JoNova
A science presenter, writer, speaker & former TV host; author of The Skeptic's Handbook (over 200,000 copies distributed & available in 15 languages).
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Sun Edison update:
Former SUNE exec’s file whistleblower lawsuit
https://www.wsj.com/articles/former-sunedison-executives-file-whistleblower-lawsuits-1487970358
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Thanks for the link. I expect many more whistleblowers will come forward as Trump shuts down the gravey train.
130
Something else very very big is also going on. I cannot disclose what it is yet.
70
Give us hint John !
71
I believe the editor of Nature realized the game was up when it was decided to publish a news report saying “The Heavens Are Filled With Mysterious Explosions.”
I will try to find and post the hyperlink.
20
Here is Nature’s news story, “The Heavens Are Filled With Mysterious Explosions” – perhaps setting the stage for mainstream scientists to finally admit the heavens are powered by neutron repulsion, the same source of energy in the atomic bombs that destroyed Hiroshima & Nagasaki.
http://www.nature.com/polopoly_fs/1.20175!/menu/main/topColumns/topLeftColumn/pdf/534610a.pdf
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Oliver, Fred Hoyle told them that ages ago! Mysterious explosions are creation events.
10
Fred Hoyle was right.
Fred was denied credit for most of the work in the 1983 Noble Prize Award to William A. Fowler.
10
Dr. P. K. Kuroda realized on 13 JUN 1936, and later reported in his autography, that A NUCLEAR PHYSICIST IN JAPAN DID NOT UNDERSTAND NUCLEAR ENERGY.
Kuroda reported the physicist appeared to be in his 30s. Long before I recognized Kuroda’s “secret message”, H. YUKAWA (born 1907) received a 1949 Nobel Prize in Physics for the SNM (Standard Nuclear Model) that ignores NEUTRON REPULSION, the source of energy that powers the Sun and the Universe.
Several other Nobel Prizes in Physics will be discredited if Trump shuts down the gravey train for pseudo-science and demands that theoretical nuclear physics theories comply with Einstein’s 1905 and Aston’s 1922 discoveries that atomic rest mass (m) is stored energy (E):
E = mc^2
20
NEUTRONS ARE REPULSIVE would make a great car sticker.
50
Or on a tee shirt.
31
“NEUTRONS ARE REPULSIVE would make a great car sticker.”
Indeed! But are they? Why are they not attractive, having mass but no charge?
No doubt they are deplorable!
11
~NEUTRON REPULSION~
EXPANDS THE COSMOS
20
Oliver, I’ve never been clear just what errors you believe you’ve found in modern day physics.
Can you refer me to a layman’s account of the issues?
Ideally, can you also refer me to a critique of that account?
10
Leo,
The error in nuclear physics is obvious in this brief tribute to my research mentor, Paul Kazuo Kuroda:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10640850/TRIBUTE_TO_KURODA.pdf
Kuroda first recognized the error in nuclear physics on 13 JUN 1936.
The definitation of “nuclear binding energy” used by nuclear physicists violates both EINSTEIN’s 1905 and ASTON’s 1922 conclusion that atomic rest mass (m) is energy (E):
E = mc^2
10
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10640850/TRIBUTE_TO_KURODA.pdf
00
Leo,
The error in nuclear physics is the slope in the line across the top of the right side of Figure 1.
If that slope were zero, the error would be zero.
But the slope is not zero, thus nullifying Weizsacker’s assumption of equal “nuclear binding energy” for the neutron and the hydrogen atom.
That slope causes, for example, the calculated value of the “nuclear binding energy” to be:
_ a.) Greater for H-3 (tritium) than for He-3, although the
_ b.) Rest mass is greater for H-3 (tritium) than for He-3.
10
Oliver,
Some time ago I looked at the graph and saw the slope referred to.
I suspect that if I now go back to it again and view it in the context of your last two paragraphs above plus pencil and paper to list the details of the components mentioned in a and b then it may start to reveal something.
Will have a go at this in the morning.
KK
10
“But the slope is not zero, thus nullifying Weizsacker’s assumption of equal “nuclear binding energy” for the neutron and the hydrogen atom.”
As far as I can tell, Weizsacker never claimed such!
“That slope causes, for example, the calculated value of the “nuclear binding energy” to be:
_ a.) Greater for H-3 (tritium) than for He-3,”
This is true a ‘very low mass nucleus’ seems to have higher binding energy than a sightly higher mass nucleus. Perhaps Fe (56) has no binding energy at all!
“although the
_ b.) Rest mass is greater for H-3 (tritium) than for He-3.”
What can you possibly be writing of? He-3 has almost twice the rest mass of h-3! Sensible heat (energy) is highly dependent upon rest mass of molecules not atomic nuclei. Temperature, hence EM radiative potential of mass OTOH remains much more complex and unknown. Can anyone please try a coherent guess at what may be going on?
KinkyKeith February 28, 2017 at 4:20 am
“Oliver, Some time ago I looked at the graph and saw the slope referred to. …I suspect that if I now go back to it again and view it in the context of your last two paragraphs above plus pencil and paper to list the details of the components mentioned in a and b then it may start to reveal something. …Will have a go at this in the morning.”
Keith,
Please let me know if you survive ‘the morning’.
All the best! -will-
11
No Will, I’m none the wiser but didn’t get very far. Haven’t had a good week.
