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
Climate Change – The Facts is a great read.
I’ve particularly enjoyed your section, Jo.
Mark Steyn’s is a ‘hoot’!
I recommend this book to everyone.
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Tell you what is also a Hoot is Peter Hannam’s utra alarmist drivel in todays SMH about 74˚ ‘temperature’ in the Persian Gulf complete with vivid graphics and of course 74˚ in the headline.
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Without a single shadow of doubt, the two earthquakes experienced in Queensland are due to man made global warming.
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Of course they are! 😉
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There’s always room for doubt in science, but since it is probably 97% certain that they are caused by global warming, no further correspondence will be entered into.
Just send money so the connection to global warming can be studied further.
It is naturally incumbent on anyone denying the clear facts to prove that the earthquakes were not caused by global warming, and if they do, to prove that they were not made worse than they would otherwise have been because of global warming. In any case even if they weren’t caused by global warming, the precautionary principle demands that anyone who isn’t rich and famous must turn off their heating and lighting.
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Further, they must donate their car to the 3rd world and plce all air tickets in the post to Kevin Trenberth, c/- Paris
Only when all that is properly done will Gaia consider settling the tectonic plates down
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Aaaagh!!! and I’m a pensioner.
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+ !00!
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I do hope that was sarcasm. 🙂
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No, No it was all said with a completely straight face!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_J8XM1_rOTg
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No, no, no, it has nothing to do with climate change. The coast here is starting to tip over, tipping point, because of the influx of immigrants to the Gold and Sunshine Coasts. All the new high rise buildings going up. Too many people. Won’t be long now before we all disappear under the waves, the earthquakes are a sign. It has happened before on Guam, see the link !
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cesSRfXqS1Q
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Sarcasm Alert!
But he said he was only joking.
Gore, Flannery, Hansen, Pachauri et al will all be able to use the same excuse a few years down the track.
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But Chris!
This was all solved around the 1980’s
The gist of a bit from “Bastards That I’ve Met” or a successor
” “Deep thinking bloke at the bar to barman
Mate, I’m worried.
Why?
Well, all that coal and iron ore going to Japan.
Well?
Well the earth is spinning and what if it gets out of balance and gets a wobble up?
No worries mate. Its kept in balance by all the Toyotas and Nissans coming back down””
With apologies to Sam as my copies didn’t return.
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bemused,
Well said!
Your droll, waggishly whimsical remark borders on being facetiously witty.
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oops,
sorry, I forgot /sarcoff!
😉
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Just thinkin’ about the acidification of our oceans
that all the greenies are so worried about.
I’m going back to when I was at high school (many moons ago)
doing chemistry and doing experiments etc.
One of the things that is rattlin’ around in my head is
about salts; I seem to remember that they are alkaline
(correct me if I’m wrong).
So, my question is, how do they get rid of the salts out of the
oceans (to allow the oceans to turn acidic)?
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Nope – salts can be acidic or basic or neutral.
60
But only in an ionising solvent.
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The ocean is NOT turning acidic. It is becoming less alkaline. The bit about carbonic acid in the ocean is very misleading. Carbonic acid breaks down almost immediately into carbonate and bicarbonate and forms the salts. CaCO3 is used by marine life to make shells. There is a buffering effect in this which prevents the ocean from becoming acidic. There is a write-up in very simple terms at http://climate4kids.blogspot.com. It’s a two part article quite aways down the page.
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The concept of buffering seems to escape the acidification folks. In fact the whole complexity of the oceans seems to escape them and so they know only what would happen in a controlled laboratory experiment that in no way can duplicate the complexity of sea water in the wild.
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Apparently, the complexity of reality overwhelms them so they simplify their thoughts by ignoring and/or evading the problem causing details. That way, their fantasies of what should be can be supported by their simplified “experiments”.
It is also likely, they thought the math in high school chemistry was too difficult so they stayed with the more “friendly” subjects. After all, equilibrium equations can require one to use something more than 3rd grade arithmetic. They are much harder to solve than “If you have three apples and take away one, how many apples do you have left?”
Full disclosure: I was a high school chemistry teacher way back in prehistoric times: years before the first Star Wars movie. My students were absolutely shocked that they had to do math and use algebra in chemistry. They expected that when they passed a class, that was the end of it and could forget all about it. Today, it is much easier for them. They don’t learn enough to be able to forget. All they have to do is “try real hard”.
Then and now, the students and too many parents and teachers had no understanding of what Yoda said to Luke as Luke was striving to increase his Jedi powers: “Do. Or do not. There is no try.”.
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“There is no try”. That has been used as a way around failure. If you don’t try, you can’t fail to graduate, you can’t fail in marriage, you can’t fail in business, etc. However, failure to try does not mean you don’t fail. You cannot escape failure by failing to try. Failing to try is failing. I understand the idea Yoda put forth, but trying can be essential to succeeding at things you might not otherwise do. You “try” to succeed and give your all. Or you fail to try and claim you are a “success” because you can’t fail at what you never tried.
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You have nailed it.
Future scientific papers can be referred to the third umpire who can determine “Try” or “NO Try”.
What a brilliant way to “settle the science”.
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Try or not try is internal and subjective. Neither produce externally observable or measurable results. Without the externally observable result, try cannot be said to exist except in the imagination of the one who says he tried. Then based only upon his word. Alternatively, do or not do is external, observable, and with measurable consequence. Do produces the result and not do does not along with try and not try.
Is it just that the one who imagines he tried very hard and says so quite loudly to get the same reward as those who actually accomplished something? I think not.
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Its not about trying hard. The vast majority of your class will be useless in the subject at university level. For them, its just general practice in literacy, numeracy, comprehension, following explicit instruction and figuring things out for yourself. They need to get some recognition for achieving that but a mark separate from competency in the subject.
What I found sad was how much high-school students were happy with that approach. It just annoyed teachers.
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This is all getting too complicated. In the end,
I realized that fact when years ago I failed to ask a pretty girl to go out with me because I thought she was out of my reach. I don’t know what the answer would have been, it could have been either way. But now I’ll never know. I failed.
Had I asked and the answer was yes I’d have had a good night out, maybe a lot of them. If the answer had been no then I’d know she really was out of my reach. But as it is, I didn’t try and that’s far worse than a no answer.
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Lionell Griffith.
Hats off to you. I studied to be a Chemistry teacher and chickened out at the last minute and went into industry instead (I went for the BS in Chem plus the teaching courses instead of a straight BA luckily.)
I do not think I would have the patience to put up with the students, parents or the school admin. I have done a lot of tutoring and that was bad enough.
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For the most part, I liked working with the students and enjoyed teaching. It was the parents, the school administration, the politics, and the poverty level pay that pushed me over the edge. I found I could easily make a lot more money with a fraction of the effort and even less politics working in industry as a software engineer.
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I got into trouble at school, over the question, “If you have three apples and take away one, how many apples do you have left?
My answer was “three”.
When the teacher questioned why I had given such a stupid answer, I responded, “Just because I took one apple away from the others, did not make it go away”.
With an answer like that, my teacher could see that I was destined for lower things.
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“If you have three apples and take away one, how many apples do you have left?”
NONE, MISS! Because eventually the Left runs out of other people’s apples!
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Well if you take one away with you, you have one. Don’t you?
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I got into trouble at school (full stop)
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For all of you who “tried real hard” to answer the question “If you have three apples and take away one, how many apples do you have left?” I offer the following.
In the classroom, the student is typically rewarded not for his analysis of the problem but for how well he accomplished giving the answer that the teacher thought the student should be thinking of what the teacher thought the answer should be. If you find this confusing, it is supposed to be.
How else can a teacher who never held a real job in the real world know anything about the real world? By demanding responses to such mental confusion, he can easily pretend he is superior to the most mentally capable student and punish him for being so capable. The teacher can also reward the least mentally capable student for “trying real hard” and continue to pretend that there are no really right or wrong answers.
Education mostly was and still is an exercise of mind reading with the blind leading the dumb following the lame. This is because nearly everyone has been convinced the meaning of words is that foggy ever shifting miasma of subjective intent contained within the “mind” of the person who uses the words. By this standard, you are all correct. Especially because you “tried real hard”. Because there are really no right or wrong answers you are all also wrong. The question was not about reality, it was about mental fog.
I, on the other hand, taught and teach that words mean things. They are referents to things that exist apart from and independently of anyone’s ever shifting foggy miasma of subjective intent. Hence, the analysis of the problem would be that there are three apples (three real actual consumable apples) in front of you. Then you remove one of the apples in front of you and count how many actual apples that are left. The correct answer would clearly be two. This because “how many apples” referred to the actual apples in front of you and was not based upon some arbitrary alternative Humpty Dumpty like trickery of constantly morphing subjective intent.
The ability to read minds, to guess correctly, or to “just know” is not and should not be necessary. Just look, do, and count. Without this, there is no science nor knowledge. With it, you have the path to know everything that can be known. It is this that frightens academia and anyone who has a pretense of being an “authority” the most because it can make them totally irrelevant. Each person, on his own, can know.
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The concept the “The Ocean” having a universal “pH” is as accurate as the nebulous concept of “global mean temperature“, one based chiefly on climate models, eg. the modeled variation of temperature anomaly from some predetermined baseline value of temperature.
I have never seen Global mean temperature quoted with range and standard deviation. Has anyone? Doing so would only serve to highlight the essential meaninglessness of the average value.
Ocean pH is variable not only by location but variable at the same location in time for example:
Elsewhere, MSM climate catastrophist meme is in fine fettle at The Telegraph, much being peddled by the journo who spun the misleading article:
Note that “70C” is in fact the “heat index” recorded at Iran’s city of Bandar Mahshahr. The measure is combination of air temperature and relative humidity in an attempt to determine the human-perceived equivalent temperature.
Kollective relief…”It is just a few degrees lower than the highest ever recorded heat index, which was 178F (81C) in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia on July 8, 2003.”….but “some of the hottest urban temperatures ever endured by mankind.”
Isn’t time someone came up with a happy hour cocktail called The Urban Heat Island Effect in downtown Bandar Mahshahr ?
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So, just 11C or 20F from the record? That’s newsworthy? If London ever got within 11C of that momentary Heathrow record it would hit 25 deg.
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The problem is that there is a dearth of knowledge about matters chemical amongst the AGW believers; photosynthesis is not understood either.
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I am sure you could get a Phd in photosynthesis or some aspect of it. It is not a simple subject and is mostly ignored.
The fact that the less efficient C4 and CAM pathways evolved and got a foothold tells you the earth is in CO2 starvation mode.
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Robert O
But it is well established that knowing doesn’t over rule feeling.
And with th Australian ALP hatred of things rural and agricultural I’m wondering if they believe they photosynthesise?
Without realising the downside for preferences from the green side.
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Just Thinkin’,
gai covered this subject rather extensively yesterday see —
http://joannenova.com.au/2015/07/spot-the-vested-interest-the-1-5-trillion-climate-change-industry/#comment-1731726
http://joannenova.com.au/2015/07/spot-the-vested-interest-the-1-5-trillion-climate-change-industry/#comment-1731523
And the other comments and links therein.
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Thanks Tomomason,
I didn’t quite get down to Item 45 yesterday
while I was at Jo’s site.
A good read though.
thanks again.
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Thanks tom, I hadn’t got to your comment when I posted the same link.
Ocean Acidification looks like the next ‘scare’ they might try.
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It’s near the top of the `scare’ list `they’ currently try, no ifs nor buts about it.
By the way, if you haven’t already read it, the nipcc report “Biological Impacts” has a nice writeup on the buffered ocean chemistry in chapter 6, “Aquatic Life” . (PDF, 1.9MB)
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I went through that HERE in the last post.
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Salts of a weak acid & strong base (alkali) are alkaline in solution.
Salts of a strong acid & strong base are neutral in solution etc.
Carbonic acid is a weak acid so when ‘neutralised’ the solution stays alkaline.
Most CO2 dissolved in water is there as a gas. It responds to Henry’s law so more CO2 in the atmosphere the more dissolves in water. Equally if the temperature rises then it is less soluble, hence the Cretaceous Age was warm and the CO2 was around 16-1900 ppm. But the White Cliffs of Dover show that the ocean never got acidic.
The conversion to sodium carbonate and free acid ions so beloved of the “disaster coming real soon” loons occurs in pH levels above 9.5, i.e. requiring billions of tons of caustic soda.
The conversion to bicarbonate ( “the first step to disaster” ) reduces as the pH drops, and cuts out around 5.5 pH.
The NATURAL pH variation in the oceans is around 0.5. The recorded variation is 0.03 units off Hawaii, well inside seasonal variation. The claim of “oceans 30% more acid” is based on circular reasoning.
CO2 causes acidification.
CO2 has gone up.
A computer model based on this predicts ocean pH in 1750 was X.
X is 30% more acid than our readings (but not mentioned as still within natural variation).
Therefore CO2 causes ocean acidification.
It is true that ultra high levels of CO2 will cause the ocean to be slightly acid. One million ppm CO2 will drop the pH to 6.2. But with no other gasses (e.g. oxygen) in the atmosphere there would be no life, and nobody to blame.
So you can’t have Global Warming AND ocean acidification. Equally, if the ocean does get a little less alkaline, the reaction slows down, so you can’t get “disaster coming real soon”.
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Thanks for the further explanation. I struggle to get people to understand that the ocean is not turning acidic. We would all be dead if the CO2 level was high enough to cause that, assuming that’s even possible in the real world. Perhaps there was a time in the distant geologic past when this did occur. I’m not sure. Plus, all the wailing and gnashing of teeth over increases in alkalinity often turns out to be nothing more than Chicken Little behaviour. Ocean life is far more adaptable than some give it credit for.
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It will never get there. Not from any amount of CO2 emissions by either mankind nor nature. The ocean holds over 98% of the world’s free CO2 dissolved in it, as it is. It maintains its alkalinity within a narrow range. If it has `too much’ CO2, it precipitates the excess as Calcium carbonate. Look around. The amount of limestone and chalks in the world is enormous.
The small foraminifera and other hard shelled critters do most of that work for them,anyway. One day the planet will run out of CO2. 🙂 What then?
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Fukushima still getting worse!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkF6LSZSu1s
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Strewth! That numbskull! Arnold Gundersen is deliberately misleading the public; globally. Causing unnecessary alarm.
The video may be beautifully produced but it’s loaded with claptrap, fear-mongering, misinformation the like of which has led to senseless suicides and other deaths amongst people who’ve been needlessly displaced from their homes and lives. None of his worst case scenarios from 4 years ago became reality.
Only Helen Caldicott diverges more from the truth than old Arnie. And both have contributed to the misery in Japan and the radiophobia around the globe. Governments have wasted billions in combating radiation “hazards” which present no significant public health risk. People have died because they’ve were working on reducing an insignificant risk.
People like Caldicott and Gundersen have no shame. What’s important to them is that they seem important. They’ll say whatever it takes to seem important. They’ll raise fears of invisible monsters; distorting technical information and leveraging public ignorance to maximise the fear that they create.
If you want information instead of propaganda by anti-nuclear activists, then you need to dig.
Leslie Corrice maintains a blog called Fukushima Accident Updates
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And so what is the real truth? If radioactivity is leaking/seeping/flowing into ground water that cannot be a good thing. Given the obvious bias of the Japanese Government toward appearing to have a handle on the problem and the equally obvious bias of the activists in the opposite direction, where the Hell do you go to find accurate, objective reporting on what’s going on? And this isn’t just a Japanese problem either. We are going to need nuclear power at some not too distant point in the future or modern civilization begins to grind to a halt.
And on a different energy note, a bill has been introduced in the California legislature with the brazen title, The California Gas Reduction Act of 2015. It intends to see gasolene and diesel fuel usage reduced in California by 50% by 2013, just 15 years from now. It foresees any and all necessary measures to accomplish that goal: rationing, penalties for using too much, anything necessary. I doubt that it will pass for now. But given California it will not be too long before enough state representatives and senators sign on sand pass it into law.
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Roy: I doubt anyone will ever honestly report on radiation. There’s too much emotional mileage out of an invisible killer. ONE molecule can kill you, you know. Or so some say. The levels of radiation in nature are actually quite high. People would be horrified if they actually tallies all the sources, which is probably why they don’t do so. Consider that radiation causes cancer and is used to cure cancer. How does that work? We can verify the absence of cancer after radiation treatment. We cannot verify that radiation causes cancer. It’s based on statistical analysis and poorly done ones at that. Kind of like climate science.
I live and work in a state that has uranium in many places. I drive by one of those cute cold war yellow radiation signs on the way to my cabin. It’s the old uranium mine in Shirley Basin. It’s totally reclaimed, but the signs have to stay up for decades. Cattle graze near the sign. Should I be freaking out? I can’t see why. Maybe you want to get a geiger counter and then measure the radiation all around you. Then you can lie awake at night wondering if it’s too much or too little. Or realize that some things in life you have no control over.
We poisoned ourselved with radon—sealing our houses up and then getting radon build up. People who listenend to the experts and sealed their houses up now have to put in air exchangers. Did the radon actually cause lung cancer? No one knows. They really don’t even know if it’s probable that it did. It’s more likely genetics played the strongest role. There is just no way to know or avoid these type of things. It helps if you read the studies and see the actual numbers, but even then the probabilities are often over-estimated.
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Sheri you seem to be getting emotional! There are safer ways and places to build things.
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Siliggy: So posting link after link concerning that terrifying nuclear power is not emotional even when some of the links are wrong and emotion based, but my statement of facts about nuclear power and uranium is emotional? Seriously? (I can give you emotional if you want….)
Yes, there are safer place and ways to build things. It was a 9.0 earthquake for crying out loud. You’re asking we build something that can withstand a meteor strike, WW3, and 1000 year weather events. That is not within the realm of human capability. Let’s all get back to reality here.
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Sheri the Fukushima reactors did survive the quake and Tsunami.
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Low level exposure to radiation has been subject to some research, but more is required.
From http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301472X07000148
[my bold]
We as part of nature have developed mitigations against a maximum level of radiation.
These basically are —
1. Radiation exposure causes the immune response to ramp up.
2. Normal immune action to above normal exposure to radiation will make you ‘feel’ sick. Temperature rise, ache and pains, irregular digestion, etc, these are all effects of your body’s response not anything unnatural.
