It is not surprising there are floods all over the East coast at the moment
September brought 500% of normal rain to 2 million square kilometers of Eastern and Northern Australia. There are floods across the South East. There are flood alerts in South Australia, floods have been washing through NSW (and some of those floods were caused by a dam release). There are floods in Tasmania. Flood watches are active in Victoria. Spare a thought for farmers who are taking big losses from both frost and flood in Australia. (So much for endless droughts, and early springs. Hello, Tim Flannery.) Heavy snow has also fallen — 25cm in Threadbo (it so late in the season, some ski lifts have stopped operating). Right now, thousands of people still don’t have power in South Australia, while others are being rescued from floods across SA and NSW. Floods have stranded 181 families for month on islands in the middle of NSW.
h/t to Warwick Hughes, and Lance Pidgeon
Source: Australian Bureau of Meteorology
A large part of the scary purple area got only 100-200mm of rain in a month (4-8 inches). It’s just very unusual in these dry areas.
To give you some idea, it has been the wettest September on record for Eastern Australia, coming on top of a one of our wettest two winters. Variability is the norm.
Two swift-water rescues were carried out overnight, a South Australia SES state duty manager told AAP, and he reinforced the message to all residents not to drive through flood waters under any circumstances.
Some of the worst-hit areas were the Clare Valley, north of Adelaide, where the town of Sevenhill was under threat with concerns a nearby dam would burst, and Langhorne Creek, south of Adelaide, which was cut off by rising floodwaters late on Thursday.
Major flooding warnings are current for Condoblin and Euabalong and the current flood peak at Forbes will progress downstream over the next two weeks causing further river rises.
At least 50,000 sandbags have been transported into the towns from Maitland in the Hunter Valley and extra crews have been brought in from around the state.
About 100 properties remain subject to an evacuation order while sittings at courthouses in Forbes, Condobolin and Lake Cargelligo have been cancelled for next week.
The Australian climate — a land of extremes
At the same time as the deluge in the East, West Australia had a fifth of the normal amount for September across a million square kilometers. (Bear in mind that in NW WA the rainfall anomally is only 0 – 10 mm down on the normal flow. It doesn’t mean much!) Somewhere an expert is about to release a paper showing how increasing CO2 can cause East-West rainfall disparities (you think I’m kidding, –they would just be mirroring research already done in the US).
What ever happened to Tim Flim-flamery’s predictions that Australia’s big dams would never fill their reservoirs again?
633
He was clearly wrong. Don’t expect an apology from him, although he should apolgise profusely. One could argue he should be sued for money wasted on building the various desal plants if it could be proven they were built as a result of his fear mongering. I’d be satisfied if he just apologised.
562
There should be a Royal Commission into the desal plants.
412
Should be one into flim-flam and all the rest of the endless drought-prophesying, wide-eyed noddies. We all know drought will return in its usual cycle, but as we know there’s no such thing as a happy Greenie, no matter how much the catchments fill so they can have 20 minute showers and full swimming pools in summer.
Some at my workplace mentioned the other day that the weather was being weird. I was forced to remind them that patchy rain is something you’re likely to get many times a year anywhere in the world except maybe Antarctica. They’ve simply forgotten what it is and when they last noticed it.
Others complained about threats of floods etc. Threats? They’d forgotten that Benalla and surrounding districts went under back in ’93. I had to help sandbag the place in my Army days. There have been depth markers around that region for a century or more. How short their memories.
473
And in about 1953 Olaf, which I remember as a boy driving from Tallarook to the cattle sales at Wodonga with my father and his mate – water everywhere the whole way.
111
I remember the Murray floods of 1956.
But those were from just natural rain.
These are from Un Preeecedented Extreme Weather Events which are indicative of Catastrophic Man Made Climate Change triggered by Man Made CO2, and you can expect more in the future.
Ask Will Steffens if you don’t believe me.
121
It’s good to see some that are older than me. Valuable historical witnesses right there.. 😉
61
All rivers will flood and carry the water to the sea, we should never be surprised about floods. This has been the wettest since 1974 when the inland was like an ocean. Anyone living near ‘river gums’ should expect their bases to be immersed in 3 metres of flood water
00
Things are crook in Tallarook..
71
Same confusion and wonderment in the USofA whenever the Mississippi, Missouri, Platte and/or Snake Rivers flood. Mark Twain (Sam Clemmons) wrote of the huge mid-west floods that occurred in his time, there are songs and sayings based on the flooding, and yet, each time the rivers overflow and burst through the levees, sandbags and other flood “proofing” our US Army Corps of Engineers contrive, the residents are dumbfounded, almost more so than those watching the news.
And then they rebuild in the same spot, saying “Oh, that’s a once-in-a-hunnert-year thing” and forgetting the last flood was maybe 30 years ago, and the one before that, maybe 20 years earlier.
I wonder, more and more often, how some of these people have managed to live so long.
01
Live so long?
Makes you wonder how they tie their own shoelaces.
01
Frankly, it’s time these charlatans were sued! Flummery first an foremost here in Australia, followed by every craven and venal politician and bureaucrat who has endorsed and pushed the CAGW scam.
The Flummerys of the world have given “advice” that has been taken so seriously by the politicians and bureaucrats that literally billions of dollars have been wasted on desalt plants with more to go on maintenance costs etc, not to mention the billions being wasted on windmills and solar and the industry, economy and employment destroying results of that effort. And all for a pathetic failure of an ideology!
373
Could it be we’re not giving Tim the credit he is due. What if Tim knew that the only way for Australia to attract dam filling rainfall was to build desalination plants? Imagine the difficulty he’d have had trying to sell that one.
91
Hilarious!
He’d be a real martyr.
Sacrificing his personal wealth to invest in financially absurd geothermal schemes, consciously making statements he knew were less truthful than Baron Von Munchausen’s, and tarnishing his reputation for all time, just to bring back the rains!
Especially since we know that in the real world, such spells don’t even work 🙁
20
But the spells obviously did work. Look at all that extra rain.
20
Remember Simon Reeves “Tropic of Capricorn” documentary series? Arrived in Queensland during a period of drought and, being the instant expert that he is, pontificated that “permanent drought” it will be because of “Klimit Chainge”. Twit!
251
Yes, that was funny – especially as the farmers were so sanguine about it: “Not as bad as 190…(whenever),” one said, “It was a lot worse, then.” “It will end,” assured another.
Simon later met a soul-mate on the Great Barrier Reef, a “scientist” who was suitably full of the doom and gloom so beloved by the Believers; curious that he didn’t try to connect with any others on the coast. All in all, though, a series that threw away its potential, to sadly try and drive the message of “The Cause” home.
11
Another imbecile who doesn’t know the difference between weather and climate
00
(Brit question) Is rain in many parts of Aus not a good thing?
(my experience of the remote parts of Aus being via Les Hiddins)
150
Good question. Yes, it will have some good and lasting effects, but floods are always damaging and dangerous. Some farmers, maybe lots, will be financially damged through crop loss, and possibly loss of livestock
Cheers,
Dave B
50
That being said, flooding is a normal and necessary feature of the broader Australian ecosystem. Unlike much of Europe, Australia has thin nutrient poor soils and relies on flood events to replenish topsoil. Still, we can only hope (and hope to plan well) that the impact on the affected communities is not tragic.
70
And I presume Oz also needs the rain to replenish aquifers.
40
and flush all the surface salt and carp out to sea!!
00
What happened to the “Godzilla of all El Ninos” that the ABC & channel 7 told us was going to bring drought, fire & brimstone in 2016. Have you noticed how quiet they’ve been now that their BS & scaremongering have been called out. Actually it pretty obvious that they were wrong (again) back in April / May.
Can’t wait to see when their next attempts at scaremongering will start!
201
The Indian Ocean Dipole, for one thing. Apparently even the BOM was able to get that one right. Perhaps they deserve an Oz of the Year gong.
40
Did not anyone warm Tim Flannery not to hang out with Tom Foolery?
