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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JO , have you ever considered Pod casting ? , its a way of getting your blog more widely known and generating extra traffic , several of the blogs i visit have moved on to podcasts in recent times , only the climate sceptical blogs seem to be holding back , with your now seemingly dormant TV presenter skills and the network of political and scientific friends that you could interview on so many climate issues , it seems a no brainer to me
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Agreed, with those enchanting eyes, winsome smile, beautiful hair and engaging personality I think David would make an excellent presenter.
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Thanks for the compliments YONNIE , errrm have we met ;]
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Settle down cowboy 🙂
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I thought podcasting was audio only. I think there’s certainly room for a weekly audio summary of Jo’s blog.
It would be perfect for people wanting their climate non-catastrophe updates while cycling, jogging, or washing the dishes. You could call it “Jo On The Go”! Or “Nova Rover”.
The video equivalent is called vodcasting, I believe.
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Is it possible to have more studies done on potential fuel savings by power grids before windmills and after?
I heard about Ireland and Germany taking the first steps and they both intimated that no fuel savings were visible, although Germany may have had complicating factors making statistics from their 25,000 windmills show them in a bad light.
I think Australia would be a good place to study this issue. They have plenty of green energy initiatives and not too much radical upgrades to industrial infrastructure or power plant efficiencies. Maybe Australia can answer the question “Has the power grid reduced it’s fossil fuel requirements after commissioning a significant number of windmills?” (per mwh obviously)
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Wind turbines are terribly inefficient due to their design flaws. Great for the scam artists who are getting huge subsidies and manufacturers.
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JL:
the Betz limit of 59% (approximately) of energy available to be extracted by wind turbines applies. The newest designs are (we are told) fairly efficient at 90% of the limit for 2 bladed and 85% for 3 bladed turbines, so a minimum of 50% of the energy is extracted. Of course there are further losses as the mechanical rotation is converted into DC, followed by further losses as it is converted to AC, followed by further losses as it is transmitted. Then there is the problem of it being generated in excess when not wanted and little or no generation when it is. Because of the need for backup their overall usefulness at reducing CO2 is limited.
But as you point out they are great at attracting scam artists.
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Have you any evidence that the rotation is ever converted to electrical DC power?
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A rotating machine synchronised with the grid must rotate at a constant peed of some multiple of 50 cycles per second, depending on the number of poles.
Since a giant fan cannot be made to run at a constant speed, the troublesome gearbox must drive a DC machine.
Solid State devices then invert this DC supply to AC.
This is because they are not “wind turbines”. A turbine, by definition, has an stationary inlet nozzle guide vane.
They are giant fans operating as noisy pinwheels in the sky.
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With respect to Wind turbines, some of them are direct drive, and some are driven through what is called a CSD (a Constant Speed Device) and comparing it to a gearbox is like comparing a current car’s six speed automatic transmission as being a bit like your Sturmey Archer gear changer on an early pushbike.
With a CSD, no matter what speed the fan on the front of the nacelle rotates at, then the generator will rotate at it’s constant speed, giving the correct frequency all the time, no matter what the speed variation of the fan is.
This further adds to the complexity of wind power, and also probably adds to the losses.
Tony.
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You are right Tony CSD’S operate a bit like the principle of squeezing soap as a propulsion system, they suck a lot of horse power.
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sceptic56109:
https://edmhdotme.wordpress.com/renewable-energy-the-question-of-capacity/
might be of interest to you. It is about the costs involved for the actual output, but that alone highlights the stupidity of wind worshipers.
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Tasmania might provide some lucrative material for a study, due to the failure of the Bass Link and the subsequent isolation from fossil fueled generation in Victoria.
The gas fired Tamar Valley power station, built as insurance against a future drought, was to be decommissioned because of the massive expenditure on giant fans.
However, now that reality has been endorsed by the failure of the life preserver, Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition is calling for an expansion of the facility.
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Rod, the Bell Bay and now the Tamar stations were built adjacent to the Aluminium smelter primarly as an insurance for the smelter in case Hydro couldn’t supply the smelter as happened in the mid 1960’s. Then I recall they brought in a diesel electric ship from NZ and moored it at the Bell Bay wharf.
The current problem as you know is due to running down the dam levels over the past couple of years to sell “green power” over the cable to Victoria. The old policy was to use the river stations over winter leaving the lakes for the summer months but with BassLink this seems to have changed and they have run the dams down and were relying on BassLink for the Summer; then it became damaged! If you look at BOM rainfall maps for the past 3 years you can see the west coast catchments received average rainfall: to blame their problem on low rainfall is not credible. StrathGordon had 2500mm. of rain in 2015, hardly a drought.
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I regard it as simply semantics as to whether the investment in Bell Bay Power and then TVPS was drought insurance or Comalco insurance.
The fact of the matter is that hydro electric power generation is a renewable, and like any other renewable, is subject to the vagaries of nature and ultimately the weather.
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I certainly agree about Comalco insurance; the only point I make is with the wisdom of hindsight should Hydro Tas. to have run the dams so low? If you look at the Hydro Dam levels they didn’t make much real gain over the past 12 months with average rainfall, and look at the official announcements since 2013 which include the largest profit ever from electricity sales.
Just as it is sensible to put a gas turbine adjacent to the Al. refinery, it’s also a good policy to run on the top, not bottom, 25% of water in the dams. To refill the dams, particularly the Great Lake which has limited inflow, they will have to turn the taps down for a while and pray for above average rainfall and a lot of snow.
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I can’t disagree with any of that.
Back in the year 2000 the hydro generators in New Zealand refused to bid generation into the market because doing so would run the levels in Lake Pukaki and Lake Tekapo below the levels at which these reservoirs are useful for recreation and tourism.
So one has to consider the question “Why did Hydro Tasmania abandon all logic and common sense and continue to export in 2015?”
Did it perchance have any relationship with the electricity market interference cause by the tax on air introduced by the Gillard rabble?
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Here is a very good analysis of how Hydro Tasmania got itself into this mess. It’s from The Conversation of all places but is well written (aside from the expected comments against non-leftist political parties). It predates the BassLink failure but spelled out the consequences very clearly.
https://theconversation.com/how-much-will-tasmania-pay-for-shorting-the-carbon-price-29106
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I think it had a lot to do with the carbon tax, but from Hobart’s point of view BassLink was always about making money: that is sell hydro at peak times for peak prices and buy back off peak baseload coal station electricity. In reality Basslink turned out to be somewhat of a lifeboat. The question as to why one would run the dams so low is interesting. My opinion is that the management structure these days is replete with moneymen and engineers sit in the back chairs. Engineers such as Alan Knight used to run the show but the current CEO previously was its Financial chief. Also people have forgotten that in the mid 1960’s there was a real drought.
An interesting question is what is the cost of re-starting the TVPS and installing 200 MW of diesel generators, perhaps more than the profit of selling too much electricity over the cable?
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I think it had a lot to do with the carbon tax, but from Hobart’s point of view BassLink was always about making money: that is sell hydro at peak times for peak prices and buy back off peak baseload coal station electricity. In reality Basslink turned out to be somewhat of a lifeboat. The question as to why one would run the dams so low is interesting. My opinion is that the management structure these days is replete with moneymen and engineers sit in the back chairs. Engineers such as Alan Knight used to run the show but the current CEO previously was its Financial chief. Also people have forgotten that in the mid 1960’s there was a real drought.
An interesting question is what is the cost of re-starting the TVPS and installing 200 MW of diesel generators, perhaps more than the profit of selling too much electricity over the cable?
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Analitik
Do you notice how that article completely ignores the TVPS?
Certainly one of the reasons for the reversal in Bass link was the 208 MW produced by TVPS continuously from September 2009 until July 2013 (apart from annual maintenance outages).
In marketing this electricity in Victoria, the pretense was that no fossil fuel was involved. Are there any sufficiently gullible to think that with an undifferentiated product like electricity, that the TVPS electricity was used in Tassie and it was only the so-called “green” variety that was exported?
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RobertO, did you read the section in the article discussing the effect of the Carbon Tax on the BassLink flow?
Clearly, the distortion in the electricity market caused by the Carbon Tax made Hydro Tasmania behave irresponsibly due to the artificially increased profits while before this, their behavior was quite prudent
Rod, I’d imagine the way the power was sold to Victoria would have been classed as being fully hydro while any output from TVPS (and the Bell Bay OCGTs) would have been considered internal consumption. How they imagined the electrons in the flows being generated at the time were sent to the proper users, I can’t say.
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Analitik
As with any analysis, sometimes things don’t make sense until all of the information is considered.
For years, HT had all the marbles. Electricity generation, high voltage transmission, distribution, and retail.
Then with the advent of the Bass Link AEMO demanded that in order to trade in the national electricity market, there would need to be competition among generators.
So the State government followed a model generated in other jurisdictions, with separate companies for generation, transmission, distribution, and retail. In this model a company that is a generator is also allowed to be a retailer. hence the creation of Hydro, Aurora, and Transpower.
The culture at HT was clearly hostile to losing some of the marbles. Competing with Aurora, and being very much the larger entity, the Hydro traders mercilessly would with draw generation in order to elevate the price, and hence “test” Aurora to see if it could respond. Most of the time it did, and Hydro would immediately bid back into the market. This cost the Tasmanian electricity consumer a bundle (indirectly of course through SOE Aurora.
The fuel contract for TVPS is a take or pay future contract, with a specified price valid until July 2017. Fuel is paid for whether it is used or not.
When the State government transferred the ownership of the asset to Hydro, most assumed that the TVPS facility would continue to operate as the fuel had to be purchased come Hell or high water.
Since the natural gas spot price had escalated considerably since the establishment of this futures contract, HT discovered a way to sell it to gas customers in Victoria. presumably at some advantage to using it to generate in Tasmania, and ceased to operate TVPS.
Until the current fiasco, this possibly made some economic sense, although if it did it would be disregarding the impact on the gas customers in the State who then had to bear the entire burden of the cost of gas transmission across the Bass Strait.
Consequently, this two year interruption in the operation of TVPS which amounts to something in the order of 2,000 GWH, and had this interruption not taken place, all other flow rates being equal, would translate into reservoir levels at least 15% higher than is presently the case.
Hence my questions earlier pertaining to a comparison of how much HT actually gained through the devious sale of gas on the mainland with the cost that will be incurred with the activities since the first of the year.
As an aside, the electricity market model was abandoned with Aurora maintaining the retail role, and the transmission and distribution roles rolled into one with Tas Networks. I dare say the cost of several studies, as well as the cost of re-organising several times, probably approaches the cost of a modest coal fired power station in the Fingal Valley. But in this day and age of government meddling in businesses politicians can’t understand, listening to “experts” that are peddling a political agenda with no regard for reality, this sort of waste is to be expected. It is all to the UN’s Agenda 21 plan.
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It’s too bad I can’t give you more than 1 upvote, Rod. That information about the gas futures fixed pricing for TPVS makes Hydro’s (mis)usage of BassLink much clearer.
After seeing you statements I did a google search about this and found that Labor are now asking the Tas government to negotiate a new post-2017 long term contract with TGP for the gas supply for TVPS. Sense is finally coming back!!
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-03-03/labor-calls-for-long-term-gas-contract-for-power-station-back-up/7218270
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As to the location of the facility, it is only logical to locate the capacity to generate electricity near the largest load, when practicable, to minimise transmission losses.
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Send more GST please.
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Throwing the UN-IPCC under the bus.
The ‘Pause’ or ‘hiatus’ is the slow death of 97% Apocalyptic Global Warming.
~ ~ ~
August 28, 2014: The surface air temperature is projected to rise under all scenarios examined by the IPCC.
It expects a gain of 0.3 degrees to 4.8 degrees for this century, depending on what policies governments pursue.
March 4 2016: Global surface temperature is the major yardstick used to track how we are changing the climate.
It is the average the UN Paris agreement refers to.
~ ~ ~
March 3, 2016: There’s an over-emphasis on the surface air temperature. – Prof Matt England
~ ~ ~
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Not a single scientist looked at water loss to space in the last 4 billion years…Can’t say that about poor dry Mars.
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Or water gain for that matter.
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John Ray @greeniewatch nails these clowns.
Not all JR’s posts are separated, so I need to copy/paste it in entirety so nothing is out of context.
Friday, March 04, 2016
Total and utter cr00ks
Despite its utter triviality, the 2015 temperature rise produced by NOAA of 13 hundredths of one degree has been hailed with gladsome hearts by Warmists.
Their enthusiasm has however been tempered by the well-known fact that 2015 hosted an El Nino event, a natural climate oscillation that is known to produce a rise in termperatures. So it is perfectly clear that the 2015 temperature is no proof of anthropogenic warming.
Warmists don’t like having their toys taken off them, however, so Jim Hansen and others have dismissed the El Nino contribution as slight.
So how great or small was it? They do not say. They offer no calibration or adjustment. The adjustment kings don’t do that adjustment!
Yet an adjustment as good as any other they use would be to take the spike observed for the previous El Nino and simply subtract it from the 2015 temperature.
Not hard! Warmists often found fault with skeptics who did not correct for the effects of the 1998 El Nino so it is quite a travesty that they are not making any corrections for the current El Nino.
But something that needs no inferences at all is the CO2 record. If the temperature rise was anthropogenic, global warming theory tells us that CO2 was responsible.
It tells us that the temperature spike should have been preceded by a spike in CO2 levels in the atmosphere.
So did that happen?
Was there an unusual rise in CO2 levels during 2015?
For information about CO2 levels I like to turn to the Cape Grim figures, as it is much better located than Mauna Loa, which is near an active volcano.
So I first looked to Cape Grim, in Northern Tasmania. And the last 4 months they had up showed exactly the opposite of the Warmist story.
The levels were drastically plateaued. They showed variations only in the decimal points of CO2 ppm.
I was rather pleased with that finding but I was vexed that CSIRO had still not put up the figures from December 2015 or January 2016.
February 2016 would have been nice too but I could cut them some slack on that one.
And WHY were they so behind with their posting? Were the more recent figures even more devastating?
So I turned to Mauna Loa. And my first look at the Mauna Loa site was an instant laugh.
They showed that the difference between January 2015 and January 2016 was only 2.56 ppm.
But I still wanted the monthly data and I was pleased to see that they do have the whole of 2015 plus January 2016 up.
And the picture was crystal clear. The 2015 figures as a whole just oscillated. It was up and down around the 400ppm mark for the whole of the year.
Threre was nothing to explain the 2015 temperature change. It’s only the January 2016 figure that edged up a bit.
So even that headline figure that gave me an immediate laugh did not represent 2015. They got a CO2 rise only by courtesy of January 2016.
They must be steaming with frustration.
I always go back as far as I can into the source data when I think something is fishy and did I find stinking fish this time!
How steaming were they?
The following footnote on their site probably covers it: “The last year of data are still preliminary, pending recalibrations of reference gases and other quality control checks. The Mauna Loa data are being obtained at an altitude of 3400 m in the northern subtropics, and may not be the same as the globally averaged CO2 concentration at the surface”.