3. The body’s highened response identifies and removes broken cells and and DNA fragments.
However (as in HIV) it can only repair what it can identify — if the immune system is malfunctioning (due to the radiation or any other cause) very poor outcomes will ensue, usually resulting in an early death.
As we are exposed to variable levels radiation all through our lives this shows that exposure to radiation does not neccessarily mean you will die. Individual response vary from person to person, and over the lifetime of the individual. You get X-rayed in hospital, geologically there are ‘hot-spots’ naturally (which can be taken up by the plants that grow there and animals that graze there).
The bottom line is that some level of radiation is perfectly natural and our bodies appear to ‘know’ how to cope with it.
Thankfully our bodies also appear to have methods and systems to mitigate against the subsequent tissue damage caused by excessive exposure to radiation (within a limited range).
The limits of radiation dose, both in level and repetition rate, from which the human body’s immune system kicks-in, and from which it can recover still requires more research.
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My post on the body’s ability to recovever from radiation is still in moderation.
tom0mason_______________________4.1.1.1.2
Your comment is still awaiting moderation.
August 3, 2015 at 2:36 am
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Tom,
Another site by Caoimhín P. Connell a Forensic Industrial Hygienist looks at the evidence about Radon gas.
It says:
“Several other independent studies also looked at mortality rates vs. mean radon concentrations and have found similar negative correlations.
Indeed, buried deep within the US EPA documents, and worded in a very complex way, the EPA recognizes that as residential radon concentrations go up, the cancer rates go down. However, the casual reader, thumbing through the EPA risk discussion, would not likely recognize this admission since the EPA made the statement in a purposely very convoluted and confusing manner…”
If you get into the text you find even more gems.
“…In one study, upon which the US EPA heavily relies, evidence involving miners indicated that at levels as low as 80 WLM, the risk of death from lung cancer was very high and the risk increased to 50% chance of death from lung cancer at even higher levels. In that study, the lowest measured exposure was 80 WLM. In fact, in that very important study, the EPA didn’t actually measure a very large percentage of the exposed population or miners to determine what their exposure actually was.“ Instead the EPA states:
Exposure in the U.S. cohort is poorly known; cumulative WLM (CWLM) are calculated from measured radon levels for only 10.3 percent of the miners…and guesswork is used for about 53.6 percent of the miners.
“Guesswork? Let’s look at that again….”
…..
“In fact, the linear model has long been known to be invalid, and the EPA has long recognized that the linear model is invalid, but decided to use it anyway. In their 2003 risk estimates.”
They quote the EPA as saying:
……..
“The BEIR VI committee adopted the linear no-threshold assumption based on our current understanding of the mechanisms of radon-induced lung cancer, but recognized that this understanding is incomplete and that therefore the evidence for this assumption is not conclusive”
……
It quoted The Health Physics Society at the University of Michigan
…….
“Radiogenic health effects (primarily cancer) are observed in humans only at doses in excess of 10 rem delivered at high dose rates. Below this dose, estimation of adverse health effects is speculative. Risk estimates that are used to predict health effect in exposed individuals or populations are based on epidemiological studies of well-defined populations (e. g. the Japanese survivors of the atomic bombings in 1945 and medical patients) exposed to relatively high doses delivered at high dose rates. Epidemiological studies have not demonstrated adverse health effects in individuals exposed to small doses (less the 10 rem) delivered in a period of many years.”
……….
In other words the US EPA knows the linear regression is wrong. They know there is a threshold, they even know there are actual health benefits but they sure as heck are not going to tell the public.
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Siliggy: I know the reactors did survive. It was the fuel rods that caused the problem. That would be a storage problem and you can thank environmentalists for that. They are okay with irradiating people to get their way.
tom0mason: I agree. Humans are far more resilient than the doomsayers want humans to believe. We are supposed to be fragile and incapable of dealing with nature, which it seems we are to be worshipping. Research done well is a good idea, but we must be careful not to overgeneralize or make the results sound overly certain if they are not. I don’t think anyone is saying that radiation is good for use, but rather we deal with diseases, allergens, injuries and the like constantly. No one likes these things, but they are part of nature and we have adapted. And like radiation, at a high level, these things can be fatal.
gai: Good information on the EPA and incorrect linear regression.
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gai @ 4.1.1.1.4
Yes, yet again the modern settled science is discovering the old science was either flawed but used, or just overlooked (and actually important).
I remember(ish), many decades ago when I was a student, reading a scientific paper from the 1950s that quoted animal experiments (pigs and sheep?) performed back in the early 1930s (IIRC 1932 in a Scandinavian country) where they were trying to find the optimum therapeutic dose of radiation for some illness (I forget what illness).
What I took from the report was the remarkable recovery these animals had dispite enduring very high exposure to both X-rays and radium, and that the graphs of dosage to recovery for the different exposures were all non-linear.
“Turn your papers over now, and see what we already knew.”
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tom0mason: Chernobyl bears this out. The animals thrive, along with some stubborn old women who refused to leave. Too bad we can’t study this because the women are not supposed to be there and therefore do not exist as far as science is concerned (or at least the Russian government).
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Worse than that: One neutron is enough to kill the entire world’s population. In “theory”.
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Oh no! One more terrifying thing to worry about. In theory. (sarc)
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Sheri,
I seriously doubt that anyone will honestly report on anything, no matter what it is.
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Only by accident.
00
Then don’t tell them about the nuclear debris passing through their bodies all the time from above, from Cosmic Ray collisions with molecules of the upper atmosphere, whatever you do.
Hmm. No, on second thoughts, there’s a possible market there in lead-foil lined hats. 🙂 Now, where did I see that patent?
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Don’t need lead. Heavy paraffin wax is more effective. And can be shaped into attractive shapes after just a short time in the sun.
OOPS. Should I have Patented that? It’s more useful (and flammable) than a Tesla car.
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Oh for heaven’s sake, Roy
Some typos are just too irritating
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Like Californian legislators?
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But you did understand it in spite of the typo, yes?
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Roy,
Not ideal, I will admit, but you have to ask the questions, “What is the radioactive material that is doing the actual leaking?”, “What is the half-life of that material?”, “Is the material soluble in water?”, “Is the water stagnant (and therefore contained), or does the water flow, and if so, at what rate, and where to?”
Directly after the accident, there was a whole lot of hype about “radioactive water” being dumped into the Pacific, and the radio activity flowing across the Pacific, and making the Californian beaches radioactive and unusable.
Water itself buffers radio activity. One of the major problems at Fukushima, was that spent rods were being held permanently in temporary holding pools that were cooled by flowing water, driven by pumps. They were held permanently, because the local environmental groups obtained an injunction to stop them being removed off-site for controlled disposal.
When the pumps stopped, because of seawater damage to the generators, the water boiled off and exposed the rods for a short time. Early reports of radiation leakage at the site were entirely from that source.
My company was only involved in the early stages, (primarily to counter the misinformation put out by some of the environmental groups, who even tried to fudge aerial photographs, to make the damage appear worse than it was), and I have not kept up with developments. But there is a full historic record on the IAEA website, that might be a good read if you have trouble going to sleep at night.
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Rereke
“One of the major problems at Fukushima, was that spent rods were being held permanently in temporary holding pools that were cooled by flowing water, driven by pumps. They were held permanently, because the local environmental groups obtained an injunction to stop them being removed off-site for controlled disposal.”
Are spent rods in need of cooling not kept at nearly all sites for 10 to 20 years? Most of these pools being nearly full.
http://www.nrc.gov/waste/spent-fuel-storage/nuc-fuel-pool.html
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Siligy,
Red-herring. If all your friends jumped off a 100m bridge onto a dry river-bed, would that be a valid reason for you to jump after them?
Abe
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Abe you lot are all jumping off the nuclear cliff and I am not following you.
How is it a red-herring to point out that there would have been fuel rods in those holding pools for other reasons?
01
Siligy,
1a. Your link only provides data on how many pools are at or near capacity in the US, not at Fukushima. It does not tell us what the ‘other’ reasons for putting them there are. But . . .
1b. A further review of the website you link to tells us that these pools are permanent and not temporary, unlike the ones at Fukushima.
So . . . Rerekee is talking about the problems specific to the Fukushima incident and you provide data on US spent-fuel storage and disposal facilities.
2. The problem was not only that the spent-fuel rods were kept in pools:
Red herring on both counts.
Abe
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If you click back one level on the link you handily provided, your answer is there. (Hint: Spent fuel storage)
10
Siliggy: My comment is being held by the moderation filter. It will appear at some time, I believe, with the offending term removed.
My last question in the comment was “Did you click back one level in your link and find out the answer to your question?” Did you?
10
It’s a red herring if you have only conspiracy theory or conjecture for making the suggestion. The rods were in the pools because environmentalists want people punished for using evil nuclear fuel. It’s not that hard to figure out. Every method of storage is protested and blocked. There are places that will willingly store the waste. Storage would be much safer if people weren’t so afraid of everything on the planet. Any little problem is blown up and marched out as proof nuclear is not safe. Thankfully, this sissy attitude did not exist in the past or we’d all be living subsistance lives, dying of nature-caused problems but no nasty nuclear. Except we wouldn’t know what nuclear was, so we could die of radiatioon and no one would know why. I get the feeling some people prefer to be killed by nature as it’s so much more natural and pure.
Did you click back one on your link for the answer to your question?
20
Sheri
I knew the answer before asking the question but clicked on your link anyhow to find nothing of interest.
The rods are in the cooling pools to … wait for it…..Cool. They are hot and need 10 to 20 years of cooling.
“It’s not that hard to figure out.”
02
Remind me to ignore your questions from here on out since you already know the answers and are wasting my time with answering them.
10
That is true for the USA, because of a Government embargo on transporting spent fuel rods off site.
For some reason I do not understand, it is OK to transport new fuel rods to a site, and to move nuclear warheads around in military convoys, but it is not OK to take your nuclear garbage to a site where it can be processed and repurposed.
As I understand it, the plan, at Fukushima, was to remove spent rods from the site, in specially designed trucks, and to drive them about four miles to the port, where they were to be loaded onto a purpose designed ship, that would take them away and drop them into deep water – think “Mariana Trench”. That four mile transit of the rods from the site, was stopped by the environmental movement, through a court injunction. That injunction was still being argued, when the Tsunami hit.
The pools themselves were designed for temporary storage (pending removal), and were filled with recycling water driven by electrical pumps, backed up with standby diesel generators. They were not designed for long-term storage.
Everything worked as designed, except that Fukushima city itself ended up looking like a war zone, and eventually the diesel ran out. Fire trucks were used to keep the rods cool, by pumping sea water out of the harbour. The amazing thing was that, there was no huge spike in radioactivity at the time. There have since been releases of radioactive gasses, which has caused alarm, but they dissipate very quickly.
A good friend of mine is from Fukushima, although he now works in the US. After the tsunami, I got an email from him. In that email, he that mentioned that there are stones, similar to grave markers, placed along the side of the hills that surround Fukushima. On them, is written, “Do not build below this point” (in Japanese, obviously).
20
Thank Rereke.
I linked to more info about those stones below at 4.1.2.3.4.
Here is more.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/ancient-stone-markers-warned-of-tsunamis/
My point about the cooling pools (lets aviod red herring words like temporary) is that it is part of the normal process to let the spent fuel rods cool in those pools for a few years before they can be transported. So there would always be some there at a running plant no matter where in the world it is. The extra weight of more may even have helped during the hydrogen explosions.
http://www.nrc.gov/images/waste/spent-fuel-storage/generation-storage.gif
00
Cool. Now we can return to blood letting and leeches for medicine and we’ll all live happily ever after. Only in hindsight did anyone really know why the stones were there (actually, we still don’t). Hindsight makes everything seem 100% certain, doesn’t it? Too bad it’s useless for prediction or understanding in the moment or many moments. After all, this is how Nostradamus became the great seer and predicted all the stuff happening today. A real psychic, that one.
00
Sheri your comments seem to be getting more bizzare.
The Japanese history of Tsunamis was very well known. The certainty of hindsight existed well before they were built. That there would be a tsunami like this was clearly predictable. Only the timing and magnitude was uncertain. It is a good thing a 38 meter one was not repeated but it may happen before the decomissioning is complete.
You could go to the opposite extreme and pretend that other reactors in similar earthquake/tsunami prone places will never have a problem. If you work hard at it you can make the old saying “history teaches that man learns nothing from history” real and true. With or without leeches.
00
I already know for a fact people do not learn from history. As far as “bizarre” comments, I can’t see that my comments are any more bizarre than your clinging for dear life to one incident (two if we throw in the antiquated, improperly designed Chernobyl in a communist country) to “prove” we can’t use nuclear. By your “logic” (I do love scare quotes in some cases and you hit the jackpot), we never should have built railroads, the space program should never have been undertaken etc. IF one learned from history, they would know that all things come with risk and deal with it. Of course, people don’t, won’t and forge blindly on. I’m just happy you came along after all the really scary stuff happened. Wouldn’t want you overly stressed.
00
One more thing to lie awake at night and worry about: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reactor
(I have links other than Wiki, but Wiki was handy.)
10
Where it is all just lovely sweetness and light with rainbows and daisys.
Does Leslie also sell coat hanger shaped bridges?
.USS Reagan Sailors Sue for Nuclear Justice .Attorney Charles Bonner gives an update on his class action litigation on behalf of military personnel harmed by exposure to Fukushima fallout during an aid mission. The suit targets the plant operator and its manufacturers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0zGbG2dTvo
Japan’s nuclear-related deaths rise by 18%
http://www.news24.com/World/News/Japans-nuclear-related-deaths-rise-by-18-20150310-2
“Unprecedented deaths along U.S. Pacific coast — Scientists: Mass die-offs of mammals, birds, fish… “No one’s sure what happened” — Gov’t wants Unusual Mortality Event declared — Samples “being tested for radionuclides from Fukushima”
ENENEWS Click here
http://enenews.com/ap-unprecedented-deaths-along-pacific-coast-scientists-reporting-mass-die-offs-mammals-birds-fish-govt-declared-unusual-mortality-event-being-tested-radionuclides-fukushima-one-sure-whats
Roy there are still people who think this disaster was caused by an earthquake and Tsunami. So good question.
“The residents’ lawyer, Hiroyuki Kawai, also said that if the former officials had escaped indictment, the real cause of the accident would have been covered up forever.”
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/english/news/20150731_80.html
18
Why Silligy? Are you in the market for a coat hanger shaped bridge?
The “unprecedented deaths along US Pacific coast” is as meaningful and scientifically correct as “We’re all going to die from fossil fuel usage”. Based on statistical models, improperly drawn conclusions and a great hatred for the nuclear industry. The tests of the Cesium levels are NOT finished and yet they are speculating that may be the cause? Why? Because nothing out of the statistical range we assign to nature ever happens “naturally” and therefore WE must have done something to cause the die-off?
As for the last conspiracy piece on what really caused Fukushima’s damage, I’m sure this is as true as the scientists in Italy failed to predict the intensity of an earthquake and were jailed for a time. Jailing people for what nature does is really, really rational and we hope to see more of it in the future. Meteorologists jailed for not warning of tornadoes, hurricane paths, etc.
US citizens will sue anyone if they think they can get money. Science has NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with lawsuits. I can sue a pickle factory for putting acetic acid in pickles and declare my winnings a victory for those who don’t like nasty acetic acid contaminating pickles.
100
Do you know how that case filed in the West went? Can’t remember which State.
Wil E. Coyote v The Acme Machinery Company for supplying unsuitable equipment.
I suspect a tongue in cheek and that it never went to trial.
70
Sheri I notice you stayed away from the USS Reagan part vs “The Fukushima accident’s radiation will not harm anyone.” Do you have a problem there?
What about the 18 percent rise in nuclear related deaths?
“US citizens will sue anyone if they think they can get money.”
What does that have to do with Japanese legal action? Where is has been shown that they did not fail to predict this. Worse three engineers quit because they knew what would happen. Good engineering allows for natures worst.
“The tests of the Cesium levels are NOT finished and yet they are speculating that may be the cause?” You do not seem to be speculating rather you have decided what the cause is not already. How scientific is that?
Here are some more tests for you to predetermine.
“However, local marine life is still showing high concentrations of radioactive materials. In August last year, a fish showing radioactivity 250 times above the government safety standard of 100 Bq per a kilogram was caught near the seafloor. The percentage of marine sample exceeding the limit remains above 10 percent of the total caught off Fukushima. Fishing in waters off the Fukushima prefecture is still restricted.” http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/english/news/nuclearwatch/20130524.html
16
Siliggy: I didn’t ignore the USS Reagan. That was what my comment on US citizens suing anyone for anything addressed.
It is impossible to attribute deaths to a nuclear accident. You have no idea of previous radiation exposure in the population. It’s just a number that someone came up with after doing a lot of statistical manipulation. Like people killed by mercury from power plants, pesticide usage, living next door to an oil field. There is no way to know who was affected and who was not.
The tests show the amount of radiation. The limits they exceed are purely political. No one knows how much radiation is dangerous at lower levels. In part, because we don’t irradiate people on a regular basis. Had we had several nuclear meltdowns and more data, we could make that determination. Be thankful we don’t know the answers and sad that people exploit that fact to cause fear and consternation among the population.
60
Sliggy,
Your comment quoting In August last year, a fish showing radioactivity 250 times above the government safety standard of 100 Bq per a kilogram was caught near the seafloor. The percentage of marine sample exceeding the limit remains above 10 percent of the total caught off Fukushima. Fishing in waters off the Fukushima prefecture is still restricted.”
This level as far as I am aware is still below the natural radiation dose you will get from eating bananas or even Brazil nuts which are particularly are rich in 40K and may also contain significant amounts of radium, samples of which have been measured at up to 444 Bq/kg (12 nCi/kg).
If my previous comment ever get out of moderation you will see some medical evidence why and how our bodies survive being irradiated.
30
Tomomason
Where on earth do you get the idea tha natural is good? I suggest that the natural radiation dose we get from the environment is bad for us and we would all live longer if the climate changed to reduce it.
While we wait for your medical evidence here is some that is deliberately ignored. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6nkLANrVlM
02
Sliggy as I have often said here, I do not do video.