10
By 1 April 2017 a new paper will be published to:
1. Celebrate the Centennial of the birth of Paul Kazuo Kuroda
2. Celebrate the end to seven decades of UN & UNAS deceit, called “97% consensus science.”
3. The start of a new scientific revolution and a new stage of human evolution based on appreciation, rather than fear, of the power that created and sustains every atom, life and planet in the solar system
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2017/02/28/morning-joe-manipulating-trump/#comment-80059
00
Thanks John,
That link is behind a paywall for me, but I found this freeby which seems to cover the same story.
http://www.todayevery.com/share/S1xeRvmRKx?hint=SB10559519697244824476804582642004088639744?responsive=y/articles
Cheers,
Dave B
40
This version does not hide behind a paywall!
00
Greenland Viking Disappearance Update.
And you were told the 97% hockey stick science was settled …
Smithsonian Magazine, March 2017, and the article treats the Medieval Warm Period as the fact it is:
Why Did Greenland’s Vikings Vanish?
Extra link:
Did the Vikings grow barley in Greenland?
“Researchers from the National Museum in Copenhagen say the answer to the question is ‘yes’. In a unique find, they uncovered very small pieces of charred grains of barley in a Viking rubbish heap on Greenland.
The Greenland climate was a bit warmer than it is today, and the southernmost tip of the great island was luscious and green and no doubt tempted Eric the Red and his followers.”
http://sciencenordic.com/vikings-grew-barley-greenland
172
Great. Dramatic evidence of the end of the Medieval warming period with the volcanic explosion on Lombok. This destroys the hockey stick on the flat side. Once again a warm period and once again humanity blossoms and the incompetents become Hanrahans, doomsayers except now they get PhDs in tree rings.
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Mark M,
There was a guy at Bunnings this morning who looked just like Eric the Red.
I don’t think he has disappeared at all. I’ll check with Michael Mann, he’ll know.
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What does a modern viking need to buy from Bunnings? (or what was he there to return; “This axe broke the first time I used it in battle, give me a refund, or face the wrath of Odin”.
Or was he there because some Bunnings shops could be mistaken for Valhalla?
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James,
Eric was there for the sausage sizzle.
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“This axe broke the first time I used it in battle”
I’ve never seen a double sides axe in Bunnings.
Poor guy probably brought it from China or on eBay.!
40
I returned a Ryobi sliding saw to Bunning a week ago and it was like a Viking battle to get a refund.
I took it back the next day because the saw would not cut a piece of hardwood fence paling straight and when i tried the 45 degree angle the 45 degree index was way out even after i spent a couple of hours adjusting the 90 degree angle index which was out of square straight out of the box.
Just because they look great and all does not mean they are any good for anything other than a timber house frame. For joinery forget it. Some people say it is only possible to get a straight cut out of them with a really expensive blade.
The saw i returned also burned the wood which it should not have done even if the wood i did the first cut on was hardwood.
50
Forty years ago Ryobi made some fantastically reliable power tools.
More recently they send stuff out without testing and “getting the bugs out”.
30
If Trump can squeeze truth from the US NAS (National Academy of Sciences), we are on the verge of a new scientific revolution.
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Then everyone will understand physics:
Hydrogen atoms are expanded e-/p+ pairs
& Neutrons are the compacted e-/p+ pairs
That comprise all ~3,000 types of atoms, &
That mimic expanded & compacted forms
of the entire, currently expanding universe
No more gravey for CERN’s pseudo-physicists!
20
Thanks Oliver.
I like that. Your neutron repulsion energy is the difference between a Hydrogen atom ( expanded proton, electron pair) and a Neutron( contracted proton, electron pair)?
00
And the neutrino is what, the energy of compaction?
My understanding of modern physics is good for a layman, childish compared to a professional’s. I’m not clear what you mean by neutron repulsion. My understanding is that they don’t repel each other, unlike charged particles of the same type, which do so repel.
I’m happy to learn I’m wrong, but can you direct me to a reputable source?
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Global temperature since 2500BC
http://www.longrangeweather.com/global_temperatures.htm
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Excellent graph. It fits the historical facts as everyone except Michael Mann understands. I note with amusement that Christ was born in 4BC. That must have been a surprise at the time.
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I understand that a union organiser tried to recruit him to the carpenters and joiners union.
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Eventually he went with the Masons. Liked the aprons.
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He was also four years old on the first Christmas day.
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I would also suggest that the lumpy nature of the graph prior to the 20th century are simply due to the total lack of thermometers or even the concept that temperature existed, could be measured or should be noted. Most temperature evidence like CO2 in ice cores spans years and leaching over time wipes out short term variations completely, which explains the contrast with the 20th century which looks so different.
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Now why would anyone red thumb a comment about the leaching of CO2 in ice cores? Was the sentence too long?
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Yes, keep it short. Must fit on a T shirt.
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From Iva Clue:
Red Thumb likes Dennis, but does not like TdeF.
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Facebook shows who has liked a post. Such identifying information on the thumbs up and thumbs down would be most illuminating.
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Easy to read: very useful.
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For Firefox users in experimental mode – dealing with WordPress
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2017/02/18/trump-campaign-stop-in-melbourne-fl-that-is/#comment-79922
Originally from Climate Audit
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http://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2017/02/james-okeefes-project-veritas-100-hours-of-secret-inside-cnn-recordings.html
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“That issue, climate change, I mean science is pretty much on board and there are a few dissenters. There’s no debate. It’s like you know, born-agains saying there’s a debate over, you know creationism, and all that stuff. There is no debate.”