They don’t like their own data.
So the 2015 temperature rise was WHOLLY due to El Nino or some other natural effect.
What a come-down! Once again we see the Green/Left need lies and deceptions to support their narratives.
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I have also had a look at the Cape Grim CO2 levels and as John Ray says, the results are only available up to Nov 2015. However I did not see any evidence of a plateau in the data graph. The levels continue to rise with perhaps a slight acceleration.
http://www.csiro.au/greenhouse-gases/
The levels tend flatten out over the southern hemisphere spring and summer, then rise in winter. Hence it can give a false impression if only a few months are looked, rather than the whole year.
The Mauna Loa data shows a similar pattern but the levels are slightly higher.
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As for the impact of the El Niño on the Pause, we are going to have to wait patiently for six months to see what happens. If the exceptional temperature excursion of 1998 is repeated then the Pause will be re-established.. If not the warmists may be right.
It could be a bit painful, listening to the warmists for,the next six months
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The warmists may be right about what?
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I am fascinated with the dramatic seasonal bumps in CO2 levels. Why are they there? It is not due to fossil fuel emissions which are not seasonal. It is not due to increase in average air temperature, which is not rising. So why the little variations on the steady rise in CO2 levels? Vegetation? Phytoplankton?
Answer that and you have the complete explanation for why aerial CO2 is rising steadily and air temperature is not and that in turn defeats the man made argument, the crux of CAGW.
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The answer does not defeat the man made argument. The CO2 seasonal variation is predominantly experienced in the northern hemisphere due to leaf growth and then decay following leaf fall. CO2 rises after leaves fall and decay. Following spring and during the summer growing season in the northern hemisphere the CO2 in the atmosphere in the northern hemisphere falls.
The CO2 variation in the southern hemisphere is not as great as the northern hemisphere. It reaches a plateau or slight peak around October and might fall slightly whereas the northern hemisphere reaches a distinct peak around June and drops dramatically till September.
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Interesting. There is little land South of the Equator, most being North. for example Australia, the mythical Great Southern Land to balance the huge continents in the North, has only evergreen trees and this does not happen. Only a tiny part of the world is South of the Tropic of Capricorn and only has 2% of the world’s population. No trees in huge Antarctica or anything else. So the explanation for such variation South of the Equator is?
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Phytoplankton!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phytoplankton
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Cape Grim shows much the same.
http://www.csiro.au/greenhouse-gases/
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And how well does the CO2 graph correlate with surface temperature, the other explanation to balance leaf litter.
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Thanks Peter C.
I realised after posting I should have included JR’s links in context.
He uses this one from Cape Grimm beginning 1976:
http://www.csiro.au/greenhouse-gases/GreenhouseGas/data/CapeGrim_CO2_data_download.txt
Regarding the further El Niño expected warming, the thesis of Un-IPCC 97% Doomsday Global Warming says that anthropogenic Co2 leads the temperature rise.
There is no evidence. Hence the wheels on the bus going thump, thump, thump.
And, if the warmunists bang on about the next six months warming, look out for “an over-emphasis on the surface air temperature.”
Also, what happened to Global Warming:
It appears that on Wednesday, the northern hemisphere even slipped above the milestone 2C average for the first time in recorded history.
Initial satellite measurements, compiled by Eric Holthaus at Slate, put February’s anomaly from the pre-industrial average between 1.15C and 1.4C.
The UN Paris climate agreement struck in December seeks to limit warming to 1.5C if possible.”
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So, this according to Michael Mann:
So, we can therefore expect that when El Niño has subsided temperatures will only drop down 0.1 degrees.
Looking back at 1998, somehow I don’t think so.
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The essential question at issue to my mind is could the 2.56 ppmv of CO2 been enough to explain the temperature increase of 0.07C from 2014 to 2015. I would say no. There was a study published in Nature in 2015 claiming to have measured a surface radiative forcing of 0.2 W/m2 from 22 ppmv of CO2 without feedbacks from 2000 to 2010 which gives a warming at the surface of around 0.037C by the Stefan-Boltzmann law (this works at around 0.0017C per 1ppmv). The 2.56 ppmv would therefore give a warming of around 0.0044C (or 0.13C with the positive feedbacks included that are meant to increase the warming from CO2 by a factor of 3). So the warming and the unproven positive feedbacks can only explain 19% of the temperature increase. In fact it should be less than 19% because we are told the feedbacks apparently take years to kick-in.
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Opps, that should be 0.013C.
00
Made a mistake, the increase from 2014 to 2015 is reckoned to be 0.16C, not 0.07C.
00
97% Peak Oil Update:
Cheap Oil is Taking Shipping Routes back to the 1800s
The plummeting price of oil on international markets has had many effects – one of which is that it may be cheaper for ships to travel right around Africa than go through the Suez Canal.
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The oil commodities will not let up production due to new technologies filling the void and they need the US cash.
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History shows that the current “oil price down cycle” will eventually transition to an “oil price up cycle”. So ships & airliners should “make hay while the sun shines” because as sure as the sun rises in the east the oil price will rise in the west (and elsewhere of course) before not too long. In fact today the price of Brent Crude has moved up to close to US$40/barrel – a big improvement from US$27/barrel just 7 weeks ago (~ 50% increase).
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Trump vs Clinton
I am resigned to the fact that we may end up with these two battling it out for the office of President of the U.S.
On the one side we have a woman who will say anything and do anything for political gain and makes Nixon look like a Saint, and on the other side we have a man who sells property and fires off a recent political debate by describing the size of his genitals.
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Just testing the reply function, I’ve had 2 server errors 🙂
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Ok, Went to see 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi last night, I don’t believe the second choice would sacrifice serving US citizens so cruelly as the first did, also I think America needs a decent set of genitals after years of neutering from the regressive left.
Question is who else has had the opportunity/platform let alone guts to tell the PC establishments what we have been saying for years?
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Those errors are still there Yonnie. You still don’t make any sense 😉
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Well, we’ve had the woman who would say anything as PM, so I suggest you have to choose the other one. At least you have the option of not voting, something denied to us in Australia.
We get the choice of someone proven to be useless, devious, disloyal to his leader but with an unjustified estimation of his ability with another the same.
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What’s worse is that it appears that the GOP is prepared to let Clinton win so that Trumps does not.
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Yes, and some of us here are considering letting Shorten win so the Turncoat does not. Though I have to say I find that incredibly difficult.
But… If I do vote for Turncoat, it will be taken that I support him. Which I definitely do not and though he may have done something since he chucked out Abbot I am not aware of anything of conservative substance that has been achieved. Perhaps someonce can enlighten me.
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That’s a dilemma in itself, but not quite what the GOP is proposing, which would be like the Liberal Party allowing Shorten to win so that Abbott couldn’t. Thankfully I can vote National Party.
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Retired Now:
Vote for an Independent or party with no hope of getting in, then direct your preferences to the least unpalatable option with a chance of winning.
That way you deprive the major party of the money for a first preference vote and signal to the party machine you are upset. If enough people did this then the candidates will have a nervous few days while preferences are distributed, and they too will start to think that T-bull might not be the right choice.
I don’t know what State you reside in so cannot advise on your choice. If in Victoria I would point out that Ricky Muir seems to be gaining respect in the Senate, and him getting back would annoy both majors and the Greens. Worth considering. Here in SA the Xenophon party will do well. Last time he was up for election he polled 25-27% of the vote and nearly carried in a second candidate. I expect him to do better this time, and if it is a double dissolution and the quota needed halves, he could well have 3 senators from SA. Also Xenophon is running candidates in the House of Reps. in at least 2 safe Liberal seats that could pickup disillusioned Liberal votes.
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It would seem Politics has evolved to the point where we now measure the best candidate by their “unfavorability index” !
Clinton 55%
Trump 60%
I do not know if this works the same way in Australia, as despite Abbot’s competence in many things, Liberal Party members were more concerned about being liked.
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Graeme no3
I tend to agree…
Obviously the GOP will still try to put a reputable candidate forward, especially with the likes of Cruz.
The presence of Trump in the race has been a distraction but also a huge embarrassment for the GOP.
They should never have let Trump run under the banner of the Republicans , but the GOP can still ask the supporters of other candidates to nominate Cruz and even ask Trump supporters to give up their vote for the parties nominee.
we may see some “horse trading “
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I don’t think that any Trump supporter will shift from voting for Trump. If you look at his rallies and the people there it’s pretty clear also that they are not red necks.
Trump will win the nomination hands down and most Republican voters will vote for him plus a whole bunch of Bernie voters who would never vote for Hillary.
Trump will be the President.
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Yes, Scotsman, but it was Rubio who started it with the comment about “small hands”. Lost me at that point!
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yes he did indeed, and it is at this point we see an obvious lack of female Republican candidates in the race.
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Remember how Ronnie was derided for being an actor and yet he liberated 600 mln people.
Do you want more of the same or willing to shake this system before we all die in Japan like non-growth, mountains of debt and give me something for nothing attitude.
He pays for his campaign so he can say whatever he wants. Trumpie has my vote.
At least he does not cry like Turdball who just does nothing except parading at Mardie gras.
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Statistically Significant
“Statistically significant is a catch phrase developed in the mid-twentieth century to describe situations which are not otherwise significant. Of course the term may also be used in situations in which no particular significance has been found – since this would be significant in itself.”
Journal of Irreproducible Results.
Goes with modern peer review I guess.
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I like this old, but funny Spurious Correlations site if I want to be amused by data manipulation and interpretation!
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Regarding the claimed correlation between CO2 and global temperatures, I just came across this analysis by AARI scientists, which stands up to legal considerations
https://rclutz.wordpress.com/2016/03/05/legal-test-of-global-warming/
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Good. Thanks Ron. I might be able to use that.
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“Because leftist ideology has, at its unspoken foundation, a view of other human beings as competition for finite resources. Once you understand this, you understand everything.”
From
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/2016/03/y2kyoto-state-o-61.html#comments
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BP are still working on aspects of their drilling campaign in the Great Australian Bight (GAB)
As the company I work for has been awarded lots of work on this specially designed ultra-deep water semisubmersible drilling rig, and the GAB is not so far (relatively) from my home town of Adelaide, I am interested in how this project is proceeding via the media, compared to what I know as the reality.
– First, the Greens, and local fishing industry complained about the proposed work as though BP were intentionally going to pollute the environment (and no one made mention of the other major oil companies planning to drill in the same area after BP has finished, using the same rig, and same bases of operation)
– Then it was widely reported that NOSEMA (the regulatory body) knocked back the BP application, when BP were only told to review minor aspects of it (but as always, (allegedly deliberate) “mistakes” in reporting never get corrected, especially by the ABC.
– Now BP have opened a warehouse and mud plant in Port Adelaide, the only bad thing the Wilderness society have to say, is something about “contempt”, which just shows how little they understand about what is happening, and what is involved with this type of project. Assuming it goes as planned, there is about 3, or maybe 4 years of work already lined up for this rig in the GAB, with BP, and other companies.
This is not cheap, and nor is it logical to build a rig specifically designed to cope with the southern ocean wave period, plan multiple wells, procure people, equipment, expertise, and all manner of things without having considered logistics. Part of the plan that is submitted to NOPSEMA involves emergency contingencies based on having a warehouse/port facilities located in Port Adelaide. How do these at The Wilderness Society expect proper emergency planning to be undertaken without having secured a site to work from..? (amongst many other ignorant and idiotic concepts they make noise about)
– No one has really complained about the multi-million dollar work carried out to open a heliport near Ceduna in order to serve the rig… which is a bit of a surprise.
I hope it all goes ahead smoothly, because it is exciting work, in a very challenging environment, and aside from the interesting geology, it pushes the boundaries in terms of engineering, design, and technology as well.
I do not want to stop people such as those at The Wilderness Society from publicly expressing opinions, and criticism, but I do wish they would do the most basic level of research into the topic first.
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I work in the petroleum industry as well and in the last 20 years from heroes of providing cheap energy we have became a pariah of society. As a result, the Australian sovereign risk is greater than in most 3rd world countries and this is during the times when Australia needs more resources that are currently depleting at accelerating rate.
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With the Donald as president we might be wise to quit the Alliance while we are in front.
11
Regardless of who ends up being President, it would be best for us to dissociate from the US as much as possible before the proverbial s… hits the fan over there. They are going down in a humongous way in the next decade or so. Anyone who reads and understands history knows that already.
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Internal collapse?
20
Financially they are already bankrupt thanks not just to their total national debt but also due to the total loans held as OTC (over the counter) derivatives – something like 20-30 trillion dollars worth. Then their is their unfunded liabilities (social securities and the like). They are in deep trouble and it’s getting worse each year. They can keep “printing” digital money as much as they like but only up to a point when the world decides they have lost faith in the US dollar. All past empires have followed similar paths after they have reached their peak. First they became arrogant then they become loose with their finances, moral decay and decadence, social disorder, civil wars, etc.. It’s not going to be pretty over there. It’s already starting to crumble in some areas. That’s one reason why Trump is so popular. People (mistakenly I believe) think he can turn things around. I wish them luck with that view.
It’s just a matter of time when it’s all over and the fat lady sings. It’s anyone’s guess when it will happen – I suspect 10-20 years time but that’s just a guess.
51
BTW, the reason I said “mistakenly I believe” above is this. Stalin was one of the most evil and horrific persons in history. Yet he did say one thing that’s very close to the truth; “Those who vote decide nothing. Those who count the vote decide everything”. Where he got it worn is it’s not even the people who count the vote that decide everything, it’s the people who control the people who count the votes (using such tactics as bribes, arm twisting fears and threats).
50
Russia and China are very close at the moment and they see the US as their mortal enemy, so the strategic implications are serious.
Weakened internally by weird policy and pressured from the outside by rivals for world supremacy, the US appears to be on the ropes.
20
You can bet your boots, El Gordo. This essay will be of interest to you.
20
All large standing armies around the world are being replaced by more efficient systems, China is no different.
http://thediplomat.com/2016/03/chinas-never-ending-military-reforms/
Because of the downturn in the Chinese economy there has been a tightening of state security, Xi Jinping is watching his back. In a country renown for revolutions over thousands of years, Xi has no intention of losing the mandate of heaven.
10
Although I agree you must see that the US is it’s own worst enemy, not Russia nor China. Much like Trump, they are acting in a predictable way under the circumstances. The US has lost its will to be the so called good policeman of the world some time ago. Their allies are worse. Look at what’s happening in Turkey. The government there has just sent the police to take over the major news media HQ of Zaman. Democracy, what was left of it is now dead in Turkey. It could be preparation for a military invasion of Syria but I hope not. Russia will most likely fight that and possibly even use tactical nukes to stop any such advance. Putin will not pull any punches. The situation is we now have a vacuum of sensible geopolitical forces. I doubt any of the Presidential candidates have the ability let alone the will to change things for the better. We have a world full of trigger happy loonies on all sides. History repeats yet again.