Mostly because much of them are trash but mainly because I find video very irritating to the point of wanting to upchuck. Hence I have no video player within my computer system.
So if there is a transcript of this vital source please point me at it. If there is not a transcript it probably is not that worthy.
20
tom0mason,
The youtube video is just a series of phtographs that depict the damage done by obviously very high doses of radiation. Some of the photos are of people who have undergone radiation treatment for cancer. Sad music plays in the background. No captions. No words.
The whole exercise is nothing more than an appeal to emotion.
Siligy,
Nobody rejects that high doses of radiation will be harmful. The discussion at hand is “Why do certain special interest groups attempt to portray all levels of radiation exposure as harmful?”
You keep missing that point.
Abe
10
Siliggy,
firstly let me apologize for mis-spelling your blog-name, my error, sorry.
I have seen some horrors that normal munitions can do but that has not stopped them from being used still.
On the subject of nuclear power as all the world now acknowledges Chernobyl was a very poor design and could not be licensed today. It operated under a very different regulatory régime from what there is now.
The fact that a horror video is on public release makes me ask why? Chernobyl type of design will never be allowed again, will never be built, so why the video? Who made such a video? What are their motives? Are you perhaps being emotionally lead to an illogical, unreasonable conclusion?
If such methods of broacasting of mutilated bodies were available at the beginnings of jet flight would we have progressed as far as we have with that human endeavor?
Would anyone ever fly if they viewed a video of burned and broken bodies, men, women and children strewn across a desolate landscape? Yet such things happen however the videos/photos/films are kept (afap) out of the public domain.
Designs such as Fukushima and the later versions are excellent and more than safe enough. Unlike Chernobyl, all modern nuclear facilities undergo international design licensing, build inspection, and build verification, with rigorous independent operational and maintainance inspections. Now we have learned don’t build them on the coast in a geologically active area.
Otherwise (as I believe you are wrong) they should be built — we do know more than enough about how to engineer and control them to extremely high standards.
20
Tomomason. No worries about the typo. It is just a nickname and many people seem to get the exact letters wrong.
“I have seen some horrors that normal munitions can do but that has not stopped them from being used still.”
The scale of potential damage from a nuclear reactor is far far greater in time,area and number of people. So the risks should be treated with the same increased scale of seriousness.
“Designs such as Fukushima and the later versions are excellent and more than safe enough.” Would you be happy with the exact same design again in the same place?
00
This whole tempest in a teapot about US Sailors was idiotic in the first place.
#1. Not problems with Japanese civilians and you can bet your booties if ONE person became ill it would hit headlines world wide.
#2. No major problems with those actually cleaning up the mess.
#3. The US sailors KNEW where they were headed and so did the brass so dosimeters and other precautions would be taken. These were not civilians caught flatfooted.
Here is what the guys in the US military (STARS and STRIPES) are saying.
USS Reagan sailors not exposed to high radiation levels in Japan, report finds
20
Where did you get the idea I said it was good. It is natural! And as part of nature we have within us methods and systems that mitigates against quite high levels of radiation. Part of that natural system, like most natural stressors, is to kill off the weak, and strengthen some or all the others. Only a lack of logic would think that we, like the rest of nature, do not have inbuilt methods to mitigate against such as radiation stressors. See 4.1.1.1.2 above.
Also nature is all we have — live with it. Harnessing nuclear power is an excellent model of humans harnessing their own and nature’s ways for our good. Some call it exploitation of nature, I call it natural! It is our natural drive to do these things.
IMO whatever humans do is natural(!), and we survive at the whim of nature, nature does not have to survive because of us. We can only control ourselves, humans can never control the totality of nature.
20
There are no words only pictures in those videos. Pictures of the many horridly deformed childeren left by Chernobyl.
“Harnessing nuclear power is an excellent model of humans harnessing their own and nature’s ways for our good.” I agree but it has not been harnessed yet.
11
tom0mason: I agree with your statement about not watching videos. I may occasionally do so, but only if there’s closed captioning on the video. I can read and read well. I don’t need pictures.
Siliggy: You need pictures, of course, while trying to make an emotional plea that has nothing to do with science or reality for that matter. I can match you pic for pic with thalidomide babies (stop making drugs), babies ripped apart in car accidents (stop driving cars), and worst and most horrifying of all, pics of the abuse inflicted on children by their own parents (no more making babies—we just aren’t ready to handle that yet).
40
Sheri,
My problem with video is partly neurological, my vision does not consistently track, and video tends to antagonize it.
10
tom0mason: I’m fine with visual usually. I was a photographer and loved it. I still do a lot of pictures. For some reason, the videos on YouTube, including my own, just come across poorly for quality, etc. One class I took over the internet used YouTube videos and I just gave up on it.
10
I too prefer to read vs watching stuff. This allows me to stop and think and to reread, go checkout the meaning of words I am not familiar with, check what other authors say….
I am visual dominant and videos or worse audio tapes lose my interest within 10 mins or so usually. Even with subjects I am really interested in I can’t take a video for more than 15 minutes max before my mind wanders yet I can read for hours on end and finish a 250 page book in a day.
00
First let me say I can see a nuclear plant from my home so this is a subject I take a deep interest in. (That is why I said of Fukushima that I was very happy at the result.)
…….
Siliggy says:
“…There are no words only pictures in those videos. Pictures of the many horridly deformed childeren left by Chernobyl.”
…………
Note the change of subject from a well engineered nuclear power plant with a disaster plan in place that WORKED, to a shoddy poorly designed plant where multiple bureaucratic mistakes were made. Also note the appeal to emotion when he was losing the technical discussion.
Sorry Siliggy you can not equate Chernobyl to Fukushima. That is like saying an old well broke pony is dangerous because a male zebra attacked and killed a man.
(Updated June 2015) There have been no deaths or cases of radiation sickness from the nuclear accident
So forget your horrible photos they do not apply any more than pictures of starving African toddlers apply to the poverty situation in the USA or Australia.
That in one sentence states the difference. Bad design, mistakes made and lack of safety awareness.
Yes the Chernobyl accident was horrible but the deaths and illness were seen immediately. Also the children and others near Fukushima were given preventatives. “Japan’s Nuclear Safety Commission recommended local authorities to instruct evacuees under 40 years of age leaving the 20 km zone to ingest stable iodine as a precaution against ingestion (eg via milk) of radioactive iodine-131. The pills and syrup (for children) had been pre-positioned at evacuation centers. The order recommended taking a single dose, with an amount dependent on age.”
00
Note the change of subject from a well engineered nuclear power plant with a disaster plan in place that WORKED, to a shoddy poorly designed plant where multiple bureaucratic mistakes were made. Also note the appeal to emotion when he was losing the technical discussion.
The Fukushima plants exploded due to hydrogen and continue to melt down. How can you delare that to have been a plan that worked unless the plan was for them to explode and melt down?
“The upgrading of Japan’s Fukushima incident to a level seven – the maximum – on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES) puts it on a par with Chernobyl.”
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-13048916
So no change of subject the two are comparable.
00
It is California enough said.
Remember Mike Mann uses lawsuits as a weapon against Realists. It is also to be noted that activist lawsuits literally drove Sarah Palin out of the Governor’s Office.
She said she did not feel it was fair to the people of Alaska to spend her time as governor dealing with lawsuits (sorry don’t have the link.)
There is this one that is even more interesting
http://johnrlott.blogspot.com/2010/06/sarah-palin-discusses-who-funded-all.html
<Gov. Sarah Palin Quietly Cleared of All Ethics Charges: /a>
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Leslie Corrice (Fukishima Nuclear Accident);
Right answer but wrong reason. The reason we need nuclear power is that it is cost competitive with coal and we have other uses for fossil fuels ( transport, lubrication, plastics) which makes fossil fuel too valuable to burn for electricity production.
120
Peter there is no reason to not burn so called fossil fuels and the prices are low There is no peak oil problem but there would be a peak nuclear problem. So wrong answer and wrong reason. Elevated atmospheric CO2 may help to clean up the radiation mess faster. That would be just one more reason to push the levels up. If the coming ice age is not enough. Current oil price $47.12-$52.21.
42
Actually I agree with Peter. Use nuclear for electricity and fossil fuels for all the other things, like transportation plastics, chemical precursors for medicine….
80
Thanks Sliggy.
Why is there No Peak Oil problem?
Why would there be a peak nuclear problem?
If there was a peak nuclear problem, could we then go back to fossil fuels, assuming there was some left.
After that Humans could vacate the Earth, leaving it exhausted of all resources. Is that the reason that Warmists and Greenies are so worried? 😉
20
Peter C
The current oil price shows that no peak has arrived yet. The hydrocarbons found on other planets and moons show it will not arrive. For example methane has been found on nearly every planet and moon in the solar system. Any carbon burnt by us returns to make more. It is simple and sustainable. There could be a problem if demand does not keep up with supply.
No successful and safe method has been found to store all the waste. While it does not have a large total volume yet that would grow and it cannot be stored in the same place. It needs to be kept apart. Some of the decay rates are long like 15.7 million years. If all electricity came from nuclear the waste problem would get even more serious than it is now and there is already no solution to the multiple serious waste storage problems.
“After that Humans could vacate the Earth” After what? With the burning of carbon there is ongoing abundance and no reason to leave. The nuclear waste problem being averted.
“Is that the reason that Warmists and Greenies are so worried?”
How would I know? Ask them.
11
We live on a radioactive ball, loaded with radioactive elements in ongoing reaction. Some of our internal planetary heat is associated with radioactive decay. People pay to put granite benchtops in their kitchens for goodness sake…here and here and here
Useful report here, (sect. 413 below) reviewing the extensive literature associated with the Chernobyl event. It’s worth pointing out and reiterating what is written here ‘Chernobyl’s Harm Was Far Less Than Predicted, U.N. Report Says‘ and the yet more obvious still, that “Without a permanent residency of humans for 20 years, the ecosystems around the Chernobyl site are now flourishing,” the report said. “It looks like the nature park it has become.”
(“Other factors, e.g. iodine deficiency and screening, are almost certainly influencing the risk. Few studies have addressed these problems, but those that have still find a significant influence of radiation after taking confounding influences into consideration.”)
70
Manfred
Thanks for the granite table top links.
“Some of our internal planetary heat is associated with radioactive decay.”
That heat is also altered by the sun as explained in these two videos.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzOOkR3a4vM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RWX9XGCdm0
10
The Radon panic in the USA I think was from Dr Petr Beckman’s challenges to the anti-nuclear industry. He pointed out the amount of radiation in people’s homes especially in New England and the Granite State and the activists freaked.
As far as Fukushima, I was very happy at the result. (Not the costs in lives and wealth but in the robustness of the plants and the organization of the emergency procedures.)
A massive earthquake, magnitude 9.0 — 130 km offshore the city of Sendai that literally moved Japan a few metres east and caused the local coastline subsided half a metre. It also caused a 15-metre tsunami yet the nuclear reactors HELD. The only problem I could see was a loss of power for pumping cooling water.
What an incredible feat of engineering!
I suggest people read that analysis. It goes into the details of radioactive releases, half life, monitoring containment measures…
100
I agree. It is remarkable the reactor stayed together under such extreme conditions.
It seems that pointing out facts might not be good with such an uneducated bunch of people. I had not heard of Dr. Beckman before. Maybe I should watch stating too much about natural radiation. People will try to leave the planet (sort of sarcastic there).
70
” People will try to leave the planet “. That might just be a good thing. If we could persuade them to take the phone sanitisers and executive hairdressers with them, what a wonderful world this would be. Could be a song in that.
40
Dr. Petr Beckmann (1924-1993) was an electrical engineer, physicist. He was born in 1924 in Prague (then Czechoslovakia under Soviet rule) He escaped with his family in 1939 to England and finally ended up at the University of Colorado as Professor of electrical engineering. His magazine Access to Energy look at a lot of scientific/political issues and gave the other side of the story you never see in the regular press. He covered the Ozone Hole, (readings taken down wind of an active volcano) Ocean acidification and Global Warming. Dr. Robinson of the the Oregon Institute (Oregon Petition) now published the magazine.
Youtubes of Dr Beckmann
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsIPgs-f94w
Book
The Health Hazards of Not Going Nuclear
other works
Petr Beckmann Publications
20
You are right gai. The reactor building that sustained the most damage was an old design. The standby diesel generators were located outside of the main building, and got swamped by the wave.
The power company had apparently applied for permits to upgrade the site but these were contested by the environmental lobby. There would have been much less atmospheric radiation, if the the company had been allowed to move the spent control rods off site for disposal. But again, the environmental lobby …
90
Their fuel supply was also from the harbour-side fuel tank; that wasn’t harbour-side after the wave struck.
40
Central Australia is in the top three safest places in the world to store high level waste long term. Old rocks, centre of a stable tectonic plate far from any faults, isolated with virtually nil animal/human life, and currently politically stable too. According to one company it’s the number 1 safest, not just in the top three.
If it wasn’t for a certain friend of the climate skeptics putting the kibosh on the whole thing we could have had a high level waste repository built by now. We’ve already got the Darwin-Adelaide railway built to transport stuff from a northern or southern port to the Red Centre. The repository could be making money out of this “natural resource” of isolated stable rock that we’ve got. I would go so far as to say it’s our moral obligation to use this area for long term toxic and nuclear waste because we are a major uranium supplier to begin with, the world’s waste isn’t going to just disappear, and putting it anywhere else in the world would be less secure.
And who knows, maybe by 2010 we could have been saying “Shinji, maaaate, we’ll take those spent fuel rods off your hands, you can rent space in our vault, mates rates, they’re still yours if you want to retrieve them for reprocessing but no more Green protests over your on-site storage pools.” And the fuel rods would have been safe from tsunamis, earthquakes, terrorists, atomic bombs, and pretty much anything short of a direct strike by an asteroid, for 2 million years. But Barry and Sheila Public won’t consider it because ooga wooga nuka booga or something.
I mean, it’s so simple it can’t go wrong. It’s a hole in the ground, people, it doesn’t have to even do anything.
50
Heck Andrew,
Store, reprocess and sell the darn stuff all over again!
It is not like the technology isn’t available for reprocessing.
I really wish people would do a bit of research before crying the sky is falling. Yes the Universe is dangerous but pick the dangers you are going to spook at with your brains not emotions.
As far as I am concerned the biggest danger is boneheaded politicians maneuvering us into the next war — with China? China and Russia? with those two behind Iraq and North Korea? — The situation looks a lot less stable now than it did 15 years ago.
40
“Their fuel supply was also from the harbour-side fuel tank; that wasn’t harbour-side after the wave struck.”
These problems occured with a wave of only 15 meters in a place known for waves of up to 38 meters and Tsnunamis as often as three times a century.
http://historyofgeology.fieldofscience.com/2011/03/historic-tsunamis-in-japan.html
10
“Central Australia is in the top three safest places in the world to store high level waste long term.”
How long term is long term? Even a very stable place can have the odd Mega flood 3 times in 10 thousand years or unexpected other event. Are we overdue for one?
02
PANIC!!!!!
Also test you soil with a radiation detector regularly if you wish to garden safely.
And do not eat fish, bananas, or food grown on naturally radioactive soil, or buy any modern electronic devices (some smoke detectors, some luminous displays, etc…)
Please do not panic —
Guess what the healthy human is completely unaffected by these things! Evidenced by our continuing, many generations, of existance.
40
Also see my reply (or not if it is still in moderation) at 4.1.1.1.2.
00
Also see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_radioactivity for all that natural radiation we live through with no ill effects. And so do cows, sheep, fowl, and fish, etc…
Now eat some full cream icecream with bananas and brazil nuts, after a Japanese style steak salad with seaweed rice balls and wonder…
30
“….Now eat some full cream ice cream with bananas and brazil nuts, after a Japanese style steak salad with seaweed rice balls and wonder…”
There are many differences between Japanese and American diets that may explain why cancer incidence in Japan is far lower than in the United States….
Must be all that seaweed in fish high in Iodine-129 and -131 . (Japan has the highest dietary intake of iodine (13 mg per day), and the lowest rates for goiter and breast cancer)
Iodine-129 has a half-life of 15.7 million years; iodine-131 has a half-life of about 8 days. It was the iodine-131 that was the concern with Fukushima.
00
I you owned a “Geiger counter”, you probably could’ve walked into just about any “western” supermarket in April of 2011, dressed in a “bunny suit”, and carted off all the radioactive bananas to save the staff and customers from radiation exposure.
00
And some perspective about permitted radiation levels.
Though I find the authors attitude and opinions on how an international body of scientists can or can not be mislead is at best regrettable, the factual information however has much merit …
[my bold]
In other words they err on an extreme side of safety, as the operation of radiation on living tissue was not well understood.
Also see my comment at 4.1.1.1.2 about some research that has been done, and also gai comment at 4.1.1.1.4 about the use of the assumed straight line relationship for radiation dosage effects.
20
Another link is
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Safety-and-Security/Safety-of-Plants/Fukushima-Accident/
The World Nuclear Association has a lot of good information and that is where I go first when I want information. Unfortunately they also have a ‘Dumbed down’ section of the site which has short feel good articles (GRRRRRrrrr) So stay within the ‘Information Library’ if you want the indepth stuff.
http://www.world-nuclear.org/Information-Library/
They have several articles on Fukushima.
This one caught my eye too:
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/RS-Japan-two-weeks-from-return-to-nuclear-power-2706151.html
60
Why did I think this story about the waste from nuclear testing in the Marshall islands would be anything but emotive clap-trap – given it’s the ABC, and Phillip Adams.
No doubt the place is radioactive, and far from a healthy place to live, but really, “climate change”…that’s their biggest problem?
60
The real story. The Marshall Isalnds, quite the gorgeous place to have a diving adventure in a tropical paradise.
40
When you’re begging for charity, it doesn’t pay to show your country as a paradise, does it!
Perhaps what I should have said was, very specific parts of the Marshall islands are probably far from healthy places to live long-term – i.e., on, or right next to test sites…?
30
There is at least one certain thing about nuclear [you name it]. It’s as controversial a subject as I have ever seen.
I thought I was going to be slugged by an extended family member for even mentioning in a conversation over lunch that it’s possible to build quite safe nuclear plants. Lots of emotion and little understanding…
40
They probaly also don’t understand how electricity works either. Electricity that kills thousands every year. But they’re mostly unafraid to use it every minute of every day.
