Don’t underestimate the Brexit effect. The landscape is shifting.
The Paris agreement just became less likely. The UK Dept of the environment will submerge, and Boris Johnson, the outspoken skeptic and Brexit figurehead, has been promoted to foreign minister.
James Delingpole says: Britain’s New Prime Minister Drives A Stake Through The Heart Of The Green Vampire
Britain no longer has“the greenest government ever.” This is good news. Very good news. The agonised screeching of all the usual suspects in the Environmental movement will be enough to sustain many of us in lols for weeks and months to come.
Five years ago, could we imagine an “infamous climate denier” like Boris rewarded in any Western Government? There were closet skeptics in the cabinet, but that’s not the same. In Australia, Tony Abbott once said climate change was “crap” and somehow still managed to become PM, but once he was, his official line was the permitted global warming story. ( He pandered, but in the most sensible possible way. And because he did not flagrantly add to the climate slush fund they still called him a “denier” but he rarely said anything openly skeptical.).
To have Boris in such an influential position is new ground. No more pandering.
He is unapologetically, absolutely a skeptic: Here’s Boris in 2013 explaining why Brits were installing swimming pools:
For more than 20 years now, we have been told that this country was going to get hotter and hotter…
That’s what they said: the BBC, and all the respectable meteorologists
They [home owners with pools] thought they were doing the sensible thing and getting ready for a Californian lifestyle – and they were fools! Fools who believed that the global warming soothsayers really meant what they said or that they had a clue what the weather would be in the next 10 years.
A lot of fence sitters have just been offered a ladder on the skeptic side of the fence. This makes it so much easier for people to “come out”.
The UK Dept of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) will be folded
Yesterday the GWPF said Let’s scrap DECC. Today it’s happening.“The UK’s Energy and Climate Change department is to be merged with the business department, according to people who have been briefed on the plans.”
Business will get control over energy and climate policy. Greens will cry. The Business portfolio has other agendas. It’s existence does not depend on whether we can change the weather.
What about Theresa May?
I confess to being skeptical. (Boris for PM!) How could any sensible person campaign for Remain? But not only has May appointed Boris, but her right hand man on UK Steel and climate policy type stuff has called the Climate Change Act a “unilateral and monstrous act of self-harm”. Furthermore, Paul Matthews looked at her voting record in detail and suspects she may be a quiet climate policy skeptic.
James Forsyth in the Spectator, says May is serious about Brexit:
Theresa May has shown real intent. She has demonstrated that she really is serious about this. She has appointed three leavers to the key Brexit-related jobs in government. David Davis will be Secretary of State for exiting the EU, Liam Fox gets the International Trade job and Boris Johnson the Foreign Office.
The David Davis appointment is particularly striking. He resigned, unexpectedly, from David Cameron’s shadow Cabinet. Putting him in charge of these negotiations, shows Tory MPs that May isn’t interested in any backsliding on the referendum result for everyone thinks that Davis would walk if she attempted that.
The rise of the skeptics
The nice thing about Brexit (apart from sticking it to Big-Gov) is that it is a decisive win for skeptics, and in so many ways.
Conservative pollster Lord Michael Ashcroft surveyed 12,369 Brits voting in Thursday’s referendum and found 69 percent of those who voted to leave the EU saw the “green movement” as a “force for ill.” Some 62 percent of those voting to stay saw environmentalists as a “force for good.”
Keep track of the British transformation at the GWPF.
h/t Bulldust, Pat.
David Davis campaigned for withdrawal from the EU in last month’s referendum:
13 Jul: Financial Times: Kate Allen: Eurosceptic David Davis in key Brexit role
David Davis, the man who has been charged by Theresa May with the task of steering Britain out of the European Union, is one of parliament’s longest-standing Eurosceptics…
Mr Davis comes from a working-class background, having been brought up by a single mother and his grandparents in Yorkshire and then south London. A grammar schoolboy, on leaving school he worked as an insurance clerk and joined the Territorial Army.
He later studied molecular science and computer studies at Warwick University, before going to the London Business School and Harvard…
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/b5b15e30-4933-11e6-b387-64ab0a67014c.html
2 Dec 2009: BBC: David Davis warns against climate change ‘hair shirt’
Green campaigners must end a “ferocious determination to impose hair-shirt policies” to fight global warming, senior Tory MP David Davis has warned.
The former shadow home secretary criticised higher taxes on flights and the building of wind farms which “look like props from War of the Worlds”.
There must be a “middle way”, including more use of nuclear power, Mr Davis wrote in the Independent.
The comments come ahead of the UN Copenhagen climate change summit…
Mr Davis said previous climate summits, at Rio de Janeiro in 1992 and Kyoto in 1997, had both promised greater cuts, adding: “Neither happened.”
He said evidence suggested the earth was cooling, not warming, and that recently leaked e-mails had shown leading scientists “conspiring to rig the figures to support their theories”…
“So it is unsurprising that more than half the public no longer believe in global warming.”
Mr Davis also said: “The UK’s environmental policy has a long-term price tag of about £55bn, before taking into account the impact on economic growth.
“The fixation of the green movement with setting ever tougher targets is a policy destined to collapse.
“The ferocious determination to impose hair-shirt policies on the public – taxes on holiday flights, or covering our beautiful countryside with wind turbines that look like props from War of the Worlds – would cause a reaction in any democratic country.
“This adverse reaction will be reinforced if, as predicted, we suffer power shortages in the next decade.
“Lights going out around Britain could be an electoral off-switch for environmental policy. This will happen at the same time as fuel bills rise by 30%.”…
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8390260.stm
[Moved this comment and the one below from another thread – Jo]
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more on the new Brexit Czar:
Feb 2010: Guardian: Mark Lynas: True climate sceptics must stop the war on science
David Davis and fellow honourable sceptics of climate change should distance themselves from the extremists and put forward their own proposals for mitigation
Believe it or not, I’ve always had a soft spot for climate sceptics. Not the obsessive trolls who patrol the blogosphere, nor unpleasant, twisted extremists like the Telegraph’s James Delingpole, but genuine, independent-minded sceptics, people who like to think for themselves and reach their own conclusions…
Also in the honourable sceptic tradition I would place David Davis, former shadow home secretary and one of my opponents in an Intelligence Squared climate change debate on Sunday evening held at Wellington College. Davis seems to me to personify some of the best qualities of true conservatism, as his principled resignation over the 42 days issue and continuing work against the erosion of liberties in this country attests.
In his speech to the debating hall, Davis traced the roots of his scepticism to a radio interview where a green campaigner declared the scientific debate “over” and demanded government action. True to form, Davis saw environmentalist attempts to close down the debate as an assault on freedom of speech, a politically motivated assault which – following the hacked emails from the University of East Anglia – he now suspects scientists of participating in.
I think Davis is wrong on this, particularly on the hacked email issue, but more interesting is the fact that, through his objection to the environmentalist position, climate scepticism felt to him like the most natural position to take given his libertarian political views…
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/cif-green/2010/feb/23/true-climate-sceptics
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Was just reading this on WUWT..
GREAT NEWS for the UK, to be sure 🙂
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No doubt the forces of evil that worked to remove PM Tony Abbott will be plotting and planning against the new UK PM too.
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Bloody poms have all the luck!! …… mind you we were very lucky Labour didn’t get a chance to gift us with 50% renewables!! 🙂
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Finally some of the dastardly work of Maurice Strong is starting to unravel. I hasten to add, it’s early days and I expect a long turn around time.
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I cannot resist tooting my own horn. A rare act, by the way. I have predicted in the last year on Jo’s site, WUWT, No Tricks and Bishop Hill that the crash of AGW was coming soon. I will now predict that now that the collapse has started it will accelerate into an avalanche. As long as it buries only those who fabricated this scam I don’t care a whit how bad it gets. In a year or less many, many people will be wondering privately if not publically: How did I get taken in by THAT NONSENSE. The heroes of this are Jo, Anthony, any many other courageous bloggers and scientists. And those, tooting again, who like me have commented and in many ways however small have supported the skeptics.
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Drat! Any=and. And I proofread. Guess I need to see my eye veterinarian.
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Stan. Predicting what people might be thinking privately (in a year or less), is a big call! But very hard to prove. Anything else you have that requires a horn?
My tip. These blogs will go on. The science will continue regardless.
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Andy, great news indeed. Seems the UK is pulling away from its own radical left as well as the EU.
In two days less than four months, America is likely to elect Donald Trump. Then the 1st and the 5th largest economies will work together in moving freedom and free economies ahead.
Warmistas of the left should be revising their resumes and trying to work their way into the expanding economies. I hope those in the UK and USA governments have long memories and remember the leftists’ fascist agendas.
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The French and German elections during the next 9 months or so are going to be very interesting. There is strong growth in euroscepticism throughout Europe and particularly in France – and that will have been fuelled further by the awful terrorist atrocity in Nice yesterday.
Merkel has a dreadful rating as she is (rightly) blamed for the mass influx of migrants into Germany and the consequential increase in sex attacks – which police have tried to keep hidden.
My gut feeling is that Trump will be elected in the USA and I wait to see what happens in the next week or so as Greece is due to pay billions back (to Germany) and it doesn’t look as it if is able to.
In the meantime unemployment among young people in the marxist-socialist-‘green blob’ controlled EU empire gets no better with around 40%+ in Greece and 25% or thereabouts in Italy, Spain and Portugal. So many young lives and futures needlessly sacrificed on the the EU altar for no purpose other than the egos of the marxist-socialists dictating the path of the EU.
The euro totters along from crisis to crisis, European banks except in the UK are largely bust and economies apart from Germany seem to continue to decline, falling behind the rest of the world.
The times they are a changing – or about to change, and I think, quite radically.
