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
Nothing to do with science apart from miscalculated angles and trajectories:
When in Asia, where I have travelled extensively, I usually have incredibly strong control over bladder and bowel. Even if I really need to go, I don’t let them get their hopes up until I have checked out the loo’s (toilets) because there are some places I just can’t go no matter how badly I need to. I think you know what I mean.
Earlier today I was in one of those situations but I surveilled the loo, which was inside a hotel and determined it to be suitably spic and span. So I sat and let nature take its course. Then reached for the toilet paper – there was none! Rookie mistake!
I don’t have tissues or anything. But there is one of those squirt hoses there. Normally I would not go near one of those. I’d have to wash my hands a dozen times after touching one. But what choice did I have?
OK so who knows how to use them?
Because to me the operation did not seem straight forward. Do you squirt from the front, the back or the side? How do you avoid water going everywhere? I thought it through and considered a frontal approach the best provided I lifted any dangling obstacles out of the firing line with my free hand.
So I took what I thought was an approximate aim – given that I, let alone anyone I know, am not flexible enough to aim by line of sight in such a position.
What a shock! I thought I was supposed to be cleaning bodily parts, not sandblasting graffiti off concrete walls!. Does the jet have to be that powerful? I nearly gave myself an enema. Fortunately, (or unfortunately), I was a little off from centre and I felt a great jet of water woosh out behind me, hit the cistern and splash back giving me a thorough drenching. Seriously, water fell on my head!
So now my tee shirt, shorts and the entire cubicle are drench and I have nothing to dry anything with. I wasn’t even sure if it had ‘done the job’!
So then I had to do the walk of shame. I guess I was just lucky that it was a pool side loo and provided no one saw me enter totally dry, they may have assumed I had just had a dip!
I will double check the toilet paper situation before taking a seat in future!
261
Jaymez.
Such poor technique!
Every time I come back from SE Asia I’m fired up to install one of these devices at home, but a retro-fit is not quite as easy as it seems. But if I ever build another house …..
51
Katio, Some years past I had an Asian family stay with me. The wash your bum thing was easy I installed a very cheap wash your doggy spray nozzle, comes with about a meter of hose and a fitting that fit onto a “T” off the tap that feeds the cistern. In later communication the young 16teen year old daughter said the thing she missed the most about me and my house was my wonderful toilet. Never told them it was for washing dogs.
10
Amusing story. You should put together a web site of interesting travel anecdotes. I have one from when I was a puppy. I did an American Express bus tour of Europe with a pal from work.
This story starts when on our way into Rome. We stopped for a rest break at a huge new roadhouse that sold everything, including beer – unrefrigerated. Before doing anything else, I took a moment to go into one of the cubicles in the toilet, only to find the door latch had jammed. I couldn’t hear anyone else in the toilet, so I started to think of options such as climbing over the top or (gross) slithering out under the door. Fortunately I heard someone come in and just as fortunately it was one of the Canadians from the bus tour. I told him of my plight and, incredibly, he was able to open the cubicle door from the outside. As an aside, many years later it occurred to me that you were probably meant to drop a coin into the latch mechanism to get it to work.
Anyway, my pal and I, along with four youngish Canadians we had befriended, all bought beer for the last leg of our trip into Rome. Naturally, we had a merry time for the first hour or so, but then nature started to call. We were only a few miles from our downtown destination, so, no problem, we’ll just hang on (in those days there were no toilets on buses). The problem was that we had arrived in Rome at peak hour and there was no telling how long it would take to cover the last few miles. Before too long things were getting quite desperate. All of us had gone quiet. We sat there suffering incredible pain as we tried out different contortions in the hope that one would ease the pressure. I was getting desperate, so I struggled my way forward to speak to Rita, our charming Swiss tour guide. Rita was an absolutely wonderful person who went out of her way to make our trip that much more special. But not on this occasion. She had no sympathy for our plight, and in fact leaned over the Willy, our bus driver, and said, ‘Willy, go slower.’
Well, we finally got to the hotel. The minute the doors opened all of use barged out and literally ran into the hotel foyer. The Canadians were more experienced at this and they got to the male toilets before us. A quick look showed us that there were no vacant positions in the toilet. Ross, my travel companion, and I exchanged a look and without a moment’s hesitation ran into the female toilet. I hate to think what might have happened if there had been anyone in there, because you can never know how tolerant the authorities are in foreign countries. So, I won’t say it was a happy ending to our saga, but it was certainly the ending for which we had been begging during those couple of excruciating hours sitting on a bus stuck in peak hour Rome traffic.
120
Why didn’t you just pee in a bottle or something?
20
Too many ladies present.
Here’s another tale you might find amusing. A few years back I took up paragliding. A paraglider is essentially a huge floppy wing that has the shape of an aerofoil and therefore flies. You can soar on the updraft from ridges or try to find a thermal and climb like a bird. It is possible to spend hours in the air – not for me, though: I scare too easily! Anyway in any discussion on paragliding the subject of taking a pee invariably comes up. Some people carry an empty bottle that has a wide mouth, such as a Gatorade bottle, whereas others just do it in their trousers, figuring that no-one is going to be wise to it. There are a lot of females paragliding, but I’ve never been game to ask any of them what their pee technique is.
But there is a further complication for people who participate in competitions. Those who do so can expect at times to have to stand around in mixed company for many hours waiting for a send-off. The best option here is to make your way to the nearest stand of trees. It’s not at all uncommon to see a steady stream of people going to and from the nearest bushes. But sometimes there is just nowhere convenient to go. Obviously, adversity being the mother of invention, some clever ways around the problem have been devised. I have heard of at least one person who wears a condom catheter with a tube running from it down the inside of his trousers, with the end being secured with elastic tied around his ankle. He prides himself with being able to spend hours up at the launch site without ever having to head off for a pee, with no-one being the wiser. But, as you well know for some reason our brains are not wired to allow us to pee and act naturally at the same time. So, if you ever happen to be up on a paraglider launch site and you see a person standing still with their eyes close and a look of relief on their face – like Ruprecht in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels – make a point not to sit down where he was standing.
21
The condom type relief apparatus is quite common in the gliding scene although quite a lot of gliders have inbuilt relief tubes / external draining with a collection funnel built into them. Funnel size is based on your ego or your aim or both!
Got one of those condom arrangements with tube and plastic container bag somewhere around in my cupboards.
A couple of the more forthcoming gliding gals have told me they wear those special incontinence absorbent panties one can buy in the super markets to fit both men and women.
A few of the older men do as well. when a long flight or a competition flight is imminent
A few years ago a highly rated international glider pilot crashed and was killed on his glide approach to I think Benalla aerodrome.
It was established that he had suffered a burst bladder just before he crashed.
The pain must have been horrific.
20
Jaymez, though an amusing story after pondering many witty replies I’ve concluded that I cannot due to the trouble it would give the Moderators on a Sunday. 🙂
[and wee all thank you very much] ED
110
My grandmother owned a hotel in Cornwall (UK) about 60 yards from the beach at Watergate Bay. We spent most summers there in the 1950s before moving to live there when she retired in the 1960s.
Padstow, now made famous by chef Rick Stein, is around 9 miles up the coast and one of the fishermen from there used to deliver fresh fish to the hotel three times a week. We used to go out fishing with him as my grandlmother adored the sea.
In those days, way back in the 1950s, Sundays were quiet days even during the tourist season, and in common with most of the UK, most places that were open on a Sunday (including restaurants) closed very early.
We were in Padstow one Sunday late afternoon in early September I was about 5 and my sister is 2 years younger. I was born when my my mother was 17 so she would have been 22 or so.
It was the end of the afternoon, getting on for 6.00pm, and we were getting ready to leave and head back to Watergate. Time for a quick trip to the loo and we left my father along with my uncle and aunt at the other end of the harbour.
The toilets were a small granite building on the harbour looking out across the estuary of the river Camel towards Rock – now a favourite holiday spot for the ‘cream’ of British society. The toilets were provided and run by the local council but it didn’t occur to us that they, like so much of Britain in those days, would close everything down early on a Sunday.
Mum took us into the ladies and the three of us all, as it was called in those days, ‘spent a penny’, before washing our hands.
We went to leave but the door had been locked by the Council employee responsible for maintaining them. It was, after all 6.00pm and time for him to shut them. Clearly it had not occurred to him to check and see if anyone was still using them !!
Mum started banging on the door and my sister and I started shouting ‘help’. Nothing happened and we made as much noise as possible…. It must have been around a quarter of an hour before my father, aunt and uncle came looking for us and heard us calling.
The doors to both mens and ladies toilets were locked, the local council offices were closed up. We were trapped and it looked like we would be there until the Monday morning!