10
Readers here might find this author interesting.
I’ve always been stubbornly of the view that if I’m going to voice my opinions on a public platform like Daily Maverick, I ought to be prepared to defend them. I am, after all, only a journalist. I do not lay claim to any status or authority that would give my opinion more weight than those of any other well-read layman. Verifiable facts and logical reason are all I have going for me, and those are always open to public dispute.
I’d always endorse that approach even if he disagreed with everything I believed.
However, he has much to say that I din’t already know, that is concise, clear and rational on the Global Warming debate.
The author is Ivo Vegter.
I have a suspicion that his bio’s self description “Not often wrong about anything” is a homage to Delingpole’s “Always right about everything.”
Check him out. Let me know if you’re glad you did.
http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2015-07-27-fantasists-dont-belong-in-public-policy-debates/#.Vbyvt88w-Uk
80
Oops, brain fade. That should have read “He is seldom wrong.”
40
Thanks Lee. Very good heads-up. Their – about us makes refreshing and rational reading.
40
That was a very good article about keeping a debate on track, to the point and sticking to facts, something which eludes most of those on the Left.
60
It does not elude them, it is one of their primary debating tactics as Siliggy has just shown.
00
I had an interesting conversation with a colleague the other day, about renewable energy, in a round-about kind of way.
Ii seems there is (at least 1) potash (potassium chloride) miner which has decided to use the cavities created by solution mining, to store compressed air (amusingly, generated via wind-power). The air is then used to increase the efficiency of their gas-fired power plant.
I think it seems like a fairly clever use of technology, which has presumably been determined to save the miner some money overall. I know compressed air energy storage is not new, but still, it isn’t something which I have thought about in a long time.
Until this came up, we were talking about the geomechanics of gas storage – using existing depleted reservoirs to store processed natural gas. The stress cycles – pressure increases and decreases (although not large in magnitude), have to be managed in order to limit reservoir damage. Despite the fact that KCl solution cavities are much larger than pore species in rock, the same principles apply, pressure management is required to avoid fatigue via repeated stress cycles.
60
Is this compressed air storage system simply a much larger version of using Air Receiver Tanks in many industrial compressed air systems?
My only concern is the cavity’s ability to provide an adequate pressure relief system which is 10% higher than the working pressure of the system for Air Receivers.
The idea is very interesting and reminds me of the Forced Induction (turbo/supercharger) of combustion engines, the tricky part will be delivering the air in a smooth controlled manner as erratic bursts would cause accelerated fatigue of the turbine.
I’ve worked with Air Receivers and pressure vessels and they must be over engineered to handle the stress cycles with scheduled inspections for fatigue, on a side note the ends cut off of large Air Receivers make excellent burners and planters.
40
HMMMMmmmmm,
After reading that, it occurs to me that underground carbon capture would have more actual problems than fracking when it comes to instigating earthquakes since it would be continuous pressure on the strata ‘forever’. And of course if there IS an earthquake you release the CO2 and kill all the people in the area.
I wonder what that does to insurance? No one around to collect?
40
In reality, a reservoir suitable for gas, or fluids, has an operating window for pressure. Storing CO2 at a pressure at, or above that of the local hydrostatic pressure (or pore pressure), but less than the fracture pressure of the rock is not a problem, after all, it is usually a case of substituting what was in the pore spaces originally, say, oil, gas, or water, with something else – say CO2.
As far as uncontrolled gas release – it depends on the way the wells have been completed, but most reasonable countries require that wells be fitted with sub-surface safety valves which rely on pressure to remain open. if the well head, or the control line to the valve is damaged, the valve shuts, and seals the well. The numerous wells deliberately destroyed in the 1st gulf war did not have such valves (as far as I am aware). If well integrity is degraded to the point where there is direct communication with the atmosphere (not via the wellbore), then obviously that’s a real problem. I am not sure if I would prefer clouds of natural gas, or clouds of CO2 moving downhill/downwind from their escape points…
50
Dang it! You just ruined the scare story I was going to use on the Warmists….
40
The average warmest doesn’t need facts, just suppositions and opinions, so you’re still in with a very good chance, I think!
40
Just imagine what could happen – knock off a wellhead, causing an uncontrolled release of CO2… I am sure it would be just like letting go of an inflated balloon and watching it fly around the room – the Earth will fly all over the solar system until the reservoir is depleted!
Think of the children!!
50
Yes indeed, holes are drilled into the potash deposit, and a brine solution is circulated so as to preferentially dissolve the potassium chloride. This is pumped out, and the potassium chloride is recovered. The same process has also been applied to ‘conventional’ mines, to extract what couldn’t safely be extracted otherwise.
This is where the geomechanics aspect comes into it – determining the pressure at which the rock will fracture. Then the key is to make sure that the maximum pressure exerted at the weakest point in the storage system does not exceed its fracture pressure, or… you’ll get fractures, which, at the very least, will decrease the working pressure of the system, and cause leaks. Likewise, decreasing the pressure too much, would cause problems too…
A rough calculation about pressure exerted on the rock – lets assume the brine has a density of 1200Kilograms per cubic metre, and the mine is 100m deep. the pressure exerted at the lowest point in the mine, just by the weight of the fluid is:
P = 1200 x 9.81 x 100m = 1177.2 KPa, 11.8 Bar, or 171psi. (where 9.81 is the acceleration due to gravity, in m/s-2).
(pure water would yield 981KPa, 9.81 Bar, or 142psi at the same depth)
This brine might be a bit more dense than average, but it’s not a completely fanciful figure, nor is the 100m.
As you can see, the rock can already tolerate at least 11.8 Bar, so, with a storage capacity in thousands of cubic metres, it’s a lot of air!
40
Nothing like an engineer to toss a wet blanket on a good scare story. Too bad it never seems to work when dealing with Activits. Their hysterics burn like a magnesium fire***. Nothing seems to be able to put it out.
Thanks for the information BTW
*** Seems the new hybrid cars are built with magnesium and new cars will increasingly have magnesium so fire fighters are now having to train in how to deal with magnesium fire.
http://www.firehouse.com/article/11300616/firefighter-training-extinguishing-magnesium-fires
…. Everyone is looking to save a dollar and still have something strong and light. Over the next 10 years car companies will be adding magnesium to other places in their cars, including BMW, Ford, Mercedes, GMC, Audi, Jaguar, and other vehicles. Magnesium casings will be added to their transmissions. Ford is adding magnesium to their dashboards and radiator covers. GM is moving to figure out new ways for magnesium to be used by placing it in door panels, hoods, and trunks. Chrysler has begun painting their vehicles with a pearl finish, which is actually magnesium. Vehicle companies have moved to add magnesium to truck grills, rims, air conditioner parts, large whole truck frames, intake manifolds, as well as engine blocks.
Household appliances have gone to magnesium because it is lightweight. You will find it in refrigerators, pots and pans, toasters, ovens, cabinets, microwaves, energy saving light bulbs, and more things to come….
40
The good thing about magnesium is how it can burn in a pure CO2 environment, leaving solid carbon behind, as it breaks apart the CO2 molecule, and uses the oxygen. Surely with the right spin, this could be a winner with the warmist crowd?
30
Great Quotes:
“Everyone acquainted with the subject will recognize it as a conspicuous failure.”
– Henry Morton, president of the Stevens Institute of Technology, on Edison’s light bulb, 1880
“There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable.
It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at will.” – Albert Einstein, 1932
“Rail travel at high speed is not possible because passengers, unable to breathe, would die of asphyxia.”
– Dr. Dionysius Lardner, 1830
“X-rays will prove to be a hoax.” – Lord Kelvin, President of the Royal Society, 1883
“There will never be a bigger plane built.” – – A Boeing engineer, after the first flight of the 247, a twin engine plane that holds ten people
“A rocket will never be able to leave the Earth’s atmosphere.” — New York Times, 1936
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N-Rays were the hoax.
Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen was already working on the effects of cathode rays during 1895, before he actually discovered X-rays.
40
Irving Langmuir (1989). Physics Today October 1989 pp 36-48
00
So-called “bias” that gets REMOVED from a record by “corrections” should NOT match a natural phenomenon like the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO), right??
So why do NOAA’s “corrections” to ERSSTv4 match the IPO????
• smoking gun: •
http://s16.postimg.org/zbthw15fp/IPO_BIAS_ERSSTV4_HADNMAT2_ICOADSSST2_DOT5.png
It should not be long before the climate skeptic community is screaming in unison at NOAA to unconditionally retract ERSSTv4.
https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2015/06/05/noaa-tries-to-make-global-warming-slowdown-vanish/comment-page-1/#comment-104332
Maybe Bob Tisdale will seize this easy opportunity to relay the deathblow. (This needs to reach a wider audience.)
It’s clear-cut.
It’s dead-simple.
…and it’s fatal for ERSSTv4.
If we tolerate this sort of thing we’re effectively waving a white flag of submissive surrender to record corruption.
Integrity demands square confrontation on this issue because it’s so clear-cut & simple. We have a responsibility. If we turn a blind eye to something so clear-cut & simple, our reputation suffers irreparable damage. When something is this clear-cut & simple, even just delaying rouses cynicism & suspicion.
NOAA should not be “correcting” a well-known natural phenomenon (the IPO) by deflating its representation in the recent record …which has the effect of straightening what remains to make it look like a better match to CO2.
151
The number of thumbs-down will be a useful gauge of how many people don’t want to face this deliberate test of allegiance:
https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/suggestions-12/comment-page-1/#comment-104787
Sometimes we have a responsibility to challenge our friends.
The Bottom Line is THIS:
NOAA should NOT be skimming a layer of IPO off recent ERSST to make it look more like CO2.
141
I was in the USA on a tour and the tour guide told us the large solar farm just before we got to Las Vagas supplied southern Californis with 75% of it’s power. Does anyone know about this solar farm. The tour guides in America seem very anti fossel fuels.
30
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2560494/Worlds-largest-solar-farm-SCORCHING-BIRDS-fly-it.html if your travel was recent. (I don’t think there’s any solar industrial powere installation that supplies 75% of southern California power. Maybe for an hour on one day since the plant opened?
Note that gila monsters, desert tortoises and any other wildlife out there is suddenly scorchable and can be driven to extinction in the name of solar power and subsidies (oh, saving the planet I mean). Your tour guides may be government employees or college students, both of which have drank significant amounts of the koolaid. They believe they are the enlightened ones and those who actually work and make a living using fossil fuels and can thus pay to travel are just uneducated lackies who don’t know any better. The connection between fossil fuels and their salaries are totally lost on them.
90
TonyfromOz in 3…2…1….
30
Looked it up. The Las Vegas plant is only 392 megawatts of 78,865mw total installed capacity, so 0.5%. Of course only when the sun shines. Solar total is 4,639mw so a very high 6%
Natural gas is the main source for electricity generation at 45% of the total in-state electric generation system power.
Large hydro is 12,362mw (15%) (Hoover dam?)
Even wind is 5,896mw (7%)
Geothermal is 2,703mw (4%)
California is a state of 40million people with a GDP bigger than most countries. A solar farm will not do it.
Tony will be there soon.
50
The “its” is the fool plant 75% of “its” power goes to sCa the rest elsewhere!
42
Excellent catch!
This is why we need to control language and not let the progressive keep changing the meanings of words.
70
The Solar ‘Industry’ is populated by people who pitch the language at a level way over the heads of
used car salesmen, sorry,real estate agents, sorry tour guides. (there, I knew I’d finally get it right)The actual language goes something like this.
The tour guide now has a pitch that promotes them (the tour guide) with a startling fact ….. “hey, I know a real lot about this stuff.”
Total power supplied by Ivanpah over 12 Months – 400GWH
Total power consumed by California over 12 Months – 258,000GWH
So 75% of the total Ivanpah output is 300GWH, or 0.116% of California’s total power consumption. So, the 75% quote overstates it by a factor of just under 650.
Incidentally, that power delivery for Ivanpah gives it a yearly Capacity Factor (CF) of, umm, 11.7%, and as CF can equate to time, that works out that the plant is operational using its solar capability for 2 hours and 50 minutes a day on average across the whole year.
Ivanpah has requested that it be able to use its Natural Gas fired component on a more regular basis. Those NG turbines run the generators up to speed and deliver power until the solar component is actually hot enough to ‘make’ the steam to drive the turbine which then drives the generator , and then they can turn off the NG turbine. Say, sorta defeats the whole purpose having a renewable solar facility actually emitting CO2.
Incidentally, nearly every one of these concentrating solar plants utilises a NG turbine to do this, run the plant up until the solar element can take over. Bet you didn’t hear that from the blurbs about these plants.
And IVanpah, well, all that for only $2.2 BILLION. A steal, really.
No wonder used car salesmen and real estate agents are flocking to the industry. Sorta like home, eh!
400GWH a year, you know, the same power delivered by Bayswater in, umm, 6 days and three hours with all four units running.
Be aware that these solar plants are (supposedly) the way of the future.
Tony.
160
So then, there is another renewable power plant on the border of Arizona and Nevada which also supplies power into California.
It’s the Hoover Dam Hydro.
It generates 4700GWH of power each year in total and 56% of that is delivered into California, so 2650GWH of power, or the equivalent of 8.83 times that of the delivery from Ivanpah.
It has been doing this now for, umm, 78 years.
Sorta makes wind power and solar power with a 15 to 25 year maximum lifespan pale into insignificance.
Tony.
180
Forget Southern California. Ivanpah would have trouble supplying even 7% of nearby Las Vegas, a city of one million people with a massive electricity demand of 5600MW on a summer day. It is worse at night when solar supplies nothing.
110
thanks TdeF,
so, then Las Vegas, with a population a lot less than for Adelaide, consumes around the same electricity as Melbourne, a city with almost four times the population, or almost twice the power as the whole State of South Australia.
Wait till electricity efficiency hits Las Vegas.
Tony.
151
Yes amazing. I had to go there seven times on conferences. An adult disneyland affectionately known as Lost Wages.
Like Dubai, in a desert with one water pipeline and massive needs just to exist, it is just not sustainable. I have been in Las Vegas when the one water pipe for the town broke. No one noticed otherwise. No one drinks water. Drinks used to be free if you were gambling. A mad place but fascinating, like Dubai with the airconditioned bus stops in the desert and air conditioned open train platforms like the Jetsons. It would be illegal in California. In fact it is. That is what it is doing next door in Nevada, Los Angeles’ playground.
60
I’m in Dubai right now TdeF. It is indeed fascinating but power and water usage is tremendous. I doubt I’d survive it here without AC at this time of the year, for sure. The mains water is desalinated and we drink ‘bottled’ water. There are power grid lines all over the place. A place to visit and enjoy, marvel at indeed, but hope not replicated too frequently.
40
However it can be used to calculate whether solar makes sense
So 392 megawatts maximum from 4,000 acres at over $US2Billion for something which works for a third of a day.
Even so, to supply the 80,000megawatts needed for California, $400Billion and an area of 820,000 acres or 3,300 sq km., so 33 km x 100km of solar cells under which nothing can live.
Now allow for maximum power only for 1/3 of a day and you have $1.2Trillion dollars and 100kmx100km to supply California for 8 hours. This is heading for California’s or Australia’s GDP.
Now a lifespan of 30 years and do it all again. Solar does not make sense.
70
I saw a documentary about what would happen if humans suddenly disappeared from the earth. Hover dam is totally automated and it is estimated that without human intervention it would continue to generate electricity for many years. See http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/life-after-people/
20
Hoover not Hover… 🙁
00
This one?
Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating site in Primm, Nev
Huge Solar Plant Lags in Early Production (youtube-wotchit.news)
November 17, 2014, phys.org:
One of the reasons is as basic as it gets: The sun isn’t shining as much as expected.
“Factors such as clouds, jet contrails and weather have had a greater impact on the plant than the owners anticipated,” the agency said in a statement.
It could take until 2018 for the plant backed by $1.6 billion in federal loan guarantees to hit its annual peak target
70
Oh, drat those pesky jet contrails! They forgot to mention swarms of locusts and birds eating the locusts.
20
But those were Global Warming vapour trails – these are from planes carrying ORDINARY people on business, and they extract warmth to send it to the deep ocean. You are mistaking them for Global Cooling vapour trails which come from planes carrying important people ( Al Gore, James Hansen, Michael Mann etc.) to Conferences about what to do about Global Warming.
These latter trails extract warmth too, but they send it to NASA to help boost the temperature figures.
80
Nuh! Chemtrails.!
D**ier skeptics surreptitiously financed by the heavily subsidised coal companies have deliberately sabotaged the Jet A1 fuel used by the airline companies with some sort of a very secret chemical formulation so that all those jet contrails are now impervious to the special types of solar radiation needed to power the Ivanpah plant at its maximum efficiencies.
It is believed that this secret chemical fuel additive formulated over many years by the coal companies and funded by the illegal diversion of the huge government coal subsidies makes the jet chemtrails imperviousness to the special type of Sun light that is needed to run solar plants like Ivanpah at their maximum efficiencies.
The illegal action by the criminal coal companies is preventing one of the main means of preventing a catastrophic global warming taking place by stopping this specific type of sunlight from being used by the Ivanpah solar renewable energy generator
With the correct sunlight the Solar Renewable Energy generators like the Ivanpah plant along with only a half dozen similar solar plants equivalent in size and efficiencies as the Ivanpah plant would able to power the entire western world’s power needs.
Now about that cave I have for sale!
Or was it a bridge!
60
They are saying this August in the UK will be the hottest ever (after the wind chills and wetness of July) and the bookies are slashing the odds.
Monday is predicted to be warmer than Bermuda.
50
This will come as a relief to the Scots who imagined Autumn had already arrived.
http://www.scotsman.com/news/environment/scotland-s-weather-snow-forecast-as-gritters-seen-1-3843824
50
HUH?
60
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2015/08/01/record-breaking-cold-in-the-uk/
See comment by TChannon; 0.9℃ at Sennybridge (wherever that is).
Note also the reports of arctic whales such as Beluga and bowhead whales being sighted in British waters.
50
Sennybridge, is in wet Wales Graeme.