You wonder if that is truly what journalists at CNN believe, that there is no questioning ‘the science’. Surely though the fact that the seas have no risen, the world has not warmed and everything if fine 30 years on would make a few of them question ‘the science’? I guess being skeptical is not in the nature of most journalists, especially if ‘the science’ is locked into a liberal left wing political position.
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Maybe report back if anyone tries it?
10
One of my Great Grandfathers came from Portugal, He went to sea at a young age and wound up in Sydney, where he married a girl from Orange in the mid west. In his retirement he was what today is described as a self-funded retiree. He and his wife had moved from Balmain to the new suburb of Drummoyne in 1898 because the former ‘was getting too rough’. They kept the house and rented it out. In the 30’s in Drummoyne they owned 4 blocks of land. The 3 along the street parallel with the Harbour had two houses separated by a vacant block. The fourth block ran along the back of the front three and also had a house, which was occupied by a son, his wife and 4 children. The back of that block and the ‘vacant’ block were for growing fruit and vegetables and keeping poultry. That, and the rent from the other house and that in Balmain, kept my Great grandfather, his wife and the unemployed son and his family through the Great Depression on less than 2 pound a week.
His second son (my Grandfather) used to be sent to bring home the bacon from the age of 10. That meant travelling to Newcastle by coastal steamer to get to the approved butcher, then return; a 2 day trip. He was one of the original employees at BHP Newcastle Steelworks in 1915. He bought a house in Merewether, then an out of the way suburb, about 1928. It was a narrow block, indeed it shared a driveway with the house next door, not that either family ever owned a car, but it was deep, so he grew fruit and vegetables and kept poultry which (with fish for he was a keen fisherman) enabled the family to survive the short employment of the Depression. For all that my mother could never stand to have a tin of Golden Syrup in the house; if she needed some for cooking the rest of the new tin went into the rubbish bin for the smell reminded her of bread and golden Syrup meals.
As the oldest surviving male my paternal grandfather buried his grandmother in a pauper’s grave in Shetland when he was 13 and went to sea. On one of his early voyages he went round Cape Horn. There he was standing on the first cross tree of the foremast braced against the mast. He was 40 feet (22m) above the deck, plus the freeboard and his 1.6m height above the water. He noticed that when the ship rolled he was looking down at water before the roll was half over, and when the ship went into a trough he couldn’t see the top of the waves. When he got down, very carefully, the Second Mate spoke to him socially for the first time in two and a half months and congratulated him on having such fine weather for his first voyage around Cape Horn. On the previous voyage he said the ship had taken over 3 days to round the Cape and the waves had been higher than the main mast. Shortly after that my Grandfather became very interested in steam engines, as he realised they didn’t take that route.
His wife’s father left Germany as a young man because he had TB and was sent on a long sea voyage in the hope of a cure. The ship was becalmed in Waterford for 3 weeks where he met a young Irish girl. When the ship sailed the Captain discovered he had a stowaway and used his authority to marry them despite both being minors. They wound up in Black Rock in NZ (which even Rereke Whakaro can’t place). It was a large gold mining town near Grey Mouth on the west coast of the south island, hardly the best place to convalesce. After some years he headed to a drier climate on the Gold Fields of WA with his family to follow. Fortunately he was a Mason and made himself known to them on his arrival, so when he proved how sick he was by dropping dead in the main ‘street’ of Coolgardie, my Grandfather was one of those who met the arriving widow to inform her she, and her children, were now destitute but the Lodge would look after them. My Grandfather took a more practical approach and married the eldest daughter.
My mother left home when she was 12 and boarded with a great aunt while she worked in Newcastle. She went to work in Sydney from Newcastle before she was 15 (she walked across Sydney Harbour Bridge the day it was opened) in search of better wages. The day she arrived one of her only pair of shoes got a hole in the sole. For two weeks she cut out pieces of thick cardboard to fit under her foot until she could afford to take them to a shoe repairer. It was some months before she could save enough to buy a second pair of shoes. Sometime about then she was told to go and see an aunt who was “having trouble making ends meet” and was living in what were then slums in City Road opposite Sydney University. She did this several times taking small sums from the family. The aunt was subsequently relocated by relatives out to Orange so they could support her.
My mother later rented a room (with her sister) in Darlinghurst down near the Sydney Oval. There were no cooking facilities of course, but in those days many housewives, by arrangement, would cook extra for a cheap ‘takeaway meal”. My Grandmother was so upset about where they were living that she dispatched the 12 year old eldest boy to Sydney to bring the girls home to Newcastle. Fortunately he had plenty of common sense and returned home and explained to his mother that they were living nowhere near the ‘sinful’ part of Darlinghurst.
My father left home at 10. He was boarded out in Bunbury so he could attend school as his father was peripatetic around the wood mills in the SW of WA and little teaching was available. Later when his father retired he was able to go to the University of WA because it was free. The Professor of Engineering welcomed the new students with a speech highlighting that “there were 76 doing engineering for the first time, plus some whose faces he recognised. No-one in West Australian needed 76 engineers, no-one in Australia needed 76 engineers, therefore most of them would fail”. As my father knew that failure would be the end of his University career, he worked on the principle that when pursued by lions, it wasn’t necessary to be the fastest runner, merely the second slowest. When he graduated along with the other 6 who had got directly to fifth year, times had changed with War being declared. When those 7, and another 7 who’d made it to fifth year more slowly, marched down to the Recruiting Office the Sergeant took the first name, and told them all to go home – X would go into the Railroads, Y into Electricity and Water Supply and the rest into Munitions, and with the exception of one who got into the army under an assumed name, that is where they went. So at 22 my father went to the other side of Australia to Newcastle to gain “industrial experience” at BHP. While there he met my mother on one of her W.E. trips back. It was 7 years before he got back to W.A.