There were heavy opaque glass windows high up in the wall which could rotate slightly inwards to ventilate the toilets but out of reach of my mother. She lifted me up to where I could grasp the catch and pull it and the top of the window inwards.
I managed to slide through it head first and my father held me up the other side whilst mum lifted and pushed my two year old sister up to where I could reach her arms and pull her up to slide through the gap.
With the window now opened inwards and my sister and I outside my mother jumped up and managed to catch the top of the window. She was young and fit and an intrepid point-to-point rider (amateur national hunt racing) and managed to haul herself up and squeeze herself head first through the gap and then jack-knife out of the window.
Home we went to the hotel for supper – and a telephone call to complain to the council the following day. I can still picture all that as if it were yesteraday, although now nearly 60 years ago.
Those were the days, a different, more gentle, innocent and far more honest world in the aftermath of the second world war.
Following on from other’s comments – it probably is wise not to place too much trust in the safety of public toilets!!
100
Roger: was it the Watergate Bay Hotel? The one that used to be the Officers’ Mess for St Mawgan? I spent some great holidays there in the ’90s (and was in the RAF there in the ’60s).
10
Yes indeed
Happened to me twice – once in Russia, once in China
Both times I was forced to utilise my underpants, no choice – then left behind in the bin without regret 🙂
40
There could not be two worst countries to choose. My experience with Russian and Chinese loos is – just go at the hotel! I have been to frozen rivers and lakes in Russia and China in winter, where docked boats locked in place for the winter, are used as restaurants. They have drop toilets at the back of the boat which the resultant debris being piled high and snap frozen on the ice. I would not want to be there at the spring thaw, or down stream doing any fishing!
20
“snap frozen on the ice”
Ah! So that is where the expression ‘snap one off’ comes from. I’ve always wondered …
00
I read Jamiez’s comment with great interest! I have made frequent visits to Dubai where these hoses are fitted everywhere. I’ve always been puzzled as to how one uses them without either soaking oneself or flooding the whole area, or, more likely, doing both! As most loos I’ve seen there seem to be somewhat awash I conclude that these hoses are not easy to use. Happily there is usually loo roll available. They also have what we term “Asian” loos there (ie…hole in the ground with footprints, as in rural France).
Another “loo” observation: you know you are back in Melbourne when you get those huge rolls of single ply that fold themselves into irritating useless scrappy pieces! Always encountered on arrival after one has had to cross one’s legs during the descent and landing and feeling brainless with long haul jetlag.
50
Sorry Jaymez….tried to correct but couldn’t get cursor to cooperate.
20
Public ‘facilities’ across England have had to be either upgraded to provide facilities for disabled users or to close if they can’t be.
Initially local hoteliers were only to happy to welcome the extra footfall and advertise themselves as the alternative to council run facilities, but that didn’t last and now you have many parts of the country as well provided for as, well rural France.
30
Apart from the bloke who has to go around picking up the dead birds at wind farms, Green jobs are usually just the result of too much gall.
02
This one’s ancient, but how many opportunities do you get.
In the town near where I grew up were two two story sandstone pubs. The Top Pub and the Bottom Pub, defined by distance from the river.
One Saturday the Top Publican came into the bar in a rage. “Just come out the back and see the filth of some people”!
So out the clients marched, to see the brown paint on the wall. One of the previous night’s guests had, instead of taking the long walk down the backyard, poked his/her bum out the top floor window with messy consequences.
Standing in the crowd, the town wag, Andy B. piped up: “Well, all I can say is the wall can’t be plumb!”
20
Anyone have for a ten??
00
That is ‘change’ for a ten
00
As I remember one of our early astronauts, Alan Shepard, was kept waiting in his perch atop the rocket for final clearance to lift off for so long that he had a rather severe bladder problem. After discussion with mission control the decision was either call off the flight or use his space suit. He didn’t call off the flight. Using a multimillion dollar space suit for a toilet is about the worst desperation story I’ve ever heard.
Never a restroom (sorry, loo) when you need it the most. 😉
30
It was stunning to read the press reaction to the halving of oil prices. Pure doom and gloom. What has happened to us? Halving energy cost is a bad thing? The environment editor in the Australian could find nothing good except that it might slow the Iranian bomb program and reduce funding for ISIS. Some shale exploitation and fracking companies in the US will slow down or fail. Great. Even the general press sees halving energy costs as a disaster. For example they predict a medium term crisis in Australia because oil exploration will slow down? Isn’t that what Greenists want?
Have we reached the point in the Greenist dominated political world where good news is a disaster? Would a doubling of oil prices have been greeted with joy? From the depths of the oil crisis in the 1970s and the control of the OPEC cartel, we have come to this? The papers even bemoan the new energy independence of the US who will soon be able to export light crude? Meanwhile Greens fight to keep Australian gas in the ground, leading to a certain energy crisis in NSW. Some good news at least.
Is it just the need for disaster to sell news or has the world truly gone mad? Possibly only a rapid increase in world temperature would cheer everyone up? That awful hiatus has gone on long enough, most of the life of the IPCC in fact. So it’s all gloom for Paris then. At least the restaurants are still good and the museums are great. If things keep getting better, it might be the last conference.
372
People have been socially conditioned by the ‘Green’ pseudo science and reality, without any questioning the average person will equate cheaper fuel + more used + more emissions = atmospheric warming, this is a major goal for the global socialists to achieve and many forms of it prevail in most aspects of peoples lives without them realizing.
In Victoria we just had 2 days in a row of 38°c before a big storm front swept over Vic and dropped temperatures where I am 11 degrees in half an hour, before this though the hand wringing hyperventilation in the MSM over the 2 38° days was unbearable, this type of weather would once have been described as a warm spell in Australia but now is considered some dire omen of the coming apocalypse!, if people want to be so weak as to fall for a doomsday cult then they will find out the impending apocalypse will not come in the form of destructive weather but the very destruction of a lifestyle they once knew.
361
And that is the entire purpose of the Green Cult.
201
And just look at the weather happening in the Mediterranean Sea area. Severe articles on this blog.
http://iceagenow.info/
151
I always have a problem with alarmists on both sides of the fence.
30
Co2 does not cause global warming, so we should be alarmed at the inevitable cooling which is gathering pace.
81
To which I’ll add, an extremely wobbly jet stream is creating climate havoc. Check out the anomalies.
http://cci-reanalyzer.org/DailySummary/
20
I remember wet snow at sea level on the south coast of Cyprus back in the mid 70s.
10
Two years ago there was snow in Cairo. That is unthinkable, like snow in Singapore. Still it is either armageddon or simply a statistical possibility. One in one hundred year events do happen, roughly every one hundred years.
20
Snow fell in the past few days in the Golan Heights (Israel) Jordan, Lebanon, Tunisia and Libya more snow expected on Wednesday. East coast of USA expecting very cold weather too.
In Algeria they had riot because of the problems caused by the snow.
Who knows maybe snow will fall in Cairo again this winter.
00
The US is in for a strong cold surge to the gulf next week as well.
http://earth.nullschool.net/#2015/01/08/0300Z/wind/surface/level/overlay=temp/orthographic=-92.72,52.92,536
Eastern Europe, NW mid east will be coping the big chill too, Balkans, Greece, Turkey, into northern Syria.
http://earth.nullschool.net/#2015/01/08/0300Z/wind/surface/level/overlay=temp/orthographic=25.82,41.16,536
And look at the relative humidity that will come with it … blizzard on the way.
http://earth.nullschool.net/#2015/01/08/0300Z/wind/surface/level/overlay=relative_humidity/orthographic=25.82,41.16,536
80
Looking at the Oz TV it looks like we are under the napalm attack. Fires raging everywhere, imminent disaster, hundreds of houses burned, be scared it will happen to you too. The global warming parallels are implied and not yet spoken of. Give a few days and they will come up. Hardly anyone talks about the lack of prevention and preparation or the fact that Australia greened by up to 25% according to csiro.
I would not be surprised if some of the firebugs are greenies just to help their cause.
103
Yes, and money is spent on prissy ‘walks’ for tourists and not keeping the new fire prone undergrowth down in Murrindindi Shire. It’ll all be ready for burning again before long.
40
.
Christine Milne and the ABC are onto already
“South Australia, Victoria bushfires a reminder for Government to address climate change: Milne”
They’re screaming from the rooftops now
51
So the real risk of co2 production is not temperature but increased plant growth leading to an abundance of fuel.
Of course all Milne can do is talk about non-existent global warming…
40
TdeF : “It was stunning to read the press reaction to the halving of oil prices. Pure doom and gloom. What has happened to us? Halving energy cost is a bad thing?”
