How fast can we burn millions of dollars trying to stuff a perfectly good fertilizer down a sinkhole? This fast…
Carbon capture must rank as one of the most flagrantly ridiculous ways to spend money (even more pointless than desal). To capture and bury the CO2 of a coal fired plant we have to spend around 60% more to build every new power station and then throw away 40% the electricity it makes. (See TonyfromOz’s calculations in the link below).
Sputnik News reports on the second collapse of UK funding for Carbon Capture:
The UK Government has wasted US$123 million on a competition to develop technology that will capture carbon emissions. The project was cancelled according to a report, after the Energy Department failed to agree the long-term costs of the competition with the Treasury.
Concerns over the price to consumers led to the competitions demise, according to the National Audit Office (NAO).
The report, which was produced by the NAO, warned that it was “currently inconceivable” that the CCS projects would be developed with government support, and that the competition costs did not achieve value for money.
This is not the first time a competition run by the government to kick-start CCS has been cancelled. In 2011, the government having spent U $70 million had to stop the project.
“The department has now tried twice to kick-start CCS in the UK, but there are still no examples of the technology working,” said Amyas Morse, head of the National Audit Office.
Other failures of carbon capture have also wasted wild amounts of money. The concept is so intrinsically futile we need some kind of miracle techno advance, or we need to break laws of chemistry to get it to work.
TonyfromOz went through the exact details of the Cabon Capture and Storage fantasy. My introduction:
Did you know CCS (carbon capture and storage) requires an industrial plant almost as large as the coal fired power station it is supposed to clean up? Or that it uses fully 40% of the energy of the entire output of the same station?
The central problem is that under conditions we humans like to be in, the CO2 molecule emphatically wants to be a huge voluminous gas. To make it more compact and storable back in the small hole it came from, we either have to change it chemically, or forcibly stuff it in under some combination of extreme pressure or extreme cold. And there aren’t many cold sealed rock vaults in Earth’s thin crust, which rests on a 1000 degree C ball of magma. Any form of chemical, temperature or pressure change uses monster amounts of energy, and there is just no getting around it without fiddling with laws of chemistry. The whole idea of CCS is so insanely unfeasible that in order to stuff a beneficial fertilizer underground it appears we must spend 60% more to build every new power station and then throw away 40% of its output as well.
You can’t make this stuff up. CCS is the threat that makes new coal stations unaffordable in the West, and building those costs into the plans makes cost comparisons with renewables (and nuclear) so much more “attractive”. Anton goes through some provocative numbers. — Jo
Other posts on carbon capture
- Carbon capture, clean coal plant goes bankrupt, only $4.4b over budget
- $22 billion wasted on carbon capture which increases cost of electricity by 70%
- Green Hit list: Wasted money and brain power
h/t Colin (Govt Cancels Carbon Capture After Blowing £168 Million) and Pat (Reuters info)
Thanks God for some rational thinking by the UK Treasury!
At least they stopped the project after 168 Million Pounds had been spent. It could have been much worse if the Government had actually paid some one to develop the Technology.
290
Some would say that the money is easy to bring into existence, just one keystroke for each zero if one is in the money printing club. Hi honey, i am home…..had a hard day at work and now my arm is aching from all the zero’s i had to press today….
80
Ranks next to the Emprorers new clothes….
Roll on the trump era…..
40
Oh, I dunno. What’s 168 million between friends? Plenty more where that came from.
20
Every 14 years, half of the world’s CO2 is exchanged with the ocean. All the fossil fuel CO2 is gone so quickly there is no time to bury it. 98% of all CO2 is in the ocean. Why is someone trying to stop this natural exchange by burying CO2?
The limestone cliffs of Dover are Calcium Carbonate. Carbonate. The Great Barrier Reef. Carbon is one of the most prevalent elements in the world and all life is made from two gases, Hydrogen and Oxygen and one metal, Carbon. Our world started when plants learned how to convert CO2 into sugars with sunlight and now there is precious little CO2 left and we want to bury it?
Carbon is the basis of organic chemistry, the study of carbon and of biochemistry. Our whole world is made from carbon dioxide, every living thing and we want to ban it? We want to bury it? The very idea of spending 168 million pounds trying to bury the most essential gas after oxygen is beyond belief.
Could someone in the IPCC please speak to a chemist, a biochemist, an organic chemist, a physical chemist or even a botanist or zoologist? In 1900 we are almost at the point where there was so little CO2 that life would cease at 0.02%. The bounce back, the greening of the planet, the recovery is wonderful and the tiny +1C, if that is true. Where exactly is the problem?
The greatest moral challenge facing the current generation is science ignorance.
620
“The greatest moral challenge facing the current generation is science ignorance.”
To be more exact, delete the word “science”.
Here are a few examples of three types of ignorance.
Social ignorance:
The wide spread belief that to make something happen one only needs to wish, demand, demonstrate, protest, and vandalize private property. All the while chanting “What do we want? (whatever) When do we want it? NOW!
Political ignorance:
They should do something about it (again whatever). They being the politicians of whatever passes for a government.
Scientific ignorance:
The almost total ignorance of the consequences of the Three Laws of Thermodynamics.
1. You can’t get more out of a system than it contains.
2. The process of getting something out of a system consumes part of the content of the system.
3. There is always a portion of a system that is beyond being touched by any process.
Sadly, the social ignorance example is a demand that political ignorance example will allow the politicians to ignore the scientific ignorance example and will promise to produce something that is impossible produce. Which is then recycled at an increasingly staggering cost until the the whole charade self destructs.
Our defense and recovery is as simple or difficult as the following.
1. Reality is what it is.
2. We can know what reality is.
3. We must use logic applied to experience and experiment to gain that knowledge incrementally.
4. To continue to live, we must act accordingly.
Your fundamental moral choice is to live or not. If you don’t wish to live, do nothing and your wish will soon come true. Otherwise, you have a lot of work to do. The really hard part is that you are responsible for doing the work. No one can do it for you. Oh, others can help and provide both good and bad examples but you must do the work yourself.
440
Lionel.
You provide an excellent summary of what needs to be achieved. The difficulty with the recovery from the current situation is keeping a focus. The alarmists try every propagandists trick available to try to prevent that from happening. The promotion of ignorance is by referencing established opinion (97% consensus) and moralistic perspectives rather than relating to the real data. I charted a propagandist blogger’s methods a couple of years ago in relation to temperature homogenisation. Rants in the Guardian or other places often have a similar structure.
In terms of direct referencing of 97% consensus, then grossly exaggerating what it implied, a good example recent example is Sen. Bernie Sanders questioning of Scott Pruitt (Presidential nomination to lead the EPA) last week.