I can’t help wondering how young people these days would react, but then I
myself, had a comfortable and cosseted life until I left home at 22 to work in Fiji.
P.S. One of my Great Uncles was in the Despatch Room in Police HQ in Sydney when they went to to intern the German Nationals. A phone call came from one of the police cars (not all had radios those days) that Herr Muller (name changed) wasn’t home. The Sergeant consulted a large book which stuck in my Great Uncle’s mind because he had never seen a ring binder before. The Sergeant directed the car crew to go down to the second street on the right, the first on the left, and the fourth house along and Herr Muller would be in there with a Mrs. Smith. “Be discrete” he counselled as ”Mr. Smith didn’t know”. The police rang back about half an hour later to say Muller had come without trouble. That was in 1939 and look how much the Government knew then! Mind how you go!
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Thanks for the great read Graeme, how did you gather the detailed family history?, either way resilience is often displayed from necessity but not all have the capability.
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I have a fairly good memory, but at one stage I tried to gather my father’s family tree. One grey day in Edinborough I spent in their records library. This was before eveything was computerised and before it was centralised (and charged for) in London. In Scotland then you were free to consult the handwritten birth / death certificates and do your own searching. With that side of the family in Shetland it was fairly easy.
My mother’s elder brother also traced his side of the family history in Australia for years when he retired.
After his death we found further information that my father had gathered without mentioning it. I think it was associated with the settlement of a long extant family trust in my mother’s family which was wound up after much searching by lawyers tracking descendents. (Don’t think I am rich, the share my parents received was $56. The various lawyers did much better. Hence the family saying “the lawyers fees never exceed the value of the estate”.)
On my mother’s side we had her favorite aunt living in Adelaide (she was another who couldn’t make ends meet) who remembered a lot, although sometimes she remembered differently. She left my mother a little stool along with its history from the 1820’s – no, it isn’t Chippendale or valuable, just sturdy as it had to be to survive.
My father’s father was resilient from necessity. He made his own carpentry tools which lasted 100 years. My father remembered his self adjusting acetylene lamp from when he was young. (In case anyone is interested it was a biscuit tin with carbide in the base, placed upside down in a larger tin of water. The gas was tapped from the top of the floating tin, which sank when more gas was needed, and lifted the carbide out of the water when there was enough gas).
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re the Black Rock – large mining town near Greymouth.
The only places that this could possibly be are Black’s Point , near Reefton (It was the centre of coal and quartz mining in the first decades of 20th century)
http://www.reefton.co.nz/what-to-do/places-to-visit/black-s-point
or Blackball- coal mining town
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackball,_New_Zealand
30
Thank you. Black Rock was oral history also it being a gold mining town. I see also Blackwater was a gold mining town, now gone. Waiuta? doesn’t sound close enough. My great grandfather supposedly ran a bakery.
20
Thx for that Graeme No 3, appreciate your family
story of hard times and resilience … Rounding
Cape Horn, so like Patrick O’Brian’s well researched
‘Master and Commander’ series,’Desolation Island,’
History’s long view correcting the myopia of ‘down
the memory hole’and Big Brother.
40
A great set of books.
🙂
20
Good job there Graeme, people and family helping each other, no victim mentality or expectation of govt assistance, how ever did they do it.
00
There has been some recent talk about renewed coral bleaching closer to Cairns, but ignoring that minor irritant the cold water anomaly appears to be slowly encircling the continent.
http://www.ospo.noaa.gov/data/sst/anomaly/2017/anomnight.2.23.2017.gif
In the US its been a mild winter in the northeast and frigid over in the west.
81
The Gulf Stream appears to be having a major effect on the eastern part of the USA at the moment.
20
Interesting new paper on No tricks zone
http://notrickszone.com/2017/02/25/blockbuster-paper-finds-just-15-of-co2-growth-since-industrialization-is-due-to-human-emissions/#sthash.g6lg4WsH.m7iwfR4u.dpbs
Humans responsible for just 15% of the rise of atmospheric CO2 since 1750
Anthropogenic fraction of aCO2 is just 4.3%
134
A number of attempts at estimating the residence time of CO2 in the atmosphere puts it at well under 7 years.
And that’s not Half-Life.
In other words human origin CO2, being no different to “natural” CO2, is sequestered by nature in about four and a half years.
So, if we all stopped our human activity, the good ship Earth would right itself in 4.5 years.
KK
20
Jennifer Marohasy does some sleuthing at Bourke, in search for the hottest ever.
http://jennifermarohasy.com/2017/02/australias-hottest-day-record-ever-deleted/
Steven Mosher shows up in comments, that would have to be a first.
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And was immediately shown to be WRONG.. as usual.
Wouldn’t buy a used car from that guy !!
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Yeah, anyway we need to get the message out that the jet stream is wonky and producing freaky weather.
http://virga.sfsu.edu/archive/jetstream/jetstream/small/1702/17022400_jetstream_small.gif
30
A few years ago a neighbour handed me a 100 years special issue of a newspaper printed in Kempsy NSW (north of Port Macquarie), the special edition had news items for every year that the newspaper had been circulated. It was fascinating to read the weather variations, rains and floods, heat waves. And to sit back and consider the propaganda we are fed today about the hottest ever … deceptive to say the least.