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This isn’t too bad either 🙂
http://dailycaller.com/2016/07/10/germany-votes-to-abandon-most-green-energy-subsidies/#ixzz4EPHQGAW1
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Even now many are , understandably, unable to come to terms with the enormity of the event that has occurred. The point is, a referendum is not an opinion poll, it is a request for a decision on a divisive subject. Well, they got one and, although not the answer wanted, the Conservatives have been quick to grasp the direction of drift. The European Union has been an abscess in the body politic of the Conservative Party for more than 30 years. It cost them the 2010 General Election, the UKIP vote denying them a majority and forcing an alliance with the green Liberal Democrats whose price was
to impliment the insane Climate Change Act (2008) and uphold the Lisbon treaty (ratified 2009) the two most destructive acts of the Blair/Brown government. Both are now heading for the circular filing cabinet as the incoming regime is well aware of;
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2016/07/09/uk-relies-on-emergency-measures-to-avert-winter-blackouts/
and also;
http://notrickszone.com/2016/07/12/folly-all-of-europes-wind-power-capacity-only-could-steadily-provide-enough-electricity-for-tiny-belgium/#sthash.eLZPgTp0.dpbs
Renewables are busted in the UK as is the European Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
For the Conservatives the chronic boil has now been lanced and the relief is palpably. Brexit will not be stalled or overturned. The people are waking up to the thrill (and horror) of freedom. The only problem is that for 40 years our body politic has not had to make any decisions or take any responsibility and must now relearn how to do it.
In passing, the relationship between the Tories and the European Union was best summed up by Scotland’s most eminent living poet William Connolly;
“Your the dog-end in my beer can
your the stone in my left shoe
when I think of great disasters
I’ll always think of you
Your the snowdrift on my motorway
The snake in my grass
But most of all baby
Your the pain in my ass”
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From the quoted graph of electricity production from the European wind turbines, it varies from 10 to 75 GW. Here in Australia it is a similar pattern, from about 300 to 2300 MW; roughly a ratio of 1 to 7 (from a capacity of 3669 MW).
We have yet to hear a valid explanation from the pundits as to how renewable energy is capable of maintaining a stable electricity grid unless there is very substantial thermal back-up generation capacity.
We are told by Minister Hunt at every opening ceremony of a government subsidised solar or wind farm that this will provide power for many thousand of houses, but there is never any mention about the 75% of the time when it will not be working.
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Not to get people’s hopes up, but the alarmista are taking a pounding at the moment. 🙂
http://notrickszone.com/2016/07/14/new-paper-lower-arctic-sea-level-rise-estimated-at-only-1-5-millimeters-per-year/#comments
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Meanwhile gone but not forgotten , the man responsible for Brexit Nigel Farage , is off to America to visit friends and attend the Republican convention at Cleveland , wonder if he will be stumping for Trump by criticising Obama and Clinton for pushing us to remain in the EU ; https://youtu.be/Fx4U34iBQhs
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All criticism is welcome.
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I note that today Obama wants a new trade deal with the UK
http://investorsfreshnews.com/2016/07/14/us-and-uk-in-early-talks-over-trade-deal/
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And we are at the end of the queue (unquote)
[We know that the nesting sometimes breaks down but are not sure why. So unfortunately you’ll have to grin and bear it. You can always direct a reply to someone by the comment number and include a quote so it’s clear to what comment you’re replying. This has been going on for some time without finding out exactly what does it.] AZ
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This has been going on for some time without finding out exactly what does it
The weight of all the attached red thumbs skews the comments, of course 🙂
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Actually, on this occasion I think Diogenese2 might have been quoting Obama’s threat that Britain would be put at the end of the queue for business with the USA.
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That was Obama’s threat before the EU Referendum.
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How prescient of the President.
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You are saying that he got things completely opposite to reality again aren’t you Rereke…
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Indeed, we are extremely grateful for his contribution to the debate, along with those of Merkel, Juncker, Hollande, schable and uncle Tom Conley and all. Without their timely intervention thousands or even millions would not have been inspired to get off their backsides and tick the boxes. thank you, thank you world leaders for the service you gave my nation.
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I thought it was Uncle Tom Cobbly or was that someone else? lol.
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G’day D, and AZ,
I had a reply misplaced a few days back, which I described in shorthand as “finger trouble”. Some detail may be useful:
I was using my iPad and Safari, had completed my reply but not “posted” it when I realised I had to rush to avoid being late for something else. So I just closed the cover.
Later I came back and resumed my session. But Safari reloads the content, does bring me back to where I was, but seemed to lose the information about the item to which I was replying and put me at the bottom.
I’m not in a rush now amd won’t remove myself from Safari, so expect this to get back as 7.2.2
Hope this helps,
Cheers,
Dave B
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Look like I miscalculated…
D
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“And we are at the end of the queue”
Diogenese was not referring to commenting here but to Obama’s pre-Brexit threat that if Brits exited the EU they would go “to the end of the queue”.
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Yes, that’s what I was trying to say Jo, only you’ve put it much better! 🙂
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I note that today Obama wants a new trade deal with the UK…
If we can just hang on until November, we should be able to avoid signing any US/UK deal which looks anything like President Obama’s appalling TTIP mess….
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I’m not very surprised at all that Obama changed his tune about future trade with the strongest allied nation that the U.S. has. I believe the U.K. should take the stance that negotiation out of the failed EU should be on their terms not the EU and the US should be the UK’s strongest supporter. Other members of the EU are going to follow the UK’s lead and will want to to leave the EU under their own terms and not under the terms of the failed EU.The house of cards has started to tumble in a chain reaction with the UK as the keystone just removed.
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Dave,I have ben a fan of Farage,since the formation of UKIP.If Mrs May turns out to be a dud,Ukip will kick their”A$$es”
Trumps speech in New York says it all.
“Come November, the American people will have a chance to issue a verdict on the politicians that have sacrificed their security, betrayed their prosperity, and sold out their country. They will have a chance to vote for a new agenda with big dreams, bold ideas and enormous possibilities for the American people. Hillary Clinton’s message is old and tired. Her message is that things can’t change. My message is that things have to change – and this is our one chance, and maybe our only chance, to do that change. If we don’t do it now, folks, I don’t know that we’ll ever, ever have another chance. We have to have change, but real change—not Obama change.”
Trump for President, Hillary for Prison – 2016
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FBI Director read the charge sheet. “No” prosecution. That may change after November. (Comments on YouTube)
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November is only the US election month (if there IS an election). A new Republican administration wouldn’t be able to indict Hillary until January 20, 2017, by which time Obama will have already either (a) declared martial law or (b) granted Hillary and her minions an executive pardon, or both.
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Jorge , Obama can’t pardon the Clintons for their ” wrong doings ^ with the Clinton foundation , as those offences were committed against individual states and foreign countries .
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I truely believe the chances of Obama successfully declaring martial law are slim to none and Obama knows it. More and more military leaders are criticizing his plans and the FBI is not happy with his administration. He has placed a target on all law enforcement. So tell me who is going to enforce his declaration of martial law?
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Help, I’m caught in moderation.
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Because of Section 18C we are forbidden to speak its name.
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Have you been able to read my comment? As an American I vaguely understand 18C, but if it means what I think you are implying no American would stand for it. Well, maybe leftists but they are not Americans. What I think you are implying makes me understand why Jo could not and can not post my comment. Disgusting, shame on you Aussies for allowing such nonsense to be the law.
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I keep an eye on American public affairs from here (Britain) and I don’t see you, in the US, very far away from the 18C situation, especially with a President who makes up new laws and an Attorney General who refuses to enforce the existing ones.
Your self-appointed media are shamelessly biased and fail to draw attention to the blatant abuses.
As for the state of American universities, is there any point in keeping them open, given their onslaught on freedom and truth?
Don’t imagine that I have any illusions about goings-on in British media and universities.
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Apparently, somebody in Penn State disagreed with my viewpoint.
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The SO CALLED “religion of PIECES”……..
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Madam Nova, I completely understand and don’t even feel snipped.
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The new man in charge of energy, Nick Timothy, had already written (when he was just Theresa May’s chief adviser) a hard-hitting attack on Britain’s Climate Change Act.
(April he wrote)“unilateral and monstrous act of self-harm – or rather, the act of harm inflicted upon industrial Britain by Parliament – that was the Climate Change Act.”
He has also voice the opinion that the UK needs to reappraise a more cost effective delivery of new Nuclear Power. He notes that currently the UK electricity supply is becoming more unreliable and the large generators are too old.
http://www.thegwpf.com/nick-timothy-theresa-mays-right-hand-man-on-uk-steel-crisis-unilateral-climate-policy/
and
http://www.breitbart.com/london/2016/07/14/britains-new-prime-minister-drives-a-stake-through-the-heart-of-the-green-vampire/
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Britain’s new foreign minister has insulted Obama, Clinton
. . .
What constitutes an insult to progressives, constitutes nail-on-the-head description to the rest of us.
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BoJo is a “journalist” at heart; expected to fill the column inches. He applies the same superficiality to everything. Remember that fictional journalist named James Hacker who became PM? Beware!
We should all have learnt by now that popularity does not equate to competence. Alexander has approximately zero understanding of how the UK is entangled with the EU and strongly resistant to education. One hopes that the civil servants at the Foreign Office have a better understanding, but after 40+years of dependence they’re just as likely of nor seeing how deeply the EU is entangled in the UK’s domestic and foreign affairs.
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So, if he (Boris The Great) were a ‘journo’ at heart, I doubt that the Progressive Left MSM would be pillorying him in quite the way they are at present. Surely there would be some instinctual recognition, yet their bile appears extraordinarily green. In NZ, the Progressive UN sycophantic MSM have wound-up their frenzied attack on a multiplicity of avenues in which the Rational Right are finding their voice again. Evident by their facile and loaded “commentaries,” for example, on the players in the US general election, the omission of the ‘M’ word in relation to terrorism, the anti-gun echo chamber, the farcical damning of Boris The Great in particular and Brexit in general, the unfettered adoration of Hilliar and Obanger, and their Progressive disdainful sneering contempt of democracy, they have become an Oscar winning parody of themselves. Meanwhile, while eco-globalist Prime Minister Key minces his way around Europe with his scantily clad Maori troupe in tow, the MSM in NZ are suggesting that the population of NZ (4.7M) whose land area is greater than the British Isles may be “too much.”
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Well the South Island of NZ is substantially under water for at least half the year. 😉
Back to Alexander; look at his performance record when he became Mayor of London and compare it to the signals that he was sending before being elected. London continued with business as usual (more green, more left, more depopulation of natives, …) while Boris’ performances distracted the public.