170
You are correct. Without the focus, not much will happen. I would add to that the discipline to sustain the effort will also be necessary
I do know how to teach the how. I don’t know how to teach the ability to focus and have the discipline to sustain the effort. I have more or less concluded that those abilities must come with the individual. Then and only then will the teaching of the how do much good. However, I am willing to be educated in the matter.
70
Kevin, the link here, “Sen. Bernie Sanders questioning of Scott Pruitt (Presidential nomination to lead the EPA) last week.” Is ill formed, with no IP address.
I watched much of Pruitt’s testimony, but missed Sanders’s questions.
10
Since most of the CO2 in that Canadian power plant is piped off to be used in secondary oil recovery I suggest we use that ignorance and claim CO2 IS USED FOR FRAKKING!
Within hours the social media will be aghast and support for underground carbon storage will evaporate.
Alternatively for the less ethically challenged types start a CO2 storage scheme. All you need is a hole in the ground and 2 shafts. Pump CO2 down one shaft (not forgetting to collect the fees) and the shaft at the other end “relieves any pressure build up causing earth tremors etc”. You could pump for years (or while the subsidies last anyway) and not do any damage to the environment.
120
Actually Graeme, I had a similar idea, run a few hundred miles of pipe, shallow, under nearby farmland, with small pin holes in it every 10 cm – pump the CO2 into that. We sequester it, the farmers store it in their produce and make oxygen, what’s not to like…
50
Have you costed a few hundred miles of pipe with pine holes every 10cm.?
My approach is cheaper, if less ethical, but I forgot to add the cost of an off-shore bank A/C to colect the takings. No reason to pay income tax when we can claim depreciation, maintenance and publicity costs. Of course these woud al be zero, especially the last as who would draw attention to a lovely little scam? Should we be rumbled by the media then we would have to hire one or two warmist thespians to appear on TV etc. claiming that we are “saving the planet”. That will stifle any investigation until we get overseas.
20
Yes To yr three unwise monkeys, Lionell. Reposted this
at Invisible Serf’s Collar on post re K-12 education and
concept/values education government wishes students to internalize.
http://invisibleserfscollar.com/controlling-consciousness-and-planning-society-via-politicalism-a-new-helpful-description-is-born/
40
The reaction will be quite instructive.
Will my comment be as a stone tossed into a lake causing spreading ripples? Alternatively, will it simply be as a stone tossed into quick sand, sinking, and having no lasting effect?
30
For the record: it was as a stone tossed into quick sand.
10
Trying to explain to people who see solar and wind and hydro as ‘free energy’ that costs exceeding output means more overall waste always seems to befuddle them – so I try to explain.. Hydro provides free energy because the water falling transfers energy to the turbines and it’s viable because the geography placed a high point above a low point, but don’t for one minute think building a mountain to get yourself a hydro operation will ever be viable- energy cheapness comes not from the input of energy but rather from seizing energy from something that’s essentially lying around waiting to be used.
The same applies for CO2 capture (but worse in that we’re wasting a valuable fertlizer) – but trying to get it past people’s indoctrination is a difficult task. I wonder sometimes if I’d be better explaining it to them using human body waste in my analogies..
50
The Progressives are all for hydro, as long as you do not build dams.
140
That’s the apex of Green thinking.
Damless hydro power.
80
Richard Di Natalie, GP leader of the Greens went one better. He wants to keep Whyalla making steel as long as they do not use coal! Coking coal is what reduces the iron oxide to iron, grabbing the oxide as CO2 which is released. You cannot make steel without coal. The Greens are a science free zone.
211
The greens are science free , the greens are brain matter free !
70
No, that wouldn’t hold water.
50
Dam
60
Greentards propose “turkey’s nest” reservoirs for pumped hydro storage. These would be built on cliff tops near the sea as the upper reservoir with the ocean as the lower reservoir.
They would be hugely expensive. E.g. There is a proposal for WA for a system that would produce 700-800MW for six hours for a mere $5 billion and you can bet that’s on the low side.
40
No no…you have it all wrong…unless the general population can understand something squished on two mobile phone screens, its just not science…..and lets face it, the poipulation has google and now that means thety are rool clever,
Right Shazza?
Roight Jenny…..
Oi, Johhno…..
*sigh*
20
If you are a buttoned-down Brit, it is easy to read orgasmic, rather than organic, and your buttoned-down British Public Servant, wants none of that in Whitehall, especially if it interferes with the tea breaks.
110
Speak for yourself RW!
60
What if they like hot crumpets?
70
Carbon is classified as a non-metal in the periodic table.
30
Metalloid then.
30
Then there is metallicity – Everything except hydrogen and helium is classified as a metal (largely for the sake of convenience, but also with some logic behind it). Just ask your friendly local astronomer.
20
“Every 14 years, half of the world’s CO2 is exchanged with the ocean.”
Not every 14 years. Not even every 5 years.
http://notrickszone.com/2016/08/07/astrophysicist-murray-salby-compares-co2-pseudo-science-to-the-medical-quackery-of-blood-letting/#sthash.F56SmmUN.dpbs
These clowns will have to work very fast.
20
More succinctly, the rate of total turnover belies the truth only half the HUMAN ADDED CO2 survives the first year, so the half life of human added CO2 is only 1 year! – The fact that only 3% of the CO2 removed from the atmosphere is human and 97% is natural does not imply that all the human CO2 takes 33 years to remove – there is no difference between human and natural CO2. The Bottom line is that a volume equivalent to half human added CO2 (above equilibrium) is removed a year, and by 5 years it’s essentially gone. If we just kept Human CO2 constant, CO2 rise would stop after 5 years.
Not that rising CO2 is bad mind you, the 2PPM rise in CO2 begets a 1% rise in food yield which is currently balancing population increase of 1% P/A, if we achieved a constant CO2 level I predict famine in 30 years (as population outgrows food yield) unless we expand agricultural lands by 1% P/A instead.
Such is the EVIL of the food reduction efforts of the climateers.
40
Bang goes my theory we could stick all the CO2 in the oceans and have lots of fizzy drink then. I’ll have to rework the grant application.
10
TdeF,
Carbon is a none metallic element. LOL
100
Arguable. As graphite it conducts electricity. It bonds with gases. That is why it is special being in the middle of the periodic table.
194
TDef – True, and a lot of chemists refer to elemental forms of even non-metallic elements as “metallic”. As in “one mole of metallic [elemental] sulphur reacts with 1 mole of oxygen to produce a mole of SO2.”
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Speedy,
One plus one equals three now?