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Make Earth Great Again!—Here’s How
Political conservatives are more likely to care about the environment if climate messages focus on restoring the planet to its past state, a study shows.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/make-earth-great-again-heres-how/?WT.mc_id=SA_TW_ENGYSUS_NEWS
. . .
What ‘state’?
1872: It is raining pitilessly, and every drop falls on my head like lead.
It means ruin if it lasts, as the teams will not get through to McLachlan and Burton until too late.
Plenty water now. Too much. The work is doomed.
The lives of two hundred men are imperilled for want of supplies.
I cannot be held responsible. I have done all that mortal man can do.
http://www.heritageaustralia.com.au/downloads/pdfs/%20Heritage%200610_Overland%20Telegraph.pdf
50
Hottest day evaahhh, now is in the last 10 – 20 years but usually as now defined thirty years .
It suits the narrative for CAGW but tells us nothing about historical long term trends .
It also hinders the BOM’s ability to predict weather in advance , Perths wet winter and SA wet spell and floods are just two examples .
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Not to mention the absence of tropical cyclones. Tropical lows/depressions don’t count. I guess BoM just can’t nail their medium term forecasts.
31
They would do better a consulting a medium!
21
Sun Metals Zinc refinery Townsville installing solar. Can anyone supply information, all I can find is supportive fairy dust. Has anyone got real information?
21
NASA discovered a solar system with seven rocky planets someof which might be capable of supporting life. It is only 40 light years away. Called Trappist-1 system.
https://youtu.be/wSM7UnUzDQM
30
Pickerings take on that!
http://pickeringpost.com/story/nasa-looks-to-pad-its-budget/6934
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The Feb 8 electrical outage in SA is now being blamed on the AEMO failing to observe a weather report. It took it’s weather report from the Weatherzone website, not the BoM.
http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/sa-heatwave-blackout-could-have-been-avoided-if-aemo-had-used-bureau-of-meteorologys-weather-forecast/news-story/ea7b59d23b337dbaf4ba3ecd09cdd73a
“SA Energy Minister Tom Koutsantonis yesterday criticised AEMO’s use of privately-produced weather information.
“The fact that the national operator of our electricity network, which is one of the biggest and most complex machines in the world, was using the Weatherzone website for its weather forecasting and not the BoM beggars belief,’’ he said.
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And I thought weatherzone just interpreted BOM data !
100
Exactly. No diff.
60
Fairfax owned.Say no more!
50
I think tht’s right Robert R. And it’s a very reliable forcast, at least of temperature. They are reliably wrong with their overnight efforts, and have been out by as much as 5 degrees C. Can’t comment on wind speeds or directions but I think a imilar statement would apply.
Cheers,
Dave B
40
I wonder if the weather data had been homogenized…..? That could do it…
I know I know…but its too good an opportunity to pass up…. 😛
10
The linked table is the CSIRO offering on what constitutes the off-grid home power supply, which they forecast will be a large proportion of households in Australia by 2050:
https://1drv.ms/b/s!Aq1iAj8Yo7jNgWsDwhaisDfoisC9
This is the basis of CSIRO economist Paul Graham advising Senator Malcolm Roberts that there was no need for base load and a 100% renewable future was technically possible and would deliver lower cost electricity.
I have little doubt this is the quality of information that will underpin Finkel’s report on the future of the NEM.
130
Hmmm?
The table you linked to is for a 6kW solar system for a house. Costs at 2015 with a small diesel backup generator is 74c/kWh. That is a high cost! The rest is speculation with a lot of optimism for cost reductions. That might happen, or might not.
Ok for a house perhaps but does not supply electricity for industry so No Jobs. Also leaves city buildings and high rise with No power.
Maybe large scale solar can look after them. How much of Australian do we need to cover with soilar cells to supply that demand?
I hope that you are wrong about Finkel, but I have a bad feeling about his report.
120
If you are buying a commercial system right now it will be considerably higher cost. If you just buy components and install yourself then you could come in around the 74c/kWh figure or even better.
The battery/inverter cost for 2015 is given at AUD534/kWh. I cannot even buy cells for that now. Commercial battery/inverter prices range between AUD1200 and AUD2400.
They have a battery discharge of 90%. That will yield a battery life around 2000cycles – no more than 5 years. The Amortisation period is 10 years and they only include 1 battery.
They have a 5kW inverter. OK my jug is running taking 2.5kW to make cup of tea and the tooter is doing my toast taking another 1kW. Then my wife goes and turns the washing machine on or the fridge kicks in. Suddenly everything is black. I made the mistake with the latest oven of getting a twin oven (my wife’s choice) – it alone sucks 6.5kW if both ovens are started at once. It has tripped its 25A breaker once when she was hosting a cookware party and had both ovens running and constantly opening the door.
This is the future that CSIRO economist Paul Graham was envisioning when he scoffed at Malcolm Roberts comments that Australia needs base load generation.
Looking at the table it looks plausible; if a little backward suggesting the diesel. But when you go through it in detail it is no more than wishful thinking. This would not matter if it was destined to collect dust but I have a strong feeling this will gain currency through the Finkel inquiry.
My submission has been acknowledged so I should be sent a draft of Finkel’s report prior to release with opportunity to respond. If it regurgitates this roadmap then I will challenge it.
110
Rick where I live we don’t have the luxury of natural gas or a sewage or potable water scheme , every time you pull the chain a pump starts for the water to pump then another if the septic gets too high .
Basically we rely on electricity for pretty much everything , heating is via a wood burning heater but that still needs an electric fan .
I’m glad the CSIRO have an economist on the case , as they’re Chrystal ball predictions have not been the best , why not handball it over to an economist rather than a computer model .