11
How ever could he hang with coach Tom Foolery of the Lollygag, TX high school Wildcats football team? Coach Foolery was very strict where wrong doing was involved. He once suspended his star linebacker when he pulled a groin. Seems it wasn’t his own groin he pulled.
cheers,
gary
01
This is impossible. you must be mistaken. Australia is in permanent drought. NOAA said so.
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/new-climate-models-predict-an-australian-perma-drought
432
If there was a way I bet the Greens would try to explain that it’s all an illusion and we are still experiencing severe drought. They would never admit they got it wrong – NEVER! The best they can do is change their story to explain it away. Literally, come hell or high water it’s man-made climate change. The world could be half destroyed by massive earthquakes and super volcanoes and they would still blame it on AGW. They just hate common sense.
432
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
This penetrating observation from Joseph Goebbels applies to any situation where political considerations dominate — and how much human intercourse is not seriously affected (if not dominated) by political considerations? For general purposes, “the State” may be replaced by whatever body is presently appropriate — even if that body is “97% of scientists”. It is truly depressing to contemplate the prostitution of Science but, when one must choose between admitting that one is totally wrong and ‘doubling down’ and trying to bluff it out, how many individuals of any political stripe will find some humility and take the honourable course?
It is also worth noting that the ethical problems currently besetting Climate Science are by no means unique to this discipline.
I’ll close with a relevant quote from Tolstoy: “I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives.”
330
Leading their campaign are some photos of steel transmission towers which have been blown over. How many of those towers blew over in this storm event? How many of those photos were even taken in South Australia?
We shouldn’t expect to be told the truth about this. How many main transmission lines failed?
The cynic in me says probably none. I expect that eventually we will discover that this event happened because the managers never planned for a wind event of this magnitude. So many windmills shut down under overload in a short period of time that the system failed to cope.
How long will it take to know?
252
Supposedly there were 23 transmission towers blown over NORTH of Adelaide, supposedly taking out 3 of 4 transmission lines to the north of the State, yet ALL of South Australia was blacked out.
120
Yairs. And with 23 “towers” down, how did they get the power back on?
23 poles perhaps? Or just wires? It will be interesting to see when we get a proper inquiry.
40
Yes. I fail to see that part of the debate being aired by the apologists over at Bolt or the Oz. AFAIK, the ‘temporary’ towers are still on the way. Overlooked conveniently?
30
It appears the fallen towers excuse is just another “The census site was hacked” propaganda attempt to defend SA’s dependence on Unreliables. Notice they don’t give a time and precise location for the fallen towers?
In contrast, precise 5 minute data exists for the wildly fluctuating output of the bird-blenders at the Aneroid web site. Here is SA’s second largest subsidy farm, Snowtown North, reaching 96% capacity, then auto-furling. 140MW of supply disappears in an instant, moments later the destabilized grid collapses.
http://i65.tinypic.com/24onc3o.jpg
The problem with wind and solar is they don’t just need thermal power stations for back-up, they need synchronous base-load power to balance the grid and stabilize the frequency. And after such a blackout, you can’t Black-start the grid on wind power alone. Ireland has legislated that Unreliables should never be generating more than 55% of power in their grid at any time. A the time of SA’s epic green-out, well over 60% of their power was coming from wildly fluctuating wind farms.
In the face of the actual data, the “Transmission not Generation” narrative of the guilty politicians and shills for the Unreliables is dead in the water. Even Blathering Lord Bouncy Waffle has changed his tune. (But no one cares what that clown has to say, as he was the one who restarted new subsidies for the Big Wind sprungers).
110
Essay by Tom Quirk ‘SA blackout apparently triggered by the violent fluctuations from the Snow town wind farms.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/10/01/south-australias-blackout-apparently-triggered-by-the-violent-fluctuations-from-the-snowtown-wind-farms/
80
Let’s not forget the alarmists predicted ”Sandy” hurricanes more regularly and also an unheard of Cat 7 Hurricane !
Sandy was 2 hurricanes joining during a super moon, it will not happen again in my lifetime
60
Sandy was an old-fashioned hurricane that was revitalized by an Atlantic storm and smacked the eastern seaboard – which happened to be an over-built seaboard – much of which should not have been built upon. It was not the storm of the century, nor would the damages have been so great if people could just understand that you don’t build million-dollar mansions on sand dunes at the edge of the ocean – or towns and cities. It’s like those people who build homes in the scrublands out in the USAn west and then cry when their homes burn down.
Alarmists can predict all they want to, they will be right once in a great while just by chance.
00
Will be more rain. SOI high.
https://www.longpaddock.qld.gov.au/seasonalclimateoutlook/southernoscillationindex/30daysoivalues/
151
Will be more rain IOD very low. Indian Ocean cool.
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/monitoring/iod1.png
140
A very negative IOD and we have a low pressure outbreak because the Subtropical Ridge (high pressure belt) has weakened.
http://www.agriculture.gov.au/abares/monitor/Pages/Climate.aspx
100
Low Pressure Breakout
http://www.bom.gov.au/fwo/IDY65100.pdf
70
Index 3,4 niño back down.
http://www.tropicaltidbits.com/analysis/ocean/nino34.png
100
BoM is keeping a watchful eye on La Nina, but not ready to call it yet.
91
BoM is sharpening their pencils in anticipation of “adjusting” rainfall figures to suit a flim-flam AGW narrative.
202
If the AAO stays in negative territory then we can expect more rain in southern Oz, regardless of what La Nina does.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/daily_ao_index/aao/aao_index.html
20
While I’m no meteorologist, I know that the BOM predicted the IOD some months ago. Do they talk to each other? Ever?
30
Tim Flannery, are you out there? We want to hear some rationalization from you. Failing that an apology will do. I’m sure you are sitting there red-faced wondering why you shot your mouth off and made such specific predictions. Take a leaf out of the IPCC manual in future and use lots of weasel words such as maybe, possibly, if, but, etc. Also push those prediction fullfilment dates beyond your life expectancy.
472
Tim could rationalize his way out of anything with the power gifted to him by kangaroos in studying their ancestors. Few scientists are so privileged to bond with hopping marsupials in quite the same way and clearly he has the incredible gift of hindsight. Unfortunately he thought they said foresight. Who else would say that rain would not fill dams. It is what rain does.
202
No… he is just a kangaroo short in the top paddock
101
Don’t be silly!
Flannery was paid a motza to toff-around the world on behalf of WWF and by the Labor-greens as a climate comedian, sorry commissioner; fluffing about with Malcolm the minister for Turnbull; and other political asides like Penny Wong and what’s ‘is name Rudd at Hope’n’bargian. On behalf of WWF Flannery set up some council of something.
The dots can be joined of the whole bizarre scheme in various annual reports of the Robert Purves Environment trust. Purves was/is a WWF “governor”; on the board; round-table player and ice-bear promoter; donated truckloads of money to Flannery to produce his much-lauded book “The weather fakers”; oh; bugger, spell-checker broken again! .. and parrot-on about empty dams, Murray-Darling basin scams and desal plants for the masses.
With the blessing of carbon-tax-believers (AKA WWF); Purves threw money at Flannery to flog his stuff through most schools in Australia; not to mention the ABC. Wasn’t Flannery an Australian of the Year; or the grand Australian B/S artist or something of the year?
Purves-reports present a wealth of the who’s who and who anointed whom in whatever passes for climate-science these days. David Karoly (Melbourne Uni) for instance, is a “WWF Climate witness”! Wow, pow and pooof. “Let me introduce a WWF climate witness”. Drum droll from the left please!
Check it out, do some searching. (https://australianclimatemadness.com/2012/07/15/freedom-of-information-request-for-donations/?iframe=true&preview=true).