30
Thanks. I looked it up later and decided I didn’t want to go there if it got that cold in summer. It’s cold enough here in winter, with the rain keeping the frosts away.
Of course, if I was entrepreneurial I would be exporting Gluhwein there, but with their dependence on wind turbines it would have to be a self heating package.
20
The NAO is in negative territory.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/pna/nao_index.html
60
The PDO is also worth looking at:
http://www.esr.org/pdo_index.html
And the effect on USA rain fall (red is drought)
http://sparkleberrysprings.com/v-web/b2/images/climate07/04mcabefig4lg.png
What I noticed is that the last two swings to the positive in the PDO were anemic. These are after the 1997-1998 Super El Nino. (See graph)
20
‘The chairman of the local National Farmers’ Union (NFU) branch has echoed nationwide concerns about the impact poor weather is continuing to have on the agriculture industry.
‘Jim Nicolson said that this year’s weather is “almost certainly the worst” he’s experienced in Shetland in the last four decades, with high levels of rainfall and a cold climate affecting the growth of grass and crops.’
Shetland News
30
Yes, Farmers around the world generally think CAGW is a complete crock.
Many, as in the USA, are in their fifties and sixties and remember the 1965 to 1970 cold spell that is being written out of the records. Many even in the USA are third, fourth and fifth generation farms and have actual written diaries of farm information so the ‘family’ remembers the high temperature and drought of the 1930s, the nice weather of the oughties and perhaps even the nasty weather of the 1800s.
The dilletante farmers, the ‘well educated’ hippies retiring from the city generally don’t last very long and lose their shirts if they don’t smarten-up real fast.
Tullips, Arabian horses, emus, ostrich, miniature horses, pot belly pigs, boer goats, and now alpacas. There have been a lot of crazes where the gullible newbie has been efficiently fleeced. I know a couple of old guys who have made the fleecing an art form.
I figure the Australian wine grape craze may be just another one in a long long list. (Selling starter stock is where you make your money.)
40
Speaking of tulips
Sir Reginald’s Marvellous Organ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XWo4ufMkG4
( Warning. Not for Baptists or other sour faces ).
30
Bermudagrass does well under elevated CO2 levels.
‘The bottom line of Yu et al.’s endeavor, therefore, boiled down to the simple fact, as they put it, that the “elevated CO2 concentration was effective in alleviating physiological damages of salinity stress in Bermudagrass,” which further suggests, as they conclude, that “C4 grasses may benefit from the rising atmospheric CO2 concentration associated with global climate changes.”
CO2 Science
90
My common bermuda is darn hard to kill.
Livestock stomping it to death, it comes back,
Drought? it goes dormant and comes back while the neighbor has to reseed his fescue.
………
Danged, if Antarctica doesn’t have a perennial grass: Deschampsia antarctica (It is a C3 plant)
http://i2.wp.com/upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d8/Antarctic_Fur_Seal_pup_atop_Tussock_Grass.jpg?w=180
50
All C4 & CAM plants do well and will do regardless of CO2
.
Most researchers are trying to associate Climate Change for the better growth of C4 & CAM pathway Plants
Yu et al.’s statement is false:
Sodium is a Salt – NaCl – not hard to find Yu!
If they had bothered to look, all C4 & CAM plants will not survive without Sodium in their pathway. Na is an essential micro-nutrient to both. A C3 plant will survive without Na.
Both CAM & C4 have reacted to water availability & saline conditions – interchangeable!
Associating Climate change as the driver of success of Bermuda grass is a crock of garbage.
Same with CAM, which can utilize CO2 efficiently at nighttime.
Some times these ignorant Plant Physiologists annoy me, because we learn this in farm school.
It’s all about the MONEY now!
20
“…All C4 & CAM plants do well and will do regardless of CO2”
……………….
What utter nonsense!!! Without CO2 ALL PLANTS DIE! (And so do we.)
CAM and C4 plants evolved in response to CO2 starvation. However they still need CO2, water and sunlight for Photosynthesis. They just use different pathways to limit water loss through the stomata.
Carbon dioxide starvation, the development of C4 ecosystems, and mammalian evolution
VIDEO: Cowpeas 42 days in chambers of ambient and elevated CO2 concentrations.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2qVNK6zFgE
C3 plants just have a better response to elevated CO2 compared to C4 plants but both respond.
A list 19 papers on CO2 and C4 pathway.
Synopsis of one of the listed papers. If there is hanky panky you can read the actual paper and spot it most times.
50
bizarre responses from Bishop!
31 July: Contra Costa Times: Katrina Cameron: Golden eagle dies three months after being released into wild
WALNUT CREEK — A young female golden eagle rescued by San Ramon Valley firefighters in March and rehabilitated by Lindsay Wildlife Hospital died hours after being struck by a wind turbine last Saturday…
A turbine struck the eagle’s left wing so hard that bones went missing as it shattered at the radius and ulna. The doctor determined that the raptor would never be able to fly again and she was euthanized later that day…
The bird wore a Wildlife band and a GPS backpack, which had an identifying serial number…
Bishop (Norma Bishop, executive director at Lindsay Wildlife Experience) hopes that the tragic death will raise awareness about the scarce resources in the world and affect behavioral change in humans, she said.
“We need to look for ways that can be protective of these creatures that contribute so much to our lives,” Bishop said…
“Everyone’s first reaction (to the bird’s death) was ‘oh, no,'” Bishop said. “The more we thought about this, the more we thought that it’s not a waste.”
There are nearly 5,000 energy-generating turbines at Altamont Pass, where the golden eagle was fatally struck.
http://www.contracostatimes.com/breaking-news/ci_28568978/golden-eagle-dies-three-months-after-being-released
60
It’s odd that the news report said:
(My emphasis.) I think it’s strange that the reporter felt it necessary to say that the turbines were “energy-generating”. You wouldn’t need to say that about a coal or nuclear plant. Perhaps this reporter deep down knows the truth that wind turbines do not produce net energy…
00
welcome again to the wonderful world of DEMAND RESPONSE:
1 Aug: CNET: Chris Paukert: BMW paying electric car owners to delay charging in Bay Area
With more and more plug-in cars hitting the roads, there’s been growing concern over the strain these vehicles will have on the nation’s overtaxed power grid. BMW thinks it may have a solution in California…
The German automaker has partnered with utility Pacific Gas & Electric for an 18-month pilot program in the San Francisco Bay Area that’s just getting underway. The trial, dubbed BMW iChargeForward, gives $1,540 in gift cards to 100 owners of i3 hatchbacks to charge their vehicles during off-peak times…
The so-called “DEMAND RESPONSE PROGRAM,” which runs from now through December 2016, involves the 100 car owners giving BMW the ability to remotely manage the in-home charging of their i3 hatchbacks. The automaker can delay charging of certain vehicles by up to an hour depending on demand information provided by PG&E.
Participating i3 owners can track the value of the incentive, as well as temporarily opt out of the program using a phone app if their charging needs are more pressing…
According to Bloomberg, around 400 BMW i3 owners applied to take part in the program. The 100 selected participants each receive $1,000 gift cards upfront and can earn a second gift card worth up to $540 upon successful completion of the program…etc
https://www.yahoo.com/tech/s/bmw-paying-bay-area-i3-141539404.html
40
Pat,
The UK is going a step further.
And the Danes are even more ‘advanced.’
I keep these two articles to remind me of what the politicians have planned for us. They already installed ‘Smart meters’ here in town and flat out lied about what they were for. Since I refused they sent out the propaganda team. After their canned speech I handed them article after article, some from Duke Energy, proving they were lying point by point…. They just kept on repeated the canned responses and looking very uncomfortable.
80
More info on the Danish guinea pigs:
http://www.eu-ecogrid.net/
http://www.eu-ecogrid.net/ecogrid-eu/the-bornholm-test-site
http://www.siemens.com/innovation/en/home/pictures-of-the-future/energy-and-efficiency/smart-grids-and-energy-storage-smart-power-grid-on-bornholm.html
30
1 Aug: UK Telegraph: Christopher Booker: The real ‘deniers’ in the climate change debate are the warmists
Those who believe that the world faces a catastrophe from global warming dismiss anyone who dares question their beliefs….
One prominent example of this has been the contemptuous itch of those who passionately believe that the world faces a catastrophe from global warming to dismiss anyone daring to question their beliefs as a “denier”. In fact, it has long been obvious that the only real “deniers” on the climate front are those true believers themselves, who cannot face up to all the evidence which makes their scare story ever less convincing…
When in 2009 I observed that, after a further severe dip in 2007, Arctic ice levels had made a significant recovery, this so enraged George Monbiot (Guardian) that he rushed into print with a piece headed “How to prove Christopher Booker wrong in 26 seconds”…
Within minutes of posting his article, however, the Great Moonbat had to come back with an apology. “Whoops,” he wrote, “looks like I’ve boobed. Sorry folks.” One of his readers had noticed that he had totally misread what I wrote, because he had been looking at the wrong graph.
Last week, after I had been prompted again to write about the Arctic by a new Cryosat satellite study showing that in 2013 its ice volume increased by a staggering 33 per cent, this provoked a strident response from another of the newspaper’s attack dogs, Dana Nuccitelli.
Only a stupid “denialist” like me, he suggested, could be foolish enough to suggest that polar bear numbers in the Arctic were actually rising, not falling – or to deny that temperatures in Greenland have not been rising so dangerously fast that, since 1990, they have been hurtling upwards at an incredible 1.1 C per decade…
But if Mr Nuccitelli wanted some actual evidence, he might consult a graph recently posted on the blog Notalotofpeopleknowthat, headed “CBS climate liars are hard at work”. The blogger, Paul Homewood, has meticulously plotted the temperature data from two of Greenland’s main weather stations, going right back to 1900. Perhaps surprisingly, these show that the temperature trend in the island that contains a tenth of the world’s land ice has not risen an iota. It has remained astonishingly stable.
As for those polar bears, I have been following this story for years, ever since I used to speak to Dr Mitch Taylor, a scientist who has been observing and counting polar bears for many decades, and knows far better than any computer model how much their numbers have been rising. One has only to Google “polar bear numbers increasing” to find several studies that explain how, since the Seventies, their numbers have steadily risen – in some places by as much as 250 per cent.
But such are the inconvenient truths to which those “deniers” at The Guardian will remain determined to shut their eyes until the world freezes over.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/11778376/The-real-deniers-in-the-climate-change-debate-are-the-warmists.html
31 July: Discovery: Patrick J. Kiger: Does Global Warming Actually Increase Antarctic Sea Ice?
People who insist that climate change isn’t happening often try to disprove it by pointing to what they see as contradictory phenomena. One example is the ***oft-repeated claim (LINK) that there hasn’t been any global warming over the past 17 years, despite rising C02 levels. But one of their most visually compelling arguments has centered upon Antarctic sea ice, which expanded to reach record levels in 2014. If the planet really is warming, they ask, then shouldn’t the ice in the southern ocean be melting?..
But now, in a new, not-yet-published paper, James Hansen, former director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and colleagues push back even harder. They argue that the increase in Antarctic sea ice not only doesn’t refute climate change, but actually is caused by warming.
“Our climate model exposes amplifying feedbacks in the Southern Ocean that slow Antarctic bottom water formation and increase ocean temperature near ice shelf grounding lines, while cooling the surface ocean and increasing sea ice cover and water column stability,” the scientists argue in the abstract for the paper, which is undergoing review for publication in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics…
Hansen told the Washington Post that the Antarctic ice expansion trend will continue, along with ice sheet melt. But that acceleration actually will be a sign that climate change is worsening.
“It will be clearer, give us a few more years,” Hansen told the Post.
http://news.discovery.com/earth/global-warming/does-global-warming-actually-increase-antarctic-sea-ice-150731.htm
the ***oft-repeated claim (LINK) re the pause is to 20 March Tampa Bay Times Politifact “Ted Cruz’s world’s on fire, but not for the last 17 years” which states:
“Cruz does have a point: There hasn’t been any significant warming over the past 17 years. However, the scientific mainstream counters that it’s misleading for climate change skeptics to assume this flat trend line will continue indefinitely, or that it negates the long-term likelihood of global warming”
“And many scientists fully expect warming to pick up again, though there is less agreement on exactly when that will start”
“Cruz does have a point: There’s been little global temperature change since 1998, and the temperatures measured are lower than what many computer models had predicted.”
but concludes:
“Cruz’s statement contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression, so we rate it Mostly False.”
30
Amazing denialism. Record Antarctic ice is due to Global Warming. In fact accelerating ice levels are a sure sign of increasing ‘climate change’ (which appears to be a different phenomenon to Global Warming).
Failure to heat is ‘mostly false’ but contains an element of truth. It shows that if you make something up, it must be the truth if you are an official scientist like James (look at me, look at me) Hansen.
So officially the fact that the sky is not falling is mostly false but contains an element of truth?
60
This morning in Newcastle The weather is clear and still, currently 23 degrees, absolutely beautiful. My daughter just said she was thinking of posting on social media that if today is typical of what global warming has to offer, bring it on. Then speculated on how many negative replies it would generate.
70
I live in Melbourne. I remain hopeful that my understanding of thermodynamics is somehow messed up and we are really going to get some global warming soon:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-08-01/melbourne-shivers-through-coldest-july-in-20-years/6665178
20
If you censor yourself and say nothing, doesn’t that mean they’ve won?
80
We are biding our time, forbidden to speak in polite political correct society. My friends and extended family have all been brainwashed, so I avoid discussing the weather.
Of course if someone else raises the matter, they are fair game.
10
“My friends and extended family have all been brainwashed, so I avoid discussing the weather.”
………….
That is the problem.
Too many people are brainwashed by the MSM so realists avoid a debate with friends and family to keep the peace.
This is exactly what the Germans did. They decided to ‘keep the peace’
Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) He became an outspoken public foe of Adolf Hitler and spent the last seven years of Nazi rule in concentration camps.
At this point we realist can no longer hold our tongues. We have to have as many facts as possible on our side and softly challenge the brain washing.
The key is to do it one on one so the other person has no peer pressure or support. If needed have useful peer-reviewed studies printed out handy. Since most people only have a vague understanding of CO2 and climate and plants there is a chance real data will create a bit of doubt.
If you know the person you should have a good idea where the weakest point in the defense is.
Cutely cute animals?
Use the increase in polar bears plus the bat shredding wind mills and bird frying solar panels (that also threaten endangered desert species.) Have the real facts and figures about the amount of energy generated and the amount needed to construct. Most important have WHO is raking in the $$$ from destroying endangered species.
You might be surprised to find it is actually peer pressure and not a deep belief you are dealing with. So choose your prey carefully and pick the one with the weakest belief. (Generally the one who says nothing.)
30
At work, decades ago on another topic, I used this one on one technique and found the ‘consensus’ in the meetings I attended was nothing more than peer pressure. Most actually disagreed but were afraid to speak-up when in a group.
Peer Pressure is a very powerful force and it is the one most exploited by the leaders of this mess. Scientific ignorance is the other.
30
Interesting that ‘our’ ABC would decide to broadcast a show asking ‘can you trust scientific findings?’, even going so far as quoting Richard Feynman.
I suppose this should be seen as a positive thing in some sense…?
40
One of those situations where the wrong question is asked. “Science” does not ask for trust and few scientists would fall into the trap of asking for it. All science, properly done, is open to sceptical enquiry and all scientists both expect it and participate in it. A more constructive question that will hopefully engender a positive and inquisitive response from listeners is, “how do you assess scientific findings?”
What do people learn or gain from asking, “Can you trust scientific findings”?
80
“Do you trust scientific findings on global warming” is my preferred option.
80
el G,
But you would only bother ask people who can answer ““how do you assess scientific findings on global warming?”. I would not and do not trust the answer of anyone else on your question.
21
Rubbish. You use other peoples data without checking up on it all the time. Its not pure science when you do that but its been a very long time since it was practical to repeat everything.
I wasted a lot of time trying to make sense of someone else’s data related to my work. I did make sense of his results but only because I made a tiny mathematical mistake. Without the error, it was impossible to model the result with anything plausible. It was obvious that he had done the same thing and fudged the data, only realising before making the model public but not the data.
Not even a remote possibility that I could blow the whistle on him. It would have damaged my reputation more than his.
Humans!
50
trust follows critique/skepticism/assessment. You are saying the same thing as me you banana.
Assessment is the skill, which you describe grappling with, and trust or not is the outcome. Hence the pointlessness of the question “can you trust scientific outcomes” since the answer is yes or no and tells you nothing either way.
11
No, Gee Aye. Read and comprehend.
Its rare for anyone to check. I didn’t, I just stumbled on the possibility while using the data. I didn’t repeat the experiment as I didn’t have the resources.
The attitude in science is so bad that I would have copped more crap for suggesting that the data was fudged than he would have for doing it.
Any reason that your comments on this thread have been insulting and barely comprehensible ?
30
apologies if you could not comprehend them.
02
I bet they won’t ask “do you trust what the press says about science?”
Cheers,
Dave B
50
I thin ‘They’** are well aware that there is a growing body of scientific research that shows CAGW is false and they are preparing the ground so they can refute it.
Dr. Happer’s work and Dr. Soon’s work are the first to jump to mind.
‘They’** Al Gore, Maurice Strong and the real leaders standing behind them in the shadows. You do not get a mania like this without some one driving it and the usual reason is for money or money and power. ‘Saving the Environment’ is just the sheepskin toss over it to make the ‘Useful Innocents’ willing to carry the banner and spread the word.
40
A lot of news stories on the bushfires in the Blue Mountains but little mention of the temperatures up there. Katoomba has gone from 7.6°C on Monday up to 14°C yesterday. Friday was a four degrees above the July average when the fires started but still much colder than the January average of 23°C. How does a global temperature increase of less than a degree make all the difference?
One of the fires was definitely deliberately lit. I wonder if it was someone trying to prove that world is warming.
81
haha very funny.
Pretending you are not joking…
Obviously the fires are news. You understand why don’t you? The weather reporting is exactly as normal. Do you have evidence that it is not?