A guess is a guess is a guess !
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Robert
Too bad you don’t fit the mould – sorry you will have to resort to carrying water. You can pump the septic if you are not boiling water. You should avoid carrying that.
The popular press reported that Malcolm Roberts came over as an idiot asking silly questions that were scoffed at. For example:
How does a professional academic researching photovoltaics get invited to present at a Senate Hearing on:
“Select Committee into the Resilience of Electricity Infrastructure in a Warming World”
Then become an “Energy Expert”
This is from the preamble:
http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Resilience_of_Electricity_Infrastructure_in_a_Warming_World/ElectricityInfrastructure
In my view the 97% consensus has been the most powerful idea in pushing an agenda. It has become so pervasive that virtually no politician questions it and the few who do are treated as imbeciles.
50
Having a nursery, to irrigate we run 2 pumps which together require almost 10 kw. Our solar system produces 5 kw max. So even on a good day we draw from the grid. And of course, the hotter the day the more we have to irrigate. We are a very small nursery so one of greater size would have to draw more from the grid. I cann’t envisage any business running on solar alone.
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brill
Maybe you missed the bit that the 100% renewable household requires a small diesel. It is factored into the price. You would just need more panels, bigger battery, much bigger inverter (or soft starters) and a bigger diesel to go 100% renewable.
You have to define a small diesel as producing renewable energy – not sure how that happens but words are used loosely these days.
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brill will find that by pouring in more and more capital, the unit cost of power will decrease.
Never mind about the economics, they will look after themselves.
After all capital doesn’t count in power supply economics – does it?????
50
Spot on. If I have to pour that much into power supply, the whole business becomes uneconomic. Given that the public resents paying what I consider a fair price for plants already, I can’t see them paying the extra to cover power. I would just shut up shop and go on social security.
20
brill
Have you considered time of use tariffs. The peak for residential (depending on location) is only the afternoon/evening typically from 3pm to 9pm. So there would be a lot of time when you could use off peak. If you are a rural user then the peak time is longer but off peak is cheaper.
Hard for me to imagine how you are using two 10kW pumps to pump water in a small nursery. You must have a huge dam. There may be means to do the job more efficiently or with reduced power running longer. Do you need the full pressure the pumps can produce?
The pain of power prices is really being carried by small business that have zero opportunity to make use of subsidies:
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/electricity-price-shock-small-business-bills-have-doubled-in-the-past-decade/news-story/0123b9b50a44b8d25c0dbb35bf00446e
Hopefully your solar panels were subsidised and are helping a bit.
Another thing to consider is a grant. This is from Queensland but the money usually comes from Federal funds:
https://www.business.qld.gov.au/industries/mining-energy-water/energy/renewable/grants-support/research
Think of it as a way to recover some taxes paid. I know it takes time to make a submission but if you are honest and brief you never know. Often it is a matter of asking. Can also be a pain to meet the administration required to sustain the funding.
11
Rick, Off peak tariffs are no good. We make sure the irrigation is finished and plants are dry before the sun goes down. To irrigate at night is to invite fungal diseases. We try to spray fungicides as soon as possible after rain, especially if the plants haven’t been able to dry out for a few days. Yes we do need the pressure. Irrigation in a nursery is not like in a garden or farm. Plants are in pots so the irrigation must be evenly applied otherwise we have some pots are over watered and some are under watered. Maintaining the correct pressure is so important we have pressure gauges at every important point. Though, by observing it every day I can now tell at a glance if the pressure is right. Some of our growing pads have different sprinklers which do not require the high pressure so can run on one pump. Unfortunately the first two pads were set up by professionals. I thought they knew what they were doing so trusted them. All pipes are under weed mat and gravel so to change the sprinklers (from 10m spacing to 5m) would require pulling it all up. A big job that would require us to have room to transfer the plants to and the staff and time to do it. Which we don’t have.
The dam is not big. In fact it is too small, and very low at the moment. We set everything up so 80% of irrigation water goes back to the dam and is treated and recycled. And all rain run off goes to the dam. Yes we did get the normal subsidy on the solar panels. And they have reduced our electricity charges by about half. Though a large part of that reduction came by just switching supplier. Last point, if we ran the irrigation longer it would interfere with the work being done. As it is we can work around the irrigation times but we still get wet occasionally.
40
Amazing! All we need to do is wait until 2050 to install our off grid home solar system and annual costs will drop from $4,444 pa to $1140. Somehow odd that they still cost in a Smart Meter. And don’t you love it that every backyard will have a diesel generator that will fire up for 2.5 days per month.
90
In southern Australia the diesel will run intermittently in May, every second day through the first two weeks of june. Every day for at least a few hours in late June early July and then reduced amount of operation through late July and early August. Very rarely run through spring and summer.
The suburbs of Australia will have that lovely dark haze from diesel fumes hanging over them in June and July – it will be wonderful. All those particulates ail reverse the urban heat effect but will not be good for the solar panels. (Reminds me of Lithgow 40 years ago on a winter’s morning)
There are certainly other possible alternatives to diesel but none that will match the price. What is a NG fuel cell worth these days – can you actually buy one?
20
I read somewhere but can no longer find the source that the definition of sea ice coverage was changed that has the effect of making it appear as though there is less ice than there really is. Does anyone know about this?
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I think this might be it.
“We have improved the algorithms calculating sea ice concentration and extent. Consequently, on June 28, 2016, we updated the graphs of ice extent with new data of higher quality.”