30
‘I doubt any of the Presidential candidates have the ability let alone the will to change things for the better.’
Ted Cruz is perfectly fine and should be able to improve policy over the years ahead, assuming he gets the top job.
For close on 70 years the US alliance has tried to contain the spread of communism around the world, but it cannot be contained any longer.
Eradicating poverty in South America and Africa would win many converts and China is not going to miss the opportunity for the yuan to unseat US dollar supremacy.
The Chinese don’t want WW3 but they fully intend breaking Alliance containment lines.
10
You don’t get the point. Ted Cruz might be a fine person but the President is not the master of events in the US. Many say the same about Trump. Trump is against the faulty establishment, which is another reason he is so popular yet I don’t believe he would have it all his way if he became President. No President has – look at Obama. He’s a complete failure and failed to implement any of his significant promises to change. You can put the best and most capable person in the world as the President and it still won’t matter. He/she would be assassinated if necessary to keep the status quo for the very rich and powerful.
32
To get a real feel of the sentiment over there among the Republican supporters have a look at this: Judge Jeanine: Mitt Romney awoke a sleeping giant
30
So its the end of empire, but the people are resilient and would like to retain some sort of relevance and dignity in the new world order.
Revolution is out of the question.
00
Yes the US will sell their souls to the coming NWO. So will Australia unfortunately.
11
NWO?
00
Ah … new world order with communist China holding the whip hand.
10
And Bayesian initial subjective-assumption statistics
But who would do a thing like that ?
10
Just came across this at WUWT. I couldn’t help alternating between laughing, shaking my head muttering “oh dear” and having flashbacks to my recent studies where similarly phrased BS was thrown at us.
50
Also worth scrolling down to reader Aphan, nice comment
30
‘We haven’t seen this coupling of rain and wind in
quite some time.’ – Weather Service Sacromento.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/03/04/california-to-get-clobbered-with-wet-atmospheric-river-this-weekend/
30
er ‘Sacramento’ the one in in Cali-for-ni-a.
30
it’s only weather, but…
5 Mar: UK Daily Mail: Amy Gordon: Dreaming of a white Easter? Britain faces a MONTH of snow chaos and freezing temperatures as parts of the North are blanketed in another three inches overnight
With temperatures set to continue to drop over the next few weeks, Coral is also odds-on at 1-2 for this year to be coldest Easter since records began, beating the previous low of -12.5C set in 2013.
‘The latest odds suggest that this is most likely to be the coldest March since records began in the UK and punters agree as we continue to take a flurry of bets on the record going,’ said Coral’s John Hill.
‘With Easter just a few weeks away, the betting also indicates the temperatures aren’t going to pick up any time soon as it is odds-on to be the coldest Easter ever, beating the previous low set in 2013,’ added Hill…
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3477953/Dreaming-white-Easter-Britain-faces-MONTH-snow-chaos-freezing-temperatures-parts-North-blanketed-three-inches-overnight.html
5 Mar: UK Telegraph: Helena Horton: The best snow pictures from social media as much of the UK falls under a white blanket
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/12183086/The-best-snow-pictures-from-social-media-as-much-of-the-UK-falls-under-a-white-blanket.html
40
To know for sure if climate-change is real,
Just ask some famous actors what they feel.
The public want real scientific stuff,
And not the constant global warming bluff.
The global warmists thrive on fear and dread,
Assuming missing penguin birds are dead.
The climate models like a crystal ball,
Will tell strange tales, which skeptics think are tall.
The A.B.C. will steer an interview,
To emphasize the warmist point of view.
140
To know for sure that warming is real,
We explore the physics with a scientific zeal.
No longer the sun nor cycles of old
Our gases dominate the ol’ natural hold.
Now some will say the sun is it,
With the same stupid models from the same dumb twits.
They preach from their pulpit the science of BS
Like G Pell’s memory, in need of redress.
Now any good look at climate fact,
shows AGW is now the dominant act.
So get with the real and factual science.
Enough of this guff from the denial alliance
113
OK Silly filly, answer me this then with your “scientific zeal” and “climate fact”:
You alarmists claim that 90% of the “heat” from CO2 back radiation is absorbed by the oceans.
By what mechanism does this “heat” get down there. How exactly does a cooler atmosphere warm a warmer ocean?
122
The Backslider,
I recall a recent attempt by warmists to ‘explain’ this by invoking . . .
. . . ahemm . . .
. . . stronger trade winds.
Ironic, isnt it?
Their response to your question is, basically, “More hot air, of course!”
Abe
82
You picked up on poetry far better than you picked up on Science.
50
And the poetry was a crap effort, warmists have no panache whatsoever!
30
watching this space:
2 Mar: CNBC: Philip Stafford: ICE may have to make hefty offer in potential bid for LSE
If as expected Intercontinental Exchange launches a bid for the London Stock Exchange Group, it would mark a return to the city that is one of the pillars of the US company’s $30 billion empire.
Executives and analysts alike say the LSE is officially “in play” after it revealed last week it was in talks about an all-share “merger of equals” with Deutsche Börse. On Tuesday ICE indicated it too may make a bid…
From the outset the 16-year old ICE has looked to the UK capital to help give its business scale, purchasing assets such as the International Petroleum Exchange and Liffe, whose names have disappeared under the ICE brand.
However, Atlanta-based ICE faces political and regulatory hurdles and may have to make a hefty offer if it is to walk off with London’s biggest exchange asset…
***Adding the LSE would make ICE London’s dominant market infrastructure. Besides Liffe and the IPE, it has also bought ***emissions trading platform Climate Exchange***, energy trading platform Trayport and also opened the first new clearing house in London in more than 100 years, in 2008.
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/03/02/ice-may-have-to-make-hefty-offer-in-potential-bid-for-lse.html
reminder:
3 Mar: ReutersCarbonPulse: Mike Szabo: Carbon whodunit: Macro factors, utilities, speculators seen as culprits in EUA price crash mystery
Front-year EUA futures trading on ICE ended 2015 at €8.29, and plummeted by as much as 44% in the first six weeks of the year to hit a low of €4.62.
Most of the selling has been done on ICE’s screen-based contracts, meaning the identities of the biggest sellers are widely unknown.
http://carbon-pulse.com/16460/
from BBC: 4 Mar: BBC: London Stock Exchange says Deutsche Boerse merger ‘compelling’
The LSE said the tie-up would be an “industry-defining combination” with substantial revenue and cost benefits…
***LSE did not mention a potential rival bid from the owner of the New York Stock Exchange. On Tuesday, Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), which owns the flagship US stock market, said it was considering making a takeover offer for the LSE.
ICE has until 29 March to make or announce an offer, while Deutsche Boerse has until 22 March..
40
5 Mar: Shanghai Daily: Xinhua: Cold front eases smog in north China
The (National Meteorological) center said an extreme cold front, the third to hit China this year, will sweep across most parts of the country from March 8 to 11, causing rapid temperature drops along with snow and rain in central and eastern provinces. Temperatures in some areas will plunge by up to 14 degrees Celsius during the period.
Affected by the cold wave, some regions south of the Yangtze River will experience record low temperatures over the same period and will be hit by rain and sleet, it said.
http://www.shanghaidaily.com/national/Cold-front-eases-smog-in-north-China/shdaily.shtml
2 Mar: SouthChinaMorningPost: Hong Kong schools urged to step up flu precautions after boy of six dies
The advice is to check pupils’ temperatures daily on arrival, as Observatory warns of unusually cold weather next week
Next Friday temperatures could drop to 10 degrees Celsius, well below the March average. Li Sun-wai, senior scientific officer at the Observatory, said temperatures would fall sharply from Wednesday because of “an intense northeast monsoon”.
Average March temperatures hover between 17 and 21 degrees…
http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/health-environment/article/1919666/hong-kong-schools-urged-step-flu-precautions-after
40
Last weekend I posted this question and received replies from Joe and Graham No3.
“Here is something which puzzles me.
The Earth orbit is elliptical. The Earth is nearest the Sun in January and furthest away in July. The changing distance should result in a variation of about 90W/m2 between perigee and apogee. Why is that cycle not seen in the temperature record?”
I also asked the same question on WUWT, hoping that Willis Eschenbach might employ his mathematical skills to the problem.
I got replies from David A and richardscourtney. Both made the point that the global temperature is lowest in January when the solar irradiation is highest. The source of this remarkable observation seems to be The Inconvenient Skeptic (John Kerr)
http://theinconvenientskeptic.com/2013/03/misunderstanding-of-the-global-temperature-anomaly/
That is a very strange thing. It is an axiom of Climate Science that the Earth remains in energy balance. Hence OLR (outgoing long wave radiation)=Incident Solar Radiation.
If that assumption is correct the Earth must somehow get rid on an extra 90W/m2 when it is cooler. Either that or the energy must be stored up somewhere (Ocean).
I have not seen an explanation of how that could occur. Perhaps new satellites with better instruments for measuring the OLR will help.
In the mean time it seems that the very foundations of Climate Science are shaky.
68
Many things remain unexplained….
I find the following in an article posted above by Handjive:
I have asked this question a number of times but have never received a reply: By what mechanism does this heat supposedly find its way into the oceans? First we must consider ocean/atmospheric coupling which dictates that a warmer ocean warms a cooler atmosphere, not the other way around. Secondly, just how does a cooler atmosphere warm a warmer ocean, considering the laws of thermodynamics? Does anybody know the warmists’ answer to this?
122
“Does anybody know the warmists’ answer to this?”
No answer was the stern reply!?
42
It’s actually possible for this to happen but you have to look at the rate of change of energy on the way out. That is, if the peak temperature in summer is the same but the difference between the ocean and atmosphere is lower then the ocean will cool more slowly because the rate of temperature change (cooling) is related to the difference in temperature between the hot and cold bodies. The result will be that the average temperature will be higher. Same with radiation due to reflection or diffusion.
30
I’m sorry, but as that comment stands, it makes no sense
1)
… the way out of what, exactly ?
2)
… the same as what, exactly ?
3) the difference between the ocean and atmosphere is lower … lower than what, exactly ?
Not being rude, but without precise answers to those questions, one can make no sense of the comment
30
Ian,
Sorry,
If we have a given Summer water temperature (IE as a common reference point) such that the ocean is holding the same energy (at the start of Autumn say) then we have an atmospheric temperature lower than the ocean, the rate at which the ocean will cool depends on the difference between the air temperature and the water temperature. Even though the air temperature is cooler than the ocean, the “Hotter” year will be the one where the difference from water to atmosphere is a minimum. The average temperature is dependent on the rate of cooling, or “Outgoing” energy.
12
I don’t believe this is correct because the primary mechanism by which the oceans cool is evaporation. Alarmist CO2/warming theory relies on more water vapor, thus more evaporation, which means more cooling. Their hypothesis dictates that the oceans should be cooling.
They actually believe that CO2 back radiation ADDS heat to the oceans. I would like to know by what mechanism this supposedly happens.
46
It doesn’t happen, but it can slow down cooling just as putting your coffee in a vacuum flask does.
Re evaporative cooling, if the temperature difference is low there is less convection, the water above the surface becomes saturated with water, without convection the cooling effect by evaporation stops. This is why on humid days you feel hotter, because evaporative cooling is much less effective, so evaporative cooling IS affected by delta T too.
Don’t believe me? try this, boil two saucepans of water the same size. Turn off the heat, put a lid on one to prevent convection. This water is also cooling by evaporation, after 30 minutes measure the temperature of the water in both saucepans. What happens? Which Saucepan is “Hotter”.
Also consider this, put two identical saucepans on a stove, make it an induction one since energy is better controlled. Put a lid on one to stop convection and saturate the air above the water, heat them up at the maximum power setting for 5 minutes (which is not enough to boil the water). Measure temperature of the water in both saucepans. Which saucepan is hotter.
So yes, reflecting IR energy or constraining convection can make water Hotter, temperature is established in an equilibrium between energy in and energy out, the water will get hot enough such that the energy out equals the energy in – that is until it boils
00
No, you don’t get it. The warmists believe that the radiation ADDS heat to the oceans, not slow down its cooling.
04
The uptake of insolation upon the oceans is almost all when the ocean surface is less that 40°from normal to the direction of that part of the insolation reaching the surface; the rest is reflected! Most of the reflected is absorbed by the atmosphere on the way back out, the remaining of that is scattered to space with exactly one half of that becoming part of albedo! Whatever insolation enters the atmosphere ocean interface gets absorbed by the ocean mass at various depths depending on the wavelength of that flux. Of that flux absorbed, about 8% is simultaneously and continually radiated back to space or clouds in the 8-14 micron window of the atmosphere. The other 92% is continuously transfered to the atmosphere, mostly in the form of latent heat of evaporation. No insolation is retained by the ocean!
All the best! -will-
516
Any radiation from CO2 cannot penetrate the evaporative layer….a couple of microns at best.
412
The Kerr observation is simply a function of the thermal inertia of the southern hemisphere being significantly greater than the thermal inertia of the northern hemisphere. Only 20% of the southern hemisphere is land compared to 40% of the northern hemisphere. The average temperature is taken across all the surface but the thermal response in water is much slower than on land. Hence the northern hemisphere average temperature responds more quickly to increased (or reduced) power input than the southern hemisphere. Kerr’s Illustration 1 on the link you referenced highlights this point – much greater temperature swing in the northern hemisphere.
Also you should check your calculations regarding the stated increase of 90W/sq.m. Using earth perihelion and aphelion of 147M km and 152M km I get a variation of 18W/sq.m average over the earths surface given all other variables, other than distance, stay the same. Assuming the top 100m of the oceans is well mixed, that increased power input over a 6 month period would increase the ocean temperature by 0.7C, which constitutes 80% of the southern hemisphere so dominates the average temperature.
The change in surface radiation due to inclination of the Earth’s axis is approximated at 82W/sq.m over the yearly cycle so it is much greater than the change in distance. This gives a temperature change of 3C if applied for 6 months to a 100m water column. Kerr’s average swing over the whole southern hemisphere is 4C. So reasonable agreement given the combination of both the inclination and sola distance factors as well as the more responsive land mass would add a little to the swing, albeit its small proportion of the total area in the southern hemisphere.
Even if atmospheric CO2 doubling can increase the thermal input to the oceans by 3W/sqm it will take a thousand years or more to reach a stable level. It is a very slow process but the extra heat input gradually finds its way through the oceans rather than just the well mixed zone. Anyone who can predict how Earth’s whole climate system can respond over that period will leave Nostradamus in their shade.
40
Thanks Rick,
Yes I agree that John Kerr was trying to demonstrate the greater effect of the land surface in the northern hemisphere. I am not doubting Kerr. I think he is correct.