Geoff Chemist
20
Well, yes, I see the conflict. I was mixing my molecules. Strictly speaking, a mole of oxygen is 16 grams of O, but because I was discussing it in its gaseous molecular form, there is an implicit assumption that it is there as O2. (Molar volume of molecular O2, like most gas = 22.41 litres at standard conditions.) For consistency, I could have also recognised that sulphur might exist as S8 in the liquid immediately before combustion, but force of habit took over I suppose…
So. Correction: 32 grams of sulphur plus 32 grams of oxygen = 64 grams SO2 (essentially*) or 1 mole of SO2.
*You can argue about the extent of reaction and equilibrium variation with temperature if you like, but it’s probably outside the realms of this discussion.
Cheers,
Speedy
10
TdeF
Debtium [debt-ti-um] can bond with all the elements including the noble elements like gold, by means of a special bond called the ‘slave bond’, especially if the special Debtium slave bond was created in a highly rarefied atmosphere of air molecules (Thin air)…..which makes it ultra unique. Further to that, Debtium varies in weight and has not been assigned an atomic weight. Economic scientist’s are still trying to determine the weight of Debtium and according to some of the models, it could be infinite..Like the other two infinite things Einstein has mentioned before.
161
Once debitum has bonded with any source of organic matter, it shows a tendency to increase in size, in a process referred to as usuric compounding.
120
Bonding to a gas does not classify the element as a metal. Hydrogen is classified as a gas but bonds to another gas oxygen.
40
True. It is also not shiny, conducts heat poorly, does not form salts but I was always fascinated that some properties are those of metals. Metalloid is the most common description. It shares electrons rather than donates them and the bonds are not ionic. Possibly the most flexible element in the table and the key to all life, it is hated by the Greens, even though Chlorophyll is a long chain hydrocarbon. This amazing hatred of Carbon has to stop. Greenpeace even banned Chlorine.
111
Have heard hypotheses that the mental impact of modern war games ant-war actions into the genetics of soldiers then offspring.
Thus dislike of chlorine per gas, lead per bullets, petrol per napalm, uranium per bomb, saucepan aluminium as in bomber aircraft and of course synthetic nerve gases.
If the resistance is from such effect, the remediation needs redesign.
Geoff
10
Nope. It comes in a form that is very shiny, which makes it very attractive. Ask any woman! 🙂
30
“Possibly the most flexible element in the table”
Add oxygen and hydrogen
and some trace nitrogen
….. AMINO ACIDS !!
Oh wait.. Amino ACIDS.. scary as well.. must tax !!!!!
22
Sorry TdeF,
As a chemist I was being rather pragmatic but didn’t mean any critism. 😉
R-COO- K+
30
It forms covalent bonds with itself it is NOT a metal
20
Can I just ask a question: how the hell can these two ‘competitions’ have cost one hundred and sixty eight million pounds? What was the money spent on? How are such costs justified? What events / meetings / seminars / PR and so on actually costs £168 million? Did they hire George Clooney as compere and get Damien Hirst to design a diamond-encrusted lump of ‘hi-carbon’ coal as a free gift to every seminar guest? How is it even possible to spend £168 million and get literally nothing back for your money whatsoever?
Some UK-centric context: average UK annual income £25k, creating around £4.8k in taxes. That means almost 35,000 people worked and paid their taxes for a full year to provide £168 million, so these clowns could turn that money into dust. Incredible.
I’m actually staggered, one hundred and sixty eight f****** million and absolutely zero end product? Whose been sacked for this? Whose been disciplined? Seriously, wtf? I cannot get my head around this in any way at all. This is the green blob working in all its glory. I may need to go for a lie down.
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By Ellen Brown: Web Of Debt website
WHAT A GOVERNMENT CAN DO WITH ITS OWN BANK:
THE REMARKABLE MODEL OF THE COMMONWEALTH BANK OF AUSTRALIA
Ellen Brown, August 4th, 2010
“The Commonwealth Bank was able to achieve so much with so little because its first Governor, Denison Miller, and its first and most ardent proponent, King O’Malley, had both been bankers themselves and knew the secret of banking: that banks create the “money” they lend simply by writing accounting entries into the deposit accounts of borrowers.
http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/commonwealth_bank_aus.php
80
CheshireRed wrote: ” That means almost 35,000 people worked and paid their taxes for a full year to provide £168 million”
lets put that another way, since most people pay what.. 40% tax? Another way to look at it is 7.2 months of the year they work for money they get to keep, 4.8 months of the year they work without pay as that goes to the government
So work it out and 14,000 years of people’s labor went into this project. Damn..
40
Really now, someone should suggest they move into “recycling” as in “recapturing” the CO2 from the air and making synfuel hydrocarbons. Not only is it a proven technology but the hydrocarbons are essentially pure. A wee bit expensive but at least there’d be a “plus” side to the madness. And ust think about how the “recycling” can be used with all power plants regardless of fuel. Even the WWF should love it.
30
Unfortunately, the energy cost of the hydrocarbons would be more than the energy produced by the hydrocarbons produced. It’s more energy efficient (and with lower carbon footprint /S) to go dig more H/carbons out of the ground. Blasted thermodynamics!
Cheers,
Speedy
100
Still, if we had infinite energy, fusion energy, we could manufacture jet fuel from the air. Among many of the great tragedies of the incredible waste of $1,000Bn a year and seventy years of world peace is that we might have had fusion energy by now.
Now that would set us apart from the hunter gatherers burning wood or peat to stay alive. Then we would not fear another ice age or heat. Even the dog kennels could be airconditioned and fresh water would be infinite and crops could be grown without sunlight. However the people who think the dark ages were a great time would be against it. It is amazing that they call themselves progressives.
220
I’ve long thought of so-called ‘progressives’ as ‘regressives’. The left seem to specialise in changing the proper meaning of words.
80
Progressively regressive maybe?
10
Yes, I think we had this discussion before, if we had fusion energy or even thorium/uranium (though there isn’t enough uranium) we could manufacture carbon fuels for our portable equipment. After all the recipe for methane, is poo, water, bacteria and keep it warm, or you can just combine Limestone, Iron ore and water with 500deg and 7GPa pressure. If we ran out of that we could use fuel cells and a hydrogen rich fuel such as Ammonium nitrate (a common nitrogen fertiliser).
10
How can I get some of this funding? I want to explore the idea of all greenies wearing a mask that absorbs the evil CO2 they exhale.
40
Plastic bags are cheap and can be recycled.
20
been done by CFACT 🙂 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlXAbi7RSBU
10
Albert Einstein:
CO2 loss to the geology has been going on for billions of years, and is a long term threat to life on earth. Why would any sane individual assist this process? Indeed, a committed environmentalist would be opposing CO2 sequestration.
Cheers,
Speedy
201
Could geology eventually suck all the CO2 out of the atmosphere?