31
Nope. The very heavy snow from two weeks ago was reported by the Aus, but Fairfax concentrated on the Bathurst/Oberon area, as did the ABC. No iconic National Parks there
I might add the usual heavy congestion of gawking tourista clogged up the villages no end that weekend – the non-reporting by the leftoid meeja didn’t fool them
There is your hard evidence of biassed reporting … warmer spells and deliberate fires are alarmist jangle, heavy snow isn’t
You and I have clashed over hard evidence before, Golly Gee. You’re not a very quick learner, are you ?
51
thanks for the strong evidence. How could I I be anything but accepting in the face of such data.
10
well I decided to do some unscientific, rapid and far from thorough googling (i.e. this was the first thing that popped up with the specific search “snow, katoomba, site:abc.net.au”
Does this report count as the ABC not reporting on the blue mountains? If not why not?
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-07-17/snow-coats-parts-of-nsw/6626632
What is meeja? Was there a joke in there somewhere?
20
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-07-18/black-ice-causing-traffic-problems-in-blue-mountains/6630180
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-07-17/snow-coats-parts-of-nsw/6626632
this is fun!
quite a few in fairfax too but if I paste too many I might get moderated use site:smh.com.au snow katoomba to get a long list
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/weather/blue-mountains-traffic-blocked-by-snow-and-ice-20140717-zuan2
20
Geeaye
“rapid and far from thorough googling”
Do you realise that ABC spend more on Google
Google IT
Ehheee
Amazing how lopsided an argument can be with money?
30
yup.
Just wondering what Ian8888 is up to. He makes stuff up to suit a narrative and then buggers off. I’d be annoyed if I agreed with his narrative because he is trashing it.
01
The fires in October 2013 were blamed on climate change. Other fires are claimed to be more often and more severe because of less than 1 degree rise in global temperatures in over 100 years. Had some twit spreading that on another blog. A recent Nature article was pushing it (the lead author was collaborator with Keeling on earlier work). All this is just stupid science but worse because it incites activists to light more fires.
This clearly shows that its wind and fuel on the ground that make the fires large. A few degrees hotter makes a very small difference.
40
this is called shifting the debate
12
No its not. Your comments are called trolling.
10
as opposed to just being incorrect
01
Joe Bastardi flashes his lukewarmer credentials.
“The heat is not going to get erased by 3 sunspot cycles.”
See more at: http://notrickszone.com/#sthash.FLxo2usE.dpuf
30
Very disappointing.
Joe needs to read some Quaternary Science papers. He is much too narrowly focused on the present.
Ice cores from the Freemont Glacier in Wyoming show it went from Little Ice Age cold to Modern Warming warm in the ten years between 1845 and 1855. Naturally. Which shows Joe really does need to broaden his reading.
A study half way around the world shows something similar.
Norway Experiencing Greatest Glacial Activity in the past 1,000 year
The authors state that most glaciers likely didn’t exist 6,000 years ago, but the highest period of glacial growth has been in the past 600 years. H/T to John Kehr (I can not link to his site without the comment disappearing)
Determining the natural length of the current interglacial
P. C. Tzedakis, J. E. T. Channell, D. A. Hodell, H. F. Kleiven & L. C. Skinner
Can we predict the duration of an interglacial?
P. C. Tzedakis, E.W. Wolff, L. C. Skinner, V. Brovkin, D. A. Hodell, J. F. McManus, and D. Raynaud
Abrupt Temperature Changes in the Western Mediterranean over the Past 250,000 Years
Even Woods Hole Observatory warned about wide temperature swings a few years ago and that politicians maybe barking up the wrong tree.
Abrupt Climate Change: Should We Be Worried?
”
This paper based on actual data shot down hope that the Holocene would be double precession.
A Pliocene-Pleistocene stack of 57 globally distributed benthic D18O records
If you want models, here is a paper using models.
Transient simulation of the last glacial inception. Part II: sensitivity and feedback analysis
20
As an after though to comment in my moderation (too many links as usual)….
Now that I think about it, this very much sounds like someone “got to” Joe Bastardi.
It is a complete turn around from what he was saying five years ago. Since he was correct at the time I can not see that he had a ‘Come to the Dark Side Moment’ without a lot of persuasion.
Interesting that it is a few months after the attack on Willie Soon. The goal, according to those pursuing the skeptics of climate change, is to expose ties between those scientists and industry…
Soon’s views got the attention of Kert Davies, executive director of the nonprofit Climate Investigations Center…
….U.S. Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., sent letters to the universities of seven climate researchers, asking for details about the scientists’ funding. — NPR Org.
……………
Here is Joe’s views from a five years ago.
Triple Crown of global cooling could pose serious threat to humanity
We already know the US government puts pressure on various groups or individuals they do not like such as True the Vote Founder Catherine Engelbrecht why would we think anything different happens to Realists? Heck we have seen the pressure put on various scientist already.
I expect this type of pressure will be placed on any of the leading realists at least in the USA as we head towards Paris.
40
Antarctic sea ice has returned to average and looking at the world its heartening news for the warmists. Is this the long mooted tipping point?
https://sunshinehours.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/global_sea_ice_extent_zoomed_2015_day_212_1981-2010.png
50
tipping point of what? Arctic is following recent trends too http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph/
04
Antarctic sea ice has returned to average.
https://sunshinehours.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/antarctic_sea_ice_extent_zoomed_2015_day_212_1981-2010.png
20
yeah but what tipping point? What is being tipped?
01
If the red squiggly line falls below average in the southern hemisphere summer, it could be construed as a regional tipping point into warmer climes, but as we are still fairly clueless on the global cooling mechanisms in play, I cannot say with any certainty.
00
Perhaps the circumpolar vortex is gaining in strength and breaking up the ice. Notice the Taswegians are getting a direct blast from Antarctica.
http://www.bom.gov.au/fwo/IDY65100.pdf
10
they sure are http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-08-03/snow-across-tasmania-forces-many-key-road-closures/6666838
00
Of course its only weather, but maybe attached to a regular cycle.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-08-01/melbourne-shivers-through-coldest-july-in-20-years/6665178
00
‘When the polar vortex is strong, the Westerlies increase in strength. When the polar cyclone is weak, the general flow pattern across mid-latitudes buckles and significant cold outbreaks occur.’
BoM
00
One standard deviation from the mean???
YAWNnnnn…..
00
the ABC and Fairfax have been running stories recently about wine grape growing and climate change,one such story concerns cool climate growers in the Murrumbateman wine region close to Canberra ACT.A lot of the growers there are retired academics,CSIRO scientists,even a Nobel prize winner not so far away,so they do have some credibility for the media.
There have been anecdotal reports that harvest dates in these regions occurred in the month of March ,30 years ago and now the grapes are ripening in February,so this is proof that global warming is happening. One cannot dispute these observations,but one can speculate about why this might be happening.
First , I have noticed that a lot of the growers are wrapping their vines with bird netting,they probably were not doing this so much 30 years ago,but it is more common nowadays and it could be that this changes the way grapes ripen.
Also could there be an albedo effect so that when more vines are planted ,then more warmth is absorbed from sunlight and is not so easily radiated back,compared to the time when a few vines were surrounded by sheep paddocks.Of course it may have warmed up a little,but how could this have happened when satellite temperature records show not much warming in the past 20 or so years.
80
No, everything is Global Warming. No other explanation is possible, ever. So how does the climate change without the climate actually changing and certainly without Global Warming. Maybe the extra CO2 is helping with plant maturation? No, Global Warming. Especially near Canberra, a major source of hot air.
90
if so why are they claiming that they are citing actual harvest data? You can’t both be right.
12
Thanks for the comment,OED definition of anecdote,”unpublished report of history”,there are a lot of stories floating about the media on this topic and not much hard published data. Perhaps I should have used the word rumour instead of anecdote,but organisations such as the ABC and Fairfax are in the business of spreading rumours rather than doing good research and providing the public with reliable information.
20
Some reports from:
Leanne Webb, a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at CSIRO 2009?
Now forgotten – because sample was so small from new vine growers?
Convenient – YES!
New early producing Grape varieties included – NO!
But today
Bumper yields all over in March!
Canberra wine region growers and makers hail “bumper grape season“
50
Jo has a whole section devoted to the diddling of the Australian Temperature record so I thought I would take a look in the Northern Hemisphere:
Spring in Germany arriving later and later every year. Also forsythia blossoms in Hamburg arriving later and later
MORE from Germany
“Very Unusual” Mid-June Cold Surprises Germany…Surface Temperatures Around Hamburg Fall To -3°C!
June 19th
Europe Weather: “Thing Of The Past” Now A Thing Of Summer …Snow At 1500 Meters In Southern Germany
And the USA…
Energy Physicist Implores NOAA To Return To Credibility… “Get Out Of Adjusting Business”!
70
Neil deGrasse Tyson is the presenter of an American astronomy radio show. He is currently on tour in Australia. The Horden Pavilion on 22nd August is all but sold out, with prices from $88 to $159.
Tour dates:
http://thinkinc.org.au/events/an-evening-with-dr-neil-degrasse-tyson/
ABC Television:
He’s on Q and A on Monday 3rd August. Also appearing is Adam Spencer who once ‘interviewed’ Lord Monckton on ABC radio.
He does not like “climate deniers” one little bit, as these brief interviews show.
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/04/18/3647978/neil-degrasse-tysons-new-show-will-blow-your-mind-on-4-20/
http://www.salon.com/2014/03/14/neil_degrasse_tyson_on_climate_deniers_those_who_think_they_can_cherry_pick_science_simply_dont_understand_how_science_works/
Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_deGrasse_Tyson
Youtube: heaps and heaps of videos, for example
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJhbQIlu4mk
There is a lot of bluster and the interviewer hardly gets a word in.
50
Neil deGrasse Tyson appears to be a catastrophist from the Gore school, with his images of the sea coming up to the elbow of the statue of liberty after the poles melt. Like the sage John Kerry he claims that global warming is proven to the same extent as the law of gravity. He tells us that people will start paying attention when they start losing their wealth. We are already paying attention thanks Neil, when more and more of our income and savings are being stolen to pay for useless windmills, solar panels and UN parasites. On the basis of the youtube clip this guy has no new scientific insights to share, but repeats the well worn CAGW mantra rarely stopping for a breath. He will fit in well with the Q and A audience.
It just occurred to me that this guy may a skeptic with a super sarcastic delivery, I’ll watch the you tube video again!
70
***this links to the paper:
20 July: WaPo: Chris Mooney: The world’s most famous climate scientist just outlined an alarming scenario for our planet’s future
Joby Warrick contributed to this report.
This story has been updated.
***The new paper by Hansen and colleagues can be read online here (LINK).
(Because the work is undergoing a public peer review, we solicited comments on the paper from five prominent climate and ice sheet scientists — their varying reactions are quoted more extensively below. )…
(Michael Mann, Stefan Rahmstorf, Kevin Trenberth, Richard Alley, Michael Oppenheimer) ETC
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2015/07/20/the-worlds-most-famous-climate-scientist-just-outlined-an-alarming-scenario-for-our-planets-future/
20
1 Aug: NYT: Fernanda Santos: Dry Days Bring Ferocious Start to Fire Season
Officials are warning about the potential for more catastrophe in the months ahead, as drought, heat and climate change leave the landscape ever thirstier
“Our fire season started a month ahead, our crops matured weeks ahead and the dry weather we usually get in August, we’ve had since May,” said Peter J. Goldmark, Washington’s commissioner of public lands. Walking along the edge of the Blue Creek fire, burning near the Oregon-Washington border, he added, “By heavens, if this isn’t a sign of climate change, then what is climate change going to bring?”…
But the West’s stubborn drought seems to be especially devastating the farther north it reaches. In Alaska, 399 fires burned in June. That was nearly double the number seen in the same month in 2004 — considered to have been the state’s worst fire year on record…
It is all part of an extensive nationwide scorching. About 63,312 wildfires destroyed 3.6 million acres of land across the country last year, at a cost of $1.52 billion to fight the fires.
Early projections have placed this year’s cost even higher, at up to $2.1 billion, well beyond the $1.5 billion set aside by the federal Interior and Agriculture Departments, which administer more than 600 million acres of public lands.
The Obama administration has asked Congress to place wildfires in the same category as hurricanes and floods, with a dedicated disaster fund to pay for their suppression…
The Republican leadership in Congress has yet to endorse any of the proposals…
Between 2005 and 2014, the average number of fires that burned more than 100,000 acres — known as “megafires” — increased to 9.8 per year, up from fewer than one a year before 1995, according to statistics compiled by the National Interagency Fire Center, a multiagency logistical hub in Boise, Idaho.
One reason, ecologists and historians say, is the well-established link between big fires and the steady loss of moisture in forests from higher temperatures brought on by climate change…
Correction: August 2, 2015
An earlier version of this article misstated the amount of land in the United States that was destroyed by wildfires last year. It is 3.6 million acres, not 3.6 billion.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/02/us/dry-days-in-west-bring-ferocious-start-to-fire-season.html?_r=0
About the writer at the NYT link: Fernanda Santos covers Arizona and New Mexico as the Phoenix bureau chief for The New York Times. She was previously based in New York, where she covered the New York City public school system; Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s City Hall; Queens, New York City’s most ethnically diverse borough; and the rural and suburban communities of New York State.
Ms. Santos holds a bachelor’s degree in social communications from Pontifícia Universidade Catolica of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, her home country, and a master’s degree in print journalism from Boston University.
She came to the United States in 1998 and, prior to joining The Times, she worked at The Republican in Springfield, Mass.; The Eagle-Tribune in Lawrence, Mass.; The Daily News of New York; and People Magazine…etc
30
2 Aug: ABC: Blue Mountains bushfire being treated as ‘suspicious’ by NSW Rural Fire Service
The NSW Rural Fire Service (RFS) is treating a bushfire in the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney, as suspicious…
RFS Inspector Ben Shepherd said it may be a number of days before the cause of the fire was known.
“Given the absence of any natural causes, we are treating the fire as suspicious,” Mr Shepherd said.
“Not necessarily deliberately lit, there is word that this area is quite common with campers so we have to rule things out like escaped campfires.”…
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-08-02/blue-mountains-bushfire-being-treated-as-suspicious-by-rfs/6666494
NSW Regional Fire Service: Watch and Act – Hordern Rd, Wentworth Falls (Blue Mountains LGA) 2015-08-02
Posted: 2015-08-02 14:44
The fire at Wentworth Falls continues to burn in inaccessible bushland, and is being fanned by gusty winds. There is no immediate threat to homes…
Firefighters are on standby near homes on the southern side of Wentworth Falls in case the fire burns towards properties…
Crews are taking advantage of breaks in the weather to conduct backburning on the southern end of Tableland Rd. Residents will notice an increase of fire activity as a result of this work. Light rain has fallen across the fire ground however it is not enough to extinguish the fire…
http://www.rfs.nsw.gov.au/fire-information/major-fire-updates/mfu?id=359
20
1 Aug: Vanity Fair: Bill Nye Reading Mean Tweets Says Everything About Climate Change Deniers
The Science Guy has a lot of haters.
by Melissa Locker
Bill Nye is a glutton for punishment, apparently. The Internet’s favorite Science Guy (well, perhaps second favorite since Neil DeGrasse Tyson took the time to explain the ending of Interstellar to us mere mortals) engaged in the ultimate Internet trial-by-fire—reading mean tweets about himself on camera.
The stunt was to help raise awareness for a new fan-made documentary called the Bill Nye Film, which is in the midst of a Kickstarter fundraising campaign. To help further the cause of making a film about himself, Nye opened up his Twitter feed and read the harshest tweets he could find—and there were some incredibly mean ones in the mix.
While most of the tweets were from climate change deniers and people who took issue with his defense of evolution as more than just a theory, others had some strong feelings about Nye’s very existence…
Nye stood his ground against the climate change and evolution deniers, though…
http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2015/08/bill-nye-reading-mean-tweets-climate-change-deniers
re the writer: i see online that Melissa writes or has written for The Guardian, Vice, Time, Rolling Stone, Fortune, CNN, Salon, etc. on every subject under the sun. very versatile.
20
i can only wish Bill Nye as much success as other pretentious CAGW efforts, such as the June release, “The Yes Men are Revolting”.
despite “Mike Bonanno” getting a whole segment on Max Keiser’s “Keiser Report” in June, and reviews in WaPo, NYT, LA Times, Chicago Tribune, Vogue, Variety, Hollywood Reporter on Desmog, & more, here is the result:
MOJO Box Office: The Yes Men Are Revolting (Documentary)
Domestic Total as of Jul. 30, 2015: $50,190
Release Date: June 12, 2015
Widest Release: 20 theaters
Genre: Documentary – Political
Actors:Andy Bichlbaum, Mike Bonanno
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=theyesmenarerevolting.htm
19 June: Chicago Tribune: Dennis Harvey, Variety: ‘The Yes Men Are Revolting’ review: Climate change agitators
The further adventures of Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno – not that those are necessarily their real names – are chronicled in “The Yes Men Are Revolting.”
The prankster activists here turn their imaginative shaming schemes toward those corporations and governments doing little to address (when they’re not actively enabling) the escalating global-warming crisis…
Bonanno moves with his family to Scotland, while Bichlbaum gets involved with Greenpeace in a very Yes Men-style prank, calling out Shell Oil’s drilling plans in fragile Arctic regions…
The movie ends with their infiltration of a homeland security conference, where they succeed in
getting attendees to stand in a circle singing and dancing an ersatz Native American song – suggesting even a roomful of defense contractors might think the time is ripe for us to downsize fossil-fuel dependence and raise our use
of renewable energies…
http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/movies/ct-yes-men-are-revolting-review-movie-20150618-story.html
from WaPo review: “For the first time in three movies, Bichlbaum and Bonanno admit (sort of) that their real real names are Jacques Servin and Igor Vamos, respectively…”
from their respective Wikipedia pages:
Servin is a professor at Parsons the New School for Design.(Wikipedia) The New School’s Parsons School of Design (known colloquially as Parsons) is a private art and design college located in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It is one of the seven colleges of The New School (Wikipedia). The New School is a university in New York City, United States,
located mostly in Greenwich Village. From its founding in 1919 by progressive New York educators, and for most of its history, the university
was known as the The New School for Social Research. (Wikipedia).