Cheers,
Dr Bill
232
Flannery is still out there …
24 September, 2016: Tim Flannery names his three priority areas in addressing environmental concerns.
https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/2016/09/24/tim-flannery-names-his-three-priority-areas-addressing-environmental-concerns
50
Flim Flams new desal = “And yet we know, because of a great study done in 2012, that if we cover 9 per cent of the world’s oceans with seaweed farms, we’d offset all of the emissions we currently put into the atmosphere in any one year. Now 9 per cent of the world’s oceans is four-and-a-half times the size of Australia. It’s a big, big ask and we’re not anywhere near that in terms of doing it. But if we start applying ourselves now, there’s no doubt we could have achieved a lot in 30 years’ time. We could offset all current emissions, and we could also be growing 200 kilograms of high-quality marine protein per head of population for a population of nine billion, doing that.”
For God sake, please save the world and shut this idiot up [snip CAPS] – he is pushing geoengineering now, who left the loony bin doors open? I can’t think of anything more dangerous the Flim Flam fornicating with kelp!!
10
He’s insane. Far worse than any current USAn spokespolitico. Cover the oceans with kelp? If that -could- be done, the oceans would be covered now! Sheesh.
00
Flim flam makes alarmist claims regularly on the ABC and rakes in millions
20
o/t for some updates from the folks who could care less about climate science:
30 Sep: Reuters: Alissa de Carbonnel: EU fast-tracks Paris climate deal to brink of entering into force
“The Paris Agreement sends an unequivocal market signal,” said Stephanie Pfeifer, CEO of the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change, which includes investors managing over 13 trillion euros ($14.6 trillion) in assets.
The decision by the EU, which accounts for about 12 percent of global emissions, needs approval by the European Parliament in a vote on Oct. 4. That in turn has to be endorsed by ministers, a process that could be done in a day…
Cementing the accord before the U.S. presidential election on Nov. 8 would make it harder to challenge if Republican Donald Trump, who has opposed it, beats Democrat Hillary Clinton, a strong supporter…
POLAND SATISFIED
Poland sought concessions for its coal-fired economy ahead of Friday’s special gathering, so EU environment ministers found a way to break with normal procedure and lock collectively into the global pact.
“This is a success. Polish interests will be secured,” Polish Environment Minister Jan Szyszko said.
Asked what reassurances Warsaw had been given, he said: “Even if I got them … then this would just be a gentleman’s agreement … undoubtedly there is still a lot of work ahead.”…
The EU shortcut, dubbed “institutional creativity” by France’s minister, ultimately hangs on trust that each of the 28 will follow through with their own ratifications. If they do not, those who have gone ahead could be stuck with fulfilling the promised emissions cuts of the bloc as a whole…
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-climatechange-eu-idUSKCN12016F
30 Sep: WSJ: Gabriele Steinhauser: Paris Climate Deal Seen Taking Force This Year as EU Speeds up Ratification
EU represents 12% of global emissions
“Our reputation was one the line,” said the EU’s climate and energy commissioner, Miguel Arias Canete, explaining the unusual step…
The EU represents some 12% of global emissions, although it isn’t yet clear whether those will count in full until all of its 28 member states have finished their national ratification procedures. The member states that have ratified—Germany, France, Austria, Hungary, Slovakia, Portugal and Malta—make up about 4.6% of emissions…
The unanimous decision to go ahead nevertheless came despite initial resistance from Poland and Italy, which are unhappy with a separate proposal on how much each EU member state has to reduce its emissions.
There were also some doubts over the position of the U.K., which is in the process of negotiating its exit from the EU and has opposed handing additional powers to the bloc’s institutions…
http://www.wsj.com/articles/eu-set-to-ratify-paris-climate-agreement-1475240342
1 Oct: CarbonPulse: EU’s move puts Paris Agreement on brink of entry, but don’t expect any action
EU ministers on Friday agreed a fast-track ratification process that is all but certain to bring the Paris Agreement into force in November, but the UN’s procedural manoeuvring means the move is unlikely to trigger any acceleration in climate action.
52
The action of the EU in applying “institutional creativity” exposes the emptiness of the Paris agreement and the purely symbolic nature of its ratification.
“The EU shortcut, dubbed “institutional creativity” by France’s minister, ultimately hangs on trust that each of the 28 will follow through with their own ratifications. If they do not, those who have gone ahead could be stuck with fulfilling the promised emissions cuts of the bloc as a whole…”
No EU member has an INDIVIDUAL NDIC and any implied obligation under this agreement. Neither is there any internal agreement on the distribution of the EU NDIC.
Also, ratification has not yet been enacted by all members, so the “fast track” is technically illegal.
The ambiguous position of the UK has been mentioned. It seems to me that the UK has exempted itself from the Paris accord.
I could foresee this and it added the cream to my vote for Brexit.
80
‘Full Brexit’ has such a reassuring sound to a serf…
http://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/716371/Michael-Fallon-declares-Britain-heading-full-Brexit-deal-finally-cut-all-EU-ties
120
Thank you for that link – that is excellent news! 🙂
40
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/10/02/hungary-votes-no-to-migrant-quotas-polls-suggest—but-what-does/
Hungary poll – 98% say NO to EU migrant quotas
10
o/t for some updates from the folks who could care less about climate science:
pat, do you really mean ‘could care less’ or couldn’t care less’, there is a big difference between the two statements.
The first says that they do care about what ever it is but are thinking they shouldn’t care so much.
The second says that they don’t care at all about what ever it is.
Sorry to be pedantic but I am seeing the Americanism of ‘could care less’ when they mean ‘couldn’t care less’ being used more and more in English writing.
110
I’m with you Ivan.
Have you also noticed the “then” / “than” confusion?
You will see it everywhere now!
30
The danger of being gunned down by badly punctuated pandas may have been over-estimated, but you should never be sorry about being pedantic.
Language is our main system for communication, and we should no more allow the system to be degraded by carelessness and laziness than we would allow such degradation in structural engineering.
20
140 characters ( is that right? ) seems to be about right for the attention span these days. Perhaps it would be sufficient in Latin.
A room without books is like a body without a soul. works. So too Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking..
Compare those (Cicero, Marcus Aurelius) with this, from a prominent, well, I’m unsure…:Stupid on steroids. In Australia, facts just don’t matter a damn any more.
(Mike Carlton)
Doesn’t quite have the carry, in my view. Problem is, every airhead has a microphone, and every preacher a pulpit. Sigh. I once thought the internet would save the world.
20
And it still could. If we could ever get through the twits. I spent two months incommunicado. My daughter {Should say stepdaughter, but primary for most of her 40 years}, because of nuance.. Ridiculous.
I would have to ask: Are we furthering communication with these tactics? Or are we simply furthering the finances of the Zuckenbergs of the world?
I guess that sprite is out of Pandora’s box. I have yet to see the last one, the one that needed all the others to be released in order for it to manifest. I am yet to see Hope.
Beware Greeks with Myths..
30
For example, putting a comma before the conjunction “and”.
01
When “and’ is connecting two independent clauses, a comma is required.
10
Ivan – it’s because us heathen ungrammatical barbaric amurikins are taking over the world, word by word, saying by saying…
00
30 Sep: Phys.org: EU ‘cautiously optimistic’ on global pact to curb aviation emissions
Negotiations for a freeze, or even a reduction, in greenhouse gas emissions from civil aviation are making progress, Europe’s transport commissioner said Friday, adding she is feeling “cautiously optimistic.”