20
G’day David
Eventually, yes, I think so. Limestone and coral are doing it all the time. We have gone from a CO2 concentration in the atmosphere from 6000 ppm to 300 ppm in about 600 million years. If it drops to 150, the plants start to really struggle. Which is bad for anything that eats plants or anything that eats the things that eat the plants. Or us.
It’ll take a while, but it will happen. Our puny efforts from the fossil fuels we burn are supporting the CO2 level, but volcano activity is probably stopping the CO2 level going through the floor.
Cheers,
Mike
20
The problem is that there is no accountability for actions done in public office. Until those in a position of power are held accountable for their actions, nothing will change.
170
The best way is to tie their salaries to their successes.
70
If they threw the money into Drax’s furnaces it would have saved on carbon™ emissions, and been more accountable.
70
I’m told that the carbon capture people got their start inventing the DVD rewinder and the fully adjustable Control Alt Delete Wand. After they made a fortune marketing Diet Water Natural and Diet Water Lite they decided to turn their skills to saving the planet.
If saving the planet doesn’t work out they’re planning on selling water concentrate to the Mars One project. (When the settlers get to Mars they just dilute it back to normal concentration. The simplest ideas are the best!)
120
I have always wondered why people do not hydrolyse water into oxygen and hydrogen, store them and recombine them at night for heat and electricity. That would be a simple form of energy storage which you could implement on a micro scale, even camping. Compression of the gases would be the hard bit.
60
“Compression of the gases would be the hard bit.”
I think you have answered your own question! 🙂
100
Compression is easy enough, but miniaturization? The world went through this during WW2 when the US needed smaller refrigeration units for fresh food. Prior to that we had giant ice factories in every suburb and ice was delivered. After the war we had the miracle of family refrigeration and then freezers. The miniaturization is amazing, not impossible but sadly so much innovation was possible in a time of need. In a time of peace the drivers have been the space race, the cold war and now consumerism. $1Tn a year would change that.
60
Hydrogen is very tiny. Hydrogen embrittlement is the process by which metals such as steel become brittle and fracture because of diffusion of hydrogen into the metal.
Follow up on this idea and see where it leads.
40
Just 2 little problems —
1. Liquid oxygen is a very hazardous material. The smallest leak could cause a very intense fire.
2. Hydrogen is very hard to keep for any length of time as it leaks through metal cylinder.
There are expensive methods of retaining the gas though…
see http://www.technology.org/2015/07/22/molecular-sponge-advancement-in-storing-hydrogen/
and
https://www1.eere.energy.gov/hydrogenandfuelcells/pdfs/adv_concepts_h2_storage.pdf
Many people are researching the hydrogen storage problem just search ‘advanced hydrogen storage’.
60
Liquid gases are another matter. You need very specialized equipment. No I only mean the sort of equipment you use when cutting with oxy acetylene, compressed gas. It is so cheap you really are just renting the bottles.
However Hydrogen storage is the problem, partly because the hydrogen molecule is so small but as indicated, the nano materials may provide a sponge mechanism. Besides, if even a tiny fraction of the million million dollars spent every year on preventing warming was spent on such things, you would could store water cheaply as two gases by now.
30
TdeF,
How much energy does it take to hydrolise water and how much energy is produced by the recombination? I suspect there would be slightly less energy produced but my studies in electro chemistry was 50 plus years ago.
R-COO- K+
30
Of course. Especially if used to drive an engine, but the storage is unlimited in principle or at least limited by the container. It is all about energy density, kj/litre, like petrol or batteries.
20
TDef
Actually the problem are that Hydrogen enbrittles metals and tends to diffuse through things like polymers making it difficult to store. It’s also rather explosive (burns hot and fast) when mixed with oxygen. It also can’t be liquified so it occupies a large volume for it’s energy (has low energy density) liquid hydrocarbons or Nitrogen hydrides store much more energy in a much smaller space. Therefore it is better to store hydrogen as carbon or nitrogen compounds, then crack that before you burn it. An interesting way is N2H4O3 (Ammonium nitrate) which tends to offgas hydrogen pretty quickly and spontaneously under certain circumstances or even 1,2,3-trinitroxypropane otherwise known as nitroglycerin. These chemicals store a large amount of energy in a very small space. C4 packs 5.7MJ per kg. Then Again, I’m not sure powering your house with C4 is a good idea.
30
No. You are sure.
30
Once we get back to storing hydrogen as a carbon compound, lets call it a hydrocarbon, we are back where we started making our own fossil fuels. I guess the oxygen is free and plentiful, so why store it? All the power must be in the oxidation of carbon, so again back where we started. It all gets down to the energy density of hydrogen as a fuel and it fails.
30
Apart from storage issues electrolysis is a very inefficient process. For the two different processes, alkaline and PEM, efficiency figures are as follows.
Wikipedia: Ranges in 2014 were 43–67% for the alkaline and 40–67% for the PEM, they should progress in 2030 to 53–70% for the alkaline and 62–74% for the PEM.[19]
20
High pressure continuous electrolysis of potassium hydroxide solution is about 80-82% efficient in electricity. The extra energy is made up by heat from the surroundings so NBG in northern hemisphere winters.
Actually not economic to try as most hydrogen gas is made by cracking of methane.
Low pressure intermittent hydrolysis so beloved by wishful thinkers is about 43-45% efficent in electricity usage, before you get to such incidentals as electrode fouling, pressurisation etc.
And hydrogen gas isn’t the easiest or safest thing to store either.
40
Let’s address the two issues of cost, and accountability. Can anyone say privatization?
If a government needs to undertake a task (often a questionable assumption), contracting with a private firm
offers some incentives to control cost, and some possibility of accountability. If the task can be opened to true
competition, the results are better, but even regulated monopolies tend to outperform government agencies.
It doesn’t take a genius to understand the problems. And it isn’t nice to assume all those who work for government are inherently venal.
(Yes a few are). IF you look at man as an economic animal, you can see that governmental idiocy such as carbon capture, or, my favorite, regulating cow farts,
spring logically from the incentives we apply.
Take a simple task – distribute a leaflet & a pencil to each student in a school system.
Government would assign a bureaucrat; rent an office, staff with a person to answer the phone, contract for vehicles and distributors,
bring in a lawyer to ensure compliance with a host of regulations, call for bids for printing and pencils, hold a series of meetings to ensure
potential vendor compliance, wait during all processes for the statutory waiting and public comment period, and, with outstanding performance
for government have the pencils and leaflets read to go only one year late, only to discover a supplemental appropriation is needed to actually distribute same.
A million bucks and an incomplete project. But the leaflets and pencils would get distributed, and wonder of wonder, the program would wind down efficiently, with only 90 personnel termination salaries and the remaining 9 months of the lease to cover.