—
Symptomatic of the fear-laden doomerism world coming to and end mentality plus prep/survivalism that has affected/infected the western world, especially North America. The Americans freak out all the time because all the doing you know what in their own nest, is gradually catching up. I prefer to examine the German, low lands and north European takes on these things, a fair bit more sensible, analytical, objective, honest and less reactive (for the most part … pity about the cAGW over-reaction though).
Having said that, as of last night’s drop to $51 we’re now only $20 US above the $31 low of the GFC’s spectacular plunge from a $147 peak, so it’s valid to see a rapid change in the change south as a troubling indicator and ask some questions about the underlying state of global economics, as last time this sort of thing occurred global trade volume fell by 25% for ~8 months.
70
Drop of oil prices is due to:
1. Oil shale revolution in the US;
2. Saudi Arabia trying to destroy it; and
3. The Weakness of the economy.
Whist this is not good for my long term job prospects as I work in this industry, I welcome it because this lessens the burden on everyone else. This also has a surprisingly cathartic effect on the petroleum industry as price of support industries went through the roof lately and made looking for oil and gas extremely expensive. Hundreds of thousand of people lost their jobs already worldwide, but I,m pretty sure that some of you never heard about it, but all of you heard about 5% ABC budget cut over 5 years?
What governments worry and lament about is the loss of billions in tax. People. Eh? Who cares! They did not work for our ABC.
50
Reducing the oil price has the effect of under-mining the Soviet gas price and their strangle-hold over Europe this winter. Anyone can read Piers Corbyn’s forecasts and see the southerly meandering jet-stream and work out that there are going to be periods of snow and bitterly cold weather when the Russians could easily apply bargaining leverage on the West’s sanctions by cutting off gas supplies.
00
I note once again that The Age is making a big song and dance about our couple of hot days and bushfires, yet keeping mum about the extreme cold and snow in the northern hemisphere, with even the Grand Canyon snowed over and blizzard warnings in Hawaii. I guess the heat in Australia will raise another cry to take more money off people and pass it on to self-serving organisations, in the name of saving the planet from climate change, while the cold in the northern hemisphere will be just considered normal weather patterns.
322
Living in the Adelaide Hills where we had a fire ‘situation’ yesterday, and in one of those (many) towns listed under emergency threat, I watched the ABC News coverage.
I wasn’t home but near and I would like to pay tribute to their efforts in keeping us informed, but I shan’t as it was an excruciating waste of time. At times I felt that next day’s newspaper would be quicker with information.
The outcome depended on how quickly the SW cool change arrived. By 3.30 p.m. they were still showing the 11.30 a.m. Weather map. The same interviews, the same pictures and the same speculation went on and on. They seemed unable to do more than talk about the gale force winds that would make the fire situation worse. No wonder they hew so strongly to the IPCC line.
Eventually the cool change arrived, the temperature dropped to 19C and there was a little rain. I drove home to find 2 emergency warnings on my answer phone, I think. The automatic message player is incompatible with Telstra’s message bank, so all I got was the last half of the message.
I might add that the town (and several others) haven’t been burnt out in 170 years but the authorities can’t be blamed for taking the gloomiest view. And that the ABC radio was far more informative and responsive to the situation that their TV confreres, but then they weren’t part of the News and Current Affairs clique, just doing their job without waffle.
111
Here in Manchester UK there is no chance of a bush fire. However, as I live on a flood plane I am part of an automated service warning of potential floods. Like in Australia, if there is the slightest risk of a severe event then I get a call. But this is playing safe, and there are different levels of alerts. My house is 80 years old and it has never been flooded. The last time any houses were flooded in the local area was in 1963. Since then extensive flood defenses have been built.
However, any severe weather events make news. Last January there was severe flooding in parts of Somerset and the Thames Valley. There were plenty of stories of houses and farms being flooded, and heroic stories of people struggling through the water. But the numbers affected were in the tens of thousands in a little country of 62 million. The severe rain was due to shift in the Jetstream – a natural but infrequent event.
90
There is also the lack of proper dredging of rivers, streams and ditches. The EU required a new bridge to be conformed to their rules in Catterick Village. Instead of the road arching over the local beck it was flat. Add to that a lack of dredging where river stones had built up, silt collected between them and the inevitable plant growth and the reduced amounts of water that could move downstream is obvious. In addition, when the ‘new’ A1 was built nearby in a manner that allowed it to flood and the diverted heavy traffic came through the village pushing mass water before it…surprise! surprise!…flooding through the village. Nothing to do with AGW…just lack of care and total incompetence.
40
Here is further evidence that the Left are driven by an obsessive hatred of fossil fuels rather than a genuine desire to find alternatives.
New wind turbine farce: How they take power from the National Grid even when they are NOT generating any electricity. Take a few momements to read this article as it contains some interesting facts and suggestions.
But, LOOK! Australia’ carbon dioxide tax DID work:
Grand Canyon blanketed in snow as hot and sunny vacation spots Las Vegas and Los Angeles endure freezing temperatures to kick of New Year thanks to rare winter storm
And further proof:
Rarest turtles in the world wash up in BRITAIN: Two reptiles are swept 5,000 miles from their home in the Gulf of Mexico by strong ocean currents
One of the flaws in the human mind is that we tend to become fixated on ideas and objects, to the point of it being obsessive. Look at how the retail industry as learnt to exploit it. Smartphone makers, for example, can count on consumers buying each new iteration of their phone without actually considering its relative worth. It’s why people become aligned with political parties and obsess over celebrities. Anthropologists could probably find something in our early history that caused our obsessiveness to give us an edge in the survival game, but, like so many of the mental attributes we carry around from our very early history, obsessive conduct is not necessarily of benefit to us in modern society. And, again, as with all of our inherent flaws, we have to learn to recognise obsessiveness and actively try to suppress it. It requires conscious effort.
But, as we know, the Left have different reward centres to normal people. Often they are driven by hatred resulting from low self-esteem, but just as often they are narcissists who are entirely focused on validating their own sense of superiority to others. And therein lies to irony of it: these people think they are smarter and more virtuous than ‘ordinary’ people (and certainly those beastly conservatives) but they don’t have the mental capacity to analyse their own flaws, let alone learn to suppress them. What’s worse is that these are the people who control the political agenda in nearly all developed societies.
171
Failed Predictions of Catastrophe by Now!
1.UN overestimated global warming by 2015
2.All Rainforest Species Will Be Extinct
3.Oil will run out by 2015
4.Arctic sea ice will disappear by 2015.
5.Looking to the future: A billion people could die from climate change by 2020
1) UN overestimated global warming by 2015
Two decades ago, the UN came up with several models that all predicted that by 2015, the Earth would have warmed by at least a degree Fahrenheit. http://www.foxnews.com/science/2013/01/28/un-climate-report-models-overestimated-global-warming/
Yet in the last two decades, there has instead been virtually no warming according to satellite temperature measurements. http://www.remss.com/blog/recent-slowing-rise-global-temperatures
The plot of the graph shown at the link shows that the measured temperature rise is within the envelope of model predictions up until the late 2000’s. After that time, observed temperatures are sometimes less than any model prediction, and are clearly different than the mainstream model behavior.
2) All Rainforest Species Will Be Extinct
Dr. Paul Ehrlich, the President of the Center for Conservation Biology at Stanford University, got famous for his 1968 book “the Population Bomb” which predicted that increasing human populations would spell doom.
One part of that doom, he warned in his 1981 book “Extinction,” was that all rainforest species would likely soon go extinct due to environmental destruction.
“Half of the populations and species in tropical moist forests would be extinct early in the next century [the 2000s] and none would be left by 2025,” he warns on page 291. He added that that his model indicated that, on the upper bound, complete extinction would occur as soon as 2010.
Elsewhere in the book, he also wrote that his model’s assumptions were “more realistic” than those typically used and that “unless appropriate steps are taken soon… humanity faces a catastrophe fully as serious as an all-out thermonuclear war.”
3) Oil will run out by 2015
A Pennsylvania state government “Student and Teacher Guide” reads: “Some estimates of the oil reserves suggest that by the year 2015 we will have used all of our accessible oil supply.”
Yet the Earth still has oil: at least 1.6 trillion gallons of proven reserves, according to the Energy Information Administration, a US government agency. In fact, proven reserves have more than doubled over the last couple decades, as technological innovation made more oil accessible. http://www.eia.gov/cfapps/ipdbproject/IEDIndex3.cfm?tid=5&pid=57&aid=6
The guide is on the website of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection. [It was – it has now been removed!] Department spokesman Eric Shirk told FoxNews.com that the prediction was “obviously wrong” but added that the guide mostly consists of practical information on how to recycle oil that is still current. http://www.portal.state.pa.us/portal/server.pt/community/waste_oil_program/14096
4) Arctic sea ice will disappear by 2015.