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.uk.php (Danish Meteorological Institute)
“Higher quality” might mean more ice in the past or less in the present – I have no idea.
50
does that mean we can blame the BOM when SA next goes down
40
On Dec 26th I visited some friends in the Latrobe Valley (VIC). Hazelwood, Yallourn and Loy Yang power stations are all nearby and quite close together. I decided to take a first and last look at the Hazelwood Cooling Pondage which is a popular recreation area and the water is around 26C year round. There are large numbers of powerlines connecting this hub of power stations and Melbourne and elsewhere. I felt sickened at the prospect of the forthcoming closure of Hazelwood and the deliberate sabotage of cheap and reliable electricity production in Victoria. Also the pond has been stocked with a variety of warm water fish which will die when the power station is turned off. I took some videos of the area.
https://youtu.be/4X0-wiQ9fDA
https://youtu.be/GZGo18mRByA
https://youtu.be/8k6eCM_ftws
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Another unforeseen consequence of closing Hazelwood Power Station (VIC, Australia) will be the death of the fish in the cooling pond. It has been deliberately stocked with barramundi and other fish due to its warm water and people can go and fish there. It is the world’s most southern population of barramundi (due to the warm water) and when the power station is shut down THE FISH WILL DIE.
I’m not a fisher but here someone writes about exotic fish in Hazelwood pondage. http://speciesfishing.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/hazelwood-cichilds-in-southern.html?m=1
Here someone swims in the pondage. https://youtu.be/wopMdkoqV8M
Barramundi at Hazelwood. http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2016-04-20/barramundi-find-new-home-in-victoria's-south-east/7342744
All this will go when they shut down the power station UNLESS they can use windmills to drive electric heaters to heat the water – that would be about the only appropriate use for them.
I want to go there to swim and camp before it is closed down.
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Surely the environmentalists will jump at the cause of saving the fish at Hazelwood!
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NOPE… not a chance !!
41
We could say to the Hazelwood owners “So long, and thanks for all the fish…”
40
We could feed the multitudes, but The Greens don’t believe in renewable fish . .
10
http://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2017/02/legislation-before-the-arkansas-legislature-to-strip-bill-clintons-name-from-little-rock-airport.html#comments
30
Germany 2nd largest power producer, RWE, reported staggering losses of 5.7 billion euros over the fiscal 2016 year
see https://im42na.wordpress.com/2017/02/25/news-of-britain-syria-iran-n-korea-and-precious-metals/
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Australia’s CSIRO can sort out this minor issue. Let RWE go to the wall. Base generation is no longer needed in Germany. Wind and PVs will do all the heavy lifting along with pumped storage, a few trillion batteries and threats to cut off the money supply to the southern EU states if they do not deliver on contracted power in winter. Problem solved.
80
Now that’s nasty on a lot of levels. Like your work.
50
Also as public servants, rapidly rising electricity prices will be a big part of the next CSIRO claim for a pay rise.
50
The biggest wet season in the Kimberley since 2011 has produced some spectacular waterfalls: Fitzroy Bluff at Mornington Wildlife Sanctuary
video @ https://twitter.com/awconservancy/status/835031531466842112
2007, and as Tim Flannery put it, coal fired power stations “emit much of the CO2 that is the ultimate cause of the drying”.
Even more ominous, “Australia is likely to lose its northern rainfall”.
New Scientist. Editorial: Australia, Not Such a Lucky Country. June 2007
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Studying dead kangaroos does not make you a scientist but he says with all the authority he can muster “CO2 that is the ultimate cause of the drying”. Perhaps between the hard Science and the Arts degrees there needs to be a new department, Science Fiction. B.SF
71
His problem is he should be studying the entrails of the dead roo .
50
25 Feb: WashingtonTimes: Obama administration neglected priorities to focus on climate change, new EPA chief says
‘There are some very important things that the EPA does for this country’ he told CPAC
By David Sherfinski
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt on Saturday said the Obama administration neglected would-be department priorities to pursue a climate change agenda and hinted that a rollback of some regulations could be announced as soon as next week…
He said some regulations will be rolled back in the near term “in a very aggressive way.”
“Next week, you may be hearing about some of those,” he said…
Mr. Pruitt’s agency could also roll back the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan, which imposed carbon dioxide limits on the country’s power plants.
He did concede that a sentiment among some conservatives that the EPA should just go away is “justified.”
“I think people across this country look at the EPA much like they look at the IRS,” he said, also saying he hoped to change that.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/feb/25/scott-pruit-epa-administrator-says-obama-neglected/
surprised Chicago Trib published this. Gloria might have mistaken $10 billion for $10 million at one point. a lone protester is sufficient to get his pic in the paper:
25 Feb: ChicagoTribune: Gloria Casas: Author’s alternative theory of climate change spurs discussion
Environmental researcher Steve Goreham had no one to debate on the stage Friday night, but several audience members challenged his claims that climate change is natural, not man made.
Goreham, author of “Mad, Mad, Mad World of Climatism,” spoke Friday night at the Gail Borden Public Library in Elgin, invited at the request of School District U-46 board member Jeanette Ward for a discussion on alternative theories on climate change.
PHOTO CAPTION: A man holds sign outside the Gail Borden Public Library Friday to counter the position of researcher and author Steve Goreham, who spoke to about 50 people on his belief that global warming is not caused by man but by nature…
“So don’t let anyone tell you about this 97 percent. It’s nonsense. Very, very inaccurate,” Goreham said.