Our contracted entrepreneur buy the pencils wholesale at the office supply place, gets the printing done at a local place that gives him a good deal,
assembles the packages on his kitchen table, distributes himself with the help of the local football team hired for minimum wage, pizza, and a small contribution to the uniform fund. Done in ten days for $25,000. At 25% profit. By the first day of school.
Are there any readers who don’t find the above scenario totally believable? But there aren’t really any villains here (unless you think our entrepreneur will be sued for child labor abuse). The government folks are responding rationally to the incentives and practices added brick by brick to a unplanned edifice over many years. Each brick is fully justified, and rationalized, and institutionalized, and has an installation specified unrelated to the structure it is going in. The result is not a building, it’s a pile of bricks.
After a while, most of us give up. We let the government spend the million, and the parents and band boosters volunteer to get the job actually done in a parallel universe.
The same reason lets the climate change folks, dealing with such things as carbon capture and cow farts, spend millions of dollars while we pursue the truth in a parallel universe.
Until someone comes along and points out that the climate folks aren’t wearing any clothes (a practical response to warming?) And there are a few venal folks who may have mislead the rest, willing to be mislead by the siren call of grants and glory.
190
We privatized the power companies in the 1990s in Victoria. It ended the supply problems and the annual strikes. However the RET is now killing the power companies while the government pretends they are in a free market. The RET is a Carbon Tax. It does not even go to the government but to private companies who are responsible to no one. That is why SA’s windmills are never on. There is no incentive.
The RET is also why the biggest, cheapest power supplier in the country is being forced to close. That’s not a market. That’s government regulation and there are people really pleased with the closure of Hazelwood. Why escapes all logic. Apparently Carbon Dioxide, the output of all life on earth is a deadly pollutant. Brown coal produces 6% more than black coal, so it must be closed. Soon only public servants will have jobs but there will be no taxes to pay them and we will not be able to borrow any more money or even service the debt we have.
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When you have a large system (eg government) trying to do simple things, the third law of thermodynamics loss (entropy) is huge. For a small focused system (a private enterprise) doing the same simple thing, those same unrecoverable loss (entropy) is very small.
The incentives are very different.
For the government, the incentive is the process of doing and consuming resources but not the outcome. Hence the lack of performance and result at a very high cost.
For a private enterprise, the incentive is to get it done at a minimal cost with a maximum of return. Hence, efficient performance, effective result, and high pay off at a minute fraction of the cost of government success.
The cost of government failure is even higher than government success. The government tries to do the same thing again with more people and expenditure while getting the same result: failure. Resulting in one more try at an even higher cost. Rinse and repeat.
The only thing government is actually competent to do is to keep things from happening. Hence its only legitimate job is to protect the individual citizen from internal and external violation of his individual rights. The pay off is that the individual is left free to produce the goods at a minimum of cost and governmental overhead.
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Keep in mind that complex things are made up of an appropriately structured and connected set of simple things. Apply that principle to the issue of government being incompetent doing simple things shows that government is exponentially incompetent doing complex things. Thus it is inevitable that the cost of government doing anything skyrockets to over the horizon.
This explains how our previous POTUS produced as much public debt as all previous POTUS combined in his two terms with little to no positive outcome for the US or the world.
Will Trump be able to do better? Only if he can successfully trim the government back to doing only what it is competent to do. Thereby leaving the rest to the individual and associations of individuals to accomplish. It looks like Trump has made a good start but we will have to wait and see what eventually happens.
Ultimately, We the People will have to do the work and pay for it as we go.
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The expense of CCS always made such investment conditional on dangerous CO2 Climate Sensitivity. IPCC pseudoscience claiming ~3.5 K CS is based on science fraud in 1976. R D Cess wrongly claimed the ratio of OLR to mean surface exitance is Earth’s emissivity – but the temperatures are different. This paper with this outrageous physics’ mistake was allowed to be published in ‘Science’, a US government funded journal. It is suspected this followed the decision in the 1975 ‘Endangered Atmosphere’ conference, organised by the Club of Rome, to create a CO2 scare to justify carbon trading to replace gold. The 1979 Charney Report by the AAAS made these false claims official US policy.
This ‘error’ created 40% more energy than reality and the imaginary 35 K GHE. Also in 1976, GISS offset the excess energy with fictitious ‘negative convection’. 24 years later, Hansen admitted to an AIP interviewer that this was ‘a fudge’, but 3-D models were fine. That is not true because the Kirchhoff’s Law mechanism devised by the late husband of Juliet Slingo of the UK Met Office was based on incorrect cloud aerosol physics. That bad physics also creates imaginary ‘positive feedback’.
No professional scientist agrees with the IPCC’s claims. However, if they go public, they lose their job. Only now sufficient scientists have retired and are prepared to publicise the fraud is the fake science collapsing. CCS is not needed.
Declaration: I worked on the two International CCS programmes 20 year ago.
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For completeness, CO2 CS is kept vey near zero by the water cycle, the Proportional part of the planet’s PID control system that has for a million years maintained mean surface temperature within ±3 K.
The Integral part is ocean current changes which lead periodically to the Arctic melt freeze cycle, and convective equatorial clouds which with the Hadley cells act as a safety valve – the Differential part. This is standard Engineering knowledge which is probably why 1000s of atmospheric scientists and far too many physicists have mistakenly endorsed the IPCC.
Prince Charles’ new Climate Book is about what you’d expect from a Royal Dimwit.
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After the illuminating comments already posted there isn’t much left to say.
Of ALL the Nutty insane ideas around, this one takes the cake.
My one hope is that one day this concept of Carbon Capture and Storage will be exposed as the fraudulent unscientific imoral scam that it is.
Politics has a lot to answer for on this issue but my fear is that the final day of reckoning is still too far off.
Just one example to show how vital CO2 is in our lives relates to how most people pass out of this world.
We have all been led to believe that oxygen is an essential ingredient for life.
What we are not made aware of is that CO2 is an essential neural regulator of our breathing, too little in our bloodstream and the brain doesn’t get the signal for the next breath and we cease to breathe.
The breathing pattern adopted seemingly automatically is the opposite of singing and it induces alkylosis, an excess of Oxygen in the bloodstream and the natural corollary, too little CO2 to sustain brain function.
Available literature on this is quite confusing because the only material on breathing at death is described under the label of Cheyne_Stokes breathing and this being quite old doesn’t seem to describe the situation correctly.
The point is that CO2 is a vital part of our lives.
Many years ago on this blog I referred to the CO2 nightmare as fitting the nursery story of The Emperor’s New Clothes.
Nothing has changed since then and almost everyone can still enthusiastically see those clothes.
It is scary to think that politicians can continue to promote this idea of CO2 as being a dangerous gas.