The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), a UN agency, opened its triennial assembly in Montreal on Tuesday and is meeting there until October 7, with a climate-centered agenda…
“There are still some open issues that need to be solved for all states to be onboard,” (EU transport commissioner Violeta) Bulc said…
???A source close to the discussions told AFP that informal talks were under way to address the final differences, stressing that Latin American and African countries were expressing “considerable” support for the proposal…
http://phys.org/news/2016-09-eu-cautiously-optimistic-global-pact.html
29 Sep: TimesOfIndia: Vishwa Mohan: India not to cap aviation emissions
Though the issue of emission cap in civil aviation is not covered under the Paris deal, the proposal is being discussed in an ongoing assembly of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) in Montreal to cut carbon footprints of airlines…
Developing countries, including India, believe the market-based taxation regime to offset emission will impose inappropriate economic burden on them…
The country would rather bargain for more flexibility on the proposed GMBM where it, along with other developing countries, remains outside the mechanism to cap emissions in the civil aviation sector for the next few years…
India’s position on this issue was approved by the Union Cabinet, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, which on Wednesday also gave its approval to ratify the Paris Agreement…
“There is an attempt to bring a cap on emissions in the civil aviation (sector) by 2020. We said that for the developing world the proposal is unfair. When it (economy) is growing, you cannot cap our emissions from aviation… A cap by 2020 will be an injustice,” Union human resources development minister Prakash Javadekar said, briefing the media on the Cabinet’s decision…
“There are more scientific ways to deal with it. We have not reached the stage of the developed world… We cannot put a stop to our growth and therefore we have decided to put India’s viewpoints very strongly.” …
He said though the UN secretariat is closed on weekends, it would remain open specifically to allow India ratify the deal on October 2 (Sunday)…
Once the Paris Agreement comes into force in November, the countries, including India, will engage themselves in framing rules for its implementation.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/environment/pollution/India-not-to-cap-aviation-emission/articleshow/54576801.cms
32
It sounds like Nancy Pelosi set these rules up while lying to pass Obamacare .
She retained her congressional seat in San Francisco CA and her position as Speaker of the House in the US Congress.
When someone asked “How stupid can a congress critter be?”
I believe the voters in CA took that as a challenge.
They’re still looking for the bottom.
80
not that you would know it if you relied on the MSM:
VIDEO: 30 Sep: GatewayPundit: Jim Hoft: POST DEBATE POLLS: TRUMP Surges to Lead in 5 Battleground States Following Debate
Trump now leads in Nevada, Colorado, Iowa, Ohio and North Carolina – all states Barack Obama won his first term – according to Real Clear Politics averages…
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2016/09/post-debate-polls-trump-surges-lead-5-battleground-states-following-debate/
VIDEO: 30 Sep: SR 1227 – UPI Poll – Trump Now Leads in Electoral College!
According to the UPI story on the new poll:
“Trump would amass 292 votes and Hillary Clinton would get 246 with 270 needed to secure the oval office.”…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnbEZjaZdy8
30 Sep: IndependentJournalReview: Mike Miller & Kyle Becker: The LA Times Just Dropped a Poll on the 2016 Presidential Race That Has Left Many Americans Astonished
In the latest USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times presidential poll, approximately 3,000 eligible voters were asked about their level of support for Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, or other candidates as well as how likely they are to vote.
Much to the surprise of Hillary supporters throughout America, respondents favored Trump over Clinton by nearly six points…
http://ijr.com/2016/09/704860-the-la-times-just-dropped-a-poll-on-the-2016-presidential-race-that-has-left-many-americans-astonished/
82
Pat
Makes you think there is a link between your earlier posts — rush to get the Paris agreement through and Trump’s surge in the polls.
Trump has threatened to tear up the Paris Agreement for the USA –can he actually do this, if the USA has ratified it?
50
Obama flouting the US constitution by treating the ‘paris agreement’ as an executive agreement and not a treaty (that requires senate assent).
40
It’s not a treaty, and the US senate won’t ratify it. Therefore, it’s not legally binding. Trump could do whatever he wants with it.
10
My recently planted Walnut tree is doing very well thank you, as is everything else in our garden.
Mind you, if the forthcoming summer is going to be hot and dry, we’d better plan for one hell of a bushfire season.
70
Flannery needs to be held to account by the media .
If we had more dams and they were being run properly the flooding would be far less as in the case of the Hume dam at Albury .
I’ve heard they didn’t release water earlier because it’s $25 mill wasted for everyday they open the gates for flood mitigation .
Australia is a drought prone land and the more dams we have the better , they may not fill every year but they will fill eventually and that’s valuable in a drought .
201
Poor Tim,
it’s sad
for him,
snow
at Threadbo,
dams,(dammit,)
presuming to
over-flow,
Nay-chur
not listening
to Tim,
it’s kinda’
grim.
182
I remember the 70’s were full of protesters waving placards of “No dams!” when it came to the Tassie hydro project. Not far behind was “Stop uranium mining!”. Many of them wouldn’t have been affected, so it wasn’t a true case of NIMBYism. I think the only way we could create more dams and clean electrickery is to cut the Greenies off both supplies altogether. That might get them to relent and STHU.
122
RR, this time last year, Lake Hume was at just 53 per cent after a dry winter and spring.
Right through that dry winter the Murray Darling Basin Authority had the inviromental flows in the Murray running at bank level.
Now let me not be the one to defend the figure fiddling BOM but they did issue a pretty fair forcast for winter and spring rainfall in the catchments above Hume for both 2015 & 2016 as follows.
May of 2015, seasonal forcast of a below average winter and spring rainfall in the surrounding catchments.
This year in May, the BOM forcast told them there would be above average rainfall in winter and spring in those very same catchments.
This year there were no environmental flows to match last year’s.None. Quite the opposite happened. In July you could, in places with the flow being so low, actually walk across the Murray in a pair of gumboots, barely getting your feet wet. They literally kept the plug in till it was to late to mitigate the rapid fill and the inevitable massive releases. A further warning was issued just yesterday of upping those releases over the next 48 hours!
It will be interesting the spin that comes out of the inevitable inquiry as to who is responsible for the flooding downstream of Albury that is causing such massive damagel
121
Can’t have more dams – the pent up waters get pouty and release greenhouse gases.
00
Jo
Sentence below the first figure
“A large part of the scary purple area got only 100-200mm of rain in a month (4-8 inches). It’s just very usual in these dry areas.”
ought to read “unusual” I’d think? At least it is for our area.
60
Ahem yes, quite Ian. Ta. “Unusual”.
40
Well we’ve just had an ElNino, lots of warming more evaporation now it’s cooled. Guess what was going to happen to all that water in the atmosphere. Add to that a negative Indian Ocean Dipole that typically means increased rain to the southern half of OZ. Hey presto.
161
I agree.
50
Let’s not forget the wet season started a month early in the top end.
50
As we had a great day for the Grand Final in Melbourne and not Adelaide’s storms and rain, there is only one conclusion.
Lower CO2 and especially windmills cause extreme weather events. It is probably a disturbance in the force.
161
The nation is flooding but Dopey Dan Andrews, ruler of The People’s Republic of Victoria just placed an order for $27 million for 50 gigalitres of desalinated water.
This is the first time that the uneeded desal plant has ever produced water but even though it has been unused for years since it was built it still costs the taxpayer $1.8 million per day to keep it in mothballs.
http://www.smh.com.au/comment/a-salty-problem-aquasures-desalination-plant-at-wonthaggi-20160325-gnr598.html
161
Rather than build more dams and other water catchment systems we build and use unwanted and expensive desal plants. This is insane. In the real world of business anyone who did something like this would be booted out by the shareholders.
131
$1.8 million a day to keep in mothballs? Ours in NSW is only $500,000 a day according to our, sorry their ABC. These amounts could be better expressed in ‘hospital beds’ or ‘teachers aides’ in schools.
111
The unions managed to get the VIC desal plant classified as a “remote area” so get paid extra, even though the only plant is only 10 mins drive from the nearest town of over 20,000 people.
81
Surely that’s The People’s Democratic Socialist Republic of Victoria? That way at least we know there is no input required of the people and damn all democracy being carried out while other people’s money is being used to feather the nests of the nomenklatura.
10
‘Scientists may have zeroed in on the cause of a mysterious 18-month drop in global average sea level that occurred between 2010 and 2011, pointing to events that occurred on the world’s smallest continent: Australia. New research shows that during those two years, flooding rains in Australia, which resulted from a rare combination of factors, took huge quantities of water out of the oceans without returning it, like a library user with mounting late fees.’
Climate Central / August 2013
81
If you pull the same stunt during the coming “La Nina” they will take away your library card and refuse you any more rain, thus vindicating Tim Flannery.