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Well if Bazza or Hillary feel insulted by Bad Boris then may they should just go call Ghostbusters, and see what that achieves.
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Equally importantly in the UK, David Davis has been appointed minister for ‘brexit’. From a close source, I know he’s a very sensible, principled, scientifically literate non-conformist politician (a rare thing) with a genuine pro civil liberties stance, and I believe (but may be wrong) a quiet sceptic too.
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It’s why I said in another post that merchant bankers don’t appear to make good PMs. Who in the world has really been driving the climate hysteria – merchant bankers.
I also note the very real difference between May and Turnbull; May appoints Johnson to cabinet, Turnbull flatly refuses to have anything to do with Abbott. Turnbull’s days are numbered.
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This is what the UK will be missing by leaving the EU
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/11747506/eu-diplomats-plan-fine-dining-service.html
Good socialist, eh?
I also understand that the EU bureaucrats are to visit Australasia (including Australia?) for trade talks soon. If these visit Australia and New Zealand please give them the reception they deserve!
and I had to laugh at this —
http://m.todayonline.com/world/look-whos-coming-dinner-date-johnson-has-eu-tizz
🙂
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Nothing but the best for the EU bureaucrats.
I suspect the bureaucrats also don’t have a sense of irony regarding Johnson coming to dinner.
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o/t
After racing to be the first “green’ state to close their only coal-fired power station, South Australia is ‘slapped upside the head’ with the reality stick …
“Renewable energy is being unfairly blamed for volatility in the energy market in South Australia, write Hugh Saddler and Rod Campbell.
But if wind’s not the culprit, what can be done to tackle power prices?”
> Its not the failure of sunbeam & seabreeze collectors, but the alternative supply of evil gas generation at times “during low wind periods”:
“It will be interesting to see if the South Australian businesses, social service organisations and commentators so eager to blame renewables for high prices are prepared to support a change which would increase competition and reduce dependence on gas.”
Hint: When companies such as BHP Biliton, Arrium and Adelaide Brighton Cement are telling you they considered cutting production, or even stopping entirely, because of power prices, there is an obvious problem.
As for building submarines without a regular supply of electricity … good luck with that.
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Actually, last Friday and Saturday production from the wind turbines hovered between 5 and 10%. At one stage all the windmills were idle in S. Aust., and later in Victoria and NSW.
Not surprisingly the ratio between the min. and max. production from the wind turbines in Aust. is 1:7 which is little different from that in Europe.
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What a stupendous, fabulous piece of news to end the week on.
The DECC should now be kollectively deported to Australia in specially rebuilt boats of yore, which may be rowed to the drum beat of rationality.
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Not on your sweet Nelly Manfred. Not even a row boat.
Though they could be given oars to generate waves for that fabulous piece of machinery off the WA coast perhaps. 🙂
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Wonderful news. Britain has broken free of enslavement by the faceless bureaucrats of Brussels who told people they controlled the weather.
As the good news continues to roll from this refusal of a political union with Germany and the end of representative democracy as invented by the same British people, the very idea that governments controlled the weather will be met with utter disbelief. This will be way past skepticism, the current categorization of anyone who thinks it is all crap. It will become crap officially. Abbott’s view of Climate science as socialism masquerading as environmentalism will be common and even his idea of low cost ‘direct action’ will be unnecessary.
There was however a positive side to his solution as it not only easily met alleged goals but incidentally could reestablish vegetation where excessive land clearances and historic fire clearances had a very negative impact on a fundamentally near desert landscape. It is long established Australia’s rainfall suddenly halved with the arrival of aborigines and their gift of fire about 50,000 years ago. Only a government could redress this problem but not though erecting worthless windmills and solar farms and very silly trains.
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‘It is long established Australia’s rainfall suddenly halved with the arrival of aborigines and their gift of fire about 50,000 years ago.’
Link?
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Sorry, I Can’t find one. I have looked for what was National news item about 8 years ago, something I noted as interesting. At that time it was announced that a US study team arrived to investigate this known phenomenon but apparently quietly went home with nothing said and I read no followup story. I was fascinated with the story and repeated it often. However records at the time and newspaper items I had read now seem to have vanished.
My conclusion is that the obvious explanation was politically unacceptable and the team realised this. Even Flannery puts the sudden disappearance of all of Australia’s megafauna to this exact time, for the same obvious reason and it is actually his field. After millions of years they vanished in less than one thousand. There are caves full of their bones.
The same happened with horses in North America, which was full of horses going back 9 million years, but they vanished at the time of one of the three waves of human migration from Asia. The Spaniards actually reintroduced horses to the US. You can only be grateful that horses were tamed in the Ukraine and powered society for thousands of years. Possibly early man found them very tasty and defenceless, a bad combination.
Such conclusions that primitive man was responsible for mass extinctions and major climate change pre industrial revolution are political dynamite, so they are rarely mentioned. We are supposed to believe primitive man was more in tune with nature and cared for the land and the animals and everything was in harmony. This is a ridiculous dream time story. The real story is of violent, devastating invasion by Australia’s top predator, man. What followed was never ending violence over territory. There was no other reason for anyone to live in Tasmania without clothes or housing or a public service wage.
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Humans are accused of changing rainfall 50,000 year ago.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/National/Climate-change-settlers-50000-years-ago-blamed/2005/01/26/1106415638942.html
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That may actually contain a strand that answers my puzzlement over how a few hundred thousand people scattered over this immense continent could drive so many species to extinction.
If we accept the premise (highly speculative, of course) – that firestick hunting dried up the interior – then my comment about the remaining fauna being conveniently herded into areas accessible to hunting may have some validity.
As I’ve said, I’m not disputing that firestick men eliminated the megafauna, simply speculating as to how the apparent mismatch of a tiny population and an enormous land mass actually worked out.
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It was climate change, really. Man destroyed a huge and clearly fragile ecosystem over a vast area and that changed the rainfall which meant the ecosystem was gone forever. Only traces remain. Animals did not have to be herded. They moved or they died.
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Fire stick man killed off the megafauna by hunting the young, fire had nothing to do with their extinction.
The suggestion that humans also influenced rainfall throughout Australia is preposterous, climate change happens naturally and its hubris to think otherwise.
We can say that the cold snap which began around 50,000 years ago was of a universal nature and would have altered the northern Australian monsoon pattern.
http://www.rockyhigh66.org/stuff/gisp2temperaturexaxispr.png
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… the apparent mismatch of a tiny population and an enormous land mass actually worked out
Sorry mate, but you still haven’t addressed the puzzle I’ve outlined here. I don’t know the answer and it seems neither do you or anyone else. That it happened somehow I don’t doubt, but the “somehow” is a puzzle that geologists cannot just let wander back into the ether.
Anyway, it’s a 10th order issue …
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A “cold snap” refers to a brief period of below average temperatures, a day or two, typically. It does not refer to an ice age happening over millennia.
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Preposterous? Hubris? That’s not science.
Firstly the megafauna took tens of millions of years to develop by the tedious process of selection by elimination and they all vanished without exception as far as we can tell at exactly the same time man turned up within 1,000 years out of say 100 million. None survived in little pocket of Australia.
However the change in rainfall is another possibly related phenomenon which was worthy of separate investigation. It also happened suddenly 50,000 years ago. Another coincidence that the Climate Changed suddenly exactly when man appeared? This would certainly be a double blow for the megafauna as halving the rainfall halves the feed and these were very big animals, wombats up to 1 tonne.
The question is whether we can change the climate? The CSIRO spent 50 years trying to make the clouds into rain and failed, so they believed it. That does not mean it is not possible or that burning vast areas of a fragile ecosystem does not change rainfall. Then if we can change the climate, should we?
I have plenty of plans to change Australia’s climates. My favorite one is a band of black East of SA to create a huge updraft like a mountain range. The second is to flood Lake Eyre, connecting it to the gulf. Yes, we can change the climate. Irrigation does that. We could also pump water south from the Ord. This makes more sense than a $200Bn train line for commuters which does nothing for the country. Food and water are the biggest issues for the future, not commuting in an internet world.
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Top marks young jorge, go to the top of the class.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/abrupt/data3.html
It was a D-O Event followed by a Heinrich Event.
40
‘The second is to flood Lake Eyre, connecting it to the gulf.’
That is a brilliant idea, maybe in the open thread we can give more thought to the climatic and economic ramifications.
30
Actually, fire had pretty much everything to do with it. Burning large tracts of forest also included large areas of shrub and other grazing habitats of the megafauna. One of the reasons for burning tracts of land in the manner hypothesised, is that it would’ve driven remaining animals that would’ve been using forest/brush/grassland to hide out in the open. Aboriginals would likely have inhabited an area for a while, hunted for everything it could, then burn the bush and drive the remaining animals to the next area. Re-inhabit; repeat procedure 1.
00
The Maori, who arrived from the Pacific to inhabit the virgin land of New Zealand hunted the Moa to extinction, in between hunting each other. It was a right royal cannibalistic fest, which included the Maori genocidal slaughter of the Chatham Islands Moriori. The wheels came off all the ‘indiginous’ fun when those disgraceful colonizers arrived.
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Thanks. It is roughly the story and about the right time. Odd that the SMH carried it.
It looks like the Australian climate was changed dramatically by massive sudden vegetation loss so it was possibly a very fragile system, as fragile as say the Amazon basin and once burned, did not reestablish. Worse, the loss of water retaining vegetation changed the colour and humidity and that affected the rainfall in a very flat country in a turning point event. Direct action may well reestablish the cycle, increasing the rainfall eventually. It is fascinating how even a light fall in Australia will make the desert bloom, so unlike the US where rain in Arizona just makes the sand dark for a while. You can see it around dams in Australia which are surrounded by green where in the US there is just sandy soil. Clearly Australia once was very green and relatively recently to have such a seed population.
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‘Odd that the SMH carried it.’
Peter Hannam became the big AGW game changer at Fairfax, moving up from Managing Editor, BusinessDay.com.au to become ‘a writer/editor on environmental issues, ranging from the carbon economy to climate change.’
This happened around 2006.
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With any luck this Mrs May’s government will consider selling-off the Met office (contract back from them only the services they really need).