Igor Vamos is an associate professor of media arts at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (Wikipedia) Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, or RPI, is a private research university located in Troy, New York, with two additional campuses in Hartford and Groton, Connecticut. It was founded in 1824 by Stephen van Rensselaer and Amos Eaton for the “application of science to the common purposes of life” and is the oldest technological university in the English-speaking world. (Wikipedia)
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Holy steam Batman, what a wonder this CSIRO really is.
Read the article and watch the video. (and, admitted it’s from 12 Months ago)
How huge is this! (/sarc)
It says this: (my bolding here)
Impressive, eh!
Advanced USC coal fired power – 677C and 34.5Megapascals.
This Solar thermal – probably could be upscaled for 20MW for perhaps an average power delivery around an average of 7 hours a day.
Advanced USC – run a single 1300MW generator 24/7/365.
If that’s matching it with the best fossil fuel systems (their words) then I’ll go hee!
But hey, CSIRO have to show something for their $5.68 Million eh!
Then they add that they can do it at a cheaper price.
Oh, and as you watch the short video, be aware that all the electric motors driving those mirrors will all be powered by the electricity the plant actually generates.
Oh give me strength! And you wonder why I mock renewable power.
Tony.
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But Lithium batteries must be going great guns.
The price of lithium continues to fall – like a brick.
I think someone (who sells electric cars) is telling fibs.
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***powerful – he’s the ex-head, so why not just say NAB?
2 Aug: SMH: Deborah Snow: Cameron Clyne, former head of NAB, criticises Canberra’s ‘wilful blindness’ over climate change
The former head of the ***powerful National Australia Bank, Cameron Clyne, has weighed into the increasingly toxic debate over Australia’s climate change policy with a salvo directed at what he calls the “wilful ignorance and blindness” of political leaders and some sections of the business community.
And he warns that many in business are afraid to speak up because “you put your head out there and it’s going to get smashed off”.
Mr Clyne says he personally accepts the “overwhelming” scientific consensus that climate change poses an “existential” threat “quite unlike any that we have faced before”.
But he argues i that even those who don’t accept the science should grasp what he describes as the overwhelming economic case for moving away from fossil fuels and towards renewable energy…
The speed of the renewables revolution is “staggering”, he says, and it would be “economically reckless” for Australia to remain largely coal-reliant…
“You can be as angry as you like with environmentalists and ‘environmentalism’ but from an economic point of view it still wouldn’t make sense to be so heavily addicted to this polluting business as Australia is.”…
NAB under his stewardship supported the Gillard government’s carbon pollution reduction scheme in 2011 but Mr Clyne insists he is “business-aligned” rather than Labor-aligned…
He said business leaders “overwhelmingly” share his conviction that Australia should move to a market-based carbon trading scheme but fear speaking out because they feel “this particular government is pretty hostile to criticism … they feel the distraction of getting up the government’s nose is simply not worth it, and becomes a huge distraction from them running their business. A lot of them are lamenting the lack of clarity on energy policy,” he said…
Asked about the views of Maurice Newman, head of the Prime Minister’s business advisory council who recently characterised climate action as a UN-led conspiracy, Mr Clyne said he had not encountered such thinking elsewhere in the Australian business community. Mr Clyne said he supported peer-reviewed science. “I don’t understand how lung cancer works, but I don’t smoke because peer-reviewed science says it’s bad”…
British Conservative MP Richard Benyon, a former environment minister under David Cameron, recently called Mr Abbott’s decision to become the first world leader to abolish a carbon price “mystifying” and his attack on renewable energy targets “bewildering”.
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/cameron-clyne-former-head-of-nab-criticises-canberras-wilful-blindness-over-climate-change-says-case-for-action-on-renewable-energy-is-overwhelming-20150731-gion1o.html
from Wikipedia: Cameron Clyne
Academic qualifications – Bachelor of Arts from Sydney University
what Clyne’s game, one is tempted to ask?
Australia’s financial system ‘vulnerable’ to climate change
The Australian-12 Jul 2015
… demand from China and the plummeting costs of solar panels. … Bank Cameron Clyne said the whole basis of financial services was the …
Abandoning carbon pricing ‘bad for business’: Clyne
Business Spectator-31 May 2015
Former NAB chief executive Cameron Clyne has said the Abbott Government is “bad for business”, citing its abandonment of a market-based …
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The next decision NAB gets right will be lonely.
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memo to Cameron Clyne – the CAGW-infested MSM may allow u to say anthing u like, but:
11 July: CleanTechnica: Joshua S. Hill: Q2 Clean Energy Investments Continue To Lag Behind 2014
Bloomberg New Energy Finance has released figures showing that clean energy investment sat at $53 billion in the second quarter of 2015, continuing to lag behind 2014 figures.
Investment numbers for Q1 were revised to stand at $54.4 billion, dropping a little bit further to Q2’s $53 billion mark, which itself was a catastrophic 28% down compared to the $73.6 billion recorded in Q2’2014…
There continue to be bright spots in the overall darkness, but these are difficult to focus on considering the seeming negative shift in investment figures…
***Most dramatically, venture capital and private equity investment in specialized clean energy companies which totaled a measly $564 million, which was down 31% on Q1 and down 60% on the second quarter of 2014. These figures are in fact the weakest in any quarter since the third quarter in 2005 for the VC and PE segment, and distressingly far below the peak of $4.2 billion in the third quarter of 2008…
http://cleantechnica.com/2015/07/11/q2-clean-energy-investments-continue-lag-behind-2014/
memo to Deborah Snow/Fairfax, who drags out the “controversial” Mr. Benyon again, see Wikipedia:
31 July: Sky News: Cameron Challenged Over ‘Green Cutbacks’
David Cameron has been taken to task by environmental groups which accuse the Government of scrapping or watering down a string of pollution-cutting measures.
In an open letter, the Prime Minister is urged by green campaigners to “resolve some of the contradictions” between his pre-election pledges and the actions of ministers since being returned to power in May…
The changes highlighted by environmentalists include reform of the car tax system, which, it is warned, will put off motorists buying low-emission vehicles…
In other changes, the Government is to cut subsidies to commercial solar power and has scrapped the Green Deal insulation scheme…
In their letter to the PM, the heads of the UK’s leading environmental groups including Friends of the Earth, the RSPB, and the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE), wrote…”Unfortunately, 10 green policies which could have helped you to achieve these goals have been cancelled or weakened in the past three months…
But a government spokesman said: “The Government has been clear that our priority is to reduce emissions in the most cost-effective way, keeping bills as low as possible for hardworking families and businesses…
http://news.sky.com/story/1528471/cameron-challenged-over-green-cutbacks
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Cameron Clyne says he is not “Labor-aligned”:
2010: SouthWind: The heat is on our climate committees
A study showing how far Australia has fallen behind in emissions abatement, and some telling shots from Ross Garnaut, make for an interesting year for our climate committees. [26 October 2010 | Peter Boyer]
Julia Gillard and her multi-party climate committee are under pressure — and it’s not from Tony Abbott and his anti-great big tax supporters, who’ve chosen to pitch camp outside the committee tent.
Information from entirely different quarters is promising to make life very interesting indeed for the committee and its two major supporting groups announced last week — the business and non-government organisation “roundtables”…
The involvement of the likes of scientist Tim Flannery and World Vision CEO Tim Costello will enliven the NGO group, but the business group has attracted most attention because it’s seen as the best indicator of success for a pricing scheme. Significantly, energy minister Martin Ferguson will have a seat at that table.
We’re in for an interesting year.
The Climate Change Roundtables:
Business (co-chaired by Wayne Swan, Deputy Prime Minister and Treasurer, and Greg Combet, Minister for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency, with Martin Ferguson, Minister for Resources and Energy, as a member): Peter Anderson (Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, based in Melbourne); Maria Atkinson (Lend Lease, Sydney); ***CAMERON CLYNE, National Australia Bank, Melbourne); Hubie van Dalsen (BHP Billiton, Melbourne); Nathan Fabian (Investor Group, Sydney); Ben Fargher (National Farmers’ Federation, Canberra); Michael Fraser (AGL Energy, Sydney); Alan Joyce (Qantas, Sydney); Grant King (Origin Sydney); Michael Luscombe (Woolworths, Sydney); Paul O’Malley (BlueScope Steel, Wollongong); Brad Page (Energy Supply Association of Australia, Melbourne); David Peever (Rio Tinto, Melbourne); Ann Pickard (Shell, Melbourne); Heather Ridout (Australian Industry Group, Sydney); Maria Tarrant (Business Council of Australia, Melbourne); Don Voelte (Woodside, Perth); Matthew Warren (Clean Energy Council, Melbourne); Masahide (Max) Yasuda (Toyota, Melbourne).
Non-government organisations (co-chaired by Greg Combet, Minister for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency, and Tony Burke, Minister for Sustainability, with Joe Ludwig, Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, as a member): Snow Barlow (Australian Landcare Council, Melbourne); John Connor (The Climate Institute, Sydney); Tim Costello (World Vision, Melbourne); Tim Flannery (Coast and Climate Change Council, Sydney); Cassandra Goldie (Australian Council of Social Service, Sydney); Ann Harding (National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling, Canberra); Don Henry (Australian Conservation Foundation, Melbourne); Paul Howes (Australian Workers’ Union, Sydney); Ged Kearney (Australian Council of Trade Unions, Melbourne); Geoff Lake (Australian Local Government Association, Melbourne); Amanda McKenzie (Australian Youth Climate Coalition, Melbourne); Tony Maher (Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union, Sydney); Joe Morrison (North Australian Indigenous Land and Sea Management Alliance, Darwin); Tony Nicholson (Brotherhood of St Laurence, Melbourne); Dermot O’Gorman (World Wide Fund for Nature, Sydney); Dave Oliver (Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union, Sydney); Linda Selvey (Greenpeace, Brisbane); Anna Skarbek (ClimateWorks Australia, Melbourne); John Thwaites (Monash Sustainability Institute, Melbourne); Peter Tighe (Electrical Trades Union, Melbourne).
ttp://southwind.com.au/2010/10/26/a164/
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before disappearing for the night, there’s a “h” missing at the start of the SouthWind url.
the non-aligned Clyne:
You can bank on Labor’s carbon pricing plan, NAB chief …
Jun 28, 2011 – NAB chief executive Cameron Clyne has backed Labor’s carbon pricing scheme as “economically superior”.
plus this is a fun page, which inadvertently shows up the ABC/MSM CAGW bias:
Australian Labor Party: ‘Direct Action’ Policy: Tony Abbott’s Train Wreck
Malcolm Turnbull is right. Direct Action is a “fig leaf” and would be a “very expensive charge on the budget in the years ahead.”…
28 June 2011
CAMERON CLYNE, the CEO of the National Australia Bank, makes clear “the carbon price followed by an ETS (emissions trading scheme) is economically superior to the direct action policy”…
21 July 2011
Ben Eltham sets out the evidence why direct action will not work and farmers will seek considerably more than promised by the Coalition.
8 August 2011
Bernard Keane from Crikey makes clear costing “has not been backed by any economists, agricultural scientists or climate scientists”…
FOLLOWED BY TRISTAN EDIS, LENORE TAYLOR, BEN CUBBY ETC SAYING THIS & THAT, THEN FINISHES WITH:
ABC fact check (LINK) queries Coalition land sector abatement claims.
http://www.alp.org.au/realitycheck3_30913
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Just for a larf …
https://thepointman.wordpress.com/2015/07/31/crisis-management-a-green-perspective/
Pointman
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But Pointy, you forgot to name Mr. Greenskull.
I have just the right candidate for the position!
…………
Sarc on (mostly… well maybe not…)
This stuff is from about a decade ago when I was research an entirely different subject, farm regulation.
Congressman Rosa Delauro (CT – D) spent over a decade tossing farm regulation bill after farm regulation bill at Congress until the Food Safety Modernization Act was finally passed. She started the year after WTO was ratified and now, with the new regulations, American Farmers must comply with the regulations written by the WTO in cooperation with the UN FAO and OIE. That is clearly stated in the law.
Delauro’s husband, Stanley Greenberg, is a very dangerous man. Republican pollster Frank Luntz says “Stan Greenberg scares the hell out of me. He doesn’t just have a finger on the people’s pulse; he’s got an IV injected into it.” [Perhaps that IV is for spreading CAGW/globalist propaganda?] http://ilf.ndi.org/panelists#StanleyGreenberg
Greenberg writes for the Democratic Strategist http://www.thedemocraticstrategist.org/ and also formed Democracy Corps http://archive.democracycorps.com/
Heck Greenberg, Quinlan, Rosner even advertised
“Whether you want to win your election, lead your country, increase your bottom line, or change the world, Greenberg Quinlan Rosner can help you find the answer,” GQRR stated this on its website http://www.gqrr.com/
“He was also a strategic consultant to the Climate Center of the Natural Resources Defense Council on its multi-year campaign on global warming……NGO board memberships:.. the Council on Foreign Relations…” http://ilf.ndi.org/panelists#StanleyGreenberg
“Greenberg Carville Shrum directed Campaigns in 60 countries including Bolivia That fiasco was documented in the film “Our brand is Crisis”” Routledge Handbook of Political Management by Dennis W. Johnson (Google has wiped the text from that book off the internet — SURPRISE!)
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MH370 hypothesis testing.
Using ocean current models for March-May 2014, you can get an idea for which locations the debris cannot have originated.
http://www.oscar.noaa.gov/datadisplay/oscar_latlon.php
Basically it looks like there is no flow solution starting near Diego Garcia and ending on Reunion island. If the crash happened near Diego Garcia the debris would wash up on northern Madagascar or on the north east coast of Africa, not on Reunion.
So you can shoot down “the shootdown theory”.
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‘So you can shoot down “the shootdown theory”.
Would you believe the plane landed safely at Diego Garcia, dismantled and dumped further south?
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Would you believe it was landed by 40 CHAOS agents and an angry boy scout?
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KAOS!
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Might be of interest to Tony
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/2015/08/y2kyoto-state-o-56.html#comments
and link
10
The 97% Guardian – Take the quiz:
Moo or false: do cow farts contribute to climate change? – quiz
How savvy are you about the unexpected forces affecting our planet? Take this quiz to find out …
> Hmm … Q4: Moo or false: globally, livestock and agriculture are the primary sources of methane gas emissions?
The Correct Answer: False
“In its report “Livestock’s Long Shadow,” the U.N. concluded that livestock were contributing 18 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases — allegedly more than the entire world’s transpiration.
The U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change used the report to forecast that Himalayan glaciers might vanish within 25 years.
Mitloehner convinced the U.N. to recant its claim in 2010.
The U.N. report estimated the amount of greenhouse gases emitted from every aspect of raising meat.
The U.N. did not do the same when estimating the greenhouse gases from cars.”
~ ~ ~
The Guardian’s response to correct answer FALSE: Oh Dear! 92% of people knew this.
. . .
Apparently none of them work at, or read the Guardian, January 2010: IPCC officials admit mistake over melting Himalayan glaciers
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Since this is open thread, has anyone noticed that attempts to comment when the blog is using a filter are a little like trying to write anything today in American universities where “American, wife, husband, tall, short, thin, fat, old, young, female, male……..” are all forbidden words. This would be great practice if I had any intention of paying a university to destroy the English language, which I don’t.
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Fred Singer thinks the paradigm shift is ready to wheel out.
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/07/a_paradigm_change_redirecting_public_concern_from_global_warming_to_global_cooling.html
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Whatever the climate problem, the Marxist controlled Greens will make sure that Western democracies and their CO2 are the problem! There will be some unproven random theory packaged as ‘The Science’.
It was interesting to read the spin on the China’ response, that they have agreed to limit their growth in CO2 by 2030. What was agreed was that their growth in CO2 emissions, more than Australia’s entire output every year, would peak in 2030 anyway. Doing absolutely nothing is their plan and only Obama would spin that to a major concession while he now demands the US cripple its economy. You have to wonder whose side he is on?
Now our Green controlled Labor party want 50% reneweables and an ETS! The fact that the RET is impossible and the ETS will cripple our economy should never ruin a good story. Soak the rich, shut down manufacturing, kill off defence, open the borders, stop the dams, meat is murder, farmers are evil, miners are thieves, what’s not to like about the Greens? At what point will Labor politicians realise they have sold their souls and no longer represent everyday Australians?
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They already know that,TdeF. The issue for you, I think, is to realise that they don’t care – in their view, the mass needs to be led, not listened to
50
Ian, you are right but I did not write that for the people who do not read this blog. I wrote it for the politicians who do
At what point will Labor politicians realise they have sold their souls and no longer represent everyday Australians?
10
TdeF,
There are only two basic types of government. A government that serves the people or a government where the people are expected to serve the needs of the government. There has been a shift to the second type of government world wide. The more complete the shift the less freedom until we find ourselves back under serfdom. For some insane reason serfdom is what a lot of people are choosing.
Read America’s Ruling Class and Dr Evan’s Climate Coup The Politics and THE US GOVERNMENT DID NOT FAIL ITS MISSION IN THE WAKE OF HURRICANE KATRINA
That is a heck of a lot different than what the US government is supposed to do:
What this shows is the governments around the world now longer serve the people, the people now serve the government. George Bernard Shaw put it more bluntly.
00
‘There will be some unproven random theory packaged as ‘The Science’.
Indeed, they will fight until their last breath, but we’ll continue to outwit them.
Time is of the essence and hopefully the number crunches and cyclists can quickly get their act together, look back in time and illustrate our dire predicament.
‘The end of our warm Holocene inter-glacial is rapidly approaching. There is no time to lose in preparing for survival. A paradigm change is essential.’
Fred Singer
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I know this is so far down the list and so late that it will probably not be noticed. But there is an interesting statement in the September issue 2015 of the science magazine Discover. It is in an article about exoplanets written by Adam Hadhazy, a freelance science writer in New Jersey. On page 43 he states,
He states that in direct reference to the carbon cycle.
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It’s not as if there is intelligence at work. This is simply a statement of a stable system in equilibrium because of opposing forces. It is always like this.
That is why the profiteers of Doom had to propose a ‘tipping point’, a rise in temperature beyond the norm which would mean a new equilibrium point. Clearly 0.85C is not going to do it as the world gets far hotter and far colder every year than the average, without going into catastrophic runaway. A very small range of temperatures of 2C at the equator and the largest range of 80C around a latitude of 40 and then small again at 50C. No tipping point even close. 0.85C was barely detectable until the change to electronics in the mid 1980s to 1990s. Obviously coincidental with the sudden warming, now stopped.