I have not actually done the S-B calculation for perihelion and aphelion. Wikipaedia confirms your values for the Earth sun distance but says that the sunlight at aphelion is 93.55% of the sunlight at perihelion which gives a variation of 87.7W/m2 difference (assuming average insolation of 1360W/m2).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perihelion_and_aphelion
One thing that I have thought about is whether it is reasonable to average the Earth temperature when applying the S-B equation to the Earth’s outgoing long wave radiation? After all the equation is T^4, so even small areas of increased temperature could increase the overall radiation output quite a bit. The average temperature might stay nearly the same. Ocean currents spread the warmer waters far and wide.
Then there is the greater emmissivity of the sea compared to land. So the southern oceans could conceivably radiate more energy to space in the southern hemisphere summer, even if the Earth is on average slightly cooler over all.
My point is that if the Earth is able to shed an additional 90W/m2 while at the same time it is slightly cooler over all, then the assumptions of Climate Science (in particular Trenberth type maths) must be completely overturned.
413
Actually it is not a Stefan-Boltzman calculation. Solar intensity is given by the inverse square law. 147^2/152^2=93.5%
00
First: your variation of about 90W/m2 between perigee and apogee solar irradiance amounts to only a 10W/m^2
change the surface irradiance. Next: January is when the northern hemisphere with most of the temperate and tropical landmass is at the extreme angle away from insolation. This reduces the land surface temperatures while the southern ocean temperatures stay relatively constant. The rest is just the actual lapse rate (not some artificial environmental crap) controlling the actual EMR exitance from the atmosphere to space! More reason for any “global temperature” to be complete BALDERDASH!
All the best! -will-
917
Thanks Will,
I presume that you support the gravitational warming of surface temperature (lapse rate) theory. I am inclined to that myself.
yes the southern oceans stay relatively constant (4C variation), but the energy has to be radiated somewhere. It should show up on OLR charts or in the global temperature data.
The water temperature at Apollo Bay, Victoria, Australia varies between 13.8C (September) and 17.7C (Feb). That is probably representative of the Southern Oceans.
http://www.seatemperature.org/australia-pacific/australia/apollo-bay-march.htm
“First: your variation of about 90W/m2 between perigee and apogee solar irradiance amounts to only a 10W/m^2 change the surface irradiance.” Can you explain that please. IS the near surface (instrument) global temperature a function of surface irradiance alone?
212
There is no “gravitational warming”, per se. There is instead gravitational distribution of atmospheric pressure (the pressure at any level is just the weight of the atmosphere above that level), which imposes a vertical temperature distribution (the “lapse rate” structure). Whatever energy is contained in the atmosphere, it has to be vertically distributed according to that elementary physics. This is entirely independent of HOW the atmosphere is warmed. In particular it is independent of any heating by the absorption of infrared radiation by CO2 or any other so-called “greenhouse gas” in the atmosphere; the only effect such absorption can have is to increase the radiation pathway for heat transfer in the atmosphere, compared to the pathways for conduction and convection (the other two processes by which heat can be transported). As radiation travels faster than convection or conduction, IR absorption can only increase the SPEED at which heat is transported (over a short distance), but it can do no more than re-attain the governing lapse rate structure more quickly than would be the case without “greenhouse gases” in the atmosphere; it cannot change the lapse rate, nor the temperature (at the surface or at any other pressure level in the atmosphere).
My Venus/Earth temperatures comparison precisely confirms this (it confirms the Standard Atmosphere model of the Earth’s troposphere, which is based upon the above physics), and shows that the Earth’s troposphere is warmed by direct absorption of incident solar radiation, not by heat from the planetary surface as everyone has been taught. And of course it utterly disproves the “global warming greenhouse effect”, since Venus’s atmosphere has over 2400 times the concentration of CO2 as Earth’s, without any effect upon the temperature.
But not many listen, or seem capable of understanding. I just happen to have the TV on now, and it is showing a rerun of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”, where they are fighting the “god” Glory. Glory is limited by the fact that she turns into the harmless Ben at awkward moments, but even when people see this transformation take place right in front of them, they can’t seem to remember it after a brief moment. The climate debate is like this, where no one seems able to retain knowledge of the simple physics of the Standard Atmosphere. So just remember, “Ben is Glory; Glory is Ben” and “there IS NO greenhouse effect”.
724
Harry Dale Huffman,
You had me until . . .
And I agree with everything you wrote after that also.
And so my first question to you would be:
How can the troposphere absorb thermal energy directly from the incident solar radiation, as you’ve claimed here, when the atmosphere as a whole, including the troposphere, is known to allow most of that EMR from the sun to pass right through it to the surface of the planet?
A second question:
Wouldn’t the rest of your comment still be valid if instead of direct absorption of incident solar radiation, the troposphere was heated by conduction/convection from the planetary surface?
Abe
30
Venus and Earth atmospheres are very different.
Venus has a very dense atmosphere and the sun does not penetrate to the surface, that means that, as Harry says, the surface must be warmed by the atmospheric pressure.
Earth’s atmosphere is much more tenuous and allows the solar energy to reach the surface.
In both cases the atmospheric gradient REGULATES the final surface temperature.
In Venus’s case but holding the heat at the bottom of the gradient, and in Earth’s case, allowing the surface heat to escape as needed.
116
AndyG55,
While I tend to agree with what you’ve said here, that doesn’t really give a response to the claim that the atmosphere on Earth warms up as a result of the absorption of incident solar radiation and not by thermal energy coming from the planetary surface.
If you think about the thermostat on a refrigerator, for example, it regulates the temperature within the enclosure of the refrigerator but it does not cause the accumulation or the extraction of the thermal energy inside.
While what you’re saying may be true, it’s not the same as what Harry is claiming.
Abe
00
BTW:
That doesn’t mean I disagree with Harry’s analysis of the similarities between the Earth’s atmosphere and that of Venus at the same relative atmospheric pressures. I’m in full agreement with that part of Harry’s interpretation of the data that we have on both these atmospheres.
He should receive wider recognition for his efforts in that respect. I’m convinced, though, that the statement I’m objecting to detracts from those efforts.
Abe
014
Peter C March 6, 2016 at 5:28 pm
“Thanks Will,
I presume that you support the gravitational warming of surface temperature (lapse rate) theory. I am inclined to that myself.”
If by “warming” you mean higher surface temperature than tropopause temperature, then yes. Lapse rate is definitely maintained by gravitational attraction and the stratification of atmospheric pressure, density, and temperature all increasing at lower altitude. That said, gravity never adds any heat energy to anything.
“First:
(wj:”your variation of about 90W/m2 between perigee and apogee solar irradiance amounts to only a 10W/m^2 change the surface irradiance.”)
“Can you explain that please. IS the near surface (instrument) global temperature a function of surface irradiance alone?”
Insolation appears to be the major source of heat energy that maintains both the latent heat of evaporation of all the atmospheric gases (including N2,O2); and the sensible heat (temperature) of surface and atmosphere.
The nominal exo-atmospheric solar irradiance of 1360 W/m² is what is varying by 90W/m² apogee to perigee. Of that 1360W/m², the average when spread as continuous (24h,4πR² area) only 142W/m² is incident to the surface, as calculated by the CAGW crowd. This is a high guess. My guess is 126W/m².. Very much insolation is converted to latent heat of evaporation of the airborne water condensate as the nightside airmass becomes illuminated. Remember the 62% cloud cover. I hope this explains some.
All the best! -will-
422
Wind Energy
This week hasn’t been a very productive week for the Australian Wind turbines producing, on average, about 700 MW, or 19% of the nameplate capacity of 3,669 MW over 32 Windfarms.
Production dropped to around 10% six times during the week and there was an extended 24 hour period on Wednesday with low production. Currently production is 10%, or 400 MW, but it has averaged about 20% for the past 24 hours.
What this means is that S. Aust. has been relying on fossil fuel stations, mainly the Yallourn coal stations in Victoria for electricity supply. But it begs the real question, what are you going to use for back-up power if one goes down the path of green energy and closes the coal stations? There is little choice really, it’s nuclear or modern coal or gas stations as electricity is required on a 24 hour basis. And really back-up electricity 75-80% of the time is the same as running the stations on a fulltime basis.
For an isolated windy location such as King Is. wind turbines can play a role as long as there is diesel to rely on. Interestingly Tasmania has re-commissioned the Tamar Gas turbines and is installing 200MW of diesel generation at various hydro stations to safeguard its supply. As of Feb 29 it only had 16.1% of water capacity left in the dams, and there is no firm date for the repair to the BassLink cable.
110
News from Roy Spencer:
Interesting conundrum for some modellers.
13
It’s known as an El Niño….you know, like 1998 and 2010?
41
Roy is a luke warmer, so no problem for him.
As you are aware ENSO is natural and out side the AGW box. BoM said it will go to neutral half way through the year, as opposed to a sharp drop La Nina.
Anyway the Denialati expect global cooling to begin this year, enjoy your moment.
00
Others are predicting a strong La Nina.
http://notrickszone.com/2016/03/06/the-missing-cold-scripps-institute-now-projects-major-powerful-la-nina-to-surface-late-this-year/#sthash.eVGK90PH.dpbs
00
2 Mar: TheStandardHongKong: February colder and drier than usual
February in Hong Kong was more than a degree cooler than is usual.
Temperatures averaged 15.5 degrees Celsius, 1.3 degrees Celcius below the normal 16.8 degrees Celsius, the Hong Kong Observatory reported today…
http://www.thestandard.com.hk/breaking-news.php?id=72004
great pics:
1 Mar: Siberian Times: Global warming? Kurilskoye Lake freezes for first time in 10 years
Waters of this wildlife paradise in Kamchatka ice up in rare event after unusually cold spell.
With thermal waters, and the warming effect of the nearby Sea of Okhotsk, this unusual lake normally does not freeze over. But this year its famous Steller’s sea eagles have been forced to relocate because the ice holes in which they catch fish have frozen over. Two weeks of calm weather and low temperatures in February – of minus 20C – shackled the surface of the lake with a thick layer of ice…
‘From the observation tower at Travyanoy we looked around the horizon in all directions. The lake was completely frozen. Only in the mouth of the River Hakytsin could we see a little ice hole, where ducks and swans were swimming, and Steller’s sea eagles were spotted.’…
http://siberiantimes.com/ecology/others/news/n0601-global-warmingkurilskoye-lake-freezes-for-first-time-in-10-years/
behind paywall:
Cold blast and snow put spring on hold for six weeks
The Times (subscription)-4Mar.,2016
After several inches of snow brought disruption to northern England yesterday, the Met Office said that the cold spell could last until mid-April…
51
Pat,
A pretty cold month for the New Yorkers also. These are quite surprising because February 2016 was the hottest month EVVVVAAAAAHHHHHH.
21
If you look at the UAH warming maps , you will see a huge warm blob over central Europe and northern Russia.
So the “anomaly” is not actually WARM, its just NOT AS COLD as usual
And you can bet that the people in that region are very thankful of that fact. 🙂
31
So, have you ever wondered why the grid needs to be, umm, gold plated?
Read the article at this link, and read it very carefully, and hey I know how people go to links and read stuff. They just read the text.
Why is there a limit to how much solar we can connect to the grid?
So then, look at the date, and then, look who wrote it. This is from a Company which markets rooftop solar power.
Something like this, even though placed (well somewhere there anyway, if you can find it) at the marketing site, would attract very few readers, so you wonder why it is even there in the first place, because it would raise more questions than supply answers.
I’ve also read recently that it seems rooftop solar owners are consuming almost as much power from the grid as those without panels. No wonder really, when the suppliers advise that you try not to consume too much power in your home during the daylight hours and to move the bulk of your consumption of power to non daylight hours.
Why?
The Feed In Tarrif.
Doing this maximises your cash return for the power you supply to the grid, generated during those daylight hours, and they pay you (considerably) more for that returned power than the cost of the power you consume from the grid. Simple Maths really.
Sort of defeats the purpose eh!
But then it was never really about being clean and green. It was just about the money. The suppliers don’t do it out of altruism. All they want to do is to sell their rooftop systems, and you can bet that the information at the link is not discussed during that time between the phone inquiry and the installation process.
Read the linked article. That’ll make you ask some questions.
Tony.
120
Luckily, the utilities and even most of the politicians have realised that the stupidly generous feed in tariffs that drove early our take up of domestic solar PV was not financially sustainable, even with the resulting RECs. Current feed in tariffs are now well below the normal retail rates so the incentive to install more capacity than daytime use has largely gone.
Now we just need all the legacy systems that were eligible for the early FITs to degrade and fail so that our thermal generators don’t end up facing the “Duck Curve” that is becoming increasingly pronounced in California.
30
Yes. Let us hope that the legacy systems do not achieve their predicted 20 year life span. The owners are stuck with the cost of removing them at the end of their life.
What do you mean by the “Duck Curve”?
30
It’s the demand curve that the grid faces due to the “contribution” from domestic pv during daylight hours
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-21/california-s-duck-curve-is-about-to-jolt-the-electricity-grid
30
20
TonyfromOz –
thanx for the link. would like your response to the following:
17 Feb: Portland Press-Herald: Tux Turkel: As solar power grows in Maine, so does tension over its future shape and direction
Many homeowners and small businesses could someday generate and store their own power, and leave a grid long controlled by utilities and energy companies
If Maine utilities have their way, the future of solar energy in Maine will be dominated by a limited number of large-scale projects feeding substantial amounts of power into the electric grid.
The solar installation industry, on the other hand, envisions a decentralized future in which the grid draws power from thousands of small installations on homes, businesses or shared community sites.
Which vision gains an advantage may be determined this year as the Legislature grapples with the question of how to compensate homes and small businesses that generate power when the sun shines, but depend on utility companies when it doesn’t…
http://www.pressherald.com/2016/02/17/as-solar-power-grows-in-maine-so-do-tensions-over-its-future-shape-and-direction/
read some of the comments following this one:
posted by JustAGnome > Steve Svensson 18 days ago
And if those same 10 houses are in the same neighborhood generating more electricity than the neighborhood can absorb who is going to pay for the new transformers to step up the voltage to balance the system? Our neighborhood transformers can only step power down and not up. I am guessing that solar generators want everybody else to pay to pay for the upgrade.
8 Feb: OttawaSun: Tom Spears: South-end councillors want transmission lines; renewable energy not enough
Councillors in favour of new high-voltage transmission line
The local advisory committee that’s looked at plans for a new high-voltage power line in South Nepean is “very imbalanced (toward) the renewable energy side of things,” says a councillor who sits on it…
While no route has yet been picked, Hydro Ottawa said Monday that “One of the main options being evaluated is to make use of the existing 115kV (kilovolt) corridor that heads towards Manotick.”
http://www.ottawasun.com/2016/02/08/south-end-councillors-want-transmission-lines-renewable-energy-not-enough
I still wonder why Fairfax spoke of solar power lines (or whatever) being down during one of the recent bushfires.
20
What these people fail so completely and utterly to realise is that rooftop solar power will only EVER be a tiny niche market.
No matter where they are in any city (large or small) or town, rooftop solar generation is virtually nothing at all.