And while there, get rid of University of East Anglia’s (UEA) Climate Research Unit (CRU), let someone else pay for all the ‘Climate Change’ B_S CRU generates. Surely the EU would buy it in trice!
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tom0mason July 15, 2016 at 7:55 am
“With any luck this Mrs May’s government will consider selling-off the Met office (contract back from them only the services they really need).And while there, get rid of University of East Anglia’s (UEA) Climate Research Unit (CRU), let someone else pay for all the ‘Climate Change’ B_S CRU generates. Surely the EU would buy it in trice!”
Damn good idea!
I am not party to EU, BR, AU affairs. But looking I see Mrs May, while lackluster before, is highly skilful in the concept of “we must do this correctly, else royalty must correct”! Put the right guy in the right place at the right time! Watch the Queen smile and wave!
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Not much for her to do really. Merely insist that in the name of rational economy that the CRU become entirely self-funding. Then watch the UEA Conversationalista develop a nail grating screech to their tonal demand for money to save The World, oh, and see them charge $5000 per photo-shopped virtual student image of their graduation, when they aren’t permitted to toss their mortar-boards in celebration of gaining an increasingly irrelevant ‘qualification’ in an eco-skience related topic.
40
There is now the big push to have Article 50 triggered ASAP. But there are some that say it is a bit of a trap and the real solution is to repeal the 1972 European Communities Act. Do both I say, and get on with it.
I don’t really understand why people are making out these negotiations are going to be so complicated. From a market point of view the EU probably needs the UK more, given the financial state of the EU and its banks.
For issues like fisheries why can’t they just say ( after triggering Article 50 and/or repealing the 1972 act) ” as from the 1st of next month –or some appropriate time, there will be 200 mile exclusive economic zone around the UK as allowed under the Law of the Seas Convention as applies in other countries” Obviously the bureaucrats and lawyers will have to draw up the appropriate bits of paper. My point is, it can’t be too complicated.
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Ross,
The triggering of Article 50 should be when the relevant team is in place. This is the view of David Davis (the new Minister for Brexit) and other Leave campaigners. The EU leaders are wanting the immediate triggering so they can scupper the chances of a successful departure for Britain. This is to discourage other countries taking the same course.
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I agree Kevin the team should be in place first , but there are comments that says “it will before Christmas”. I interpret that to be the end of the year –too long. If the EU elite have a chance to scupper a successful exit , it suggests the EU has a few fish hocks hidden its constitution and rules. If that is the case then it is going to be extremely messy and a giant trough for the lawyers.
But with the extremely bad news coming out of Nice today the EU bureaucrats might have other things on their mind in the near future.
50
Far less so if the UK uses the opportunity to deregulate instead of simply replacing EU reg’s with their own. Deregulation doesn’t bring just the benefits of freeing up the market, it also reduces “justification” for growing domestic bureaucracies to replace the EU’s dysfunctions.
My gut feeling, and it’s not much more than that, is that the UK will require about a 10-year period for a clean break from the EU. (In the back of my mind, there’s the still-struggling economy of the former East Germany, recovering from 40 years of planned economy.)
Negotiations with the EU, after the EU is notified of the UK’s intent to leave, could be extended right at the start, based on e.g. the EU’s willingness to initially permit the UK to become part of the EEA upon termination of its EU membership. Such would allow an exit sooner, rather than later. EFTA remains a potential, alternative stepping stone to the UK restoring its status of trading nation in its own right.
The period before notification is not only useful to educate the UK’s team, it’s also useful for scoping talks with e.g. the EU and EFTA that will define the negotiating period. The new PM should announce a timetable for the exit before the end of this summer.
One of the classic conflations used to delay negotiations is that of freedom of movement for foreign workers (i.e. trade in services and guest workers), tourism and immigration. It’s essential to keep a clear head when talking about that sort of thing.
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Bernd
The UK would be stupid if they did not make a massive attempt to deregulate.
When I said it was going to get messy –I meant if the EU rules are designed to make it difficult for a member to leave then it would be messy. That is, the simple act of separating. In my mind the deregulating etc. takes place afterwards, as the UK reviews the regulations and this should be done on its own without any possible interference from Juncker & co.
I’d agree the whole deregulation phase could take up to 10 years.
40
On deregulation – when, in South Africa, the Democratic Alliance (DA) party won the City of Cape Town from the African National Congress (ANC), before they could run the city effectively, they had to get rid of 10-12 years’ worth of incompetence and chair-polishers (otherwise known as cadre deployees). It took over a year to clear out the dead wood, so that the DA could make a start on running a city, rather than running a jobs-for-boys trough. SO I reckon that getting rid of EU deadwood will take Mrs May a few years yet!
30
Boris for PM? Thank goodness he is not, he is a nasty Malthusian, lamenting that the world has given up on population control
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/3643551/Global-over-population-is-the-real-issue.html
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‘All the evidence shows that we can help reduce population growth, and world poverty, by promoting literacy and female emancipation and access to birth control.’
Very true.
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The evidence is clear cut.
‘Germany has dropped below Japan to have not just the lowest birth rate across Europe but also globally, according to the report by Germany-based analysts.’
ABC
30
It is interesting that the areas that most strongly voted ‘out’ were what would have been called ‘working class areas’ and are labour stongholds! Our labour party might want to take note of this before undermining the leave process and promoting second referendum votes.
Did May campain for out because she felt it was the right thing to do at the time? We will never know, but I am still suspicious of her.
How many remainers are actually that bothered about the leave vote? I have colleagues in that camp – voted remain, but are not passionate about it. With a 72% turnout, only about a third of the electorate actually voted to remain. You could therefore easily conclude that only about a quarter of the electorate are actually passionate about remaining.
On the other hand I would say that generally leavers were more passionate, after all it is a positive vote for change and not a passive vote for the status quo.
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Don’t forget that the boss (Cameron) was throwing his weight around at the time, and that those in Whitehall were being fed poll after poll saying remain would win. Even on the night before the leak from No.10 was that Remain would get 57%. She may have thought there was no point in fighting.
20
“Rule Britannia”. Bye bye all the “AGW Crap”. The EU can wither & die as it smothers in all this “Warmist Crap”. It is enough to give one the s…., that is if one is unfortunate enough to live in the “Dysfunctional EU”. Brexit has been like a miracle for the Brits. “Thank god” they will be saying in the years to come.
170
All funding of the EU, Greenpeace, WWF, UEA, and other green trougherati must be cut off as soon as possible, or else it will be used to subvert Brexit. If Brexit fails, it will signal a return to “Drool, Britannia,” which began with the CCA.
40
Brexit means business and no time for any more of that self indulgent socialism dressed as environmentalism climate nonsense. Britain’s a got a job to do.
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The Obamas and Clintons and the rest of the leftists of the world are now running scared. It’s about time. Unfortunately what is likely to happen is the world will swing too far the other way – to the right resulting in similar types of leaders taking over, if not worse. We humans never learn. History is proof of this.
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PeterS, You may be right, but I’m sure going to enjoy the swing.
120
Twelve months ago I felt isolated, as I was the only one seeing the emperor with no clothes. I found it very difficult to find much online which was overtly right wing. I can’t have been the only one with such a strong swing across so many countries but I will never forget my dismay at not being able to discuss my views and understandings without being labelled a social pariah.
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“without being labelled a social pariah”
You are welcome here 🙂
…the only social pariahs here are the occasional mug-head far-left trolls.
43
Exactly my thought Peter S.
Retired Now, take heart. I given up hiding my light under a bushel. Anyone foolish enough to ask what I think of Brexit, gets the intellectual equivalent of both barrels of a 12 gauge. It’s a wonderful conversational killer, but the eco-lefties have to grow up and realise that they are not the only one’s inhabiting this slice of heaven.
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It’s just amazing how many who have asked us what we think about Brexit have swallowed the ABC indoctrination about Britain being in a total mess. They get both barrels from us too, only politely as they are friends!
They had made the ABC-induced assumption that Brexit would be a terrible thing to vote for and that only ignoramuses would do so, or should that be ignorami?!
20
Is that a gaudeamus ignoramuses?
20
I hope there is not an over correction as well. However, right of centerers are far less dangerous than the likes of Hillary or Obama. Hillary and Obama do what they want regardless. Conservatives still demonstrate, at least in word, respect for the rule of law (in the US such things as the Constitutional checks and balances to be more specific and holding people accountable) and the voice of the people.
80
“Right” and “Left” are fabrications of the Russian Socialists, who attempted to falsely distance themselves from the German Socialists. They are not opposite ends of some putative liberal/conservative spectrum, but as close in ideology as two beads on a demonic Mega-State rosary.
50
It is my understanding that PM Theresa May was toeing the party line on Brexit but was not enthusiastic about supporting the No vote. In other words she is a team player.
I think we can rely on her to lead and to do battle with the “Green Vampires”.
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By the way, it is 5C here on the NSW Mid North Coast again this morning, 8.36 am.
50
good time for our own CAGW sceptic pollies to speak up:
14 Jul: Sky News: AAP: SA’s volatile power mix ‘deters business’
Treasurer Tom Koutsantonis has taken the extraordinary step of asking a private energy supplier to fire up a previously mothballed power station in Adelaide to bolster the state’s depleted electricity supply.
The move was forced when a planned outage at the Heywood Interconnector for upgrade work combined with higher gas prices and severe storms to send spot prices for electricity soaring this week.
An extra 239 megawatts of power will come on line from Friday after major companies, thought to include BHP Billiton and Arrium, went to the state government to warn of possible shutdowns because of the high energy prices.
Business SA policy director Anthony Penney says the state’s volatile energy mix has pushed prices out of control, spooking employers away from potential investments…
But opposition spokesman Dan van Holst Pellekaan said the government had been too hasty to invest in renewables.
‘The Weatherill government’s over-zealous rush into wind farms without associated large-scale battery storage is directly responsible for the surging price of electricity in South Australia,’ he said…
Mr Penney said SA should also consider incentives for baseload power stations to continue operating, including subsidies.