“Peter Wadhams, who heads the Polar Ocean Physics Group at the University of Cambridge… believes that the Arctic is likely to become ice-free before 2020 and possibly as early as 2015,” Yale Environment 360 reported in 2012.
Yet government data shows that arctic sea ice has increased since then. At its lowest point during 2014, sea ice covered about 1.7 million square miles — an area nearly half the size of the United States.
5) Looking to the future: A billion people could die from climate change by 2020
Dr. John Holdren, who currently serves as the White House Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, made dire predictions about global warming in the 1980s.
Paul Ehrlich cites Holdren in his 1987 book “The Machinery of Nature”, noting that: “As University of California physicist John Holdren has said, it is possible that carbon dioxide climate-induced famines could kill as many as a billion people before the year 2020.”
Holdren told FoxNews.com that he does not view that as a prediction.
“As accurately reflected in the quoted passage, my statement in the 1980s about potential impacts of climate change on food production by 2020 was not a ‘prediction’ or a ‘forecast.’ It was, precisely, a statement about what ‘is possible,’ ” he wrote in an email to FoxNews.com.
There are also still five more years left for the scenario to occur.
“It is a bit too soon, on the eve of 2015, to make any firm pronouncements about what will or will not happen by 2020,” Holdren wrote.
“I very much hope, of course, that nothing as dire as a famine killing a billion people will happen as a result of climate change by 2020, or ever. But the prospects for permanently avoiding such an outcome… will be greatly improved if this country follows through on the sensible measures in the President’s Climate Action Plan,” he wrote.
The above edited from: http://www.foxnews.com/science/2014/12/31/botched-environmental-predictions-for-2015/
141
But Jaymez, the oil ran out in 1975. I remember Paul Erhlich’s prediction that ” by 1975the oil will have run out, there will be famine in the USA and cannibals would stalk the mid-West”.
He surely couldn’t have got it wrong, could he? Like all his other predictions. As for Wadhams I like the subtle (?) comment in the UK that Prof. Wadhams had achieved distinction in the Climate debate as being regarded as an idiot by BOTH sides. There must surely be some way of getting at these doomsayers without imperilling free speech. A 2 year wait then section 18C them?
131
Yeah the recent 50% price fall of crude is just a ruse to suck people into using the last few barrels.
Peak oil theory would have to be one of the most pervasive urban myths out there after AGW. I spoke to someone just the other day who started on peak oil with me and I pointed out that if the rules of supply and demand mean anything then a 50% price drop is unlikely to be evidence of dwindling reserves. They had no idea the price of oil had fallen. Like most people, strong opinions and no research to back them up.
60
Not to mention that a higher price would just make it profitable to convert coal –> oil –> gas, and extend the global liquid fuel supplies by about 150 years given virtually any hydrocarbon can be synthesized on an industrial scale already in many countries, and that most modern reciprocating engines operating today are already using 100% synthetic engine oils. So you can get an economic and demand adjustment transition phase, but there is virtually zero chance of supply failure. The people who sprout that muck either have no idea about how business works and resources are discovered, produced and delivered, or they do know and are just not interested in telling the truth about the energy abundance we actually have, at all. [if ‘Gaia’ didn’t want its most impressive critter to use oil seeps, tar pits and coal measures to burn hydrocarbons and develop and improve its lot, then Gaia probably should not have created either through 100% natural processes, eh? … it’s 100% natural and 100% organic after all, so Gaia must be kewl with it, right? But if we get an email from Gaia to desist forthwith, we will. Fair enough?]
So where’s the “energy crisis”? Must be off playing hide-‘n-go-seek with the Tooth Fairy’s unicorns again.
50
Unmentionable
Don’t ignore this another unmentionable
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2014/12/16/gas-to-gasoline-at-1gallon-call-it-25-cents-liter/
60
The real interesting item on this drop in the price of oil caused it seems by the success of America’s fraking of it’s extensive shale deposits is that so far fraking is only really going on in the USA.
And yet America is now almost or larger producer of oil than any other nation.
Russia if it ever gets back into the oil game and gets into fraking has the truly immense Bazenhov shale formation which covers about one million square kilometres it wil have the capability of flooding the world with fraked oil
The Bazhenov Formation:
[ quoted ]
The uniqueness of the Bazhenov as a shale formation is not only in its size (more than 1 million km2), but its natural oil flow, which distinguishes it from other shale formations around the world. There is not any shale formation in the world with natural flows as thick as those of the Bazhenov. It can produce hundreds of cubic meters of natural flow oil per day, or, in more than a third of the wells drilled, no production whatsoever .
_________
And that is only one of a number of immense shale deposits such as Australia’s Cooper Basin shale deposit in NW WA, a fair proportion of which have the probability of being major global oil sources when fraking is extended to them.
The UK has a shale deposit under a good percentage of the UK that is well over a thousand feet feet thick, unlike the American shale deposits which are often only 30 metres thick seams.
. The UK may possibly have more shale oil under it than the Americans can muster.
As they say; the stone age never ended because of shortage of stones.
Mankind just found a better and easier way of doing things.
So I suspect it will be with oil.
We will find better ways of generating useable energy and better energy sources such as Fusion reactors long before we ever even look like running out of oil.
And if the Russians are right then oil, Abiogenic oil, oil created not from fossil s plants under enormous pressures and heat in the earth’s crust but from simple chemicals like CO2 and carbonate rocks still even much deeper in the earth’s crust will ensure we can never run out of oil.
We just have to find it way down there
And Abiogenic oil in minute amounts from CO2 has been created in the very high pressure laboratories as well as found in the field in small amounts .
As for drilling down past the 40,000 foot depths and on down to the temperature limits of the drill pipe steels probably around the 60,000 feet deep mark, Shells expanding drill pipe technology now being commercialised is a piece of astounding technology.
This was quite early in the development of the mono diameter oil pipe technology
Monodiameter drilling
30
I personally think a-biotic is baseless and surplus to requirements plus doesn’t pass Occam’s keep-it-simple-stupid razor. If gas comes from coal, and coal is full of fossil plants, I fail to see a need for a replacement theory of hydrocarbon deposition and structural migration with respect to oil traps.
Russia has the same problem as Australia (but worse) of very low infrastructure development levels, very long distances, and the time and money needed to develop enormous reserves of almost everything humanity needs to prosper. Except Russia has -50 degree winters and technical and maintenance issues, plus continuity of supply questions as well. Plus considerable geopolitical risk on top.
For China, Japan and India this just makes investing big and long-term in Australia (once again) look better and better – as long as they trust the politics will not become a problem. The political problems will probably not be geopolitical with good management, more likely be Greenie related, with the Ted Kaczynski fans and other misanthropic Luddites thinking human beings have no right to be characteristically human, nor to use technology which the properties of the cosmos make possible for a natural animal to naturally exploit in the way we do, so to better survive and increase our options, adaptation and inter-niche mobility.
Apparently that’s just so wrong.
50
The great Richard S Courtney who designed & built a Coal GTL plant for Thatcher speaks from authority :-
http://joannenova.com.au/2010/11/unintended-consequences-greens-protect-coal-deposits-and-destroy-rainforest/#comment-133702
What I can’t understand is why Australia has not at least got an academic program hard at this for economic sovereignty & national security reasons.
It would go a lot further than spending money on the AGW effects on the sex lives of the lesser pink greenies or the service life of a populist politician’s soapboxes.
( I realise National Sovereignty is an anathema to the NWO/CFR/ROUND TABLE/Fabian/City types but charity begins at HOME!) DOUBLE PLUS GOOD!
60
What you are doing here Jaymez is very important.
The doomsayers need to be held to account and/or held up to ridicule.
The dud predictions are easily forgotten as the years go by.
Prediction 5. Is actually quite moderate compared with this failed prediction:
4.5 billion people might die by 2012 due to carbon clathrates.
50
Doesn’t seem that long ago (March-April 2012?) that the Murray and Murrumbidgee Rivers were in full flood. Since then we have had three pretty decent snow seasons.
Current Southern NSW dam levels (a) Burrinjuck 60% (b) Blowering 29% (c) Hume 55%.
Lake Eucumbene is at 57%.
Australia wants to be the “food bowl” for Asia.
As our population grows, more and more people will live in rural Australia.
Anybody else think a few more big dams might come in handy?
220
But you will get screams from the BANANA (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything) crowd. Schemes like the Snowy Rivers scheme could never get off the ground today unless we change direction radically.
130
No point in building more dams.
If true to form, the greenies would somehow get to use any water stored for “environmental flows” so it could fill a South Oz water ski dam, or run uselessly out to sea anyway.
Can’t do anything useful with anything you know, that’s counter green theology.