121
When will TIM FLAM be arrested?
122
So are we now going to see a drop in sea levels rising? Afterall the last time there was a pause/drop they pinpointed the cause as being due to all the water now trapped on the Australian continent following some significant rainfall and flooding. Can’t recall when that was now though. We have had four months in a row here now where the monthly rainfall average totals have been 50 to 100% above average.
70
Been the wettest winter/spring since I moved to Northern Vic. It’s good for the catchments, parks and gardens, drainage system flushed and a pain in the neck for Greenies. What could be better? An apology from Flim-Flam. Start the petition.
131
Aldgate in the Adelaide Hills was 30% above the annual average rainfall at the end of September. Just under 1,300 mms.
Since Climate ‘science’ shows this must be man-made, should we call months of drenching rain the Flannery effect?
42
No. Just let him die in obscurity.
31
He’s already been honoured
A Flannery = 25 mm of rain
51
I thought the unit of measure would be a bit less, considering he was betting for near zero and permanent drought. Maybe we could trade in Flim-Flam credits?
10
I calculated the effects of the dramatic rise in snow in Antarctica reported about two years ago during the record ice extent. That would have corresponded to about 6mm in sea level. News like the growth in Antarctic ice and snow is reported, but clearly without any idea that it has to come from somewhere.
81
I was disappointed no windmills caught fire or fell down in SA (as long as no one would have been hurt). Let’s tear down these useless things and replace them with proper power stations, ultrasupercritical coal plant or nuclear. Enjoy watching these things burn or fall.
https://youtu.be/wfzgIxMEo8g
151
Yes! Isn’t it strange that four legged towers were blown over yet one legged wind turbines stayed erect.
91
One leg good, four legs bad? (Apologies to Animal Farm.)
20
In the twi-light world of Green logic,is half a leg
better than one?
00
Alternatively donate them to people who need them, like sub saharan Africa. It is becoming clear that highly variable output makes windmills dangerous as part of a grid as they destroy stability and reliability. Steady spinning coal fired dynamos or turbines or engines run naturally all day and steadily but a naturally flukey power source might be great for local power and a disaster as part of a National Grid where every component has to exactly match in output.
Just as windmills are being productive and spinning fast and steadily, they all have to be turned off. You would be allowed drive a car as unreliable as that on a freeway. Now imagine hundreds of such cars. This is our National Grid.
So give all the windmills away and go back to coal and South Australia can have steady, reliable constant power even in a storm or still summer’s day. Give the windmills to people like South Sudan where a friend in Melbourne organized donation a big solar system for a hospital in the middle of nowhere and Australians risked their lives to help a single hospital keep antibiotics cold. No grid. A big battery for backup. A huge improvement in quality of life. These people would dream of a windmill. No one dreams of a grid and reliable power.
It is absurd that people who do not need windmills are furiously building them, not only in South Australia but in the North Sea. It redefines self indulgent ignorance not only of the reality that we are carbon life forms, but also that windmills are utterly unsuitable for reliable base power.
120
I never once thought that all this “green” and “free” tech was for the poor people, the 3rd world countries, those that could use it. No, it’s a flaunting of the wealth of the modernized countries, the salving of an angry guilty wound. Very remote and unconnected areas would benefit greatly from having wind and solar power until “real” power is brought in, or the tech improves to the point where that “free” tech is actually worth the money it takes to maintain it.
Of course, that isn’t what the IPCC or UN is really all about, or that’s how it would be playing out Right Now.
01
Are quantitative measurements available on the amount of lightening, thunder and/or charge separation in clouds that produce rain? Such measurements might identify the role played by cosmic rays in inducing the condensation of water vapor into droplets.
81
Now that Science and Nature both admitted that the weaker magnetic field at the surface of our Sun does not prevent the Sun from emitting a super-solar flare every ~1,000 years (just like massive stars with stronger surface magnetic fields), it is time to reconsider earlier reports that solar magnetic fields that penetrate the photosphere may, in fact, accelerate ions in the photosphere into so-called galactic “cosmic rays.”
The very survival of mankind depends on our willingness to use new observations to correct the earlier “consensus Standard Solar Model.”
https://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2016/09/16/a-world-hangs-in-the-balance/
41
1. Nature Communications, 7:11058 doi:10.1038/ncomms11058 http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2016/160324/ncomms11058/pdf/ncomms11058.pdf
2. Science News. “Could Earth be fried by a ‘superflare’ from the Sun?”
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/03/could-earth-be-fried-superflare-sun
3. Nordic Science, “Sun can emit superflares every 1000 years.”
http://sciencenordic.com/sun-can-emit-superflares-every-1000-years
00
Don’t I remember from meteorology textbooks that stormy weather forms at the boundary of COLD fronts?
60
Maybe you didn’t make it through the whole book.
Look for the chapter explaining tropical easterly waves.
00
Yup, force x again. When will they take notice?
41
GetUp can claim another win for renewabulls. For a 12 hour period, the entire grid was zero-emissions again in the DPR SA. Of course the whole state was dark but so what?
81
The SA voters got what they wanted. They can freeze in the dark.
60
David Maddison
The Libs got over 50% of the primary vote in the last SA election and Labor still got in….the voters in SA did not have a chance
80
***HOW SPECIAL IS THAT?
30 Sep: CBC: Canadian Press: Prairie farmers expected to benefit from global warming by growing corn, soy
Rising temperatures and longer growing seasons predicted for Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba
Farmers on the Canadian Prairies are ***THE ONLY AGRICULURAL WINNERS ON THE PLANET as a result of global warming, according to an economist studying global food supply.
Lutz Goedde, a partner with McKinsey and Co. in Denver, told the Global Business Forum in Banff on Friday that rising temperatures and longer growing seasons mean that ever-increasing areas of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba will be able to switch to corn and soybeans from wheat and canola
“I think Canada is in a unique situation with the corn and soy belt basically moving north,” he told reporters after his speech.
“The planet is heating up and there is an opportunity for Canadian farmers — and they have been executing on it — to convert wheat land to corn and soy production.”…
In his presentation, Goedde said the world must produce 40 to 50 per cent more food in the next 20 years to account for population growth and a growing taste for higher protein diets in emerging economies like China and India.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/global-warming-canada-prairies-farmers-1.3787210
LinkedIn: Lutz Goedde
Senior Partner at McKinsey & Company – Leader in Agriculture + Food Practice
Previous Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation etc
From 2006 to 2010 he was part of the leadership team building the global and agricultural development program at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. During his tenure the Foundation committed to development efforts in Africa and Asia to improve smallholder agriculture. Until 2005 Dr. Goedde was CEO of Alta Genetics, a global livestock genetics improvement company based in Western Canada. In his early career, Dr. Goedde worked for Bayer Crop Science in Central America and South Africa in sales and marketing…
19 Apr: Newswise: International Agriculture Expert Joins Global Institute for Food Security Board
(GIFS was established in December 2012 through the collaboration of its founding partners – PotashCorp, the Government of Saskatchewan and the University of Saskatchewan (U of S). With initial commitments of $35 million from PotashCorp and $15 million from the Saskatchewan government over seven years, the Institute addresses the increasing global demand for safe, reliable, and nutritious food.)
SASKATOON – Lutz Goedde, a leading expert in strategies to improve agricultural productivity around the world, will join the board of directors of the Global Institute for Food Security (GIFS) at the University of Saskatchewan (U of S), effective today…
“If current trends continue, by 2050, caloric demand will increase by 70 percent, and crop demand for human consumption and animal feed will increase by at least 100 per cent,” he said…
http://www.newswise.com/articles/international-agriculture-expert-joins-global-institute-for-food-security-board
40
“Prairie farmers expected to benefit from global warming by growing corn, soy”
A few years back Vlad Putin suggested that a bit of warming in Moscow might be beneficial. The following summer we heard endless reports of devastating drought and bushfires in Russia.
Did they really get unusual bushfires, or was this just GetUp’s mates at work?