KK
At the end of life
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For warmists, their most zany goal,
Is to capture the ‘carbon’ from coal,
But with adults in charge,
These alarmists at large,
Can be ousted and kept under control.
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We should of course acknowledge Kevin Rudd’s contribution to the CCS crusade. According to the Carbon Sense Coalition $400 million got captured and stored in “salaries, consultants, travel, entertainment and operational expenses”. No wonder Kevin went on to become a contender for UN Chief.
http://carbon-sense.com/index.php?s=golden+fleece&Submit=Go
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CC has never been a viable concept. But the climatocracy is not interested in reality. They are acting on faith minus the reason that a sound religion at least strives for.
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Front page in the Australian this morning, the statement that if Trump walks away from Paris, Australia should walk away from the RET. Allegedly many Liberal MPs including of course Tony Abbott think so.
The RET is the problem.
“The LRET creates a financial incentive for the establishment or expansion of renewable energy power stations, such as wind and solar farms or hydro-electric power stations. It does this by legislating demand for Large-scale Generation Certificates (LGCs). One LGC can be created for each megawatt-hour of eligible renewable electricity produced by an accredited renewable power station. LGCs can be sold to entities (mainly electricity retailers) who surrender them annually to the Clean Energy Regulator to demonstrate their compliance with the RET scheme’s annual targets. The revenue earned by the power station for the sale of LGCs is additional to that received for the sale of the electricity generated.”
A massive Carbon Tax with Carbon Certificates and a ‘trading scheme’ and the money goes overseas, to the windmill financiers and manufacturers. A progressive dream crippling all of Australia.
Remove this and electricity and gas prices could halve. Who would object to that?
Remove this and Hazelwood would stay open, Alcoa and Port Pirie and Whyalla would not need subsidies to stay open.
Remove this and the free market would operate.
This cash goes to private companies who are under no obligation to provide reliable power. Basically, no one cares.
That is the windmills never turn. Too little wind, too much wind, no financial incentive. As seen above, their job is to produce LGCs, not power. Renewables? No, these are replaceables, unreliables, irresponsibles. Remove the RET. Now. Halve electricity and gas prices tomorrow.
Recall the RET and save Australia. The poorest would vote for this. Manufacturers, farmers, retailers, shops, supermarkets, home owners and everyone with a refrigerator or airconditioner. Everyone except Malcolm.
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@TdeF 8:37
Thanks for that. A concise summary. I’ll send it to my federal representative, who I have met, so I know there will be a problem with comprehension and attention span.
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Carbon Capture! Really?
GHOST BUSTERS ARE MORE SUCCESSFUL!
What a joke.
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The Inconvenient Truth was another memorable science fantasy movie. Amazing plot. Almost credible.
“Sir, what you had there was what we refer to as a Focused, Non-Terminal, Repeating Phantasm, or a Class 5 Full-Roaming Vapor . . . a real nasty one too”.
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I recall that large than life movie “2012”…
Of all the NWO “death to humans” rubbish I have seen dressed up and a holliwood movie, its the lamest of all and a huge joke.
The NWO crowd are seriously messed up in the head….carbon sequestion…another joke….
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If humans continue on to release vast quantities of fossilised CO2 into the atmosphere, plant growth will become so vibrant that the globe will be overrun with plant life and humans will be fully occupied weeding their gardens and pruning trees in an attempt to control the rampant growth:
https://cdn-assets.answersingenesis.org/img/articles/aid/v10/global-warming-figure-4.jpg
My suburban plot of land produces about 500kg of dry wood each year just from pruning trees or cutting up fallen branches. Burning that would produce 2700kWh of energy but right now I just store it; wondering what I will do with it. One thought is a slow combustion heater to replace the central gas heater but have not done the economics on that.
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CCS is simple.
PLANT TREES!
$160 million buys a lot of them!
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Make them cabinet timbers too, that way they will be desirable for a more permanent place inside a house. If it’s just any old junk tree, it’ll eventually rot where is lies, or get mulched in the local rubbish tip.
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I’m having trouble with my half acre of carbon capture. It’s so efficient I have to mow it down three times a week or I’d soon be unable to walk to the shed.
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What’s this Tony from Oz know about the earth’s core? Papa Gore told us it was a million degrees hot down there:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGV7Dr2iDvU
Gore has a Nobel Prize, so he must be right …
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I was wondering if anyone would ever notice that CO2 is a molecule at a lower energy state than any of the things it comes from when they’re burned. It’s formation during combustion wouldn’t be an exothermic reaction otherwise and we likely would live in quite a different world today, if indeed we were around at all, because the same exothermic reaction is what keeps us going in the first place.
How do they miss something so basic in physics and chemistry? Probably only by not studying those subjects in the first place. So in ignorance they propose capturing CO2 by some magical process.
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Roy is industrial carbon dioxide C12 or C13?
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Hydrocarbons and Carboniferous/Permian coals are richer in C12
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Thank Ian.
How do scientists know the exact amount of human induced CO2 in the atmosphere, compared to the CO2 liberated from the warm oceans?
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Off the top of my head? I don’t know. I could find out easily enough but frankly I’m not interested, it’s a distinction without a difference in the climate change debate.
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The biggest science fiction con-job in history is unwinding and it will be costly as the UK example shows .
The big losses will be from the wave of bankruptcies
from grant dependant “renewable ” company flame outs .
Too bad so many people had to die fuel poverty deaths caused by climate model liars and politicians that couldn’t pass Grade 10 science . The Real Inconvenient Truth is the MSM moved from being journalists to propaganda tools because they are clueless about science and hoped it would help their business interests .
Now they just look like climate con-men .
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I am very disappointed to read today that Deputy PM Barnaby Joyce, who is in Germany at present attending a conference on agriculture, said when questioned about POTUS Trump dumping the renewable energy target that Australia remains committed and, that when Australia signs an agreement it is upheld.
Ok, I well understand that solidarity in government is very important and that as Leader of the National Party in the Coalition with the Liberal Party he must be a team player. But if he really supports the RET (former PM Abbott said that Australia must follow the US lead and abandon it) then he too is another misguided and misled politician. No better than Labor Greens.
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It is looking that way. Malcolm has Joyce on side and Malcolm is bright Green, so it looks like a vote for the National Party is also now a vote for the Greens.
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Its clear that Barnaby doesn’t have a clue or is being disingenuous for the sake of the Coalition.
Career politicians are feeble creatures with a herd mentality, but it still comes as a surprise to see a neo agrarian socialist go to water so readily.
Anyway, he has to stay on song and avoid destabilisation, otherwise his dream of opening up the regions may never eventuate.