100
How the BBC ensures that only the ‘right’ people are appointed to key positions.
40
On the ABC recently (to their credit)there was a program called “Don’t Panic, The Truth About Population” by Hans Rosling. (A Scandinavian I think.) I didn’t record the time or date unfortunately.
But, in Al Gore fashion, he managed to very well illustrate how the population growth is already dropping in countries like Bangladesh…at 2.5 children per family…and for young people in the world as a whole.
He illustrated world incomes and how food production is quite able to cope until the population peaks at about 9 billion around mid century. The key is to let countries that need cheap coal power or energy to have it in order to attain our standard of living.
This goes against the grain of the Greens and AGW believers but is the brightest way of seeing the future. He didn’t claim to be the know all but he was a refreshing change from the gloomy picture we keep seeing.
If you are able to find it on Youtube and download I’m sure you will be pleased to view it.
71
This was very interesting, except for his nod to political correctness of the impact of global warming at the end. I had heard that the population was expected to peak but not any of the details.
31
Don’t Panic, The Truth About Population
10
“Don’t Panic” reminds me of a book written by Douglas Adams.
20
From the same stable, The Ignorance Project should dispel a few misconceptions about population, life expectancy and the potency of renewables.
Questions
1. In 1950 there were fewer than one billion children (aged 0-14) in the world. By 2000 there were almost two billion. How many do UN experts think there will be in 2100?
2. There are 7 billion people in the world today. Of the maps below, which one do you think shows best where they live in the Americas, Europe, Africa and Asia?
3. What do you think is the life expectancy in the world as a whole today?
4. What percentage of adults in the world today are literate – can read and write?
5. Which of the curves below shows the present income distribution of all people in the world?
6. On average, in the world as a whole today, men aged 25-34 have spent 8 years in school. How many years on average have women in the same age group spent in school?
7. What percentage of the world’s one-year old children is vaccinated against measles?
8. In the last 20 years the proportion of the world population living in extreme poverty has…
9. What percentage – approximately – of total world energy generated, comes from solar and wind power?
10. In 1965, the number of babies born per woman in the world, on average, was 5. What do you think the number is today?
Answers: from USA
20
On a non climate related matter.
‘Mrs Kelly said she was campaigning against the airport in the Liberal-held seat of Penrith because she didn’t see why the promised infrastructure funding package for Western Sydney had to be tied to an airport.
“I think at the moment if you say ‘jobs’, people will put up with anything. But when people realise how many jobs, what kind of jobs, and the trade-off in enjoyment, property values and traffic congestion, it will be one big sticky do.”
Reading between the lines, there will be no second airport in Sydney. The Coalition is flying kites to gauge public opinion on building an airport west of the Blue Mountains and joined by HSR to Sydney.
This is pure speculation.
30
I haven’t yet seen anybody note that “Sydney’s” second airport will be also NSW’s second airport.
Logic dictates that “NSW’s” second airport should be in the Newcastle area, not the Sydney area, hemmed in by The Sandstone Curtain”.
20
Maybe, more likely they will use the borers from the north-west rail link (finished in a couple of years) to drill under the sandstone curtain west of Sydney, with an airport on the central tablelands and a very fast train to Sydney. This would make it economically viable.
20
I’m in the US so I don’t know how many of you have ever seen Bill Moyers(and his friggin company). I had the misfortune of having nearly nothing else to watch a few days ago. The only good thing is that it was billed as his “last” episode on public TV. The part of the show I hope you watch is here: http://billmoyers.com/episode/full-show-climate-crusade/?utm_source=sidebar&utm_medium=bannerutm_campaign=climatecrusade
This is where it’s at. No longer is it about climate, it’s about twisting democracy into a very fucked up place.
I cannot express in words just how sick I feel after watching this Mary Christina Wood. The end is near friends, climate science is now old news.
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Mark D.
I watched about 5 minutes of this.
These people need to take a walk outside, visit
the mountains, streams and reefs and see what it
is REALLY like.
Most of them have never been outside their neighbourhood
so would not have any idea…..at all.
I truly feel sorry for my grandkids who are being brinwashed
by these teachers “who know best”.
You are right, the end is nigh.
Well, as we knew it, anyway.
Pooe fella, my country.
71
POOR… not that other word.
20
Can people point me in the right direction please? My daughter is doing sustainability at uni and working in the helping professions is surrounded by green group think. One of her beliefs is that the oil and gas industries are heavily subsidised by government and that renewables just can’t compete with that subsidy – based on what she has been taught, backed up supposedly by peer reviewed papers. As you can imagine this has brought me up short.
She hasn’t been able to get online to get me the references but did a google search that came up with an ABC report that included tax deductable exploration costs as a “subsidy” as was Geoscience Australia and that seemed to be it. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-11-11/coal-oil-and-gas-companies-receive-4-billion-dollar-in-subsidie/5881814
An IMF report wanted to include all externalities, traffic congestion and car crashes as a result of using fuel that is not factored in to the price, also other pollution, etc. Plus such things as over irrigation of land, etc. http://www.imf.org/external/np/pp/eng/2013/012813.pdf.
I’m not sure what bothers me more – the intellectual dishonesty or the overly emotive angst driven nature of their deeply held beliefs.
What I would like would be a couple of links to reputable, preferably not using biased language, sites with info on the real subsidies for renewables. She won’t plow through lots of info on an obviously anti-renewable site but would take some notice if presented with alternatives to group think. She isn’t unintelligent, but she is passionate about wanting to do the best for the environment and people and we are talking enough for me to want to continue.
Any help appreciated.
50
I sympathise with your effort to cut through increasingly barefaced Green propaganda now permeating institutions of learning.
Just consider if you might, the huge taxes raised from fossil fuels vs. well how much tax is raised from renewables ?
Fossil fuels pay their way, whereas renewables just cann’t compete for wholesale energy production (full stop).
61
This is bare faced lying, promulgated within our educational institutions.
Most of these so called “subsidies” are legitimate business deductible costs, as with any business. This lie casts all tax deductibility as subsidies. Believe it or not, there are lots of people in our education system who do not know the difference between income and profit. However, this lie is pushed by people who do know the difference.
Many of them believe that tariffs and subsidies are the same thing. They believe that relief from a tax or a tariff is a subsidy.
There is the example of the fuel tax rebate. The fuel tax is connected to the provision of public roads. It is collected pricipally from users of public roads. Mining companies are not rebated on the fuel which they use on public roads, they pay that tax the same as everybody else. However the tax is rebated for the much greater quantity of fuel used in off road machinery applications.
The Hawke government for a time abolished the fuel tax rebate, imposing huge pre production costs on industries which had received the rebate. That policy was changed after discovery of the degree to which it was depressing productivity.
20
Oil companies are actually taxed.
00
Why does the World seem so concerned about collapsing oil prices ?
Because Governments raise lots of money from tax on fuel at home and from selling fuel abroad.
Economies would collapse without it.
Now who would miss renewables ?
Renewables are just a huge burden, a drag and a handicap on economic survival.
60
Showing your daughter evidence and facts on what it’s really about vs Green/Leftist propaganda is fine, but she had better not raise these issue in her studies or she’ll have a resounding fail. Universities and the like only have one correct path and that’s the propaganda that they push.
Jo has already highlighted many such cases of misinformation/selective information in this blog, with full references. Catallaxy files also has covered some of this, specifically the so-called subsidies.
62
Try the Treasury website.
If Government subsidies are being given, then must have been budgeted for. Government departments just can’t give money away to people they like. It may have been hidden behind some double-talk name, so be creative in what you are looking for.
Better still, if she has been told that oil and gas is being heavily subsidised by government, ask her, and by inference her lecturer, to give you the appropriate references to the official Ministerial Papers to Cabinet. If that fails, you can always search Hansard for an appropriation in the latest Budget.
80
It’s a lost cause ‘Retired now’. She is at the age where her hormones are compelling her firstly to conform to the values of her peer group, making her vulnerable to peer pressure and, secondly, to adopt values that allow her to advertise her apparently high-minded social qualities in order to attract potential breeding partners, and, thirdly, where she is driven to elevate herself socially by distinguishing herself from what is seen as the status quo. Young people don’t socially distinguish themselves by adopting the values of other generations. Opposing it gives the individual a sense of greater social status.
On top of that there is the problem of angry leftist grey-beards exploiting her by indoctrinating her on the perceived ills of society. Again, when young people find a way to criticise or even demonise our society it serves to create a sense of social relevance and perhaps even superiority.
If the day ever comes when we get a genuine conservative government, social studies that teach children about their hormones and about how they are vulnerable to exploitation will be introduced into schools. Children should not only be taught about their primitive social urges but they should be socially conditioned to ridicule such behaviour. That way, when they become teenagers they will be armed with the knowledge to resist those who try to exploit them. Good luck waiting around for a decent conservative government to come along!