In the U.S. the Residential consumption is around 35% at the whole of Country overall level, and that translates down to the region, State, City, etc level.
Let’s actually pretend there is a pretty large scale penetration of rooftop solar, say 5% of residences.
That’s 5% of 35%, which is 1.8% of the generation needed for that area, no matter how large. Then between a third and a half of that rooftop solar is actually being consumed by the homes with those rooftop panels, so now we are down to less than 1% of power being consumed in that area, and that’s just during daylight hours.
If there is a Mall with a supermarket, then that consumes around the same as for a thousand or more homes. Add in all commerce, and any industry in that area, and the street lighting and control, hospitals and emergency services etc.
These people think that the only consumers of power are homes and that rooftop solar can cover all their needs.
Less than 1% of any areas power generation comes from rooftop solar power. It’s not even enough for grid controllers to even notice, let alone try and take into account.
Tony.
40
Maine’s an ideal spot. It’s so close to the equator.
20
.
Yes, Maine is a slightly lower latitude than Southern Germany where they have installed over 38GW of PV capacity so it makes perfect sense for Maine to “invest” in PV.
After all, Germans wouldn’t anything stupid like shut down perfectly good nuclear reactors with decades of operational life left, build offshore wind parks without transmission links, install enough windfarms to destabilize their grid on windy days or subsidize non-dispatchable power to the point of closing the world’s most efficient gas turbine plant.
Hold that…..
80
Yes.
The world has gone mad.
A very good summary of the politics of “renewables”.
30
I have been following the performance of the King Is. diesel/wind/solar power station for a few weeks now and haven’t seen solar produce more than 60Kw at midday, so for practical purposes output is insignificant. Going to the energy.anero.id.au site and looking at solar one finds 103 Mw of solar capacity producing about 100 Mw between 10 am. and 4 pm. and a little an hour either side of this period. On a cloudy day it’s down to 60-70 Mw. As you say Tony, not much use for a lot of cost.
30
Tony,
I agree with your argument generally, however, there are increasingly commercial, 100kW+,(subsidized, but little or no feed in tarrif) solar rooftop instalations that exist because the commercial tarif is around 39c (western Australia). There are many issues in trying to stabilize these feeds, especially as they become a greater portion of supply. They supply in a somewhat random manner. Inverters tend to drop off en masse when there are radical momentary spikes or dips in voltage. Many of these commercial entities need to consider cleaning up the character of the power grid if they are to feed-in with delicately controlled equipment.
00
just letting u know I posted your link on WUWT Tips & Notes, with question marks, to see if anyone responds.
20
For Discussion – The ‘Refrigeration Analogy’: A Deconstruction
Introduction
A couple of weeks ago I posted a description of how the man-made refrigeration process works. At the end of that post . . .
The plan was to list the logical errors I found in the original claim and go on to present an analogy without those errors comparing man-made refrigeration to the Earth’s atmosphere. As I started writing, I kept finding more errors and in trying to explain each one, the length of the post got completely out of hand.
I also realized that I’d left out an important part of how the common refrigerator works, the thermostat.
I’ve decided that I’ll only discuss two of those logical errors in this comment and present a description of the thermostat.
Here again is the original claim:
In the analogy as originally stated, ( the first quote. ), thermal energy accumulates within the boundary layer and has to then be removed by the process of refrigeration, and because man-made refrigeration is never 100% efficient, no process of refrigeration can ever be 100% efficient.
Fails in the logic
If: The man-made refrigeration process can never be 100% efficient.
Then: Any refrigeration process, including any hypothetical natural one, can never be 100% efficient.
???
1. Conflation ( fallacy of equivocation ) creates False Analogy – Major flaw
The man-made refrigeration process is in fact, never 100% efficient. But only in the sense that:
If we look carefully at this description, the thermal inefficiency comes about as a direct consequence of the fact that there is additional thermal energy produced by the refrigeration unit when the coolant, more properly called the refrigerant, is compressed into a liquid, and this thermal energy must also be removed. Thing is, this additional thermal energy never enters the enclosure of the refrigerator. It stays entirely within the hot reservoir. So clearly it’s only the refrigeration unit, that’s less than 100% efficient.
The analogy equates the entire refrigeration process with the refrigeration unit. This creates the false analogy whereby ‘no refrigeration process can be 100% efficient’. Restating the analogy without the fallacy of equivocation we get: ‘Because the refrigeration unit in a man-made refrigerator is never 100% efficient, any hypothetical refrigeration process in nature that we can think of must also be less than 100% efficient. 😮
This point may appear trivial all by itself but it’s importance will become clear when we look at how the thermostat works and what it does.
2. Another False Analogy – Minor flaw
The analogy as presented assumes that:
a. The boundary layer can be likened to the enclosure of the refrigerator. (The place where thermal energy accumulates.)
b. The same thermal energy which accumulates within the enclosure is the only source of energy that can be used to power the refrigeration unit.
In a man-made refrigerator the enclosure and the refrigeration unit are separate entities. While both are part of the refrigeration process, each has it’s own separate source of energy. The thermal energy that accumulates within the enclosure comes from the environment and the energy used by the refrigeration unit, electricity, comes from a plug in the wall. 😮
Just like the false analogy at 1. above, here too, this point may appear trivial all by itself but it’s importance will also become clear when we look at how the thermostat works and what it does.
Before going on to examine why these two logical errors in the refrigeration analogy are so important, we need to look at a description of the thermostat. Common refrigerators come equipped with a thermostat, and here is a simplified description.
Intermission – The Thermostat
The thermostat regulates how long the refrigeration unit will stay on depending on how much thermal energy we want to remove from the enclosure. When we plug the refrigerator into the electrical outlet for the first time, the temperature inside the enclosure will be the same as the ambient temperature of the surrounding environment and we decide what the temperature will be inside the enclosure when we set the thermostat.
Once the thermostat is set, the refrigeration unit begins to remove thermal energy from the enclosure. The thermostat continuously reads the temperature inside the enclosure, and when the reading matches the desired temperature, the thermostat turns off the refrigeration unit and thermal energy from the environment begins to accumulate again within the enclosure.
At some point, the temperature inside the enclosure will get high enough for the thermostat to turn the refrigeration unit back on again, the refrigeration unit begins to operate, and the unwanted thermal energy that caused the rise in temperature within the enclosure will again be removed.
Back to the Deconstruction
The refrigeration process has two separate but interwoven cycles:
Air is circulated in and out of the enclosure. I’ll call this the cooling cycle because this is where the refrigerator actually produces the cooling that it was designed for.
A refrigerant is circulated between the hot reservoir and the cold reservoir. I’ll call this the refrigeration cycle because it’s here that thermal energy is actually removed from the refrigerator and back into the environment.
As a part of the refrigeration process, the cooling cycle produces only cooling by introducing air into the enclosure that’s colder than the air that’s already in there.
As a part of the refrigeration process, the refrigeration cycle creates thermal energy by compressing the refrigerant, exposes that thermal energy to the environment which is cooler, reduces thermal energy by decompression, and exposes the now cooler refrigerant to a flow of warmer air taken from the enclosure.
As we’ve seen, it’s the refrigeration unit that’s never 100% efficient because of the additional thermal energy that it produces which has to also be removed as part of the refrigeration cycle. But . . .
. . . all of the thermal energy that we want to remove from the enclosure is removed completely. 😮
And this is in addition to the thermal energy that’s produced by the refrigeration cycle itself. 😮
So the claim that no refrigeration process that we can think of will be 100% efficient fails. 🙂
The refrigeration unit may not be 100% efficient, but that part of the refrigerator runs on a separate source of energy and the efficiency of the refrigeration unit is only in reference to that additional source of energy. 🙂
The refrigeration process, as a whole, is 100% efficient at removing unwanted thermal energy from the enclosure of the refrigerator. 🙂
Now that that’s out of the way, I’ll try to write up and post the comment showing the analogy to Earth’s atmosphere without the logical errors as quickly as possible.
Abe
39
Standing by in anticipation.
10
Peter C,
Thank you for being patient. I don’t have as much free time as I used to but I am working hard to get it done.
I know you’ll like it when you see it.
Abe
00
You are correct! The spontaneous heat(energy) transfer in the direction of lower temperature is by definition isentropic (no entropy generated). It is the consumption of other power to create a lower temperature on the cold side and the generation of higher temperatures on the hot side that in 100% entropic.
Again you ignore the point of the original poster that insisted that thermal EMR flux (Down welling IR flux) is created and dispatched in a direction of higher radiance (temperature). Such has not been demonstrated even once!
All the best! -will-
415
Will Janoschka,
Yes. I did that intentionally. I don’t want to get bogged down in that discussion.
Not yet! And definitely not as part of this discussion on refrigeration!
🙂 🙂
Funny how so many people believe this false claim anyway!
Hmmm.
Abe
02
For most of the last six months I have been absent from my usual climate websites. Partly because of health issues and partly because of computer issues. My news of the climate wars has been limited to the MSM. How I have missed JoNova, WUWT, Notrickszone, and Bishop Hill. This hiatus has made me more appreciative of the efforts of Jo Nova. I have previously said she is one of the great women of the world for her principled stand against the warmists. The passage of time without Jo’s wonderful website has convinced me that my prior appreciation of Jo was completely accurate. The only time I have ever been sniped here is when I repeated a former girlfriend’s comment that “Hillery thinks she’s pretty and she’s not, and she thinks she’s smarter then she is.” The snipping was later rescinded and the comment was admitted. Beauty is not skin deep is an axiom. Whatever the physical characteristics, Hillery is not a beautiful woman. Jo Nova is. The difference is the soul, Hillery has an ugly soul, Jo has a beautiful soul. I rest my case.
60
Your analogy might be more clear if you were to consider the adsorption refrigeration cycle instead of the vapour compression cycle. Perhaps even clearer still if you were to consider the solar adsorption variant, as it is solar energy that is required to transfer heat energy from a cold space to a warm space.
60
Rod Stuart,
What analogy is that?
The comment: For Discussion – The ‘Refrigeration Analogy’: A Deconstruction, describes the logical errors in an analogy posted by someone else.
If I set the thermostat in my refrigerator to 4°C, the enclosure of my refrigerator will reach 4°C before the thermostat turns off the refrigeration unit. All the accumulated thermal energy above 4°C will be removed completely. The power used by my refrigerator does not come from the thermal energy that accumulates within the enclosure but from somewhere else.
On these, and other points, the writer of the original analogy is wrong. All I’ve done so far is point out why.
You may have missed my previous comments:
For Discussion – The ‘Refrigeration Only’ Argument: A Deconstruction
For Discussion – The ‘Refrigeration Cycle’: The Basics
Abe
26
Yes. I’ve been away for a few weeks. Just trying to help.
10
Rod Stuart,
I noticed. Good to have you back.
The intent of my reply to you was not to reject your statements not am I necessarily in disagreement with what you wrote.
Help is always appreciated.
I haven’t investigated how this type of refrigeration works for two reasons.
The first is that vapour compression is the most common and so more easily accessible to the majority of readers. The two points I made:
The requirement of an additional and external source of energy to power the refrigeration unit.
The fact that the refrigeration process removes all unwanted thermal energy from the enclosure.
. . . must be true for all types of refrigeration.
The second reason is that the I intend to show that it’s the vapour compression variant of man-made refrigeration which operates naturally in the troposphere. The concept itself and the mechanisms behind it are not new and I’m certainly not the one who discovered them.
Like I said, help is always appreciated. I’m interested in why you suggested solar absorption as your best choice. Could you elaborate on why?
Abe
01
Abe
Perhaps it was because I didn’t read your comment in enough detail, and I focused on this:
I find that many folks have trouble understanding the thermodynamics involved in their refrigerator or freezer. I sensed it was the general population that you would like to address with an analogy with the common refrigerator. It didn’t strike me that you were pointing out that a refrigeration cycle exists in nature analogous to the vapour compression refrigeration cycle.
The adsorption refrigeration cycle used typically in camper trailers and motor homes, and indeed in some large commercial installations, makes it perfectly clear that heat energy is expended in order to transfer heat energy from a cold medium to a warm one because that energy is present in a flame. People not familiar with thermodynamics often “get it” when the work added to the adsorber is a flame rather that horsepower from a motor. When the work in eventuates from solar energy, it occurred to me that your “refrigeration cycle in the atmosphere” might be easier to explain.
While the adsorption cycle pre-dates the vapour compression cycle, it is rather less efficient in that it requires more work in to transfer the same amount of heat energy. Albert Einstein made some improvements with the “Einstein refrigeration cycle”, but its use is nevertheless less common. With the advent of micro gas turbines, such as the Capstone turbine, the adsorption cycle is particularly useful in using the waste heat to perform refrigeration, for instance in a cold store for fresh fruit. In jurisdictions in which natural gas is a much less expensive energy alternative to electricity, I have suggested (to no avail) that room air conditioners using this cycle could be used to unload the electricity infrastructure in summer when the load on the gas delivery infrastructure is often low.
00
This is not a joke. There is now a “feminist glaciology framework”.
http://m.phg.sagepub.com/content/early/2016/01/08/0309132515623368.abstract
Glaciers, gender, and science
A feminist glaciology framework for global environmental change research
Authors
Abstract
Glaciers are key icons of climate change and global environmental change. However, the relationships among gender, science, and glaciers – particularly related to epistemological questions about the production of glaciological knowledge – remain understudied. This paper thus proposes a feminist glaciology framework with four key components: 1) knowledge producers; (2) gendered science and knowledge; (3) systems of scientific domination; and (4) alternative representations of glaciers. Merging feminist postcolonial science studies and feminist political ecology, the feminist glaciology framework generates robust analysis of gender, power, and epistemologies in dynamic social-ecological systems, thereby leading to more just and equitable science and human-ice interactions.
feminist glaciology feminist political ecology feminist postcolonial science studies folk glaciology glacier impacts glaciers and society
30
I think a glacier’s view on gender diversity would be similar to mine.
30
I saw recently ads for solar installations that land lords can do on their investment properties which are based on legislative changes (I think) and billing software. It is claimed that the tenant can benefit by about a 20% reduction in power costs plus the land lord can earn about $500 per year in a typical installation.
Disregarding issues with solar power we all know about, would such an installation be of real economic benefit to a land lord?
30
Only if the landlord was able to charge higher rental for the property, but I doubt it.
And the advert is on dangerous ground, deceptive. I note an increasing trend by advertising solar panel sites to add a disclaimer that their system might not be less costly than using the electricity grid.
50
???
6 Mar: ABC: Victoria to switch desalination plant on next summer, following decline in water storages
Melbourne households will face an average $12 a year hike in their water bills when Victoria’s desalination plant is turned on for the first time since it was completed in 2012.
The State Government has announced it has placed an order for 50 gigalitres of desalinated water to be delivered next summer.
Melbourne’s water storage is now at 63.8 per cent capacity, down from 72.1 per cent at the same time last year.
Water Minister Lisa Neville said the decision was made based on advice from Melbourne water retailers following a “significant decline” in storage levels in the past two years.