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Dennis –
23 Jan: ABC AM: Parliament to vote on TPP despite US plans to withdraw
KIM LANDERS: I’m asking… I’m asking… I’m asking why the Australian Parliament needs to vote on a trade deal that the US is never going to honour.
BARNABY JOYCE: Well, it’s a clear indicator of our intentions and as we go into bilateral trade agreements, which no doubt will take its place, it will be clear indicator that this is something that’s taken the world economy forward, it’s made people wealthier, it’s taken the global standard of living forward…ETC
KIM LANDERS: If I could turn to another topic, do you think Australia should dump the renewable energy target and our carbon emissions reduction commitments under the Paris climate agreement if Donald Trump walks away from the deal too?
BARNABY JOYCE: Look, we have an agreement, we’ve signed an agreement and we’re honouring that agreement. In fact we are ahead of where we need to be in honouring that agreement.
We are doing it in a vastly cheaper way than what the Labor Party had proposed through their carbon tax and emissions trading scheme
KIM LANDERS: But what if the US walks away?
BARNABY JOYCE: I believe… Well, that is a question for the US. It’s a question for the…
We are not United States of Australia, we are just Australia. United States will look after their business and we will look after ours.
We have to have a commitment that is reasonable and we have to have a commitment that is achievable, we have to have a commitment that doesn’t put undue pressure on our own power prices and our capacity to deliver affordable electricity to the Australian households – and that’s why we have an issue with states who go it alone on targets that are way beyond the capacity that it’s become apparent for even them to provide and South Australia is a classic example of that.
KIM LANDERS: Do you think some of your colleagues in the coalition party room are thinking that perhaps Australia should pull out of the RET?
BARNABY JOYCE: Well, that’s… You know… What people… I mean, people have the benefit of freewill and think what they wish, and on the backbench, they can say what they wish. What I can say is that we are reaching our targets – and in fact we are beyond our targets – we are doing an affordable manner, and when you have states such as South Australia that go off on sort of romantic ventures of, you know, excessive renewable targets, well, the consequences are there for all to see: They can’t keep the lights on.
KIM LANDERS: But the Government’s going to stuck with the renewable energy target for now.
BARNABY JOYCE: We don’t sign agreements to pull out of them. I think Australia is known as an honourable party in these.
We go into them, we negotiate, and we negotiate in the belief that if you sign a piece of paper that you should be sticking to it…
http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2016/s4607891.htm
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20 Jan: CNBC: Reuters: California unveils sweeping plan to combat climate change
California released an ambitious plan to cut the state’s output of heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions on Friday, the same day that newly-minted Trump administration signaled it will undo federal U.S. carbon regulations.
California’s plan details how it will achieve its goal of cutting emissions 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030, which state air regulators called the most ambitious target in North America.
The plan includes an extension of the state’s controversial carbon cap and trade program and calls for the state’s oil refineries to cut their greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent…
http://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/20/california-unveils-sweeping-plan-to-combat-climate-change.html
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OT , was just listening to the local news and weather presenter said we were 8 degrees above average for this month so I thought I’d check , most sites only go back as far as 1980 some not even that far .
Tried BOM but was also blocked from going back much further and then I found this .
Average annual temperatures (maximum, minimum or mean) are calculated by adding daily temperature values each year, dividing by the number of days in that year to get an average for that particular year. The average values for each year in a specified period (1961 to 1990) are added together and the final value is calculated by dividing by the number of years in the period (30 years in this case). Similarly, average monthly temperatures are calculated by adding monthly temperature averages (from daily data) and dividing by the number of years in the specified period. Mean temperatures are calculated by adding the daily maximum temperature and the daily minimum temperature, and dividing by two.
Am I reading it wrong or did weather recordings only start in the 1960’s?
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Officially, around 1900, unofficially 1788.
I demand an audit.
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You maybe interested in a new post by Jennifer Marohasy, we demand an audit.
‘To be clear, the Bureau changes a perfectly good temperature series from Cape Otway lighthouse by remodeling it so that it has Melbourne’s temperature signal – all through the process of homogenisation.’
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Being where the lighthouse is it’s a windy place and likely cooler which won’t fit the trend that BOM are trying to establish hence the adjustment , it’s what Bureau of manipulation do .
Thanks will check her site .
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So-called “Carbon Capture and Storage” has always seemed to me to be the most pointless exercise imaginable. Why? The world’s oceans do it so much faster and better than human enterprise can. Where do these people think all the limestone so liberally used in those big white buildings in Washington and in cities all around the world came from?
The world’s oceans hold 98.8% of the “free” CO2—over fifty times the atmospheric content. It’s solution products — HCO3 (bicarbonate) and CO3 (carbonate) ions contribute to the alkalinity of the sea water. Its precipitation as Calcium Carbonate (CaCO3) is one of the ways the ocean’s regulate the PH and hold it in the 8.4 to 8.8 range. Millions if not billions of t ons of it annually. That’s why limestone is so common.
The foraminifera and other critters build their skeletons out of it and when they die, it builds up on the sea floor. Again, the tonnage is way beyond our capacity.
What those engaged in the PE (Pointless Exercise) forget, is that when atmospheric CO2 nears or drops below 150 ppm, then there is no time left to even panic. When there is no CO2 left, that’s the end of life on this mud ball.
Life is a Gas: CO2; the Gas of Life.
30
22 Jan: UK Telegraph: Jillian Ambrose: Fund urges float of Green Investment Bank over sale to Macquarie
One of the bidders for the Government-owned Green Investment Bank (GIB) has backed fresh plans to float the lender rather than complete a controversial sale to the Australian investment bank Macquarie.
Macquarie was selected as the Government’s preferred bidder late last year, but alternative plans to list the bank have since emerged amid growing concerns over the Australian bank’s intentions to cash in the GIB’s assets once the deal is complete…
Now the “green” investment fund Sustainable Development Capital, in an attempt to encourage the Government to pursue alternatives to the Macquarie sale, has said it would take the GIB public without breaking it up, once the bank has grown its earnings and portfolio of environmental projects by the end of the decade.
Jonathan Maxwell, the fund’s chief executive, said: “We believe that an IPO by 2020 is viable and this has been an important consideration behind our approach to the privatisation. “An IPO should be feasible and attractive once the GIB’s portfolio has been built out, remaining capital expenditures have been invested, earnings have increased and cost efficiencies through economies of scale have been achieved over the next two to three years,” he said…
The Government is expected to clarify its plans for the sale of the Green Investment Bank in a Commons debate on Wednesday.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2017/01/22/fund-urges-float-green-investment-bank-sale-macquarie/
22 Jan: Financial Times: Green Investment Bank sale thrown into doubt
Change of plan on the cards with suggestions government could opt for flotation
by: Oliver Ralph and Jim Pickard
On Sunday a Whitehall official denied that the sale process was about to be aborted but admitted than an IPO was possible…
However, he said a flotation was not imminent…
The consortium, led by Sustainable Development Capital, including Mitsui, John Hancock and the Pension Protection Fund, lost out on the bidding before Christmas…
https://www.ft.com/content/dc55fea6-e0b9-11e6-8405-9e5580d6e5fb
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TdeF made mention of this in comment #16 –
23 Jan: Australian: Sarah Martin: ‘Dump RET when America walks away from Paris’
A growing number of government MPs, including some on Malcolm Turnbull’s front bench, say Australia should dump the Renewable Energy Target and its carbon emissions reduction commitments under the Paris climate agreement if Donald Trump walks away from the deal.