The warning from employers came as new figures showed South Australia’s jobless rate remained the highest in the nation…
http://www.skynews.com.au/news/national/sa/2016/07/14/sa-s-volatile-power-mix–deters-business-.html
14 Jul: AFR: Ben Potter: South Australia intervenes in electricity market as prices hit $14,000MWh
Turmoil in South Australia’s heavily wind-reliant electricity market has forced the state government to plead with the owner of a mothballed gas-fired power station to turn it back on…
The extraordinary intervention – first foreshadowed in December when the government of premier Jay Weatherill hosted an energy crisis meeting – comes as electricity prices soar to near record levels across the nation…
Electricity contracts for delivery in 2017 and 2018 are priced at $91-100MWh in South Australia, compared to $50-63 in Victoria, NSW and Queensland…
http://www.afr.com/business/energy/south-australia-intervenes-in-electricity-market-as-prices-hit-14000mwh-20160714-gq5sac
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This requires very careful explanation where pat mentions this: (my bolding here)
Former Greens Party Senator
Pixie Anne WheatleyChristine Milne was caught out once when she famously quoted something similar.This figure of $14,000/MWH is an instantaneous spike as the power plant comes on line. That spike lasts barely seconds and then settles back down to the actual cost of power generation for that plant. That instantaneous spike is the dollar cost per MWH to operate the plant extrapolated out to the seconds in time it takes to stabilise on the grid.
The plant is run up to speed, sychronised to the grid, and when switched online to the grid, the cost spikes instantaneously to that huge amount and immediately settles back to the new adjusted price of the actual cost for that plant added to the already esisting price for power generation.
This can be seen by looking at this link, and do it now, because it disappears in a few hours as the day goes by.
Once at the link, see that graph chart at the right there, well click on that, and when it opens up at mid screen, click on SA, (top left of the upper screen) and then click on 5 Min 2 Day. (top right of upper screen)
You can see that instantaneous spike there, and then the price settles back down.
Okay then, now look at the time, (around 6PM) because that’s important, and I’ll mention why a little later.
Now, this is a second link to power costs for SA for this Month.
Note the cost for SA, and also note from the text above the chart that PEAK power is from 7AM to 10PM every week day, and that’s every day, not just a few days a year as some journalists might like to spruik.
Note the significant costs for power for SA, and a couple of them are over $1000/MWH, but look specifically at the cost for 7th July and the Peak time cost there of $1832.37/MWH. That’s the average cost per hour for every hour of that Peak period for all 15 hours.
Let’s explain that, shall we.
Here’s a third link to wind power generation, and this is for that same day, 7th July.
At the top right of that graph mid screen, click on the MW tab, and this now shows the power output for all wind power.
Under the chart is a list of all the wind plants. At the bottom you’ll see the States listed.
Untick all States except for SA, and then untick the total, so all you have left is all the plants for SA and the Sub Total for SA. (which is the solid black line)
Note that from around Midday on that same day power costs spiked during the peak power period, there was almost zero input from wind, and even when it was delivering power, it was only averaging around 150MW of 1580, but most of that was before the peak power period kicked in at 7AM.
So then what does this show us.
The true cost of wind power. When it’s not delivering it requires what is now shown to be enormously expensive backup, and if that backup was not there, then SA just literally goes dark.
Okay then, back to yesterday when the price spiked to that $14,000/MWH, around 6PM, and this is just to show you with the AEMO chart which is still current, as it changes with time, so that earlier day of the 7th July, it was the same, only higher, and with more spikes as more costly plants came on line, and had to stay online for longer than they are normally tasked to do.
Here’s the link to the wind power chart for yesterday. Same thing. Click MW (top right) and then untick all States bar SA, and untick the total.
See SA wind power at 6PM was barely 250MW and falling rapidly, and has stayed at around only 100MW up till right now, 10.30AM Friday 15th July.
So, wind power is expensive to actually generate, as shown by the normal cost for power in SA, with wind delivering, and then enormously expensive when wind is NOT delivering, and that folks is the TRUE cost of wind power.
Expensive at all times.
Tony.
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Comment 24.1 of mine is in Moderation, probably because it includes four links.
Tony
[It was probably the size of the comment that put it om moderation -Fly]
50
Comment 24.1 was well worth waiting for though. So simple, but why cannot the politicals in charge not grasp the nature of grid. Such wilful blindness is noticed, hence the very first act of out new prime minister is to scrap the Department of Energy and Climate Change (without even blinking). That alone is proof that reality has broken through into the Westminster bubble.
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Hello again from the eastern USA. I still lurk here quite often but felt the need to say “thank you Tony” for putting that post together – it will be coming in handy very soon – it seems so odd/disheartening that those in charge cannot understand such basic concepts – or (more likely)are willing to ignore them for their own gain.
Keep fighting the good fight
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That might explain why there was steam coming out of torrens A on tuesday..
30
The word is that the shutdown plan for Torrens has been “deferred”. The government is trying to tout it as ensuring electricity supplies “when the wind is not blowing and the sun is not shining” but are still trying to tapdance around the fact that renewables have utterly failed to produce electricity reliably and/or reduce retail prices.
http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2016/06/06/agl-defers-decision-shut-s-aust-plant
http://www.afr.com/business/energy/gas/agl-energy-keeps-sa-gasfired-power-open-to-avert-pain-20160606-gpcmur
Apparently, they’re going to fit carbon capture instead
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/business-spectator/torrens-island-to-attempt-ccs/news-story/e751b1819a93f496f30d283d0d7a17a5
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-06-04/agl-to-carbon-capture-in-adelaide/6521422
What’s the bet that it’s a delaying tactic and the CCS plant will never be built?
And given that the captured CO2 is supposed to be used for soft drinks and treating waste water, wouldn’t it end up getting released into the atmosphere anyway? Better not tell that to The Greens! 😀
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Supposedly the SA government is going to spend “…$500,000 towards a feasibility study to explore options for greater energy interconnection with Eastern states for more base load power…” according to this SA budget puff-piece on the ABC
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Don’t worry, Adelaide will be saved, thanks to a 1.17MW solar array on top of a carpark at Adelaide Airport.
Isn’t it good to know that such a system will provide 100% of the power needs for the carpark… for a few hours a day…maybe…
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And yet somehow at RenewEconomy, they cannot fathom why the retail electricity prices keep going up even though wind and solar are forcing down the average wholesale price.
And Giles will still not tell me (or George Papadopoulos who also asked) how the ACT deals with wind farms provides power for them at the contracted rates when the wind is not blowing.
http://reneweconomy.com.au/2016/act-could-make-windfall-gains-from-bold-100-renewables-target-56838
This Third Way is very confusing
80
New British Prime Minister Theresa May continues her ruthless overhaul of the cabinet, sacking a raft of ministers, promoting loyalists and putting supporters of Britain’s exit from the European Union firmly in charge of negotiating its terms.
120
South Australia is becoming a basket place like Tasmania. All the real jobs are going away due to Labor/Green government policies. Both states rely on handouts from Canberra. The majority of jobs are government funded. Only wine and tourism provide any foundation for some wealth creation. Industry that relies on competitive electricity will leave SA. Tasmania has hydro power, and could produce more with a few dams, but the greenies won’t allow it.
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The ill-fated second dam on the Gordon R. would have produced 180 MW of 24/7 electricity. It was stopped by newly elected PM Hawke using external treaty obligations that Aust. had signed. The water is back again, the topography hasn’t changed and infrastructure exists to build it cheaply; all that is stopping it are a few pieces of paper and people who have never been to this area, or unlikely to ever go.
Lake Pedder is now enlarged and is a Mecca for trout fishing and the native galaxid (tiddly) in the lake has been successfully transferred to other mountain lakes away from the hungry trout. Most summers it was possible to land on the beach on the eastern side of the lake when the level dropped. This was an unique experience but now gone. Prior to the Hydro building the roads for the Gordon scheme the only people to visit SW Tasmania were the odd bushwalker and the weekend pilots, literally a handful of people.
There have been investigations for dams on the Arthur R. since the 1930’s, and the only possible other sites would be on the Picton R. and the New R. with catchments in higher rainfall areas, but again they are all now in World Heritage areas except for the Arthur which abuts the Tarkine Wilderness.
Perhaps they could get funding from the Renewable Energy fund and put a barrage across Macquarie Harbour and have a tidal station, probably more reliable than the S. Aust. windfarms.
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Not all industry has left, they still have their solar powered submarines.
10
The Paris Climate Agreement to go into mass dunny roll manufacture.
This BS agreement has found its true calling!
p.s. Useful after all
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yet another ABC hour-long CAGW fest, tho ABC avoids saying so in the summary.
Flannery wants all Aussie coal-fired plants shut down ASAP cos, otherwise, how can we expect China, India and South Africa to shut down theirs. 300 coal-fired plants need to close down urgently to keep those temps down, says Flannery.
14 Jul: ABC Big Ideas: Let nature be your teacher
In this Sydney Writers Festival session three authors explore nature and how it shaped their lives. James Rebanks who runs a 600 year-old family farm in the Lake District in Northern England discusses the purity of nature, Australian scientist and natural heritage advocate Tim Flannery explains what nature has taught him, and Jeanette Winterson talks about the day when twitter sphere erupted after she posted a photo of a dead rabbit she was about to put in her cooking pot…
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/bigideas/let-nature-be-your-teacher/7625942
cli-fi writer Winterson with an objective review of Flannery!
2011: JeanetteWinterson.com: Book Review: Here on Earth by Tim Flannery
Climate change, environmental degradation, overpopulation, and war each threaten the future of our life on earth. They are our own man-made Horsemen of the Apocalypse – not sent by a vengeful deity to roll up the world, but a lethal consequence of the greed and stupidity of that species we still call Homo Sapiens…
Tim Flannery is not a Doomsday prophet. Jared Diamond’s Collapse (2005) makes grimmer reading, and James Lovelock in The Revenge of Gaia (2006), thinks it is already too late for us to change our fate. On the other side of the argument are all those scary men shouting for more coal, more oil, more runways, more weapons and bigger bonuses.