“Last year we lost 152 gigalitres of water so this is a really significant decline in our storages so this is a top-up I suppose, a buffer for our storages,” she said.
The Government said inflows into the catchment were at 306 gigalitres in 2015, which was worse than average inflows at the height of Victoria’s millennium drought, which were 376.
She said the Government had always considered the desalination plant to be an insurance policy for Victoria and Melbourne…
The decision has been praised by the Victorian Chamber of Commerce.
But Opposition water spokesman Peter Walsh said the switch-on was politically motivated to justify the construction of the plant under the Bracks-Brumby Labor government…
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-03-06/victoria-to-switch-desalination-plant-on/7224276
50
If nothing else, it should make a decent variable demand for the wind energy from the various wind farms afflicting Victoria and SA, so that the Latrobe Valley coal generators can be run at a more constant and hence efficient rate and the open gas turbine generators can be called on less often. It could even be used overnight to allow the coal generators to run even higher capacity factors.
70
I wouldn’t past the government to deliberated drain the dams so they could create a water shortage to justify the desal plant.
72
I keep wondering why the Goulburn River near Alexandra is so full? Presumably it’s water is being let out of Eildon?
00
Its. Blighted predictive text thinks it knows better.
00
I bet it p!sses down rain…..
50
The desal effect. 🙂
10
February 2016 hottest month eeeevvvvvvvuuuuuuhhhhhhhj!
http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2016/s4418571.htm
30
Repititious fairy tales turn more people off than take it seriously.
52
read all:
4 Mar: PV Mag: Jonathan Gifford: Europe: future of large scale PV in doubt
SolarPower Europe held its 11th Solar Market Workshop in Brussels this week where the future of European solar markets were discussed in detail by industry participants and analysts. A decidedly uncertain future was delivered during the session: Is there a future for large scale in solar?
“Large scale solar in Europe is basically dead,” opined Bloomberg New Energy Finance’s (BNEF) Jenny Chase in a session discussing the future of big PV in the EU. The forthright analyst said that as utility scale PV has the same generation profile as rooftop solar, that it is likely to be squeezed out as distributed generation applications take precedence. Chase, BNEF’s lead solar analyst, also noted that Europe’s peak electricity demand continues to occur during the winter months, making solar PV a poor fit.
“We can use batteries to solve a lot of minor problems, but it won’t solve the problem that peak [electricity] demand occurs in winter,” said Chase…
Enerparc’s Stefan Muller noted that project tenders in Egypt, Dubai, and Jordan present opportunities: “there are barriers, but it is interesting.”…
“It is possible to make money in Germany at €0.08/kWh,” said Muller. “It’s fun! The question is now how to move away from markets that have sharp [installation] peaks like the UK. But a 500MW/a market [in one country] is a good market.”…
http://www.pv-magazine.com/news/details/beitrag/europe–future-of-large-scale-pv-in-doubt_100023559/#axzz425n9XwDZ
30
lots of detail – would appreciate any comments:
1 Mar: TheEnergyCollective: David Hone: Solar Thermal by the Numbers
Early in February the King of Morocco, HE Mohammed VI, opened the first phase of what will eventually become a major solar energy facility in the centre of the country…
The original cost of Noor I was estimated at about $1.1 billion, but various reports show that upwards of $2 billion has been spent, although a proportion of this must be for overall site development, roads, infrastructure etc. which will benefit all of the phases…
The initial 160 MW project has a net capacity of 143 MW, producing some 370 GWh of electricity output. This equates to a capacity factor of nearly 30% which is high for solar, but reflects the nature of the location and the energy storage mechanism using molten salt. Nevertheless, in terms of total annual output, this is similar to building a 60 MW gas turbine, although the gas turbine would always be limited to 60 MW, whereas the solar facility can output at higher levels through much of the day when businesses are open and drawing on the grid…
By the end of Phase 2, total capacity of the facility will be over 500 MW, at a capital cost of some $5 billion (although The Guardian puts this at $9 billion)…
The justification for the project is interesting and can be found in one of the documents on the World Bank project site. Carbon pricing figures strongly although there are no immediate plans for a robust carbon pricing system to be implemented in Morocco. The report concludes that Concentrated Solar is not economic on the basis of conventional cost-benefit analysis (the economic rate of return is negative over the anticipated 25-year horizon of the project); the economic benefits are taken as the avoided costs of the next best thermal alternative, which is CCGT using imported LNG. To be economic at the (real) opportunity cost of capital to the Moroccan government, the valuation of CO2 would need to be US$92/ton of CO2 (calculated as switching value, i.e. NPV of zero), or US$57/ton of CO2 when calculated as the Marginal Abatement Cost (MAC). The justification for the project is largely on the basis of macro-economic benefits for Morocco (jobs, technology transfer etc.) and global learning curve benefits…
http://theenergycollective.com/davidhone/2323160/solar-thermal-numbers
About the writer, David Hone:
David Hone serves as the Chief Climate Change Advisor for Royal Dutch Shell. He combines his work with his responsibilities as a board member and Chairman of the International Emissions Trading Association (IETA). Additionally, he works closely with the World Business Council for Sustainable Development and has been a lead contributor to many of its recent energy and climate change publications. After graduating as a chemical engineer, Hone started his career as a refinery engineer in Australia during another period of very high oil prices when energy efficiency was paramount. He spent a period in the Netherlands, before returning to Australia to become involved with another side of the oil industry, energy economics and supply. This led to a move to London as an oil trader for Shell followed by a time managing the global trading and chartering of Shell’s crude oil tanker fleet. In 2001 he took up his current role and has not looked back since.
40
pat:
I think the Guardian figure of $9 billion was for the end of Stage 3. Initially there were 5 stages planned.
I suggest that capacity factor is fiction. That sort of performance has not been seen before in these sorts of plants. You might consider that many are equipped with a smallish gas turbine generating electricity in the early morning while the waste heat gets the molten salt hot enough to circulate. This first stage was only expected to have 3 hours storage anyway.
“the gas turbine would always be limited to 60 MW, whereas the solar facility can output at higher levels through much of the day ….” and how do they do that and direct heat into storage? They can only run the plant after the sun goes down with heat not used up during the day – in other words limiting their output during the day.
“The report concludes that Concentrated Solar is not economic on the basis of conventional cost-benefit analysis (the economic rate of return is negative over the anticipated 25-year horizon of the project)” translates as we build it with other peoples money and keep it going with more subsidies. The moment the subsidies stop is the moment when the plant is shut down.
60
They still need to use something to preheat the salt in the mornings, anyway, and in Spain, this is done with gas. Somehow any electricity generated by the pre heating is still counted towards the “solar” output
92
For my haters, may I ask you to go to the link below and read the paragraph just above the heading “REE June grid data”
http://euanmearns.com/a-review-of-concentrated-solar-power-csp-in-spain/
While I’m at it, I’ll also take the opportunity to point out the high water consumption of these concentrated solar power plants due to the need to keep the mirrors clean
http://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/green-tech/solar/how-do-you-clean-258048-solar-thermal-mirrors-trucks-with-robot-arms
Some more info for CSP
http://solarcellcentral.com/csp_page.html
80
Hone writes:
“By the end of Phase 2, total capacity of the facility will be over 500 MW, at a capital cost of some $5 billion (although The Guardian puts this at $9 billion)”
Guardian wrote:
4Feb: Guardian Photo Caption:
Phase one of Morocco’s vast $9bn Ouarzazate solar power plant provides 160MW of its ultimate 580MW capacity…
King Mohammed VI will then lay the foundations for Noor 2, the next stage of the solar complex…
“It is a very, very significant project in Africa,” said Mafalda Duarte, the manager of Climate Investment Funds (CIF), which provided $435m (£300m) of the $9bn project’s funding…
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/feb/04/morocco-to-switch-on-first-phase-of-worlds-largest-solar-plant
given both talk of figures of 500+MW at the end of Phase 2, the figures would seem to be only for the first two phases, or am I not understanding it?
however, to confuse matters…read about Phases 3 and 4 in the following:
Wikipedia: Ouarzazate solar power station
The entire Solar Project is planned to produce 580 MW at peak when finished and is being built in three phases and in four parts. Total project expected to cost $9 billion
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouarzazate_solar_power_station
30
Ouarzazate is phase 1 of the whole Noor project. So they have just completed stage 1 of phase 1.
It will be interesting to see how much of the rest of the stages and phases can get financed. And then there is the interconnector to Europe to be built since most of the output is intended for that market
30
Graeme No.3 –
I just added up all the MW to Phase 4 and that would result in approx. 580MW, so the Guardian’s 9bn probably is for the complete project.
20
pat:
I did a calculation of the likely cost of the electricity generated on a 6 year payback time (likely commercial approach) and found it was around $270-280 per MWh. Compare that with Victoria where coal fired electricity sells for $30 per MWh and you can see why it won’t make money and why there was no enthusiasm about transmitting it to Europe.
30
Jo. This is serious. When I have put into the MS search engine Jonova .com I have always gotten a reference to your excellent site. Now I get some site advertising business softwear. The site has hijacked, your JOnova, probably copyrighted, site has been hijacked. It is a crime!
—-
Thanks Stan. This is the second report today. But jonova.com has existed for years according to the wayback machine. Perhaps their ranking has just grown? — Jo
11
Jo
FYI
”
stan stendera
March 5, 2016 at 10:19 pm
Emergency Alert. Jonova’s site has been hijacked on MSN. When you put in JoNova.com you get some business softwear site which has hijacked her web address. You can still get it by putting in
JoanneNova.au.co, but, as we all know Microsoft is pro global warming. I suspect chicanery.
Reply
MangoChutney
March 6, 2016 at 12:02 am
Nope, her website is http://joannenova.com.au/ and appears to be ok.
”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/03/05/new-research-uncovers-the-myths-behind-aviations-climate-change-crisis/
31
Ted Cruz looks like a comedian, which should be of immense value in the battles ahead.
http://images.sodahead.com/polls/004760822/533742127_ted_cruz_bill_murray_xlarge.jpeg
20
A hoax paper on glaciology: http://m.phg.sagepub.com/content/early/2016/01/08/0309132515623368.long
10
I mentioned it above but I don’t believe it is a hoax.
10
There is discussion about it here. The research grant was US$400,000.
https://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/48xzly/socjus_a_feminist_glaciology_another_sokal/
10
This is literally beyond me, whether it’s a $400k hoax or thinks it’s real. This rubbish has no place in geological science
Perhaps I’ve related here the episode of the feminist at a geology conference who insisted to me that Einsein’s E=mc^2 equation was sexist because it priviledged the speed of light above the speed of other “entities”. Clearly a “blokey” habit
Hard science topics are simply beyond the delusions of post-modernism. These !diots can make up their own thought bubbles to play in but have no basis for attempting to destroy hard-won knowledge, gained by much blood under the bridge
80
.
That’s just plain silly, scientific ignorance.
“c” is also the speed of magnetism and everyone knows that’s feminine.
50
But gravity waves are obviously blokey since they are so brutal and insensitive – I mean, crunching up the space-time fabric, really they must be immediately denounced and reconstructed, like Beethoven (all that macho noise)
The horrifying aspect of this silliness is that it is so easy to do (as hard science is not), it gains some small audience and funding
20
Monday week in America is pi day. It’s the 14th March 2016 = 3.14.16
80
Pi day huh? I think I’d rather have pie, apple with a big scoop of vanilla ice cream on top. Pie trumps pi any day, even on pi day. 😉
And besides, shouldn’t it also be pi day everywhere that uses the Gregorian Calendar, not just America?
20
It is on the 31st of April everywhere else 😉
50
Fiddle-de-Dum, Fiddle-de-Dee, A ring round the Moon is Pi times D, But if a hole you want repaired, you use the formula PiRSquared.
That’s something that stuck in my mind from schooldays.
10
4 Mar: ArizonaDailySun: Howard Fischer: Profs’ emails on climate change ruled public
PHOENIX — An organization that is questioning the research behind climate change will get another chance to demand to see the emails of two University of Arizona scientists.
The state Court of Appeals has overturned the ruling of a trial judge who said the university need not disclose 1,700 emails and other records from Jonathan Overpeck and Malcolm Hughes. Pima County Superior Court Judge James Marner had said the university did not abuse its discretion in concluding that disclosing the documents would not be in the best interests of the state.
But appellate Judge Joseph Howard, writing for the unanimous court, said it’s legally irrelevant what university officials thought was appropriate to disclose…
The ruling does not guarantee that the Energy & Environment Legal Institute, which has raised questions about climate change and the causes behind it, will get all of the documents. But in raising the bar for the university to shield them from disclosure, it increases the chances at least some of these will see the light of day…ETC
http://m.azdailysun.com/news/state-and-regional/profs-emails-on-climate-change-ruled-public/article_3654cbcf-f6a1-5187-af02-e94e57be904f.html?mobile_touch=true
30
5 Mar: UK Telegraph: Christopher Booker: Energy bribes betray Amber Rudd’s desperation
The Department of Energy and Climate Change now realises that, to keep the lights on, we badly need new back-up
The slow-motion train crash of Britain’s energy policy gets nearer to the abyss with every week that passes. Consider a few facts. On the windless afternoon of February 25, the contribution being made to keeping our lights on by our 6,600 absurdly subsidised wind turbines was less than 0.4 per cent – four-thousandths of all the electricity we were using. Nine per cent was coming from abroad, 37 per cent from gas and 26 per cent from coal.
But our 11 coal-fired power stations are now vanishing so fast by 2019 only one may survive. Due to the government’s drive to “decarbonise” our entire electricity supply by 2030 – to rely on “renewables” and (non-existent) nuclear – our remaining gas-fired plants may well follow, thanks not least to our crippling “carbon tax” on fossil fuels.
So grotesquely is the government distorting the electricity market, that by 2020, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), the cost of “environmental levies” will have more than quadrupled, from £3.1 billion in 2014/15 to £13.6 billion.
But now things have got worse…READ ALL
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/12184689/Energy-bribes-betray-Amber-Rudds-desperation.html
40
This has nothing to do with anything in particular except that we frequently end up discussing power generation and distribution, thanks to the considerable expertise of TonyFromOz. So considering what our modern electricity driven world owes to Nicola Tesla I thought I would mention this in case anyone is interested.
A week ago while searching Netflix I stumbled on and a watched a fascinating documentary about Tesla and his work. It’s called, “Tesla: Master of Lightning.” I was amazed to find out how much we really do owe to this man for which he gets no credit, being instead, noted for his most worthless accomplishment, the Tesla Coil.
You’ll have to search for it if you don’t find it in the recently added list of titles. And if you don’t have a Netflix account you can sign up for a free month and then just cancel it after watching this.
I went around the house counting the number of induction motors. I have at least 13 of them in use if I didn’t miss any and a couple more in fans stored in the garage Even such small items as bathroom exhaust fans use them as well as the large stuff like air conditioning compressors.