So, to sum up, don’t try to argue the facts, because they are irrelevant to someone who is at the age where social considerations are the strongest force. The best you can do is try to show her how she is being exploited and explain to her the biological changes that make her vulnerable to it. But the need to fit in is a stronger force than the need to see reason. Good luck. I’m afraid if the Left have got at them by they time they go to university they are lost forever. That, after all, is the main reason the Left want everyone to go to university.
To conclude, here’s an interesting quote I saw yesterday on the Catallaxy Files blog (I haven’t checked it):
41
Excellent take. Though it doesn’t explain Christine Milne (and I’d rather you didn’t try to hard on that one 😉 ). Fortunately they usually have little capacity to do much damage at that stage of personal, social, financial and professional development.
One of the greatest myths of our age has been that teens are grown up and responsible because of an 18th birthday, or that they’re adult, educated and intelligent and need little or no further guidance at age 25. Hence routine error and endless foolish choices and actions are culturally baked-in, and the same willful nonsense continues and also amplifies.
91
Whenever this crock on subsidies is raised, I always mention the up front money that the Governments (both Federal and State) throw in at the front end as an outright gift, not a loan, not even a subsidised loan, but an outright gift.
I’ve lost count of the times I have been called a liar for even mentioning this.
Luckily, the Internet is my friend here, and all these announcements (at the time of original release) are there for the finding.
Just one case in point here, and believe me, every single one of those Australian renewable plants got these gifts, which in effect are nothing more than up front subsidies.
Now, go back a few years to when Julia Gillard announced two new huge solar plants for Australia, as part of the solar flagship ….. whatever.
One was for Moree, and the second was for Chinchilla in Queensland.
Both Governments threw in as a gift between 45 and 50% of the original cost of the construction for these two plants.
Now, what that effectively does is lower the amount of money that needs to be recovered during the life of the plant, and hey, see what that means. The cost per unit of electricity generated is now lowered, artificially however, because of that up front gift. Hence renewable urgers can now make the claim that the electricity generated is now cost effective when compared to fossil fuel generated power, something so grossly untrue, but hey, who’s believe me anyway.
Liar liar I am called. Show me the proof.
Okay then here it is, and this is from June of 2011.
Australia to build world’s biggest solar stations
It says at the site: (my bolding)
On top of this, the State Governments of NSW, Labor at the time (for the Moree plant) and the Queensland Labor Government (for Chinchilla) also threw in almost $100 million each towards the plants.
EVERY renewable power plant in Australia receives these free Government handouts, and these are in fact, nothing more than SUBSIDIES.
The Chinchilla plant fell over when an incoming LNP Government under Campbell Newman pulled the Queensland funding, so obviously they could no longer make their own way without that Government money, hence collapse.
Tony.
141
Subsidy and tax deductions are 2 different things. Just like any other business the oil industry is entitled to tax deductions (not subsidies) which are related to exploration, capital and operational spending. Before drilling you have to get through a multiple levels of checks that often overlap. Then usually you follow up with the acquisition of seismic surveys (an acoustic imaging method that allows to see below the surface) and work to identify drilling prospects. Expenditure is small $ peanuts compared to the next stage, but it can substantially vary between 2 to say 100million (all values in us$).
To drill one exploration well offshore to about 4000m usually costs around 70-100million. In other words you spend 1 million dollars a day. A lot of those costs are blown now, like in the Browse Basin (offshore Western Australia), often to 150-200 million. The chance of the exploration success or finding anything is usually 10% or you have 1 in 10 chance of finding anything (not necessarily economic). Then once you find something you have to drill follow up or appraisal wells that usually cost the same if not more as you step up your expenditure with testing costs, coring, additional logging. Often in the case of gas your expenditure before commercial development decision is 2 to 10 billion dollars. Then the decision to make is what type of production facility ie offshore or onshore. Shell chose a floating LNG giant ship in the browse basin withnfacility reportedly costing > 10 billions. Why they chose offshore?. Because of environmentalism, land rights issues and poor political leadership in Western Australia. Chevron LNG development is onshore with the current cost of some 60 billion now (some 80% of original cost, again driven up by government, unionism and environmentalism).
You may say, but the final price is far more profitable. The answer is “no”, as often the internal rate of return is less 10% and with the low prices now basically these things are very likely to be uneconomic, particularly when you start adding multiple taxes, which I won’t mention at this stage.
As a result, the price of petrol at the pump consists of some 60% tax, 25% taken by refinery, 10% by exploration and production companies, 3% by transport and 2% by petrol station operators.
Notice at no stage the government helped except taking. The Government simply is too poor and not technologically advanced to get involved. This is why they allow big companies to explore otherwise these resources will never be found and developed.
The nationalisation does not work either. Look at Venezuela. Give something to clerks in government and this is a sure formula for disaster.
GA is a government organisation that comes from everyone’s taxes now (officially), although originally was set up to be subsided by the petroleum industry. Over the years the direct support from the petroleum industry was de-emphasised and lost but I am still sure that we are the primary contributors. In other words without us GA would not exist.
This is where the money comes from, after all they don,t call us the “milk cow” for nothing.
The next time your daughter opens her iPad, switches on electricity, drives her car or your car ask who is responsible for this? Ask her if she used any powered tools like hairdryer lately, what about that lipstick, clothes that shine, shoes that have funny colour, even her future engagement ring would not be possible without energy spent finding the stone and converting ore into metal. If she insists that this does not matter than you have more money for your own retirement. Both sides win. Another capitalistic transaction just like it should be.
Tell this to your daughter.
[This was caught by the automatic filter because it contains a word or a phrase that is “unwise”. It took a while to find, and fix, sorry -Fly]
50
Moderators
What are u doing?
00
Most progressives are economically illiterate.
CAGW is based on The Broken Window Fallacy.
Frederic Bastiat’s original
Of course breaking windows does wonders for the bottom line of some companies but it is at the expense of the peons and to civilization as a whole whose wealth and resources have been squandered on unnecessary destruction and rebuilding instead of on advancing.
00
retired now,
I would suggest you print out those two articles (conceal the origin of the Mises article) and hand them to your daughter to read in hard copy.
However as others have said. STRONGLY warn her she has to keep her mouth shut about what she has read or she will reap a whirlwind at school.
(Forbidden Knowledge is always enticing.)
00
retired now: may i suggest you get your daughter to read the links to Treasury and the ther “Henry Tax Review” in this reference:
http://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2014/02/is-the-diesel-rebate-really-a-subsidy/
The diesel fuel rebate is not a subsidy, it is a reibursement of a legitimate business input. The tax is then levied on the value added output.
Hopefully that will give her a better understading. From their she can do her own searching. However, the green propaganda is everywhere and generally there is only one in a hundred or so references in a Google search that contains the truth; the rest is propaganda.
For example , see if you can finnd the link I gave above amongst this lott of rubbish:
https://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en-AU&source=hp&q=diesel+fuel+rebate+subsidy&gbv=2&oq=diesel+fuel+rebate+subsidy&gs_l=heirloom-hp.12…2281.12578.0.15015.26.20.0.6.6.0.1265.4469.3-1j5j1j0j1.8.0.msedr…0…1ac.1.34.heirloom-hp..13.13.3610.kk5CsUQK3L8
🙂
41
“There” not “their”. Brain in holiday mode.
20
Retired Now:
I would suggest you try Forbes Magazine on-line and their articles on energy, especially “renewables”. Being a business paper they keep their eyes quite firmly on the money.
30
Here is a blog from 2012 from this very website:
Repeat after me: Fossil fuel companies subsidize the government.
40
Thank you everyone. I appreciate the efforts you have put in to reply and all the info. I’ll look into all those links. Something to do over this coming week.
Daughter is over 40, a mature aged student, so not stuck in the teenaged fitting in years. She does however have to pass her very expensive uni papers so I’m going gently keeping lines of communication open as well as possible in the meantime.
00
Dang! Global warming just hit The Grand Canyon!
http://time.com/3652757/grand-canyon-new-year-snowstorm/
41
i turned on sky news for a minute last night (while watching SA vs WI cricket) and swear i heard an offical – as part of the bushfire coverage – saying heat waves are the greatest natural disaster kill across the world.
have searched every sky news article on the bushfires, but have not located the official making the statement.
saw a little of overseas coverage of the bushfires, all pushing the extreme heat angle, none mentioning the lightning strikes that have sparked some of the fires in SA and Vic, little mention if any of the strong winds, & none mentioning SA officials were investigating other possible causes, which Sky reported last nite, without mentioning the “incinerator” which may be implicated.
