal?
24 March: AP: Japan-US nuclear deal announced at Hague summit
By TOBY STERLING and JUERGEN BAETZ
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — A major international summit to rein in the threat of nuclear terrorism opened Monday with Japan pledging to return to the United States more than 315 kilograms (700 pounds) of weapons-grade plutonium and a supply of highly enriched uranium…
The White House also said, in addition to the Japan deal, the United States had reached agreements with Belgium and Italy to remove highly enriched uranium and plutonium from those European allies…
As part of the deal, the U.S. will continue to receive spent reactor fuel from Japanese nuclear plants for an additional 10 years.
Miles Pomper, a nuclear expert at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, called the return of the materials “a step in the right direction.”
In addition to the weapons-grade material Japan is giving back, it maintains a stockpile of 9.3 tons of lesser-grade plutonium that could be easily weaponized by a country of Japan’s sophistication…
Additionally Japan’s new Rokkasho nuclear plant, due to come online this year, is capable of producing almost that many more tons of plutonium per year when operational. Yet, with most of Japan’s nuclear plants still shut down in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear plant disaster, there is no apparent use for that material.
“So this is a step forward, but it’s not enough,” Pomper said.
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/japan-us-nuclear-deal-announced-hague-summit
30
anthony is having a bit of fun with this:
7 June: WUWT: Free money! All you have to do is to be a ‘climate victim’
Californian Billionaire Tom Steyer has just created a fund for victims of climate related extreme weather. The new initiative is intended to be 50% funded by Tom Steyer, and 50% funded by fellow travelers.
Steyer has apparently raised the money by selling his stake in Kinder Morgan, a large Texan Oil Company…
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/06/07/free-money-all-you-have-to-do-is-to-be-a-climate-victim/
30
coal is king – LOL:
3 June: Bloomberg: Sandrine Rastello: Coal-Fired Plant in Kosovo Tests World Bank Clean-Air Pledge
The half-century-old plant near the capital, Pristina, produces a third of the nation’s electricity by burning lignite…
Chronic power outages hobble the country’s $7 billion economy, the poorest in Europe after Moldova.
Kosovo’s government is asking the World Bank to help finance a new plant that would provide a reliable power supply while still tapping the nation’s lignite reserves, the world’s fifth largest. The proposal is forcing the lender and its biggest shareholder, the U.S., to make an exception in their clean-energy commitments and concede that burning coal can be the fastest route out of poverty…
“We’re going to avoid coal except in the most exceptional circumstances, and in this case, it is one of the exceptional circumstances,” World Bank President Jim Yong Kim said in a May 30 interview…
Containing less energy and more carbon, lignite is cheaper than hard coal and has seen a recent revival in Europe as policy makers allowed mines to be expanded to drive down power prices…
The Kosovo project — a two-unit, 600-megawatt plant that would be fed coal from nearby state-owned mines — is estimated by the government to cost less than 1 billion euros ($1.4 billion)…
***U.S. and European companies are lining up to bid on the project. New York-based ContourGlobal LP and Sithe Global Power LLC, which is owned by funds managed by Blackstone (BX) Group LP, were pre-approved as bidders, along with Turkish company Park Holding AS, according to Economic Development Minister Fadil Ismajli…
To lure investors and their financiers spooked by political or credit risks, the World Bank would offer about $60 million in loan guarantees that would kick in if the government failed to meet obligations such as supplying coal or purchasing electricity…
Kosovo’s future with coal is “a test of the ambiguity they’ve left on the table,” said Scott Morris, a former deputy assistant secretary for development finance and debt at the U.S. Treasury Department…
This time, the bank’s largest member-nation appears more supportive, with officials from the U.S. Agency for International Development recommending the project in a September report.
Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew said during a May 8 congressional hearing that “for the poorest countries, we continue to have an exception for coal facilities.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-01/coal-versus-poverty-in-kosovo-tests-world-bank-clean-air-pledge.html
5 June: DesmogCanada: Obama’s New Climate Regulations Could Bring More U.S.
Coal to B.C. for Export
A new U.S. proposal to dramatically reduce carbon dioxide emissions from
coal-fired power plants could result in more thermal coal being shipped to
Asia through existing and planned port facilities in Metro Vancouver, people
attending Port Metro Vancouver’s annual general meeting were told Tuesday…
http://desmog.ca/2014/06/05/obama-s-new-climate-regulations-could-bring-more-u-s-coal-b-c-export
20
Bloomberg’s Morales interviews Yvo De Boer:
5 June: Bloomberg: Alex Morales: Climate Treaties Like Kyoto Aren’t Coming Back: Ex-UN Climate Chief
The U.S. announcement could tilt the goal of UN climate change negotiations, away from an “international, legally binding” treaty, to a patchwork of national commitments. Pacts like the Kyoto Protocol, which the U.S. Senate blocked by a 95-0 vote in 1997, are probably a thing of the past, said former UN climate chief Yvo De Boer. He is now director-general of the Global Green Growth Institute in Seoul…
Q: What’s the deal with American Republicans and climate change?