40
As world food production grows every steadily higher, there are people who want to bring back the glaciers which buried the world under kilometers of ice. Logically things get warmer or cooler but as archeology and geology show, it has been much colder and Northern Europe, Russia and Canada were buried under ice.
The irrational fear of an alleged +1.5C in 150 years is just nuts compared with the certainty of retreat of glaciers only 10,000 years ago. That was when agriculture was discovered, the wheel and the burned stick but some hanker for the good old days?
Even if Global Warming was true, what is the problem? The Northern latitudes melt every year across Russia and Canada today and 0.5C would not matter if you have been there in winter! As for Antarctica, 0.5C doesn’t matter in summers of -25C and winters of -50C. As for the tropics, how can they change anyway, all moderated by water and monsoons? No, it is all irrational fantasy pushed for political purposes, to scare people to vote for their Green saviours who want absolute power. Why else was Tim Flannery made Alarmist of the year?
132
Any chance those desalinization plants could be used to house the homeless? Might as well get something out of the expense.
91
The Sydney Morning Herald January 4, 2008
IT MAY be time to stop describing south-eastern Australia as gripped by drought and instead accept the extreme dry as permanent, one of the nation’s most senior weather experts warned yesterday.
“Perhaps we should call it our new climate,” said the Bureau of Meteorology’s head of climate analysis, David Jones.
130
David Jones should go back to selling clothes.
40
Or Davey Jones’ Locker maybe?
30
How long before they throw Flim Flammery, the BoM and everyone else under a bus? “They were wrong – gerbil worming means more rain all the time” becoming the official narrative. Certainly they are trying to use a modest Cat 1 wind event from the Bight to ram through the “hotter and wetter atmosphere” meme good and hard.
102
But with their record, as soon as they switch to droning “hotter and wetter” we will be gripped by drought. Keep Flannery but don’t give him any money.
62
It is also interesting to look not just at anomalies, but also at the actual rainfall. The Australian Bureau of Meteorology website http://www.bom.gov.au provides excellent tailor-made graphs of rainfall and temperatures since 1900 by station, by area, by month, by season, by year with trend lines.
For example, the average spring rainfall for eastern Australia is about 100mm, but with significant cyclic variations. The annual rainfall for the same region averages about 600mm.
Remember all the hoo-haa about the Murray-Darling Basin running dry and all the money spent on water buybacks? The 15 year running average shows 450mm pa, about the same as it was back in the early 1900’s.
One area that does show a down trend is SW Australia – from 750mm pa to 600mm pa. But for total Australia the average has increased since the 1900’s from 400 to 500 mm pa.
32
Linked is a CSIRO rainwater chemistry analysis report in which one will find values for pH and note that here is no data at all for Carbonic Acid, so the low PH values (< 7) are partially due to HCL and H2SO4, and the rest probably due to dissolved protons.
There was a massive CME ejected by the Sun which reached the Earth on 28th September causing significant electrical effects such as the SA storm, and the appearance of a hurricane off the US, among other things.
So it's a surge of solar protons that passed through the Earth electrical circuit and leads to the possibility that rainfall is caused by excess protons in the ionosphere that move to the Earth's surface via rain, (rain having low pH due to excess protons). Massive CME's could well cause the formation of ice/snow as well, and one test of this scenario could be the 1859 Carrington event.
100
In addition, after watching Pat Frank’s presentation on model errors etc, in which there seems to be an autocorrelation problem in the climate modelling.
So we know that cloudiness is driven by cosmic radiation, on top of which is a solar variability of solar protons. Since clouds are simply condensed water droplets, and we add surplus solar protons delivered by a CME, this then lowers the pH resulting in an increase in positive charge in the clouds, which on atmospheric dilectric breakdown then initiates lightning, basically short circuits between the ionosphere and ground via the cloud layer, (lighting originates from the ionosphere, not clouds), followed by a mass movement of positive charge, rain, to the Earth’s surface.
I suspect that it’s this process, which is unknown to the climate modellers, could be the source of the autocorrelation since the modulation of solar radiance should be correlated with solar wind fluxes which modulate the cosmic ray flux.
50
More on the way . .?
http://www.metservice.com/maps-radar/satellite/australia-infrared
30
O/T. James Lovelock gives the Greens and AGW another hard, swift kick.
http://www.breitbart.com/london/2016/10/01/james-lovelock-godfather-green-climate-change-religion-totally-unscientific/
100
Heehee – nice! That was a good fun read on a Sunday morning. Thank you. 🙂
50
‘…and anyone who tries to “predict more than five to ten years is a bit of an idiot.”
Hmmm …
40
Wait. What?
SMH, July 2014: Australia’s dry south to become even drier, scientists say
“Southern Australia has been warned to brace for more dry winters as a new study links the drying trend of the past few decades to human-induced changes in the atmosphere.
Dr Nerilie Abram from the college of physical and mathematical sciences at the Australian National University said the emerging consensus among researchers painted a “very worrying picture”.”
SMH, Sept. 29, 2016: Climate change stealing rain from Australia by shifting winds towards Antarctica
Abram: “What this research shows shows us is that we need to keep putting money into research to find out how Antarctica’s climate is being affected because it directly affects our lives in Australia.”
> No. No more money. You have failed. Look out the window.
. . .
Now, the resident redthumber’s head is probably exploding at this moment, pointing that this prediction is for 100 years future:
“Projections in the study, published in online journal Nature Geoscience, suggest that autumn and winter rainfall in south-west Australia may drop by up to 40 per cent by the end of the century.”
But, the redthumber would be wrong: [Global Warmng] Is Already Here, Says Massive Government Report
101
We still need to come up with an alternative package or nothing will change.
00
Note the quibble on prediction/projection.
A prediction is what science makes; a projection is what climate science makes.
41
Yep that the right template, now just fill in the dots and get it published.
00
Tom Quirk nails it at Watts.
South Australia’s blackout apparently ‘triggered by the violent fluctuations from the Snowtown wind farms’
62
Thanks. Link here. Tom is a real scientist, not one of these people who call themselves scientists because their degree was in the science faculty like psychology and botany who generally have no need for mathematics and physics and engineering and computer modelling and even chemistry.
As I wrote, the analogy is a freeway where some of the cars start behaving erratically and even stopping and starting suddenly. It brings the whole system down if only to prevent a major catastrophe. I guess the only upside to this is that no power generators were actually damaged as this had the ability to bring down Victoria too. Victoria must retain the right to protect itself from erratic customers who try to run their state on windmills.
The Government of South Australia should take full responsibility for this disaster and the huge cost in many ways. Of course, they will blame the storm and everyone else, including Victoria. Sell the windmills or keep them as a novelty. Like the useless desalination plant as the Murray overflows and the Barossa valley is in flood. If nothing else, dams and coal are far cheaper and self indulgent South Australia is heading for broke. It will not be saved by overpriced submarines.
71
It is indeed the sudden stopping that causes the wildest fluctuations that trip out the grid. When a subsidy farm auto-furls, it is typically generating at maximum capacity. Here is Snowtown North suddenly going from 140MW to zero moments before grid collapse.
“The Government of South Australia should take full responsibility for this disaster and the huge cost in many ways. Of course, they will blame the storm and everyone else, including Victoria.”
Again, correct. But Jay Weatherfail just signed the economic death-warrant for SA. Instead of telling the truth, he chose to spin as wildly as a bird-blender, erratically pumping out narrative. The patently false “transmission not generation” spin may convince journalists and similarly unintelligent members of the public, but it won’t convince engineers and business owners. Those that might invest in production and manufacturing now see both electricity and government in SA as unreliable and untrustworthy.
42
Another analogy is Sally Robbins, the Australian female eights rower who gave up and laid back in the boat dropping her oars in both the Worlds and then the Olympics. You cannot seriously run a synchronous team when you know that is a real possibility.