4 Jan: ABC: SA bushfire: Homes lost as Adelaide Hills blaze burns towards townships
The bushfire is burning freely towards townships and residents across the area are fleeing to safer ground, although some have chosen to stay and defend their homes…
Police Commissioner Gary Burns said the cause of the fire had not been determined.
“An incinerator is one line of investigation we’re looking at,” he said…
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-01-03/adelaide-hills-face-most-dangerous-fire-day-since-ash-wednesday/5998294
3 Jan: ABC: At least four houses destroyed by bushfire near Kersbrook in Adelaide Hills, CFS confirms
Mr Eden (Country Fire Service spokesman Brenton Eden) said an incinerator was the likely cause of the fire, which has also destroyed a firefighting appliance, but no-one was hurt…
South Australia experienced a dry end to winter and received very little rain throughout spring, experiencing its hottest October on record…
MFS assistant chief fire officer Paul Fletcher said it was important household air conditioners were serviced.
“We’ve had 24 house fires caused by overheating and electrical cooling equipment and we don’t want any more,” he said…
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-01-02/catastrophic-fire-conditions-declared-near-adelaide/5996722
31
Pat:
see my bit at 3.1 re the uselessness of the ABC.
Was talking to 2 locals about 3 hours ago about their experiences closer to the fires. One had fire within 200 metres of house (evacuated) and other was staying in Mt. Torrens with other men (wife and son and dogs sent to safety in good car while he waited by his beloved antique) and they couldn’t get any information from the ABC radio. Eventually one of then logged onto the CFS web site (inundated as it was) and got latest info. and said “time to go, boys”. The place survived. (One of his neighbouring houses went through the 1939 fires OK).
He reports that they had whole carbonised leaves floating down, blackened by the heat in the flames but not burnt for lack of oxygen there).
40
Compile a pre 1987 (pre gw populism) list of Australian bush fires and their observed regularity.
Push it into the face of fools pumping such climate-change induced bushfire claptrap.
Ask them to explain in direct and concise terms their conclusions and why such extraordinary conclusions can be called rational, if not likewise founded on unambiguous and necessarily extraordinary an compelling physical evidence?
ABC
SBS
BOM
CSIRO
Canberra
UN IPCC
BBC
EU Commission
White House
62
/ crickets
40
i have not been able to find any news story about a queensland heat wave, and am not experiencing one where i live:
2 Jan: Yahoo7 & Agencies: Catastrophic conditions cause out-of-control fires
Queensland has also been hit by a heat wave, with the fifth warmest year on record
https://au.news.yahoo.com/a/25889243/scorching-temperatures-across-australia/
31
Climate Change Takes A Village ???
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/14/shishmaref-alaska-climate-change-relocation_n_6296516.html
20
Shishmaref Alaska is a ‘barrier’ island and therefore inherently unstable.
A Celebration of the World’s Barrier Islands
The book continues with a lot of information about the village of Shishmaref Alaska.
Willis Eschenbach also did a decent explanation HERE with photos.
00
naturally, the Guardian has Milne too, & tries hard to show she’s not exploiting the situation!
4 Jan: Guardian: Daniel Hurst: Bushfire response: disaster spending faces overhaul amid calls for climate action
Coalition signals funding focus could shift from disaster recovery to reducing risks as Greens call for government to ‘put their climate denial behind them’
Earlier, the Greens leader, Christine Milne, said the government “really must put their climate denial behind them” because such an approach was “costing the country dearly”…
Milne began her remarks by saying her thoughts went out to the communities currently threatened by bushfires and to the firefighters and emergency services risking their lives to save people, houses and communities…
Asked whether it was too soon to make such comments given that homes and lives remained under threat, Milne said: “It’s absolutely true that many more homes are at risk in South Australia and as I stand here it is still unclear how many homes have already been lost. It is absolutely the time to talk to Australians about the need to prepare for this.”…
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/04/bushfire-response-disaster-spending-faces-overhaul-amid-calls-for-climate-action
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Hmm! Christine Milne, sometimes I wonder.
Surely, knowing so conclusively that the emissions of CO2 are causing these bushfires, and now, with so much damning evidence across the years, I’m wondering why you just don’t take legal action to close those coal fired power plants down.
Surely you can put your money where your mouth is, eh!
It, umm, acts as a pretty huge indicator that you’re not really serious if you don’t take that legal action.
Surely it’s not just political grandstanding rhetoric now, is it?
Tony.
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Hasn’t the most effective mitigation aka. back burning already been strangled in Green tape ? It’s a pity bush fires cann’t be regulated in the same way. Whereas grandstanding Greens only do damage when you take notice of them.
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What is truly astonishing is the fact that people actually believe that man-made ‘climate change’ is the cause of bush fires, and that if CO2 emissions are cut all will be well!
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speaking of CAGW zealots exploiting disasters, natural or otherwise…
can anyone find a source or sources for Michael Bachelard’s claim that AirAsia CEO Tony Fernandes said anything about “climate change” making the weather worse & flying riskier in the tropics? of course, note Bachelard says Fernandes was “suggesting”! unless Bachelard provides a source/sources for these claims, i will believe it is Bachelard who is doing the suggesting:
1 Jan: Sydney Morning Herald: Michael Bachelard: AirAsia flight’s behaviour ‘on the edge of logic’
Without giving details, he steered blame towards the weather, saying his airline would continue business as usual, but suggesting that climate change was making weather worse and flying riskier, particularly in the tropics.
http://www.smh.com.au/world/airasia-flights-behaviour-on-the-edge-of-logic-20150101-12gk9a.html
this got picked up a day later (given Time Zone difference) in the UK Independent & Daily Mail, but appeared to be lifted from Bachelard’s report. i have found no source for such remarks.
following is precisely what fernandes said in his press conference and the “weather is changing” bit was carried by CNN and NBC, with no mention whatsoever that it was referring to CAGW or CC:
12mins approx: Press Conference CEO AirAsia Tony Fernandes
10 mins in: “Until we have the investigation, we cannot make any assumptions as to what went wrong. All i can say is that the weather in south-east is bad at the moment. You know, the floods in Malaysia, the floods in Thailand. There’s a lot of rain, so that is something that we have to look at more carefully, because the weather is changing, the weather is changing”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_ufJbYgf0k
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Pat,
Back in the days when hippies were afoot and the age of aquarius was upon us, I was on the pointy end of Boeings. The weather in the tropics was as scary as shit, the only reason I and the passengers did not die was that Boeings were built to last, not just people movers but almost combat ready in their toughness. Not entirely sure about the airbus structural integrity, but it’s fly by wire systems have shown to have the odd gremlins present. The weather has not changed, aircraft have changed, and pilots have changed, whizz bang aircraft hardly need a pilot until it hits the fan, then the IT experts up the front have a problem. Cheap airlines will always have a problem getting good pilots with good training, they are ticket cheap for a reason, their training, and maintenance is a bit suss. Air Asia has been on a naughty list from the yank civil aviation authority as not cosher. There is only about three mobs worse than them, Bangladesh is one of them. I find it sad, that technology built in to these aircraft and their magnificent reliability is being used and abused at the price of dead people for profit.
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re Bachelard/Fernandes…note how neither paper provides any actual quote:
1 Jan: UK Independent: Kashmira Gander: AirAsia flight QZ8501: Aircraft’s behaviour before crash ‘on the edge of logic’, according to expert
Earlier in the week, AirAsia chief executive Tony Fernandes
suggested the jet had encountered “very unique weather” and suggested climate change may be making flights more risky, particularly in the tropics.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/airasia-flight-qz8501-aircrafts-behaviour-before-crash-was-on-the-edge-of-logic-according-to-expert-9953622.html#
1 Jan: Daily Mail: Stricken AirAsia plane soared ‘as fast as a fighter jet’ and then dropped almost vertically into Java Sea…
by Richard Shears In Sydney For Mailonline
In a fascinating, yet worrying, comment earlier in the week, Mr Fernandes suggested that climate change was making weather worse and flying riskier, particularly in the tropics…
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2893411/Stricken-AirAsia-plane-soared-fast-fighter-jet-dropped-vertically-Java-Sea-thrust-giant-hand-crash-experts-revealed-today.html
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Bachelard’s earlier report.