Tesla was one of those seat-of-the-pants creative geniuses who could come up with the right way to do things, make them work and show the world the running prototype, all without going through all the engineering math. And it got him a very long way. But his lack of faith in math finally was his Achilles Heel when it came to transmitting useful power through the atmosphere because if he’d done just a little analysis of his proposal he would have discovered that the intensity of an RF field diminishes so fast as distance from the transmitter increases that his project was hopeless.
It’s tragic that so many know about all the fireworks and almost no one except an engineer knows anything about his really useful accomplishments. Perhaps more tragic is the fact that Tesla didn’t protect his patent rights so others now get credit for his work.
The documentary, as I said, is fascinating.
70
PS:
I suppose I should confess that as a young kid I was fascinated with the Tesla Coil at the observatory in Griffith Park in Los Angeles. If my parents would have tolerated it I would have stood there waiting for each hourly demonstration just to see all the sparks, the neon tubes light up and the docent stand there holding a key close to one of the screws holding the neon tubes against the window with sparks jumping to the key without his feeling a thing.
I wouldn’t have been nearly so fascinated with a transformer or an induction motor at that age. So I suppose the flashy fireworks is what captured people’s attention in Tesla’s time just as it did mine all those years ago. We can hardly blame them, fireworks is news, motors and transformers are not.
The Tesla Coil is still there and still gets demonstrated hourly while the observatory is open to the public.
30
Perhaps the handiest (little pun there) thing for electrically trained people was first thought up by an English Electrical Engineer, John Fleming.
His two rules are the basis for electrical training.
Fleming’s Right Hand Rule – For Generators.
Fleming’s Left Hand Rule – For Motors. (and that’s electrical motors)
Fleming also invented the thermionic valve. (Vacuum Tube)
It’s amazing how so many people from so long ago give us a life we now take for granted, and, umm, most of them are electrical engineers, who, incidentally rule the World!!!!!
(Nyuk nyuk nyuk!)
And thanks Roy. The real Tesla (umm, also an Electrical Engineer) is indeed someone we can also be thankful for.
Tony.
50
I started teaching this to our children but my wife stopped it, insisting that all I was doing was teaching them variations of rude finger gestures 🙂
10
Line from a Woody Allen movie: “Would you like to see my collection of obscene Italian hand gestures?” –from “What’s Up Tiger Lily?”
20
Tony, A wonderfully accurate and true statement
and I especially liked your comment
20
Hey Tony, what’s a vacuum tube? 😉
10
But seriously, for something that made both radio and TV possible, not to mention everything electronic, there’s hardly a trace of them left these days — gone literally with the wind. They’re the Dodo Bird of the electronic world.
How many of our children, if shown a vacuum tube, would even know what to call it?
During the last 19 years of my career before retiring I worked for a company that, among their several other products, sold and serviced a high power, high frequency RF amplifier that depended on a very specialized vacuum tube. And that’s the only tube I’ve seen since some time in the late 1960s. The actual amplifier design dated from the ’60s but was still in some demand in the 21st century.
When I started to work on my first job as a computer operator in 1967 the company still had an all vacuum tube computer, actually two of them, one live and the other on hot standby with a technician going through it testing the tubes. The thing required more power than a small city and more air conditioning to cool it than I’d want to pay for. It was housed in a large three story concrete building. These days an equivalent computer is called a PC and you can pick it up and walk away with it.
20
If it makes you feel better, tubes are still very popular in amplifiers for guitars and such.
10
Not that it makes me happy or unhappy but tubes are also still popular in some of the high end audio amplifiers coveted by audiophiles (I mean really expensive stuff). Those things are also beginning to disappear as home theater takes over the world — all integrated circuits except for the final audio stages where you’ll find some big transistors mounted on a heat sink. We old guys have trouble recognizing the rest of it.
Personally I wouldn’t trade the reliability of transistors for tubes even if the tubes didn’t use so much power just to heat the cathode. I really don’t miss them except that I think a little of our electronic history is probably being lost.
When about 10 years ago we began the design of a new product at work, the joke was that it would have a pair of what we all new were rather large tubes mounted on the top. I can’t remember the type now but everyone recognized them as large power amplifier pentodes. If you’ve a suggestion I may recognize what was proposed.
00
“Personally I wouldn’t trade the reliability of transistors for tubes”
I know what you mean 🙁 🙁
My old rebuilt Dynaco MkIVs were gorgeous to listen to .. when that were working.
About a year ago I finally gave up trying to keep them running, and bought a Dayton tri-path to drive the mids and top end. Its rather nice for its price, I must say, 🙂
00
Very sensitive things these valves, superheterodynes were really top range during ww11, for radar etc. Strange fact they were so sensitive that during the manufacturing process if a menstrating woman touched them they would not work. Strange but true.
00
“climate fiction” is an appropriate name for the genre!
6 Mar: ABC America: AP: Wilson Ring: Schools Add ‘Cli-Fi’ – Climate Fiction – to Lit Curriculums
“It’s a very, very energized time for this where people in literature have just as much to say as people who are in hard science fields, or technology and design fields, or various social-science approaches to these things,” said Jennifer Wicke, an English professor at the University of Virginia who will be teaching a course this June on climate fiction at the Bread Loaf campus of Middlebury College in Ripton, Vermont…
Climate fiction, a term that emerged less than a decade ago, is now being discussed by academics across the nation and world. Next month, about three dozen academics are expected to attend a workshop in Germany called “Between Fact and Fiction: Climate Change Fiction,” hosted by the Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg Institute for Advanced Study in the northwestern city of Delmenhorst…
Retired Hampshire College Professor Charlene D’Avanzo, a marine scientist who spends her summers in Yarmouth, Maine, is about to publish her first novel, “Cold Blood, Hot Sea,” the first of a three-volume series of what she describes as “cli-fi eco-lit novel and amateur sleuth mystery novels” sparked by what she sees as the harassment of scientists studying climate change…
http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory/schools-add-cli-fi-climate-fiction-lit-curriculums-37441504
11
A celebration of ignorance.
20
can’t recall this being posted here:
2 Mar: AFR: Electric shock: SA business fears being stuck with high costs for years
by Ben Potter with Simon Evans
Steven Mouzakis got a shock last year when he negotiated a new electricity supply deal for Brickwork’s Austral brick factory at Golden Grove, South Australia for 2016.
“The energy price increased by 90 per cent,” Mr Mouzakis, the company’s Sydney-based national energy and sustainability manager, said. “How can we operate a business with energy costs increasing at 90 per cent?”…
Prices for electricity in 2017 and 2018 are $80 to $90 per megawatt hour, which is twice the price in Victoria. South Australian business groups fear they will be stuck with high prices for years after the meeting heard there were no short-term fixes for the squeeze…
Supply of conventional baseload power in South Australia is tightening as wind power subsidised under the Renewable Energy Target policy is offered to the local market for very low – sometimes negative – prices.
This is driving some coal and gas generators out, leaving the state heavily dependant when the wind drops on a couple of gas turbines and a high voltage link to Victoria’s brown power stations – and vulnerable to spot market spikes.
“We have been the state that has taken on more of the Renewable Energy Target burden than any other state and that’s coming back to bite us,” Mr McKenna said…READ ON
http://www.afr.com/business/energy/electric-shock-sa-business-fears-being-stuck-with-high-costs-for-years-20160223-gn1c7w
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4 Mar: Toronto Star: Jim Coyle: Tribunal upholds appeal against Prince Edward County wind-turbine project
How endangered Little Brown Bats and Blanding’s Turtles stalled another wind-turbine project in Prince Edward County.
Blessed are the small and humble, for they, it seems, shall halt wind turbines.
In the latest instalment of the epic machine vs. nature struggle being played out in Prince Edward County, environmental activists have scored another victory against construction of wind turbines they say will do serious and irreversible harm to already endangered species…
Last July 16, the Ontario Environment Ministry issued an approval to White Pines Wind Inc. to install and operate a facility of 27 turbines on the pristine south shore of what locals call the County…
The tribunal dismissed appeals on the grounds of human health risks. It also rejected appeals on the threat to birds, although it did call the project site “poorly chosen from a migratory bird perspective.” …
The developer now has a chance to propose ways to mitigate the risks outlined by the tribunal. “That’s what we’re preparing for now,” Hirsch said…
“In Prince Edward County, everybody gets together on these issues,” Hirsch said. “Volunteerism is a remarkable thing here.
“Ms. (Kathleen) Wynne should understand that we’re never going to have wind turbines in Prince Edward County.”
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2016/02/29/tribunal-upholds-appeal-against-prince-edward-county-wind-turbine-project.html
20 Jan: Kingston Whig-Standard: Elliot Ferguson: Township mayor ‘dumbfounded’ by police turbine fees
Recent changes to how the Ontario Provincial Police bill municipalities for service could have a major impact on rural townships that are home to wind turbines.
More than six years after the turbines on Wolfe Island became operational, Frontenac Islands Township council was surprised in December when it received a bill for policing from the Leeds County OPP.
“They charge us the same in this new policing formula for a wind tower as they do for a house,” Mayor Denis Doyle said. “It costs us a lot of money.”
Frontenac Islands Township pays an average of about $300 per household for policing, meaning new policing fees for the wind turbines properties added almost $26,000 to the township’s policing bill for 2016…
A few rural townships also face the prospect of having industrial wind energy projects built in their townships, whether welcome or not.
A spokesperson for the OPP Corporate Communications in Orillia said the cost for policing wind turbines is being looked at by the provincial government…
Last summer, North Frontenac declined to support a project that could see as many as 52 wind turbines built in the township as part of a proposed development that is part of Ontario’s push to expand the amount of renewable energy being produced in the province. If approved, the 52 turbines would add about $15,600 to the township’s policing costs…
http://www.thewhig.com/2016/01/20/township-mayor-dumbfounded-by-police-turbine-fees
00
5 Mar: TamworthHeraldUK: ‘Monstrous turbines will ruin our village’ claim Edingale people
OUTRAGED residents are calling on planning chiefs to turn down proposals to build two wind turbines in Edingale, which they say will “ruin their lives.”
Villagers have expressed their anger over the plans which they believe will blot the landscape and damage the character of the village.
They are now urging members of South Derbyshire District Council’s planning committee, who will discuss the proposals, to throw out the plans to protect their village…
***”Villagers are not only concerned about the present time but what happens when wind turbines go out of date.
“Villagers are at a loss as to why anyone would want to erect such monstrosities in an area of natural beauty.”…
Margaret Jones, clerk at Edingale Parish Council: “This application came up in summer last year and back then, the council rejected the proposals due to the high volume of complaints from residents…
“We will wait and see what happens on Monday, but I would imagine that the councillors will follow how the residents feel and I think they will stick to what they said last year.”…
http://www.tamworthherald.co.uk/Monstrous-turbines-ruin-village/story-28847592-detail/story.html
20
3 Mar: Bloomberg: Jessica Shankleman: Wind Farms Now Come With the Threat of Jail
One of Europe’s most promising markets for renewable energy is being threatened by legislation that would impose new fees and potential jail terms for operators of wind farms, an industry lobby group said.
Poland’s governing Law and Justice Party is proposing laws that would require new turbines to be situated away from homes, schools and natural reserves at a distance of more than 10-times their height. That would be about 1.5 kilometers (0.9 miles), according to data compiled by Bloomberg New Energy Finance. The law also would subject existing wind farms to audits every two years.
The law would raise annual wind farm costs by as much as 150 million zloty ($37.6 million) even if no more turbines were built, according to the draft legislation. While the government is attempting to clamp down on rising electricity bills and empower communities concerned about the installations, the wind industry says the rules would choke off development and eliminate a clean source of electricity…
Concerning for the wind lobby group are rules embedded in the legislation that would require wind farm owners to pay fees for operating plants and sign up for a new permit every two years. Those who fail to comply might face prison sentences, and the rules would be applied retroactively to existing plants, said Joy…
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-03/jail-and-new-fees-threaten-key-european-market-for-wind-turbines
10
Bloomberg doesn’t mention Abengoa!
3 Mar: Bloomberg: Vanessa Dezem: Brazil’s Clean-Energy Boom Running Out of Steam
Brazil’s renewable energy industry is poised for a setback this year as the slumping economy dries up credit, curbs power demand and threatens new transmission lines needed to connect projects to the grid…
Another challenge is new transmission, which is needed to connect clean power projects to the grid. About 220 power-line projects were behind schedule as of December, about 60 percent of the total capacity under development, according to a document from Brazil’s energy regulator Aneel. Difficulties getting environmental licenses caused the most delays, according to the document.
“There is no way to grow power generation without transmission lines on time,” Girao said…
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-03/brazil-s-clean-energy-boom-running-out-of-steam
10
6 Mar: Herald Scotland: Victoria Weldon: Temperatures predicted to plummet over Easter
Met Office statistics show an average of 756mm of rain fell across the country during December, January and February – the highest on records stretching back to 1910.
And now Easter is predicted to see temperatures drop to record lows – beating the -12.5C seen in the Scottish Highlands in 2013.
Bookmakers Ladbrokes have cut their odds to make it odds-on for the coldest Easter ever, with odds of 1/5 on snow falling over the four day holiday weekend.
Ladbrokes spokeswoman Jessica Bridge said: “The odds are falling as quick as the snow, and it looks like Easter Egg hunts will be replaced by snowball fights.”…
Ladbrokes is also offering odds of 5/6 for March to be named a record breaking month for low temperatures, while odds of 5/1 are being offered for a new low temperature to be reached this month.
This would need to see the mercury drop to below -22.8C, which was seen in Aberdeenshire in March in 1958.
http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/14325148.Temperatures_predicted_to_plummet_over_Easter/
6 Mar: UK Sun: Delivery driver stuck in flooded river as UK prepares for coldest EVER Easter
Polar blasts will send the mercury plummeting to -13ºC
And even though this week marks the beginning of meteorological spring, for most it has felt more like the start of winter…
(INCLUDES CUTE MET OFFICE TWEET) “With light winds and clear skies for many it will be very cold tonight, especially away from towns and cities.”
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/6981118/UK-braced-for-coldest-ever-Easter-as-temperatures-tipped-to-tunble-to-12C.html
21
Does anyone here know the history of Australian mains voltage power plugs and how the present design came into being?
00
No David.
I am aware that in the early 1930’s there was a belief by some that Australia would move to 40 cycle (same as Yanks).
Two such stations were built. One in Broken Hill and one in Boulder for the mining companies. Both of these were substantial diesel stations.
20
The USA is 110V 60 Herz .
There were various differences in the early days. WA picked up (cheap) a 20 Herz station originally intended for Moscow.
From Wikipedia so take it with a grain of salt.