Here on Earth is a factual account of the state of our planet now, an explanation of how we got here, what the problems are, and most importantly, how we might solve those problems if we act now. Not later… now. Flannery knows we are living in End-Time…
Tim Flannery’s skill is to give us the facts …
http://www.jeanettewinterson.com/journalism/here-on-earth-by-tim-flannery/
Winterson post-BREXIT:
25 Jun: Guardian: Jeanette Winterson: We need to build a new left. Labour means nothing today
‘7am and woken up to UKIP England. Never cried for my country before. But it isn’t my country anymore. Now we have to build a new Left’
This is what I tweeted this morning…
30
pat mentions this: (my bolding here)
Please, oh please, somebody listen to this man and do it now, please.
This whole debate about the worth of coal fired power will end in less than an hour, in fact, in minutes.
Seriously, though, he can actually get away with saying this because he KNOWS (without fraction of a doubt) that it will never happen, because as soon as it does happen, his name will be trashed forever, and don’t get me wrong here. He knows all right.
And if Australia is st00pid enough to actually go along with what he says, and cut their own throat, do you seriously think, knowing what will inevitably happen, that ANY other Country will do the same.
Tony.
280
Meanwhile the German Government is stopping green subsidies and building new technology coal fired power stations.
50
ROFLMAO!!! 😀
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He is a Failed Doomsday prophet.
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Failed doomed profit but not doomed in the real world by Hammurabi Rules. In the buffered world of inner city
elites and politics of resentment academia, there’ll be book launches and well funded guest speaker ops like David Suzuki, another failed Climate profit enjoys. And there’s the real estate. )
30
Jeanette Winterson conveniently ignores the retraction in 2012 by Lovelock (who was a genuinely intelligent, first principles scientist who trusted modelling a bit too much but eventually corrected himself)
http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/04/23/11144098-gaia-scientist-james-lovelock-i-was-alarmist-about-climate-change
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Whoops – just noticed that the Timmy Flannelly book review was dated 2011 BEFORE the retraction by James Lovelock.
Is this why I was red thumbed?
Why did you post up that old crock of $hit, pat?
40
Analitik –
posted it just to give a sense of how the lovefest went on ABC’s Big Ideas for those who, understandably, might not want to listen to the whole thing.
40
Fair enough – perspective on the innate $tupidity of Jeanette Winterson is warranted
20
Sounds like Theresa May is a Euro and climate skeptic but one who thought she might make a difference from the inside. Now she is off the leash, the iside is no longer an option but the skeptic remains intact and committed. She may also now feel free to speak more frankly to the Euro afficionado’s and tell them just how they managed to stuff up a dream with their piss weak, cowardly, autocratic and bureaucratic approach.
I though going into Iraq was the right thing at the time but there is no dowubt the Yanks stuffed it up big time. Same view of the Euro Zone up to a point given the 20th Century World wars and the Cold War.
Go Boudicca! Hope it turns out better though. 🙂
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I’m not sure that most Australians including most of Jo’s blog inhabitants plus Americans and Canadians realise just how unbelievable arrogant, condescending and self centred the EU’s Commission and [ the almost powerless ] Parliament political leaders are in reality.
Der Spiegel is a left wing German media news sheet with an English language on line edition.
.
[ The English language being the lingua franca of the EU.
One example mentioned elsewhere and witnessed by an englishman was of two Spanish engineers switching entirely to English because they couldn’t understand each other’s regional Spanish dialect.
The English language being an apparently common solution for such differences in dialects across many nationalities in the EU.]
.
Der Spiegel commentators and opinion writers have been scathingly critical and completely hypocritical with a remarkable ability to be completely blind to the dictatorial trends that are appearing in the EU in their comments on the Brexit vote whilst at the same time and in the same breath, predicting all sorts of calamities of just about every type about to befall the British because they dared to vote to leave the EU.
—————
From Der Spiegel OnLine english edition.
.
Interview with Juncker and Schulz: ‘Deadly for Europe’
The presidents of the European Parliament and the European Commission, Martin Schulz, 60, and Jean-Claude Juncker, 61, talk about the consequences of the Brexit vote, the failures of EU leaders and their early morning phone calls.
[ Example quoted from the interview ]
[ More>>>> ]
The European Left as exemplified by Der Spiegel is loaded with hate against the American [ and British ] version of a working democracy which you can get some idea of if you read some of the following Der Spiegel commentary.
Reading some of the recent past Der Spiegel headlines, it would seem that the European Left and Centre Left and water melon Greens who have dominated the EU’s Europe for close on three decades now, has lost all sense of relativity on the range and seriousness of the threats to our civilisation and our standards of living and to our future.
America’s Last Hope: Can Clinton’s Reason Defeat Trump’s Rage?
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An Exhausted Democracy: Donald Trump and the New American Nationalism
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Opinion: America’s Election Shame
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America’s Agitator: Donald Trump Is the World’s Most Dangerous Man
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“One example mentioned elsewhere and witnessed by an englishman was of two Spanish engineers switching entirely to English because they couldn’t understand each other’s regional Spanish dialect.”
I encounter the same problem in Newcastle (and Liverpool for that matter). Fortunately we can all speak American.
Good spot ROM, needless to say this interview has not figured much in the UK MSM, such refreshing candour from Schultz and Juncker.
“I have another explanation: In its 43 years of EU membership, Britain has never been able to decide whether it wants to fully or only partially belong to the EU.”
Some of us decided 43 years ago, but spot on matey.
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The Australian newspaper
MICHAEL OWEN
South Australia, with the nation’s worst jobs rate, is paying the highest prices in the national electricity market.
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But, but, but…
and
When the wind blows, the price of power falls – they even give it away!
Wind energy’s biggest month, and how it keeps prices down
Wind energy supplied 83% of South Australia’s electricity on Monday
Wind energy hits 100% of South Australia demand on Sunday
It must be those greedy grid operators, gold plating their wires and poles.
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Analitik mentions this:
I’ll bet you’ll never see this Headline in any South Australian media:
From 9AM Thursday 7th July to 9PM Friday 8th July, wind power averaged under 20MW total output for those 36 consecutive hours, covering two complete working days, and not just a weekend Sunday, when consumption is lower.
So then, you tell me that without fossil fuel backup, just which 99% of South Australia gets blacked out.
Tony.
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But what about the 120 per cent of demand at 4.30am on Sunday, 22nd of May?
That could be used later when the wind dropped. Couldn’t it?
Because storage is getting cheaper all the time
Macquarie invests $200m in major US battery storage rollout
300MWh of behind the meter battery storage and demand management for Southern California Edison and Tesla Powerpacks and AMS energy management software also providing Southern California Edison with up to 10MW of capacity
So why won’t that work here for the state of SA????
And look at this for integrating storage and demand control which will “include batteries, electric vehicles, controllable HVAC systems, and binary-switched devices like water heaters and LED lighting controls”.
It must be serious because the government agency ARENA are supporting it along with the Southern Cross Renewable Energy Venture Capital Fund
“Internet of energy” start-up taps booming Australian solar + storage market
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costs of storage, load shifting, link
Some interesting developments. Ironically they would benefit baseload power, especially nuclear probably more than wind and solar, in my view.
Essentially load shifting storage costs are likely to come down from the current US$0.30/kWh to around US$0.05/kWh if this paper is to be believed.
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http://energystorage.org/energy-storage/technologies/electrochemical-capacitors
Storage capacitors may find their way into the grid. I think all of Mr Musk’s efforts rely on massive subsidies.
20
Your link gets me a blank page (might be my insistence on very aggressive ad blocking within my modified browser)
None-the-less if it is what I have read in other places, it is only minor refinements, offering a minuscule advantage over the older technology which has the major drawback of size — the physical volume of capacitors required to store any appreciable amount of energy is vast, and when fully charged would be a monumental safety hazard. Millions of Joules of energy sat in any one place has huge explosive potential!
Be aware that at the moment similar capacitors are used for switching in power-factor adjustments ( http://static.schneider-electric.us/docs/Power%20Management/5860BR0901.pdf ).
As with all the techniques listed in link http://energystorage.org/energy-storage/energy-storage-technologies
None of them scale-up satisfactorily due, in the main, to losses overtaking gains. They all have safety issues some manageable, too many are currently intractable when scaled-up.
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Tomo,
I agree about the hazard and scalability. The first link was about two companies working on asymmetric capacitors for grid size load shifting, the proposal being that they could utilize old generation premises and switching infrastructure. This would be a safe area for such stored power.
Present power factor correction adjusts reactance within one cycle and is not about load shifting as such.
I agree about the hazards (and present costs) and I think domestic storage will prove to be problematic on a larger scale of uptake.
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The Australian Energy Regulator wants changes to the network planning frameworks in the National Electricity Rules to keep pace with new technologies and other developments in energy markets.
The changes will force network operators to consider new technologies rather than just maintaining and expanding the grid.
Regulator to push networks to consider alternatives to poles and wires
The viability for utility storage must be on the rise. Here they are saying that 1 and 2 hour storage systems will be economically attractive in 5 years.
Commercial Energy Storage Economics Will Be Attractive in 19 US State Markets by 2021
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As a bit of a chuckle.. did you notice what is used as the anode and cathode.
EVIL CARBON !! 🙂
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Doesn’t that count as sequestration?
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Just about anything could be commercially viable and attractive to investors if taxpayers offer subsidies to base profit on.
However, a rule that socialists don’t understand is to let the market pick winners and losers, only the best will survive the test.
No taxpayer subsidies.
And Germany is now dropping them.
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Yes but for the last 24 hours (9:30am 15/07/2016 – 9:30am 16/07/2016), the mighty 3771 MW of national wind farms (ex WA) has been putting out between a whopping 400 MW and a stupendous 800 MW. That would have to power around 200,000 to 400,000 households out of the 9 million odd in Australia.
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Hopefully the UK government has noticed this —
German Power Company Threaten to be the Country’s Largest Bankruptcy.
“Today German flagship daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) reports here that the country’s largest power company, RWE, now faces bankruptcy in the wake of the post Fukushima Energiewende, where the German government forced the immediate shutdown of nuclear power plants in a panicked reaction to the Japanese disaster.
For RWE this meant an immediate shutdown of some 25% of its assets. The FAZ writes that since Fukushima, RWE has lost a whopping 70% of its value.
The situation is hardly better at competitor E On, whose share price has fallen 58% since Fukushima.
The title of the FAZ article is “The last days of RWE” and writes that “Germany’s largest power producer has become a bankruptcy candidate“.