A: I remember George W. Bush at the beginning of his first term being extremely critical of climate change as an issue. I remember Condoleezza Rice joyfully calling the EU ambassadors into her office and saying Kyoto was dead. And by the end of the second term, Bush was saying that climate change was a global issue that requires a global response. So we all have our learning curves and conservatives are not immune to learning.
Q: Do you think people are getting UN climate talks fatigue? The wrangling seems endless.
A: I think they are. I often have the feeling that the climate talks are a lot like those terrible American soap operas where every episode is incredibly exciting but if you don’t watch for 2 years, you don’t miss anything. That’s why I think political leaders engaging in the UN Secretary-General’s [September] summit, and political leadership in Paris, is so critical.
Q: How important are the U.S. and China to an agreement?
A: Everything revolves around China and the United States. Much of what is agreed in Paris will flow from a U.S.-Sino willingness to engage.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-04/climate-treaty-like-the-one-gore-signed-isn-t-coming-back-ex-un-climate-chief.html
5 June: Bloomberg: Buffett’s $26 Billion Power Bet in West Seen Paying Off
By Lynn Doan and Naureen S. Malik
The energy unit of Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc., with the help of California’s grid operator, is moving to unite the holdings under a single market capable of dispatching power across seven states every five minutes. The system, designed to handle sudden swings in supply and demand, would revolutionize the markets from Oregon to Nevada, where 38 transmission operators manually balance their territories on an hourly basis.
The move would be a game-changer for the renewables that Berkshire Hathaway Energy Co. has accumulated over the past decade, including two of the world’s largest solar farms, and for other clean-power producers, according to those who trade in the region’s markets…
***Transmission operators across the U.S. are struggling to manage record volumes of variable resources such as wind and solar coming online to meet state renewables mandates. Power prices, already weighed down by a 66 percent drop in natural gas since July 2008, can slide to zero or negative at times when output unexpectedly surges, pressuring profits for gas, nuclear and coal generators…
To bring this growing collection of renewables onto the grid, “you really need to have better tools — situational awareness, speed and wide areas of diversity,” PacifiCorp’s Bird said. “The West lacks that, and this, from our point of view, is critical.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-03/buffett-s-26-billion-power-bet-in-west-seen-paying-off.html
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pat quotes here:
In 2005 China’s power output from coal fired power alone was around 1500TWH, as they started to ramp up construction of their new coal fired power plants.
It is currently around 4300TWH, and that’s just from coal fired power alone.
That increase, just the increase alone, around 2800TWH is the equivalent yearly output from around 190 large scale (2000MW+) power plants.
These power plants have a projected life span of 50 years.
If you seriously think China is going to close down that many plants, or even a fraction of them, most barely 10 years old, then you are seriously deluded.
It’s OK for the U.S. ALL their coal fired power plants have an ….. AVERAGE age of 47 years at the moment, so all of them are approaching the end of their life span.
Tony.
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The Chinese are aggressively enforcing their “Exclusive” Economic Zone in the East China Sea, and the South China Sea, even where the boundaries intersect with the EEZ’s of other countries in the region.
The reason for this, is access to minerals, both for power generation and for manufacturing.
They have just completed negotiations for the construction of a pipeline that will supply gas to the Northern China manufacturing region.
They are also negotiating with Pacific Island States, especially in Micronesia, for licensed access to their EEZ’s.
None of the above, are actions of a country that might be prepared to negotiate away its power generation capacity, and therefore its manufacturing potential.
The Chinese are expected to take a hard line for the status quo, or better, in Paris; and the US will be under pressure to respond in kind, rather risk economically falling behind the Chinese.
As soon as the writing is on the wall, a number of other industrial or semi-industrial countries will follow China’s lead. This may cause some disruptions with the European Community.
We are about to start living in interesting times – again.
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THE VERY BEST US DATA… !!!
Unaffected by adjustments, UHI, Mann, Hansen et al….
This data, although short, shows a probable COOLING trend in the USA since 2005 !!
This matches well with RSS, which shows a very probable cooling trend since 2001.
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Question is… why haven’t BOM set up something like this? ……. are they scared of the truth ????
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Let me introduce my straw man of the week :- If Obama says its right , you know for sure it is wrong.
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