31 Dec: SMH: Michael Bachelard: AirAsia flight QZ8501: ‘Unique weather’ may have caused plane crash, says CEO
Referring to floods in Malaysia and Thailand, he (AirAsia CEO Tony Fernandes) suggested that climate change may have played a part in more dangerous conditions for air travel: “There’s a lot of rain, so that is something we need to look at carefully because the weather is changing. The weather is changing”…
http://www.smh.com.au/world/airasia-flight-qz8501-unique-weather-may-have-caused-plane-crash-says-ceo-20141230-12fs40.html
finally, a reality check re plane travel in general:
29 Dec: Reason: Ronald Bailey: 2014: Fewest Airline Crashes Since 1927
Despite these horrific crashes, the Bureau of Aircraft Accidents Archives reports that globally there have been 111 crashes in 2014, the lowest number since 1927…
http://reason.com/blog/2014/12/29/2014-fewest-airline-crashes-since-1927
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21st Century Paradigm Shift in Climate Change Science
Some have asked for a succinct summary of the new 21st century paradigm shift in climate science, about which I have published a paper and an article in 2012 and a book in 2014.
Whilst it does require a correct understanding of Thermodynamics, I have endeavored to explain it in lay terms in this new website.
I welcome any appropriate questions pertaining to the physics, which completely refutes the greenhouse radiative forcing conjecture.
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It’s gratifying to see that 60 people visited this site yesterday. Those who don’t will probably never understand why planetary surfaces are hotter than a planet’s effective radiating temperature.
02
According to the Central England Temperature record (CET), we’ve had the hottest average year in the record, 10.93C. Not that this is that startling, there are plenty of years above 10C going back over the years.
A record year? Does it matter? I thought I’d post some thoughts on the subject.
Average temperatures lose information about what actually goes on weather-wise.
If for example you have a look at the CET years 1659, 1754, 1902, 1956, and 2010, all have an average temperature for the year of 8.83C.
Robin Stirling in ‘The Weather of Britain’ (published 1997) tells us on p148 that after a mild January in 1956, ‘ the first day of February saw a severe blast of air of Siberian origin sweep across Britain, giving day maxima well below freezing in many parts of the south, as low as -6C at Ipswich. Even in the Scillies there were two days of continuous frost and gales’ and also ‘February 1956 will be remembered by arable farmers for the severe damage to winter wheat, since, except along the east coast, there was very little snow to protect the ground from hard frost.’
In 1963, the annual average was slightly lower at 8.47C, yet Stirling comments that ‘in 1963, there was probably the coldest January since 1814 over England’ and ‘the Thames was frozen over above Kingston power station, although not at Tower Bridge because of the warmth from industrial cooling water which pours into the river.’
The ‘take home’ message seems to be that minor temperature differences don’t define climate, and that we should beware of record temperatures – and also our memories, because I was at school in 1963, 14 years of age – but I don’t recall the cold January of that year at all!
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A bit out of date but Luboš Motl has something on the CET” ‘Warming trends in England from 1659’:
here
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If the data doesn’t fit your failed hypothesis, just change the data says the BOM
https://twitter.com/GalileoMovement/status/551699518861750274
“Concurry has been stripped of it’s claim to the nation’s highest temperature days before it was to celebrate it’s 115th anniversary.
The 53.1c on January 1889 had brought notoriety to the outback town.
The weather bureau’s acting Queensland regional director, Jeff Crane said the high was struck off the books because of the way it was recorded.
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Anonymous KinkyKeith loves to espouse his “heat from the core of the Earth warms the oceans” conjecture but the reasons why it is wrong are explained in my new website ClimateBlogCritique.homestead.com soon to have the domain name itsnotco2.com
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Earths core approx 5430 deg C
Space surrounding Earth: minus 271.56 deg C
There is a temperature gradient of 5412 C deg from the centre to the surface over about 4,000 miles.
From the surface to the heat sink surrounding Earth there is a temperature gradient of 290 C deg over maybe 100 miles.
Energy will always try to move to the area of less internal energy; true it may get held up on the way but is is always pushing.
Now Doug, here is a perfect opportunity for you to describe to me the band of energy up there in the sky which either causes surface heating or significantly reduces the escape of heat from the atmosphere.
KK
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“Energy will always try to move to the area of less internal energy” The Second Law says entropy will increase until thermodynamic equilibrium is attained with no unbalanced energy potentials. If you want to invent your own laws of physics, good luck. The rest of my response is at http://whyitsnotco2.com
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KK:
A temperature gradient is not expressed in degrees. It is degrees divided by distance. Your terminology is loose in all you write. “Energy” you say, without defining what type of energy. It’s clear you have little understanding of physics.
The planet Uranus also has a temperature difference of about 5,000K between its small solid core (55% the mass of Earth) but if it were somehow cooling off, or generating internal thermal energy from mass, then there would be a clear cut difference in radiative balance at the top of the Uranus atmosphere, and such would be especially noticeable because the Sun’s radiation is so little – about 0.1% of what Earth receives. But there is no compelling evidence of significant net outward flux.
All through the nominal troposphere of Uranus (350Km in height) there is a temperature gradient close to the usual -g/Cp as is found on all such planets. Is that mere coincidence?
How does the temperature get down to just the right level at the base of a planet’s troposphere, especially when there’s no surface there and no incident solar radiation?
You have a lot to figure out my friend, or you could just read my universal explanation for all temperature data in tropospheres, surfaces, crusts, mantles and cores of all planets and satellite moons. And that reminds me, what keeps the core of our Moon above 1300C? It’s the Sun, S t u p i d. You know where to read the correct physics here.
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And just to clarify regarding the very variable temperature gradient below Earth’s surface which you seem to imply is uniform, we know (from boreholes) that it is about 25K/Km in the outer 10Km of the crust. Try extrapolating that back to the center of the core about 6,370 beneath the surface: you’ll get a temperature of nearly 160,000K.
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That should of course be 6,370Km beneath the surface.
So how does the temperature plot “know” that it needs to get much steeper in the outer crust such that the plot extrapolates to the observed temperatures? After all, these surface temperatures are just right so that the temperature gradient in the troposphere is as expected, and the overall level of the temperature plot is just right so as to make the whole Earth+atmosphere system in radiative balance with the Sun.
Physics is universal, and so the same kind of thing happens for Venus, and for Uranus, and for every planet with a significant atmosphere.
Is that all just the mostly a lot of extraordinary coincidences, my friend, or might my explanation as to why it happens perhaps be right?
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Doug
I did geology and physics at uni and am fully aware of the transitions in the Earth’s structure and the varying heat transfer capacities resulting.
To say that “which you seem to imply” is just putting words in my mouth which I never uttered and certainly did not imply.
If there was any implication it was to imply that the lapse rate of the atmosphere continues down a mineshaft.
btw you still have not described and quantified this “band of energy” which you imply will prevent energy leaving the planet.
Does it work at night time?
http://joannenova.com.au/2015/01/weekend-unthreaded-61/#comment-1659475
KK
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The outline of my hypothesis is linked via my name above as previously advised. You will be able to work out answers once you understand what amounts to a totally new 21st century paradigm which you will not have learnt in physics courses. I don’t imply anything about any band preventing energy leaving the planet. Gravity has trapped thermal energy in all planets over the life-time of those planets and the mechanism and reasons are in the outline of my hypothesis and in more detail in my published book. I don’t wish to waste time discussing any other conjecture that you may have, but am happy to answer genuine questions pertaining to what I have written.
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You haven’t addressed the issue in my comment at 12:00pm. Your question about “bands” is irrelevant to my hypothesis.
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“A temperature gradient is not expressed in degrees. It is degrees divided by distance.”
Both temp gradients mentioned were rough but did incorporate temperature change and a length.
Perhaps you might take another look.
And this:
“It’s the Sun, S t u p i d. You know where to read the correct physics here.”
Really. No not the Sun, the stupid bit.
?
Doug, if you can’t explain it you probably don’t understand it fully.
?
KK
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Yes I know KK that you quoted distances but the implication is that there is a homogeneous temperature gradient and that is not remotely the case. Otherwise why use the word gradient? You could just have said there’s a temperature difference.
As yet you don’t understand the Second Law of Thermodynamics and the implications of that law pertaining to the density gradient and temperature gradient at any altitude or depth beneath the surface. You will learn about that when you get around to reading the one page summary linked via my name above.
The phrase “It’s the Sun Stup.. ” is common parlance I thought you would have heard or read. It was not meant as a personal insult. But, yes, it is the Sun that supplies the required energy to maintain Earth and all planets and satellite moons at their current temperatures. If they were to cool then the temperature gradients would remain roughly the same and so there would not be radiative balance with the Sun, and so it wouldn’t happen whilst the Sun radiates at current levels.
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Someone killed the hiatus!!
http://ds.data.jma.go.jp/tcc/tcc/products/gwp/temp/fig/an_wld.png
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lol.. the Japanese Met are using NCDC data.. anything could happen !!!
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2001/plot/rss/from:2001/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2001/trend/plot/rss/from:2001/trend/plot/uah/from:2001/plot/uah/from:2001/trend/plot/gistemp/from:2001/plot/gistemp/from:2001/trend
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Well, it sure as heck wasn’t you.
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