Currently RWE has “45 billion euros in long-term liabilities, 8 times its equity“, the FAZ reports.”
From http://notrickszone.com/2016/07/15/german-power-giant-risks-becoming-largest-bankruptcy-in-german-business-history/
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Analitik
Only because major costs are shouldered by everyone paying for the subsidy and, when the unreliables are online, for the real generators running to stabilize the system!!
Take either or both items out and the unreliables are well overprice and fail to perform as required.
And why should anyone pay for a household battery pack when they are paying for electricity to be available 24/7. Surely households must be able to sue for non-delivery of the contracted electricity service?
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The idea of domestic batteries is supposed to facilitate the household being able to loadshift daytime power production into the evening’s so called “duck curve” when power is still on peak but the sun doesn’t shine. It is an opportunity for the guilt ridden to suck subsidies when the unrealistic feedin tarrifs expire. Without subsidies current loadshifting batteries are uneconomic.
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Load shedding at peak times is much to be welcomed, however it should be the a suppliers job not a consumers job. If the electricity supplier believes domestic batteries are the future then they should supply them and the insurance to cover the loss, damage and recycling batteries require.
BTW Tesla has stopped selling the larger of its two Powerwall home batteries, citing a lack of interest from consumers. All mentions of the 10 kWh Powerwall have disappeared from Telsa’s website and press kit.
Also in the USA, the guaranteed capacity and longevity has been derated by some 10% for already sold units.
While Tesla didn’t initially explain the move, a representative confirmed to the press that it has discontinued the product, as customers preferred the smaller 7 kWh version. The difference in the two products was not merely capacity. Tesla only designed the 10 kWh Powerwall to serve as a backup energy source for solar panel users, and the lithium ion only lasted for a mere 500 cycles.
Some in the press also notes that some lead acid batteries are cheaper and last for more cycles, and even some state-of-the-art generators are more economical than Tesla’s backup solution, which cost $3500 for installers.
No mention of 10kW here — https://www.teslamotors.com/powerwall
Expensive solar here — http://cleantechnica.com/2015/05/13/lets-get-straight-tesla-powerwall-does-3000/
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And this http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/Tesla-Discontinues-10kWh-Powerwall-Home-Battery
tells it like Tesla maybe readying the market for a new release of battery or more likely battery + solar announcement.
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An announcement of batteries or a battery of announcements ?
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Examples of Australian costs and paybacks…
http://www.techly.com.au/2016/01/29/teslas-first-powerwall-installed-australia-worth/
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Here’s the opinion of the guy who had the first PowerWall installed at his home
http://unleashthepowerwall.com/2016/06/30/winter-discontent/
and his ROI estimates
http://unleashthepowerwall.com/2016/04/01/powerwall-roi-calculation-part-two/
And his political views
http://unleashthepowerwall.com/2016/06/01/australian-greens-election-2016/
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At ABC News the Editor of The Drum online has written for the first time to announce that today is that last day The Drum online will be published.
Slowly slowly the ABC is crumbling.
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It’s raining good news! (Bit chilly though, even here on the midcoast of NSW.)
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OK, it’s a small start, but the UK still should’t have any Act of Parliament that relates to “climate”. She should strike while the iron is hot, or not, if you take my meaning.
And then there is the global-warming department at the BBC. They haven’t gone away.
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Lol, pretty close to the way I called it – The Greens have topped out
How Green protests ruined a party of protest
The denial runs strong, though – they party line is that there were loads of pure protest votes in this last election and that
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To quote I think an Australian politician of times past;
A week is a long time in politics!
.
None of the current British political situations and the Brexit outcomes and the consequent EU’s shock, horror, disgust, self flagellations and political inflexibility aligned with the arrogant and hubris driven claims that the British didn’t know what the hell they were letting themselves in for according to the arrogant EU elite, none, not one of these current political and societal outcomes and consequences were predicted, modelled, forecast, calculated for, crystal balled or just plain guessed at by anybody at any time in the past.
And so with a significant but non violent, democratically voter driven change of the political situation in a small democratic and European nation of some 64 million souls situated on the edge of the world’s largest continents of some 450 million peoples, the whole of some two and half decades of climate modelling and a trillion dollars worth of climate salvation through publicly subsidized Renewable energy is now all coming to nought as a key player begins to unwind and cut through the Gordian Knot of climate legislation that the climate alarmists and watermelon greens thought they had managed to tie up the developed world in forever in their green hued, rigid leftist ideological straight jacket.
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The quote is: “A day is a long time in politics”.
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.
“A week is a long time in politics”
Harold Wilson, former British PM.
&
Ted Baillieu, Former Victorian [ Aus ] Premier
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We are still in Provence, France at the moment (far from Nice, thank goodness) staying in a very pleasant villa that my wife found. In conversations with the nice French lady , in her 60’s, who looks after the place, the gardener (a French/Swiss) and the man who came to fix the fly screens we discovered that they all thought that BREXIT was the best thing that has happened to the EU and they look forward to France following suit. Looks like Europe might be changing politically and environmentally faster than anyone would have thought.
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Looks like Europe might be changing politically and environmentally faster than anyone would have thought
Or even hoped. Despite some earlier misgivings, it does seem Theresa May is taking the Brexit plebiscite result seriously.
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a statement from ISIS’ media group, Amaq Agency, said that an ISIS “soldier” carried out the attack in Nice…….
read more here :-
http://edition.cnn.com/2016/07/16/europe/france-attack-on-nice-isis/
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The first Brutus, the one who overthrew the last king of Rome, got his name because he survived by pretending to be what we would call a dill (brutus). His best known ploy was his stammering.
When the time came to strike, Brutus the Stammerer revealed his true self. After expelling the foreign monarchy, he then got the Romans to swear an oath which “forced the people, desirous of a new liberty, not to be thereafter swayed by the entreaties or bribes of kings”.
It’s all a bit of a tailored yarn passed down the centuries because it strikes a chord, but…
Theresa May?
40
I doubt she had firm convictions on Brussels one way or the other. But she is opportunistic and Brexit gave her the path to power, allowing her to build support on the 52% plebiscite result and of necessity removing those “Remain” parliamentary members who will now oppose and threaten her. Nothing like realpolitik, is there ?
Consequently, doing the old two-boot sideways shuffle (ie. reneging) is now metaphorical suicide.
Change of a good sort (good in my view) is now unavoidable. Cassandra is feeling a little less neglected 🙂
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Thanks for the link Jo. It’s good to see these UK stories getting coverage from people like you and WUWT.
The abolition of the Department of Energy and Climate Change suggests that our new PM Theresa May does not regard climate change as a top priority. It has been swallowed up into a new department called the “Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy” leaving UK lefties and greenies angry and confused.
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Hooray!
‘The news came after the appointment of Andrea Leadsom – who revealed her first question to officials when she became Energy Minister last year was “Is climate change real? – was appointed as the new Environment Secretary.’
Independent
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I read this on Euro Pacific Capital’s site (europac.com)as part of a commentary from John Browne ( one of their consultants –I think he is from the UK and has political connections )
“It has been kept remarkably quiet, for instance, that the EU intends to divide the UK into eleven administrative regions, all reporting directly to Brussels. Although Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland will remain intact as individual national regions, England will be split into eight regions. Worse still, the coastal counties of England will be teamed with regions in Portugal, France, the Netherlands and Germany, where they will remain in a minority role. Even the English Channel is to be renamed. Very little mention is of the EU proposal for EU-wide ID and tax numbers, likely heralding a heavy EU taxation regime.”
I posted this on a UK blog last night and apparently it has been known about for sometime and John(?) Prescott tried to get it in but the wise people in the North East of England saw through it all and it was rejected.
Is it any wonder most voted to leave when the EU elite want to effectively setup a dictatorship.
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Oh yes indeed! I remember all this plan for regions. I believe some of the ground work was done producing regional assemblies.
10
A Leave, the expressed public will,
Is for many a most bitter pill,
With these Tories not keen,
On being so Green,
The warmists are feeling the chill.
100
Talking about renewable energy I heard on our ABC this afternoon they are going to build a solar station near Cooktown. Capacity was enough power for 1000 households and battery storage was later envisaged. So about 15 Kwh per house, perhaps 15 MW?
31
Robert O,
You can expect to get something like about 6kWh/day from a 1kW panel, nominal daily averaged over a year in northern Australia. I’m not sure of the nominal household usage but my guess is between 10 and 20kWh per day. For PR purposes, say 10kWh/day nominal. So say 1.7kW of panel/house or 1.7MW of installed panels. That would be my estimation.
10
14 Jul: E&E News: House GOP subpoenas AGs, enviros over climate investigations
by Gayathri Vaidyanathan, ClimateWire
House Republicans yesterday subpoenaed the New York and Massachusetts attorneys general and nine environmental groups for documents related to state investigations of Exxon Mobil Corp.’s climate change record…
“We believe this investigation is actually compromising our First Amendment rights to petition government and have freedom of association,” added Kenneth Kimmell, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists, which has received a subpoena. “We think this is not a lawful subpoena.”
Other groups subpoenaed are: the Climate Accountability Institute, the Climate Reality Project, the Rockefeller Family Fund, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Greenpeace, 350.org, the Global Warming Legal Action Project and the Pawa Law Group.
Jamie Henn, communications director for 350.org, said that his group will not hand over private correspondence…
Richard Heede, director of the Climate Accountability Institute and an independent scientist, said in a letter to Smith yesterday that he would not provide communications to the committee. The work of CAI, which tracks greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel production, does not affect companies, nonprofits or scientists, he said.
“Scientists from these companies, trade associations, and think tanks are free to discuss and publish their work in peer-reviewed journals and other media,” Heede wrote. “To be clear, CAI is respectful of contrarian opinions and dissenting science. We have no need, nor any ability, to intimidate these individuals, nor to threaten the First Amendment rights of ExxonMobil or other major oil and gas companies.”
http://www.eenews.net/stories/1060040266
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“In Australia, Tony Abbott once said climate change was ‘crap’…” – sorry, but I think you have that wrong. If I remember correctly, his statement was about ‘climate science’, not climate change. Some sections of the press just manufactured that comment and used it against him.
That single word completely changes the meaning of what he said.