Conservative MPs have told The Australian they believe there is no point in remaining committed to the Paris accord without the US locked into action on climate change, a phenomenon the new President has previously labelled a Chinese “hoax”.
Former prime minister Tony Abbott and South Australian senator Cory Bernardi have both publicly argued for the scrapping of renewable energy targets, saying that would allow the government to campaign more forcefully against Labor on energy policy.
One conservative MP said the view was “getting a lot of traction very quickly”, while another said that opinion was already “widespread” within the Coalition partyroom…
“I think when Trump walks away from the Paris agreement that will be the perfect opportunity to follow,” one MP said.
“We would grandfather any existing investments that have been made under the current scheme, but for new investment, it has got to be economic, it has got to stand on its own two feet.”…
Another said that regardless of the RET target, the government would seek to incentivise the building of new coal-fired power stations, in a move aimed at wedging Labor on job creation and cost-of-living pressures linked to the new investment.
“There was a lot of absolute dismay that we didn’t actually campaign on Labor’s 50 per cent renewable energy target, because it would impact household budgets and small business and we wouldn’t have had to run a scare campaign on that, it would have been an actual factual campaign,” one MP said.
“Let’s see what Donald Trump does, but it stands to reason that we should not be trying to lead the world on this and if other countries are not going to be playing their part, whether it is right, wrong or indifferent, if we try to sacrifice our economy and household budgets to make no environmental difference we would be doing not only ourselves a great disservice but also the environment.”
But that view is not shared by cabinet, which believes any change to the renewable target would create more policy uncertainty and discourage investment. Several senior conservative MPs said there would be no change in position by the Turnbull government, and warned that doing so could create sovereign risk…
Resources Minister Matt Canavan said last week that new “ultra-supercritical” coal-fired power stations could be used in Australia to generate electricity with a 40 per cent cut in greenhouse gas emissions.
The parameters of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation could also potentially be changed to allow for low emissions coal technology.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/dump-ret-when-america-walks-away-from-paris/news-story/c6863739afb25e205d67a321ce70b954
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97% of sceptics agree: this money was wasted!
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http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change-risk-assessment-global-warming-government-accused-burying-report-a7540726.html
In case y-all haven’t seen it, the UK govt. allegedly covered up its own hysterical global warming report.
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HR193 – US bill to leave the UN
Off Topic so my apologies , but I thought this might be interesting.
a bill which was quietly presented in paralell to another bill reducing funds to the UN was slipped in on the 3rd Jan 2017.
https://www.rt.com/usa/374754-us-leave-united-nations-bill/
It seems the House is now studying the possibility of leaving the UN citing failures and a lack of effectiveness.
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I endore the plan to depart the UN completely, unless the UN immediately denounces the false and corrupt nuclear physics and earth/planetary sciences for which Nobel and Crafford Prizes were awarded to the UN’s IPCC, Al Gore and scientists who ignored clear undeniable evidence the pulsar-centered Sun is the creator and sustainer of every atom, life and planet in the solar system, powered by NEUTRON REPULSION, the same source of energy that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki shortly before frightened world leaders united nations and formerly “national” Academies of Sciences under the UN: https://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2017/01/23/a-key-clue-to-trumps-presidency-american-empire/
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Under court subpoena for Dr. Tim Ball’s trial in Vancouver next month, I might still be forced to release a copy of my 26 April 1976 three-page letter to the AGU President and MIT Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences Frank Press [later President of the US NAS (National Academy of Sciences)] with cc to the AGU Executive Director, Dr. A. F. Spilhaus, Jr., documenting the strange sequence of irregularities in handling an abstract for a paper Dr. D.D. Sabu and I sent to AGU in early January 1976, including an abrupt, last-minute changes in the published schedule for presentation at 10:30 am on 14 April 1976 to insert a Harvard astrophysicist into the program to speak without any abstract after we had already invited the editors of major research journals to hear our paper.
Here is a photograph of me later in 1976 at the Gregynog Workshop on Nucleogenetic Isotopic Anomalies, sitting directly behind the physicist who would later receive the 1983 Nobel Prize for explaining the standard model for the origin of the elements.
http://www.omatumr.com/Photographs/Photo1976GregynogWorkshop.pdf
21
Being a Brit, I am just glad that the second competition was cancelled. This cost £100m, but would have cost taxpayers £1,000m if it has gone ahead. Further consumer subsidies would have been £3.9bn or £8.9bn over 15 years, depending on which of the two contenders in the competition. This to put in a hole 1 Mt or 2 Mt of CO2 per year. Cost per tonne of CO2 stored would be £264 (US$330, A$435) and £300 (US$374, A$490).
I did a ballpark calculation of how much it would cost if China and India adopted CCS on all their coal-fired power stations. Instead of a consumer subsidy between £105 and £172 Mwh in these experimental schemes, I assumed just US$100. For China the subsidy might be $700bn a year, or 6% of GDP, whilst for India, a $240bn a year subsidy would come in at around 12% of GDP. The only thing they have to do now is find a great big hole.
https://manicbeancounter.com/2017/01/23/carbon-capture-and-storage-loses-another-100m-but-saves-up-to-10bn/
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According to their website, the International Energy Agency [ an offshoot of the OECD ] is demanding one billion dollars to build a technology demonstrator for CCS. { Note – technology demonstrators are the precursor to pilot plants. } They also reckon about 44 trillion dollars must be invested in electricity generation [ including CCS ] by 2030 if the dreaded 2 degrees temperature rise is to be beaten. Presumably that is on top of the 100 billion per year demanded by the UNFCC as a slush fund ( see Paris COP 21 ) to start the ball rolling to combat climate change.
10
And any time anyone brings up CCS, I have the desire to paper their offices with posters saying “Remember Lake Nyos”. Burying very large quantities of CO2 is not only ridiculous, but extremely dangerous.
10
And that may have been the origin of the story of having all newborns killed. Newborns apparently were cared for at ground level while older family members lived on higher levels in the buildings.
True or not?
00