30
A ball at the bottom of a valley is a good analogy for equilibrium. The recent increase in sea surface temperatures, perhaps caused by Lord Monckton’s lack of cloudy days in the second half of the 20th century has increased CO2. You need a change like this for CO2 to alter otherwise you can expect equilibrium and any extra CO2 will be absorbed into the massive total as if it did not exist. That has happened. Otherwise the greedy plants will eat the lot, right to the point where it threatens their very survival, which is where we were according to Dr. Patrick Moore. At 0.02% it was critically low and we are all much happier at 0.04%. You have to wonder though how warm it was and how prolific the vegetation to lay down the limestone beds and the huge oceans of oil and what the CO2 levels were then.
30
Were there any Warmist dinosaurs? I mean they lasted 150million years in one run, where modern man, Homo Sapiens would be lucky to be around more than 200,000 tops and 70,000 out of Africa.
Dinosaurs must have decimated the vegetation and species changed continually as they evolved, without some ecologist demanding that they stop eating other species. Tyrannosaurus Rex was simply the last in long line of bigger and faster predators and perhaps not the biggest at all and all his predecessors were extinct, eaten.
Where were the paleoentologists to protect the yellow bellied spiny frog gobblers? Now we have the Greens who want to stop evolution, stop CO2 changes, stop the seas rising, the glaciers melting and the species becoming extinct and to stop the consumption of meat. They should all be transported back to the time of T-Rex and they could lecture the dinosaurs themselves and tell them how to stop the meteor which ended their remarkably successful run.
How were the dinosaurs so successful without ‘The Science’ and especially without the religion of man made Global Warming? In fact, without caring about their environment. The only thing that was certain was that every living thing was a meal for something bigger, as in the oceans today. All we have is taxation and it is the Greens who want to tax us more. They are the predators.
10
found this on Tim Ball/WUWT thread, posted by Barbara. can’t recall seeing it previously.
5 pages…a MUST-READ:
Nov. 2013: Globe & Mail: Eric Reguly: No climate-change deniers to be found in the reinsurance business
In the aftermath of the German and Canadian floods, the victims, the insurers, the media, the politicians and the scientists were all asking the same questions: What caused them? Was it the relentless buildup of atmospheric carbon dioxide? Could “extreme” weather events become the new normal or were they once-a-millennium acts of god?
In Munich Re’s offices, there wasn’t much debate as the claims cheques flew out the door: The higher frequency of extreme weather events is influenced by climate change; and recent climate change is largely due to burning hydrocarbons. “I’m quite convinced that most climate change is caused by human activity,” says Peter Hoppe, head of geo-risks research at Munich Re…
What is remarkable is that Munich Re first warned about global warming way back in 1973, when it noticed that flood damage was increasing. It was the first big company to do so—two decades before the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit triggered a planetary anxiety attack by publicizing the concepts of “global warming” and “climate change.”
Munich Re, Swiss Re and the other reinsurers, along with the Lloyd’s of London insurance market (unrelated to the bank of the same name), stand out from the rest of the business world by being on the same page as scientists on climate change…
Just as recognizing the trend lines on climate change is good business for the reinsurers, the oil companies’ skepticism was designed to prevent or dilute regulations that would hurt their business. The reinsurers had no such axe to grind. The question: Will they be right on emerging risks, such as genetically modified crops and Arctic shipwrecks?…
Hoppe, 59, is “Prof. Dr. Dr.” on his business card—he has doctorates in both meteorology and human biology. His endless CV, which includes advisory positions at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology and the OECD’s advisory board on the “financial management of large-scale catastrophes,” underlines his stature as one of the world’s top climate-change specialists…
The 1973 document he prints out for me is a source of pride within the company, which bills itself as “the first alerter to global warming.” The warning notes “the rising temperature of the Earth’s atmosphere [as a result of which glaciers and the polar caps recede, surfaces of lakes are reduced and ocean temperatures rise].” It points to the “rise of the CO2 content of the air, causing a change in the absorption of solar energy.”
The warning ends with a pledge: “We wish to enlarge on this complex of problems in greater detail, especially as—as far as we know—its conceivable impact on the long-range risk trend has hardly been examined to date.”
The pledge was fulfilled. Munich Re has been examining climate change since then, compiling the world’s most extensive database on natural disasters, covering some 33,000 events and drawing on research by its own staff and more than 200 other sources. “There hasn’t been any industry or company that has addressed climate change this early,” Hoppe says…
***How did Munich Re and the other reinsurers get it right so early? The answer, in a word, is fear—fear of losses that could destroy their business. No industry has more incentive to know the effects of climate change than the reinsurance and insurance industries…
In 1974, Munich Re recruited its first meteorologist. Over the years, it has hired a small army of natural scientists specializing in geology, geophysics, meteorology, hydrology and geography. The team now numbers 35 scientists…
***That said, anthropogenic climate change doesn’t explain everything. Roger Pielke Jr., professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder, argues that there is no meaningful trend in insured losses from extreme weather events. “The accumulation of wealth in disaster-prone areas is and will always remain by far the most important driver of future economic disaster damage,” he wrote in his blog, quoting a scientific paper…
Munich Re does not dispute that losses increase as coastal areas get built up. But it does note that in the long run, the frequency of weather-related catastrophes rises in step with global warming, and is thus linked with CO2 concentrations…
Munich Re has no evidence to suggest the upward trend in weather-related disasters will reverse any time soon. For those in risky places, premiums will rise…
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/rob-magazine/an-industry-that-has-woken-up-to-climate-change-no-deniers-at-global-reinsurance-giant/article15635331/
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radio news i heard this morning quoted the “we can see it” part this morning…
the President says this is not opinion, it’s fact. we can see it & we can feel it – hotter summers, rising sea levels, extreme weather events….etc etc
President Obama Sends “Memo to America” on “Our Planet”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dMOeLFar3Y
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VIDEO: 3 Aug: Herald Sun: Paul Carter: Cold brings warnings and snow wonder
THE snow that delivered high excitement to Hobart and surrounding areas is beginning to melt as police scramble to fix the Tasmania Police website.
The Tasmania Police website has crashed, unable to display its list of road closures and community alerts since about 6.30am…
Today’s snowfall failed to match the volume of snow that fell in 1986, weather bureau forecaster Tristran Oakley said.
It was more comparable with a lighter snowfall in 2005, he said…
“There have been reports of snow down to sea-level at Kingston with some snow settling on the beaches down there,” he said…
There are a multitude of weather and road warnings as well as road and school closures…
Metro Tasmania advises the following bus services are presently closed due to snow…ETC ETC
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/national/cold-brings-warnings-and-snow-wonder/story-fnjj6013-1227467164313
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3 Aug: Herald Sun: AAP: Wind turbine Senate report to be released
THE Senate select committee on wind turbines, chaired by independent senator John Madigan, will on Monday release its final report into the health and financial impacts of wind energy.
Its interim report made seven recommendations, including that the government should set up a national wind farm ombudsman.
That recommendation has already been agreed to by Environment Minister Greg Hunt as part of a crossbench deal to help pass legislation to slash the renewable energy target…
Committee member Liberal Democrat David Leyonhjelm has compared the wind industry to “Big Tobacco” and accused the sector of ignoring health concerns…etc
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/breaking-news/wind-turbine-senate-report-to-be-released/story-fni0xqi4-1227467296536
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The easiest way to stop these wind “farms” (subsidy farms) is to remove all subsidies for them. They can then be dismantled and used for scrap or landfill. Alternatively, Green-type people could buy their electricity (on those rare occasions it is produced) at inflated prices and freeze in the dark the rest of the time.
40
http://www.skynews.com.au/news/photos/snow-falling-across-tasmanian-beaches.html
10
Queensland’s 5.7 magnitude earthquake packed the force of 15 atomic bombs
Daily Mail – 5 hours ago
Queensland hit by two quakes
Radio New Zealand – Jul 31, 2015
Qld quake ‘most severe in a century’
Perth Now – Aug 1, 2015
3 Aug: Bundaberg Mail: Queensland earthquake packed power of 15 atomic bombs
QUEENSLAND has experienced eight earthquakes in the past week with Saturday’s 5.7 event alone packing as much force as 15 atomic bombs, a senior seismologist has told the ABC…
Geoscience Australia seismologist Dr Andrea Thom told News Corp that Queensland could expect even more tremors.
“We can definitely expect to feel more tremors and it is possible we could still be in for something bigger still.”
She warned coastal residents in particular should be vigilant because “these events can cause (a) tsunami”…
There are 400 to 500 earthquakes a year in Australia but they are not near people or they are in the ocean, so not noticed.
2 Aug: Brisbane Times: Kristian Silva: Queensland hit by earthquakes… now what?
An area off the Fraser Coast was hit by eight earthquakes in three days, with the largest a 5.7-magnitude event on Saturday followed by a 5.2 aftershock 90 minutes later.
A 5.3-magnitude tremor kicked off the chain at 9.41am on Thursday…
“You could continue to get earthquakes in this region because this is the most likely area in Queensland for it to occur,” Geosciences Australia senior duty seismologist Dan Jacksa said.
“Is there going to be a magnitude 6 or 7 there? Who can say?
“Because of the fact there has been earthquake as much as 5.7, the probability of another occurring is higher than a week ago because things have moved and what’s to say other parts of the fault – north and south – can’t move?
“However it’s also quite possible that this is it for 100 years.”…
Even though Saturday’s 5.7 shake was on par with the 1989 Newcastle earthquake which claimed 13 lives, the key difference was the NSW shake occurred 10 kilometres from the city centre.
The Fraser Coast Regional Council said there were no reports of infrastructure damage from the eight earthquakes…
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/queensland-hit-by-earthquakes-now-what-20150802-gippet.html
Sky News: Last week, Bundaberg residents reported buildings swaying in the city’s CBD as Queensland’s southeast was rocked by a magnitude 5.3 earthquake.There were evacuations in the Wide Bay city, including the seven-story Auswide Bank building, following the quake, which occurred in the Coral Sea, 100km off the coast, at 9.41am on Thursday…
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don’t know how the Qld earthquake post went thru, but i hadn’t finished it.
woke up to Alan Jones talking to a Dan Jaska about these alarming earthquakes that packed the force of 15 atomic bombs. repeated and repeated. horror horror.
note “hit Qld” below:
AUDIO: 3 Aug: 2GB: Alan Jones – Dan Jaksa
Alan talks to the senior seismologist from Geoscience Australia about the earthquakes that have ***hit Queensland in recent days
http://www.2gb.com/article/alan-jones-%E2%80%93-dan-jaksa
as far as i know, Qld didn’t get hit by a single earthquake. i don’t know a soul who has felt a thing. most MSM seems to be leaving out that the earthquakes are 120-plus kms off the Qld coast.
Bundaberg Mail piece fails to mention they are off the coast, even tho the piece ends with –
“There are 400 to 500 earthquakes a year in Australia but they are not near people or they are in the ocean, so not noticed.”
http://www.news-mail.com.au/news/queensland-earthquake-packed-power-15-atomic-bombs/2726540/
AMONG COMMENTS:
Move along, nothing to see here!…
15 atomic bombs..’eh..???
Must be the size of 2 bob…’eh
I haven’t felt nothing at Moore Park Heaven….!!
Not a thing even to mentioning about…
(no mention in the comments of anyone feeling anything)
listed at the link:
(THE SO-CALLED QUEENSLAND EARTHQUAKES LISTED AT ABOVE LINK – NO DISTANCE OFF THE COAST MENTIONED)
Queensland earthquakes
Thursday
9:41am, magnitude-5.3
9:45am, magnitude-3.9
11:59am, magnitude-3.4
Friday
2:11pm, magnitude-3.6
Saturday
11.18am, magnitude-2.8
1.38pm, magnitude-5.7
2.26pm, magnitude-5.1
3.08pm, magnitude-3.1
Source: Geoscience Australia
where the scary story atomic bombs story originated – ABC:
3 Aug: ABC: Kate Higgins: Queensland shaken by eight earthquakes since Thursday, future tremors impossible to predict: seismologist
Eight earthquakes have been detected in Queensland since Thursday, with Saturday’s magnitude-5.7 event alone packing as much force as 15 atomic bombs, a senior seismologist says.
Geoscience Australia senior duty seismologist Dan Jaksa said three of the quakes, which all occurred in an area about 120 kilometres east of Fraser Island, registered magnitude-5 or above.
He said at least one of Saturday’s four quakes was felt by residents between Bundaberg and the Gold Coast.
“Magnitude-5 is the strength of an atomic bomb test,” Mr Jaksa said.
“[Magnitude-5.7] is about 15 times bigger than a magnitude-5, so that’s 15 atomic blasts of energy.”…
He said Geoscience Australia received more than 3,000 felt reports in response to the three magnitude-5 events, with many residents surprised to feel the tremors.
“A lot of people say to me that we don’t have earthquakes in Australia,” he said…
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-08-02/queensland-rattled-by-eight-earthquakes-in-three-days/6666250
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The various State Water Boards run a series of seismological networks to monitor any threats to the integrity of the major water supply dams
These records are a great source of hard seismic data. I know the majority of the populace would be amazed (and probably incredulous) of the number of small-scale tremors that are occurring constantly
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Suppose there were another planet in our Solar System located in an orbit about root 2 times (~1.4142x) further from the Sun and having no atmosphere. It would receive half the solar radiation that Earth receives at our top of atmosphere, but about the same as Earth receives at its surface, because about half of our TOA solar radiation is either reflected or absorbed in the atmosphere.
The imaginary planet’s Solar constant would thus be about 1360/2 = 680W/m² and, for the sunlit hemisphere the mean flux would be half that, namely 340W/m² which has black body temperature of 278.3K, equal to 5°C. However, that 5°C would only be achieved in a flat disk receiving uniform flux of 340W/m² striking it orthogonally. Because the mean is based on variable flux, the actual mean would be below 5°C. And that’s just for the sunlit hemisphere. If the planet kept one face always towards the Sun, the dark side would get down below 3K unless there were significant internal conduction across from the warm side. So we are talking about a very cold mean temperature about half way between 278K and 3K.
So it’s absolute garbage to talk about there being only 33 degrees of warming due to the introduction of an atmosphere sending additional radiation back to the surface. In fact, according to those energy diagrams, the Earth’s atmosphere (after 30% reflection) receives 235W/m² (342-107) at the top, and then delivers from its base 492W/m² (324+168) into the surface, thus amplifying the solar energy by over 109%.
So there’s apparently about 150 degrees of warming due to back radiation if you work things out using the incorrect 20th century paradigm that assumes radiation determines a planet’s surface temperature.
You all need to think outside the square and break free from the indoctrination that has been prevalent in the whole education system from the 1980′s onwards. It’s all wrong.
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Not sure about this or the whole nomenclature surrounding “back radiation”.
“thus amplifying the solar energy by over 109%”
Back radiation doesn’t go very far back, not unless you count microns as being “big”.
What happens is that the interaction of solar energy and gases delays the removal of energy from Earths surface. Energy is not created or destroyed, just delayed on its path back to deep space which is at something like 1.6 deg K.
The accumulation of energy produces a notable temperature in the surrounds when energy is held up by being involved in the slower convection rather than radiative transfer of what was formerly solar energy.
KK
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You, Trenberth and his buddies live on a world that is a flat disk always facing a weak star. Trenberth’s cartoon is using arithmetic, 1364/4 = 341 W/m^2 instead of using the correct mathematics as he should on a ROTATING sphere. This gives a completely false picture of what is going on. Then he screws up by using Watts per meter squared which is not a measure of RADIATION ; it is a measure of POWER areal density.
Also radiative emission is proportional to the fourth power of the absolute temperature (T) of the emitting surface (i.e. the radiated energy flux is proportional to T^4). So drop the temperature of a km^2 in the warm tropics by 1.0°C and raise the the temperature of a km^2 in the cool Arctic by 1.0°C and the Earth’s average temperature will not be changed. HOWEVER it creates a radiative imbalance. This imbalance is because the amount of energy radiated by each region does NOT change by the same amount because Ttropics^4 does NOT equal Tarctic^4.
On top of that not only do you use Trenbreth’s flat disk at 341 W/m^2 you then add insult to injury by incorporating a dark side value of no energy so you incorporate the darkside TWICE. (I pity your former students)
John Kehr a Chem engineer points out the fallacies in that idiot cartoon but I can not link to that site since it is censored.
So I’ll use George E. Smith’s comment on Trenberth’s cartoon (yeah THAT George E Smith)
Sorry Dude, there are too many engineers out there who know that explanation is a classic case of misdirection.
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It’s interesting you cannot link to John Kehr’s site. He’s spoken before NASA and other such groups. I certainly do not consider him fringe or unscientific. Odd.
As for the flat disk: It’s not a flat disk, it’s the integration of the amount of energy received over hald a sphere. It’s an integration because absorption at the poles is different than the equator due to angle of the energy hitting the earth. The disk is used because the unwashed masses are not able to do calculus and the computed values are equal. Like using the volume of a beer stein to explain blood volume in person. I did have a retired scientist explain to me that the problem is when the entire thing is averaged, the average included both the dark and light side of the planet, which is clearly nothing like reality. I still am not certain if this is the case, but it may well be. All that blending of good data, adjusted “bad” data, kringing, homogenizing etc to get values reeks of government accounting methods. The fact that most accounting methods function to hide information, that makes me very nervous.
If one looks at the drawings closely, it is not hard to understand that energy up is not added to energy down, so the difference between up and down is the only real change in energy. For example, 430 up and 450 down means only 20 units of energy gained. Perhaps we should create a drawing and clearly label that. And stay away from internet classes from MIT where they seriously tell you Earth gets more radiation from backradiation than the sun—clearly an impossibility in any physics on this planet. For the severely math challenged, we could use Bob gives up 5 apples. Bob gets 6 apples back. What is the difference in the number of apples Bob had and what he now has. (Do not use common core math, nor do we care how Bob “felt” about all of this or if there was social justice in it due to Bob’s race. Wow…..math used to be so much simpler…..)
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The Taswegian snow might be a regional cooling signal, dunno.
https://quadrant.org.au/one-snow-job/
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