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“Climate change argument is absolute crap.”
Tony Abbott is purported to have said this on 2 February 2010, but I cannot confirm its veracity.
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Tony Abbott reportedly uttered the words in Beaufort, if this Australian article quoting someone who quoted Tony Abbott is to be believed…
10
I believe Craig Wilson ans Stuart Rintoul is an outstanding journalist, so we can safely accept the proceedings as truth.
00
It was David Cameron here in the UK who said “We have to get rid of the green cr*p” ….then didn’t.
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The actual comment was
in his 2010 interview with Kerry O’Brien. He then went on to say
Tony Abbott joins The 7.30 Report
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Here’s one for your whingeing poms.
Complaining on Oxygen
Does Brexit mean they might stop ?
20
The closure of DECC sounds good but the devil will be in the detail. Is it being scrapped or just renamed?
Like most of the world, it seems, I worry about Boris. If I recall correctly, he used to be the highest paid MP. He had substantial outside business interests. That must tell you something but I do wonder if he has the gravitas to be a Foreign Secretary.
He has been on the BBC’s Top Gear programme a couple of times. The first time he and Clarkson both admitted that they did not know how car engines worked. The second time Boris was saying how good electric cars were and it must be the way of the future. Clarkson asked him where the energy came from …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFaU-K3h5JY
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Perhaps history will show that the only reason Boris got the job was because Prince Philip was unavailable? 🙂
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Jo your short post “This is not a tribute” runs rings around anything written by the trash posing as journalism here and abroad.
“A united and righteous fury.” is what’s needed on more than one front, my thanks for your insights.
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Sh!t hitting the fan in Turkey now.
There goes their prospects of EU membership for the foreseeable.
https://twitter.com/skynews/status/754060577798971392
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Here’s a possible benefit to Britain (and Africa) from Brexit that I haven’t seen mentioned:
Once it’s no longer subject to the EU’s anti-GMO laws, Britain will be able to buy GMO food from Africa at lower prices than it is paying for non-GMO food, and African farmers will finally be able to use GMO crops to be more efficient producers, now having a nearby market for them.
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A lot of the British do not want GMO foods. There was quite a campaign against them and wanting food to be labelled so that those who didn’t wish to eat food of unproved safety could avoid them.
20
Let them be labeled. It looks as though labeling is coming to the US, thanks to Vermont’s labeling law.
I suspect that most people will buy lower-priced GMO foods, and that non-GMO foods will become a specialty of higher-priced, boutique supermarkets, in time, in both countries.
10
Lots of thinking people do not want to consume genetically modified foods and be used as guinea pigs…….
10
Angry: how many ‘thinking people’ actually find out what ‘genetically modified’ actually means, I wonger?
00
Try:
http://atimes.com/2016/07/why-the-terrorists-are-winning-the-intelligence-war/
The Asia Times is published in Hong Kong. Our HRC cannot get at it.
10
Not going to get my goat! Can’t speak for the rest. Goats need guns.
20
“Update – AP: Turkish soldiers have fired on people trying to cross #Istanbul’s Bosphorus Bridge in protest at attempted coup & some are hurt”
Protesters braving gunfire in ongoing Turkish coup attempt.
20
“Turkish fighter jet reportedly shoots down helicopter carrying ‘coup plotters’ over Ankara, local media reports”
20
Crowds are now taking on the tanks in Ankara
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BBC radio report has a man on the ground saying that Erdogan arrived back into Istanbul and has appeared on state TV broadcasting from Attaturk Airport.
BBC reports that Erdogan says the coup was stirred-up by US based cleric called Fethullah Gulen. He says that these military threaten both himself personally and the Turkish people. He said that the military had bombed the resort he was staying at in an attempt to assassinate him.
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The Turkish military was concerned that Erdogan was taking Turkey down towards a more radical i. s. l. a. m. form of government.
Hence their actions to maintain Turkey as a secular nation,
40
So both sides saying they are concerned about I.s.l.a.m.icization by the other, as if that it is the popular bête noire.
10
The Pointman nails it.
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BBC radio report has a man on the ground saying that Erdogan arrived back into Istanbul and has appeared on state TV broadcasting from Attaturk Airport.
BBC reports that Erdogan says the coup was stirred-up by US based cleric called Fethullah Gulen. He says that these military threaten both himself personally and the Turkish people. He said that the military had bombed the resort he was staying at in an attempt to assassinate him.
Repeated many times that Gulen sympathizers were at its root.
Again he has called for the public to come on to the streets in protest. And calls on the military to purge these Gulen sympathizer from their ranks. He has then taken questions from the reporter.
He appears confident but he said he was surprised that this attempt had been made now, while the country was fighting the terrorist, and while he was on vacation.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Who is Fethullah Gulen?
Look here — http://dailycaller.com/2016/07/13/new-ties-emerge-between-clinton-and-mysterious-islamic-cleric/
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Ho-humm, I’m now caught in moderation commenting on BBC report about Turkey.
10
Erdogan has been trying to cast Turkey in a more I. s. l. a. m. i. c. mode and has been increasingly oppressive. The army has traditionally wanted a more secular country, as Ataturk insisted……….
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/coup_in_turkey/
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Turkey coup: Live updates as 90 killed and more than 1,500 arrested after uprising against President Erdogan……
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/turkey-coup-live-updates-explosion-8431256
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I am already pretty sceptical that Theresa May has the slightest intention to produce Brexit. She has (15/7, UK time, probably 16/7 in Australia) effectively announced that the First Minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon, will have a veto over Brexit, because she (i.e. May) supposedly wants all components of the UK to agree the terms for Britain’s departure from the EU. Scotland (population: 5 million) is very unlikely ever to prefer “Leave”. England (population: well north of 50 million) wants to go. How does Scotland get to second-guess the electorate?
Until very shortly before the referendum, Theresa May was regarded as favouring “Leave”, but then she declared for “Remain”and proceeded to say virtually nothing on the subject, either way, until the votes were in. Since she cultivated the image of a half-hearted Remainer, quite a few Conservative MPs probably thought she could be trusted on Brexit. David Davis, Boris Johnson and Liam Fox entered the cabinet, with the job of organising Britain’s exit.
That looked promising – until May invented this new clause, never in the referendum question, that allowed Scotland to override England. The referendum was always UK-wide. A simple majority would win and did. Whether or not any component of the UK differed from the predicted English preference was always irrelevant. I have a strong suspicion that this stratagem was dreamt up by the bureaucracy well before the vote, as their Plan B, supposedly to justify a second vote, and that they never imagined that Wales would vote the same way as England, because three-against-one would have sounded more persuasive than two little ones against one little one and the big one.
Since May was a prominent figure before the refendum, she may have been party to this thinking, but I doubt it. It has all the feeling of a civil service draft that Sir Humphrey helpfully happened to leave on her desk. I don’t believe May has strong convictions on anything, apart from her ego. She was a useless Home Secretary. Thanks to Section 18C, I mustn’t go into details here. Let’s just say that Britain is considerably less safe now, than it was six years ago, when May went to the Home Office. She has vaccilated; she has flailed around; she has endlessly made empty promises. The problems she inherited, she made worse and dumped on her successor (who is, incidentally, Amber Rudd, previously the True-Believer at the now-defunct Department of Energy and Climate Change).
With luck, Theresa’s promise to Nicola Sturgeon may turn out to have been as insincere as all the previous ones May has made, which will, after all, be good for Brexit. If Johnson, Fox and Davis find they are just tokens, not allowed to make any productive moves towards Brexit, they aren’t going to hang around. The Conservative majority is just twelve votes (yeah, OK, a landslide in Canberra) and May picked just seven Brexit-campaigners for her cabinet. There are lots more (than twelve) Brexiteers on the outside, not just ejected cabinet members, who could make life very difficult for May.
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Owen Morgan July 17, 2016 at 4:12 pm
“I am already pretty sceptical that Theresa May has the slightest intention to produce Brexit. She has (15/7, UK time, probably 16/7 in Australia) effectively announced that the First Minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon, will have a veto over Brexit, because she (i.e. May) supposedly wants all components of the UK to agree the terms for Britain’s departure from the EU. Scotland (population: 5 million) is very unlikely ever to prefer “Leave”. England (population: well north of 50 million) wants to go. How does Scotland get to second-guess the electorate?’
I agree with your Owen Morgan
July 17, 2016 at 4:12 pm · Reply
I am already pretty sceptical that Theresa May has the slightest intention to produce Brexit. She has (15/7, UK time, probably 16/7 in Australia) effectively announced that the First Minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon, will have a veto over Brexit, because she (i.e. May) supposedly wants all components of the UK to agree the terms for Britain’s departure from the EU. Scotland (population: 5 million) is very unlikely ever to prefer “Leave”. England (population: well north of 50 million) wants to go. How does Scotland get to second-guess the electorate?
Owen Morgan
July 17, 2016 at 4:12 pm · Reply
I am already pretty sceptical that Theresa May has the slightest intention to produce Brexit. She has (15/7, UK time, probably 16/7 in Australia) effectively announced that the First Minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon, will have a veto over Brexit, because she (i.e. May) supposedly wants all components of the UK to agree the terms for Britain’s departure from the EU. Scotland (population: 5 million) is very unlikely ever to prefer “Leave”. England (population: well north of 50 million) wants to go. How does Scotland get to second-guess the electorate?sk
00
AW crap, please delete 57.1
Owen Morgan July 17, 2016 at 4:12 pm
“I am already pretty sceptical that Theresa May has the slightest intention to produce Brexit. She has (15/7, UK time, probably 16/7 in Australia) effectively announced that the First Minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon, will have a veto over Brexit, because she (i.e. May) supposedly wants all components of the UK to agree the terms for Britain’s departure from the EU. Scotland (population: 5 million) is very unlikely ever to prefer “Leave”. England (population: well north of 50 million) wants to go. How does Scotland get to second-guess the electorate?’
I agree with your skepticism I do not see a better candidate. She seems to have acted quickly to have the correct folk in the correct locations if exit is decided. Boris is perhaps best to decide the exact timings of sect 50, if ever.
I wish I could have been a mouse on the wall, to witness your Queen reminding May that the 48% are still my subjects also!
All the best! -will-
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