While in 1937 there was no “Standards Australia” in existence, it was then that the design was adopted as a result of a “Gentlemen’s Agreement” between manufacturers Fred Cook of Ring-Grip, Geoffrey Gerard of Gerard Industries and Brian Harper Miller of the State Electricity Commission of Victoria (SECV).[13]
The design was based on an American plug and socket-outlet intended for use at 120 V which was patented in 1916 under US patent 1,179,728. Australian plugs will fit these obsolete American outlets perfectly. (While this socket-outlet never became a NEMA standard design, the 50 A NEMA 10-50R, has a similar pin configuration in a larger form.) Argentina, Uruguay and China based their plugs and sockets on the same design. New Zealand, Fiji and other Pacific islands, also adopted the Australian design, since Australian equipment and many electrical appliances were exported to that country.
30
Didn’t know the plug was based on a US design. You can see an image from
That patent here.
http://www.google.com/patents/US1179728
Why did the US drop that design?
20
David,
From the diagram it looks like a receptacle designed to be screwed into a light bulb socket and provided a way to plug in various appliances that couldn’t be screwed into the light bulb socket directly. In the early days, electricity was used only for lighting (there were no electric appliances) and the bulb socket standard was already well defined when electric appliances came along. But not all homes were wired with wall outlets to run the new electric gadgets. So what you’re looking at looks like an adapter for the case of no handy wall outlet.
I suspect that once separate outlets for plugging in whatever you wanted became standard, the design in question had no more purpose and disappeared. The current plug and outlet design is something I don’t know the origin of or the reason for most of it. But you can probably find something if you’re interested, which I am not.
I should also note, that here in the states we started off at 50 Hz, not 60. I’m not certain when the change to 60 happened or why it was done but I know it happened because my father had a synchronous alarm clock running on 50 Hz and he told the story of how he had to have it converted to 60 Hz by having a new motor installed in it. Those were the days when things were not “throwaway cheap” and the manufacturers actually supported their products, even such an inexpensive thing as an alarm clock. That clock was so durable that my father still had it running to the day he died.
20
You wanna know what gets my goat?
I’ll tell you what gets my goat.
Builders and electricians who install bayonet sockets for a horizontal bulb mount.
IT DOESN’T HOLD THE BULB LEVEL.
So the bulb droops and rests on the inside of the light fixture and makes the light source sharper and less diffuse, contrary to the purpose of the diffuser.
It’s inherent in the socket design that the bulb has to be pushed into the socket to unlock the bayonet and begin turning it, so the top of the cuff of the socket cannot be flush with the bulb, so cannot support it.
I don’t care if it is a few extra turns of the wrist, Edison screw is the way to go every time.
Except maybe in high vibration environments, like ships, where the bayonet is probably better, but then they don’t have artistic needs for low-profile lampshades in high-vibration environments.
Maybe I should invent a better light bulb socket, one which combines the vibration resistance of Bayonet with the stability of the Edison Screw? Better than most get-rich-quick schemes I’ve heard.
10
There is some interesting detail about frequencies employed around the world in this article.
Note that the British began to establish a standard of 50 Hz as early as 1904.
The most notable difference between North American GPO’s (General Purpose Outlet) and the power points specified in AS/NZS 3000 is that the higher voltage Aussie power points have a switch. Presumably the switch is provided because at 240VAC a substantial arc is created when a 10 amp load is “unplugged”.
10
Off all topics here.
Talking to an Argentinian friend on Sunday I asked, “How’s things going in Argentina?
He replied ‘You know a man was shot at 6 AM this morning leaving a night club’. ‘The official inflation rate is 30%’.
I asked ‘How do you know this, was it on SBS?
Shaking his head he intoned ‘Oh no we watch the local news on the net’.
We of English background think SBS is supplying local language to the poor esl speakers with poor receptive English language.
Not so, they don’t need SBS anymore.
They are better informed than we are and just switch SBS off.
Pity that SBS is one of the few stations I watch.
It has, however, lost it’s raison d’etre.
The new equation and Model {NBN plus NET> SBS in all overseas local language applications}.
50
Yep, SBS has reached its ‘use by’ date and should be given the opportunity to get off the government tit and embrace the free enterprise model. At the moment only 20% of cash inflow comes from advertising.
The Bridge is outstanding.
40
As is The Vikings series
10
Again from [snip] David Fullers daily market report.
[FIN, It’s better if you substantiate what you’ve reported with a link or two to the sources. But I see no reason to not approve this and let readers agree or disagree with your conclusions.] AZ
01
Posssibly, but they have a long long way to go. Why don’t the Kuwatis and the Omanis use the energy from their own oil to pump the oil? That seems a lot more sensible to me. We will have to wait and see if Glass Point stacks up economically. Do you have any forecasts?
00
Since Tesla was provided with some pretty substantial subsidies/tax concessions by the Nevada government based on the jobs being generated by the factory’s construction and operation, I wonder if they will take Tesla to court for breach of contract?
http://www.afr.com/technology/100-workers-walk-out-at-tesla-battery-plant-building-site-20160301-gn7xgq
50
So look, I know I’ve mentioned this before, but every time I mention it, it surprises people.
These pledges to reduce CO2 emissions, no matter whatever those percentages are.
Because the average person has been so conditioned, they now believe the ….. ONLY real target is coal fired power in the main.
As soon as I mention that it’s across the board for all CO2 emissions from every source and that the transportation sector (the second largest source of CO2 emissions at 32% of the total) is also one of the major targets, and that means all forms of transportation, even the family car, then I get surprised looks, usually followed by, “Hey, I never thought of that!”
The Friends Of The Dirt, sorry, greens supporters have their answer though when they confidently say flat out that we’ll all be running battery cars by then anyway, so that problem is solved, eh!The U.S. plans a 28% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2025, so that means one in three to four cars off the road by that time.
So then, how’s that little car replacement exercise going then, now that there’s a considerable ramping up of electric cars?
Well, they actually sold 116,099 electric vehicles last year. (2015)
Not bad. Seems to be a lot of them eh!
Total new car sales in the U.S. for that same year came in at 17,500,00.
So battery vehicles accounted for
Zero0.66% of new car sales, less than one percent.It all augers well for reaching that target then, eh!
Yeah! Good luck with that.
Then there’s SUV’s Utilities, small trucks, large trucks, big rigs, boats, ships, planes, etcetera.
I think there’s some electric plane stuck in a hangar somewhere in Hawaii though. That might help!
Tony.
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Tony
Don’t overlook that pickup market. Not sure where things are now but
Around the mid 1970’s the US vehicle market shook out at
GM cars 1
Ford Cars 2
Ford pickups 3
And US Consumer Reports (was there at the time) on vehicles had a rating of
Open circle = average
Half black worse, all black much worse
Half green better, all green much better.
For the (AIRC) 1975 year the only two with nothing but green were Porsche 911 and Ford pickups.
By my readings of the US machinery blogs the EPA imposed “improvements” have dented all of these
10
ANd don’t ask about what has happened to the heavy truck sector – for one Cat trucks ain’t
10
keeping a CAGW meme alive. Fairfax is already jumping on this:
7 Mar: Financial Times: China carbon dioxide emissions may be falling, says LSE study
by Yuan Yang in Hong Kong
China’s carbon dioxide emissions are likely to peak by 2025 — and may even have done so already — according to a new paper that suggests the country’s economic slowdown and transition, combined with rapid adoption of renewable energy, mean previous projections of China’s emissions are far too pessimistic.
“The major problem with current models of China’s emissions is that most of them do not pay attention to change in the structure and growth of China’s economic output,” said Fergus Green of the London School of Economics’ Grantham Research Institute, co-author with Lord Stern of the LSE paper to be published this week in the journal Climate Policy…
The new study assumes that even under a “high-growth scenario”, annual economic growth will be just 6 per cent for the coming decade — compared with an average of more than 10 per cent in the first decade of this century…
At the same time, China’s energy will increasingly come from non-fossil sources, the report says…
This means coal could be squeezed out faster if total energy consumption is lower than expected…
Provincial governments may be tempted by the short-term growth boons of building new coal plants. Coal plant building accelerated in 2014-15 “despite already enormous amounts of excess capacity”, says the report…
***Many climate change researchers believe China’s emissions are already far lower than official estimates…
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/446b9636-e354-11e5-a09b-1f8b0d268c39.html
***or, as is more likely, much higher than official estimates?
yet, despite a much lower growth rate and a much higher renewable energy input, it’s reported:
6 Mar: TheOlivePress Spain: Joe Duggan: Carbon emissions increase faster in Spain than anywhere else in Europe
CO2 emissions rose by 4% last year in Spain with a 23% increase in the use of electricity to blame, according to the Observatory of Sustainability.
Emissions from vehicles also grew by 3.4% in 2015 according to the report.
Chief investigator Jose Santamarta has slammed the European CO2 trading market designed to cut carbon emissions, claiming current prices per tonne of CO2 emitted are too low to be prohibitive…
http://www.theolivepress.es/spain-news/2016/03/06/carbon-emissions-increase-faster-in-spain-than-anywhere-else-in-europe/
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AFP tells it like it is:
5 Mar: Phys.org: AFP: China emissions goals less ambitious than 2015 cuts: plan
China on Saturday set less ambitious climate change goals for this year than it achieved in 2015, as the world’s biggest polluter struggles to wean itself off harmful fossil fuels.
Beijing has said its emissions of the greenhouse gases that cause climate change will carry on rising until “around 2030″…
It frequently prefers to point instead to its achievements in energy intensity—the amount of power used per unit of GDP—which it has repeatedly reduced in recent years.
Last year it cut it by “at least 5.6 percent”, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the country’s top planning body, said in a report to the National People’s Congress, the country’s Communist-controlled parliament.
But the document set a goal of only a 3.4 percent cut this year.
Similarly, carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP went down “at least six percent”, the NDRC said, but the 2016 target was set at 3.9 percent.
Other pollutants also had weaker targets for this year than had been achieved in 2015…
Earlier this week, China reported that its coal consumption had fallen for the second year in a row, with coal use dropping 3.7 percent compared to 2014 levels.
Yet there are widespread doubts over the accuracy of official statistics in China, which critics say can be subject to political manipulation.
It emerged in November that China had been under-reporting its coal consumption for years, prompting a revision of official data that shot the figure for 2012 alone up 17 percent, or 600 million tonnes…
http://phys.org/news/2016-03-china-emissions-goals-ambitious.html
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stop shutting down coal…
7 Mar: Bloomberg: Francois De Beaupuy: EDF CFO Said to Resign Over U.K. Hinkley Point Disagreement
Electricite de France SA’s Chief Financial Officer Thomas Piquemal quit last week after disagreeing with Chief Executive Officer Jean-Bernard Levy on the timing of a plan to build new nuclear reactors at Hinkley Point in the U.K., people with knowledge of the matter said.
Piquemal resigned after expressing concern that a final investment decision on the project could be announced as early as April, a move he said might jeopardize EDF’s financial situation, the people said, asking not to be identified because the discussions were private. It wasn’t clear whether the board accepted his offer to step down…
EDF shares dropped as much as 9.6 percent in Paris trading, the biggest drop since 2014.
Going ahead with new atomic plants in the U.K. would strain the balance sheet at a time when electricity prices have plunged in Europe, reducing cash flow just as EDF needs to fund billions of euros of maintenance at its French reactor fleet…
The internal disagreements add to doubts about the timing of Hinkley Point, originally planned for completion in 2017 and now unlikely to be built until at least 2025…
EDF shares, 85 percent of which are owned by the French state, sank to a record low on Feb. 25 and have lost almost 90 percent of their value since peaking in 2007. Standard & Poor’s has threatened to downgrade the company’s credit rating if the U.K. project, which has been planned for more than eight years, goes ahead…
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-06/edf-cfo-said-to-resign-over-u-k-hinkley-point-disagreement
5 minutes ago:
7 Mar: BBC: EDF finance chief quits over Hinkley Point nuclear plant
EDF has confirmed that its finance director has quit over at the French energy giant’s plan to build the UK’s first new nuclear power plant in decades…
Last month, the director of the £18bn Hinkley Point C project in Somerset, Chris Bakken, said he was leaving to pursue other opportunities…
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-35741772
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7 Mar: Guardian: Terry Macalister: Hinkley Point nuclear project in crisis as EDF finance director resigns
A new plant at Hinkley, in Somerset, is desperately needed and has been heavily promoted by the chancellor, George Osborne, and other ministers as a key part of keeping the lights on in Britain.
But EDF has been hit by a series of problems that have led many – even in the City of London – to conclude that the new nuclear plant project is on the verge of collapse…
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/mar/07/hinkley-point-c-nuclear-project-in-crisis-as-edf-finance-director-resigns
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Unthreaded of course …
There’s quite a bit of waffle-talk about on negative interest rates (NIR)and declaring cash illegal – mainly in the EU and USA. The vague purpose is to relieve various Govts of debt somehow, as printing money (quantitative easing) hasn’t worked, nor have low to zero interest rates. Banning cash is apparently meant to prevent enraged citizenry from withdrawing their savigs
Bursts of NIR have been seen on and off in Switzerland and other European countries as well as Japan (currently doing this). It basically means that the bank charges you to deposit your savings and further charges you to keep it there. For how long ? …
Is there anyone reading this who may make sensible comment on this ? I think it’s absolutely appalling, criminal – but during what we call Glasnost in Russia (which lead to the Berlin wall coming down etc), I know that overnight without warning the Russian Govt devalued by 1000% to avoid defaulting on offshore loans. This had the calamitous effect of destroying individual savings: one went to bed at night with $10,000 in deposit and woke up with $10
Are our Govts capable of this brutality ? I confess I’m unsure
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I’ve never heard of Russian-style overnight devaluation being planned.
I have heard of bail-ins for insolvent banks being planned to re-appropriate any amount above A$250,000.
Start here http://barnabyisright.com/2013/07/10/australia-plans-cyprus-style-bail-in-of-banks-in-2013-14-budget/
That’s not the same thing as a blanket devaluation, but technically it’s only ever one software update away.
If you look further on that site you’ll find that the RBA prefers people to never know that their bank is insolvent so they don’t ever try to make a run on the bank anyway. Keep it on the down-low. Much smoother that way, y’know.
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Thanks for the link
It seems that there are a number of methods of “using” other peoples’ deposits without the irritating need to ask them first
One of the supposed bulwarks of democracy is the inviolability of private property. Simply not believable …
Mark Twain’s comment that “no man’s property is safe while the legislature sits” is still apposite
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Jo and Tony Oz
An Eureka moment!
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2016/3/7/stupidity-signalling.html
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The Chinese want to buy Kidman (the combined property is bigger than Ireland) but Australians are crowdfunding to keep it.
Living in the 21st century is very exciting.
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Jupiter is highly visible tonight.
http://www.aww.com.au/latest-news/you-can-see-jupiter-tonight-25882
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Yes Jupiter is highly visible tonight. But if you miss because of cloud or other reasons do not despair. It will be highly visible in the night sky for several months to come.
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The decision of CSIRO to end climatology support is great news for me.
What are the chances of it being implemented?
I am asking as a US scientist, who does not know the Australian system, but who hopes that the same would happen here.
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