We know wind farms are likely to drop off the grid at any time, either because the wind drops suddenly or it increases suddenly. That might be fine on a small scale contributing to a far bigger system, but it is hopeless as a base load. The process of getting back into synchronization is near impossible too. In this case, being in sync with Victoria as stroke is hopeless knowing Victoria has to disconnect from a wildly varying system or threaten Victoria’s grid too. It has not been mentioned but SA had a real chance to bring down both states, a double disaster narrowly avoided by fast and predictable and necessary action. This is not the grid or transmission itself at fault but the very idea of having unreliable power generators in an AC grid where exact synchronization is necessary at all times.
41
The wind is howling across Victoria at the moment, often over 60Km/hr and with big gusts. No one in Victoria is expecting any interruption to our power. That has not happened for many years. It used to be like that in South Australia but not since their power bills went through the roof. They are paying a massive premium for unreliable power. I mean, who really expects wind power to shut down because it is windy?
61
What is truly astounding is how they were given fair warning of the approaching disaster, yet drove straight on in.
Snowtown Main auto-furled 3.5 hours before the cascade collapse, instantly stopping delivery of 120MW to the grid. Then half an hour before collapse Hallet 1 & 2 auto-furl and another 100MW goes black for minutes. Finally, Snowtown North & South over-speed and shut down, a sudden loss of 260MW. The Victorian inter-connectors, already tormented, switch out. This leaves the SA grid facing 1600MW demand, but with only 100MW of synchronous base-load power. Of course the grid goes unstable and crashes.
3.5 hours warning not enough? How about 12 months? This is lunacy.
31
It was producing 80 MW when it dropped out. Whatever you mean by “auto-furled” is in you own head not in the data provided.
… and then came back on and stayed on until the blackout.
That could well have been an automatic shutdown due to a lightning strike. Our local substation used to do that regularly during storms. ( no “windmills” concerned ).
The usual politically motivated rants have no more validity than alarmist claims of CO2 driven warming. Just read whatever you want into what happens and start shouting.
03
Greg,
I mixed up capacity for Snowtown South (126MW) and Snowtown (99MW). But the fact remains that Snowtown reached 95% capacity then suddenly went dark. Five subsidy farms with 71, 94, 99, 126 & 148MW all did this leading up to the eventual Green-out.
It doesn’t matter whether this was lightning or over-speed auto-furling (“feathering” the blades to stop the rotor). Both these events are to be expected when operating wind turbines in storm conditions.
What we can say from the data –
A. SA was getting most of the power in their grid from wind turbines during storm conditions.
B. Most of the synchronous base-load power needed to balance and synchronise the grid was coming from two Victorian inter-connectors running near full capacity
C. Base-load power being generated within SA was below the individual capacity of 6 of SA’s larger wind farms.
D. Prior to Green-out, 5 farms all had sudden drop-outs from near maximum capacity.
E. Previous similar incidents where wind farms had suddenly gone from max to zero had caused widespread blackouts and damaged train line infrastructure.
A+B+C+D = F. They had fair warning, but drove straight over the cliff.
30
Yes, his (Quirk) Figure 5 nails it, I agree.
The windmills did drop their bundle BEFORE the total blackout. The total blackout in itself was the essential result of the Vic Heywood line tripping off after being instantaneously hit by a huge unexpected demand (transferred from the useless windmills), which was impossible to meet, to avoid cascading through Victoria – as this interconnector is designed to do.
I’ve been waiting over 20 years for the perfect storm. Such a pity that so many innocent people are hurt. And any inquiry will either avoid saying this in public or will expurgate this from the public report. There is already a road-tested template for this with the Wivenhoe Dam.
31
Tom Quirk nailed nothing. It was baseless speculation based on a lack of information and a lack of knowledge of the network. At that point you can speculate whatever you like and claim it is “most likely” what happened.
That is typical IPCC strategy which sane people reject: whether it fits their personal bias or not. Seems skeptics forget to be skeptical when “wind mills” are concerned.
Calling turbines “windmills” is usually a pretty sure sign of a politically motivated rant starting.
22
Ian, I’m sure renewables contributed to the statewide blackout, but it seems to me that until we get the data on 1 minute or even 10 second splits I can’t tell whether a straight up line is due to a transmission tower or an auto cut off. Where were the towers that fell, and what time did each one fall, and where are the shots of the tornado damage? Does anyone have data on autoshut off’s of wind farms other than just a 24 hour graph of output?
It’s a management debacle, absolutely, but whether this particular disaster was firstly thanks to weak towers, too high % of wind (frequency synchronization), or stupid auto-shut-offs is not yet clear. Mostly likely there is some combination. Will the SA govt ever release all that data?
42
I hope so.
30
Jo,
in truth the relevant data is already in the public domain, and it shows pylon collapse did not initiate the green-out. In all probability, pylon collapse was the result of the green-out.
1. From available data we know SA was running over 60% of the grid from wind in storm conditions. Given that over speed or lightning protection can take 100’s of MW of supply offline instantly, this was simply crazy.
2. We know almost all synchronous base-load power balancing the grid and establishing frequency was from two Victorian inter-connectors running near capacity.
3. We know from available data that SA subsidy farms were spooling up to maximum capacity, then suddenly dropping out due to over-speed or lightning protection in the storm conditions. This happened for at least five subsidy farms.
4. We know that moments before grid collapse, Snowtown and Snowtown North, suddenly dropped 260MW of supply then tried to switch back into the grid minutes later.
5. We have a good idea as to why the two Victorian inter-connectors would have tripped in such conditions. (Hot and bothered by 3 previous attempts to trip them.)
6. We know that without synchronous base-load power from Victoria, A) Grid frequency would have gone instantly unstable. B) Almost 600 MW of load would have been applied to the grid, draining smoothing capacitance in a huge load surge.
7. We know from previous failures around the world that load-surge (on sudden loss of supply) as opposed to power-surge, can cause heating and ductility in aluminium transmission lines. In high wind this can cause cable failure. If cables fail, significant uneven structural loads can be applied to pylons, taking them beyond their design limits.
The bottom line is this: The longer South Afailure continue to lie about what happened, the worse this will get. It does not matter what wild and erratic spin the government pumps out about this wind fail. At best they can fool inane lame scream meeja journalists, and fools who take their words as gospel. They need to convince engineers and business they know what went wrong and present a plan to fix it. The “strong winds blew a few pylons down” narrative is making business laugh and engineers snarl. South Afailure needs to quit with the “narrative” and embrace the truth. This was a green-out not a black-out.
Synchronous base-load power. Without it, South Afailure will remain closed for business.
03
If any of that rain is unwanted it would be a nice neighborly thing to do if you sent some of it to California and the whole western United States. 😉
20
It’s no doubt too late to avoid the flooding but I hope you come through it with the least possible damage.
It seems like the weather never quite manages to even out the trouble it causes over Australia or America. And the blame for it is always put on climatechange these days.
40
If climate change was to be prosecuted in any U.S. court for its list of crimes the standard rules of evidence any judge would follow would see the case thrown out with extreme prejudice.
30
Ted O’Brien. –
how quaint…doing a cost-benefit analysis!
27 Sep: The Conversation: Angelina Davydova: What’s holding Russia back from ratifying the Paris climate agreement?
Following a special climate event at the 2016 United Nations General Assembly, Alexander Bedtritsky, special adviser on climate to Vladimir Putin, confirmed that “Russia will not artificially speed up the ratification process”.
Russian representatives have said they need more time to evaluate the effects of the Paris agreement on the Russian economy, which is heavily dependent on fossil fuels. The government wants to draft a low-carbon development strategy before deciding to ratify.
So far, the plan is to work out an analysis of the socio-economic effects of the ratification by mid-December, and to later draft a strategy for low-carbon development. No certain deadline for ratification, which is due to take place by passing a corresponding legal act within Russia, has been set…
Energy efficiency was high on the Russian agenda from 2009-2011. But following the imposition of international sanctions over the conflict in Ukraine, the issue has been dropped. Regional subsidies for emission reduction and energy efficiency measures are being cut to zero for the third year in a row.
Another problem is the lack of access to international financing sources – here, once again, following international sanctions, a number of international donors and development institutions have cut support for emission reduction projects in Russia…
https://theconversation.com/whats-holding-russia-back-from-ratifying-the-paris-climate-agreement-64842
The Conversation: Profile: Angelina Davydova: Born in 1978 in Saint-Petersburg, Russia. MA in Economics from the St. Petersburg State University of Economics and Finance…Reuters Foundation fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, Oxford University (2006). Participant of the Beahrs Environmental Leadership Program (ELP) at the University of California, Berkeley (2012)…Since 2008 is an observer of the UN Climate negotiation process (UNFCCC). Teaches at the Faculty of Journalism, St.Petersburg State University.
Nov 2014: OpenDemocracy: Angelina Davydova: The problems of environmental activism in Russia
Moreover, over the years, Russian scientists and politicians have publicly denied the existence of climate change, preferring to attribute its results to climatic cycles or American weapons for use in climatic warfare; or declaring global warming to be in effect global cooling…
Oleg Anisimov, head of the Climate Change Research Department at the State Hydrological Institute, is one of the co-authors of the Fifth Report (vol. II) of the UN Intergovernmental Expert Group. In his opinion the Russian economy is facing a raft of problems resulting from climate change, but at the same time, new opportunities are opening up for the future development of the Northern and Arctic regions: the climate will become less severe, heating and electricity costs reduced, and navigation easier along the Northern Sea Route…
Oleg Anisimov says that harvest yields will increase markedly in most Russian regions…
Russian media also pay relatively little attention to climate problems…
https://www.opendemocracy.net/od-russia/angelina-davydova/problems-of-environmental-activism-in-russia
Wikipedia: OpenDemocracy
Prominent contributors to the webzine have included Kofi Annan, George Soros…It has been funded by a number of philanthropic organisations, including the Ford Foundation, the Atlantic Philanthropies, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust…
10
OpenDemocracy is one of the branches of the “color revolution” movement – and is a surrogate of the US government and it numerous affiliates.
George Soros – who has a finger in every planned piece of chaos – is a sponsor.
https://www.opendemocracy.net/author/george-soros
Need I say more?
30
Sorry to scoop Pat but…
Conservative Party Conference
Brexit begins: Theresa May takes axe to EU laws
60
You seem to have comprehension challenges. What she ACTUALLY said was that she was going to copy all existing EU into British law verbatim to ensure continuity. Nothing will change except the possibility to change it in the future.
Now that sounds like quite a clever political move to me.
But if you think that is an “axe” I’d like to see a video of you trying to cut some logs. Could be amusing.
11
Serious question: Do any of our governments (meaning Australia, US, Europe etc.) have anyone with a clue giving them sound technical and engineering advice on how to run a traditional reliable electricity system (i.e. one that doesn’t include any intermittents).
61
Of course they do, but of course they (the politicians) are more interested in politics and their place in the game, emphasis UN positions.
30
The next low over southern Australia.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/blocking/real_time_sh/500gz_anomalies_sh.gif
The pressure increase in the stratosphere.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/daily_ao_index/hgt.aao.cdas.gif
Jumping galactic radiation.
http://cosmicrays.oulu.fi/webform/query.cgi?startday=01&startmonth=07&startyear=2016&starttime=00%3A00&endday=01&endmonth=10&endyear=2016&endtime=00%3A00&resolution=Automatic+choice&senddata=on&picture=on
20
“Galactic radiation” measured by Oulu’s neutron monitors are in fact measurements of “SOLAR COSMIC RAYS.”
00
Jo, where do you get this ridiculous idea that average rainfall figure is “normal”. This just plays to alarmist BS claims.
Look at the presented graph of Sept rainfall. I doubt that there is one single year which actually had the average value. There is nothing “normal” about it.
There are just over 100 annual values there ranging from near zero to about 50. Plot the distribution in bins of 5 and you see a pretty broad distribution, no “normal” value.
11
I was going to do what I just suggested so went to look for the data. Here is the product description from BOM:
Yeah, right. We don’t have sufficient daily data to make a reliable average …. but we’ll do it anyway by fudging around. Sounds like the ACORN fiasco all over again.
21
Greg, That was the point in mentioning WA at all there — Australia has the ideal climate for generating meaningless press releases about extremes. I did say “It doesn’t mean much”. I did show the bar graph of wild variability. In my first draft (ten days ago) that was the point of the post. I changed that when I realized it actually was a record on the East Coast and the stories of floods were coming in from everywhere.
31
During the last geomagnetic storm have occurred volcanic eruptions in Indonesia and Mexico as well as a swarm of tremors in the volcano Katla in Iceland.
20
Jo, the 1900-2016 plot of Eastern Rainfall shows below average for 1956. This does not coincide with my brains recall of the 1956 flooding in the Hunter River and co-incident floods in the Murray, Murrambidgee and the Darling when towns including Pomona and Wellington were cut off for 1-2 months. (Anyone else over 70 or history nerds who can verify?)
11
Peter, the BOM slice up the data quite a few ways, including for NSW, and for South East Australia. You may find one of those graphs shows you the 1956 year you remember. Eastern Australia could mean a very large area and may blend monsoon type rain with southern cold fronts.
20
Peter
The big Hunter flood that wiped out Maitland was in 1955 not 1956. That flooding also affected a large part of NSW as far north as Moree, as far west as Nyngan and almost to Forbes in the south. From early January 1955 to early April 1955 there were a whole series of tropical depressions/cyclones coming down the east coast, the most intense having a central pressure of only 965mb. 1956 was nothing special on the east coast although cyclones were very active in the Indian/Arafura Sea areas of the northwest.
BOM has a very basic spreadsheet with all of the cyclone and depression (tropical and extra-tropical)data up to early 2015, but you will have to be fluent in Excel and do a bit of jiggery pokery to get any useful information out of it. I can’t point you to the exact place in the BOM site where I found it, but it will be an obscure Excel file somewhere in the cyclone section. It does not have any rainfall data though if that is all you are after.
00
Neville Nichols, as President of AMOS (Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society) wrote articles describing the dramatic 2010-2011 flooding as related to the strong La Nina (or SOI) – that is, due to natural variability.
Jo, if you are interested, I have one of his pieces on Word, with a graph showing the precipitation-SOI relationship.
Dorothea Mackellar was correct – Australia is the land of droughts and flooding rains.
40
“A report by the nation’s top scientists this month said Australia was in for a tenfold increase in heat waves as climate change pushes temperatures up.
It found exceptionally hot years, which used to occur once every 22 years, would occur every one or two years, virtually making drought a permanent part of the Australian landscape.”
July 2008
10
Pictures of tree damage in SA
Movie of tornado during the storm
Tree damage consistent with F1-F2
00
Sorry but I put the links in the wrong thread Jo.
00
But it can’t be true, “Australia’s rain is being stolen by climate change”, see here:
http://www.canberratimes.com.au/act-news/climate-change-stealing-rain-from-australia-by-shifting-winds-towards-antarctica-20160927-grpyq3.html
“When much of southeast Australia faced abnormally hot and dry weather last summer, forecasters put it down to a high-pressure system blocking clouds from forming.
But rising greenhouse gases were also to blame, researchers have found.
A new study by the ANU and 16 other institutions revealed human-caused climate change is already harming parts of Australia by robbing vital rain and pushing south westerly winds towards Antarctica.
The ANU’s lead researcher associate professor Nerilie Abram said the hijacking of rain combined with 2015 being Australia’s fifth-warmest year on record and 2016 on track to be the hottest was an ominous mix.
When looking at rainfall in southeast Australia, particularly the ACT and NSW, Professor Abram said it was important to consider other weather events such as El Nino phenomenons, which cause hot and dry conditions.” (and then dismiss them!)
But she needs more money, on top of the $480,000 research grants she has had from 2014 -16.
“What this research shows shows us is that we need to keep putting money into research to find out how Antarctica’s climate is being affected because it directly affects our lives in Australia.”
00