“Fake news,” Ward shouted out…
http://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/elgin-courier-news/news/ct-ecn-elgin-library-climate-change-st-0226-20170225-story.html
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The Mainstream news were caught flat footed by Trumps call of Fake News. Only now are they reacting and calling any contrary opinion Fake News, which fools no one. The whole country knows what Fake News is about, from ‘you won’t believe’ click bait to Trump’s daughter is married to an alien. They also know the mainstream news is full of it, as FARK pointed out years ago.
“It’s Not News, It’s FARK
HOW MAINSTREAM MEDIA TRIES TO PASS OFF CRAP AS NEWS”
What happened with Climate Change was FARK Science or FAKE Science.
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On Friday, Jo said:
I had to chuckle about the Green/Left crowd’s terminology regarding freedom.
In 2013 the ABC published an op-ed describing Gillard’s “market solution” ETS as a “market-dominated response”.
Last year the ABC published an op-ed claiming:
Today, in what amounted to an alert about corporate spying, the ABC described Amazon’s management priorities as:
Let’s review…
A price on CO2 emissions that you’re forced to pay by law was described as a “market solution”.
An avoidance of government regulation is described as an embrace of regulation.
A completely voluntary transaction with one of several competitors is described as a long term lock-in.
The phrase “fake news” may be new but the phenomenon is not, it just used to be called propaganda.
50
24 Feb: Daily Caller: Andrew Follett: CPAC Panel: Here’s The Part Of The Global Warming Debate Greens Don’t Want You To Know
“[CO2] is the food which sustains essentially all plants and animals on the face of the Earth,” Dr. Craig Idso, chairman of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, said during a panel session at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).
“As carbon dioxide is released into the air, it has the potential to cause warming,” Idso said. “However, the biology side of this is something we don’t hear a lot about.”…READ ON
http://dailycaller.com/2017/02/24/cpac-panel-heres-the-part-of-the-global-warming-debate-greens-dont-want-you-to-know/
25 Feb: Daily Signal: Group Defends Carbon Dioxide as ‘Elixir of Life’ in Climate Change Debate
by Kevin Mooney
Forget everything government officials, many media outlets, and “activist scientists” have warned about the damaging effects of carbon dioxide, because in reality there’s no cause for alarm, a group called the CO2 Coalition urges.
Scientists, engineers, and policy analysts who are part of the nonprofit organization turned out in force Friday at the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, outside Washington.
“Atmospheric CO2 is not a pollutant, it is in fact the very elixir of life,” Craig Idso, a science adviser to the CO2 Coalition, said during a panel discussion at CPAC exploring the benefits attached to higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere…
“Adding CO2 to the atmosphere enhances plant water use efficiency,” he said.
Increased levels of carbon dioxide could boost plant growth and make plants more resistant to droughts, he said. This could lead to increased food production, which in turn could offset projected food shortages…
Idso, who has advanced degrees in geography and agronomy, is founder and chairman of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, a nonprofit based in Arizona…
“Unfortunately, the government mindset has viewed CO2 as a pollutant,” Idso said…
Joining him for the CPAC panel discussion was CO2 Coalition member Kathleen Hartnett White, a senior fellow and director of the Armstrong Center for Energy and Environment at the Texas Public Policy Foundation.
“No, carbon dioxide is not a pollutant and fossil fuels are not the agents of death,” Hartnett White said…
Hartnett White, a member of President Donald Trump’s economic advisory team during his campaign, also is labeled a climate change “denier” by some environmental activists…
During a Q&A session, James Delingpole, executive editor of the London branch of Breitbart News Network, asked Idso why environmental activists have made such an effort to “demonize CO2.”.
“Different people latch onto it for different reasons,” Idso said, adding:
“If you’re a scientist, you must publish to support yourself and your family. And if you’re out there saying global warming is not a problem, you are not going to get a research grant. If you’re a politician, you know that if you can control carbon, you can control life.”…
http://dailysignal.com/2017/02/25/group-defends-carbon-dioxide-as-elixir-of-life-in-climate-change-debate/
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23 Feb: PJ Media: Debra Heine: CPAC Climate Panel: With Trump, We’re Going to Have a Real Debate
The climate experts at CPAC’s “Fake Climate News” panel said Thursday morning that the global warming debate in the United States is about to get real.
“This panel comes at an incredibly opportune time,” said NRO’s John Fund, who served as the moderator. “We’re about to have things shaken up. There’s a new administration that takes a different view, its appointees have different priorities, and I think now we have the prospect of having a real debate.”…
The panel, titled “Fake Climate News Camouflaging an Anti-Capitalist Agenda,” was sponsored by E&E Legal Institute and featured Breitbart London editor James Delingpole; Steve Milloy, a lawyer and author who founded the website JunkScience.com; and Tony Heller — better known by his pseudonym Steven Goddard at the blog Real Science…READ ON
https://pjmedia.com/trending/2017/02/23/cpac-climate-panel-with-trump-were-going-to-have-a-real-debate/
Youtube 36mins21secs: CPAC 2017 Fake Climate Science Panel Part 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbSgt0cSwhI
Pt 2 is mostly Tony Heller:
Youtube: 25mins04secs: CPAC Fake Climate Science Panel Part 2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_PCSiKOS_s
21
read all:
24 Feb: Westernwire: NYT Quietly Deletes Section Of Pruitt E-mail Story That Contradicted Sierra Club, NRDC Talking Points
by Simon Lomax
A New York Times story (LINK) that contradicted claims of wrongdoing against U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt was quietly edited after publication to remove lines that challenged the talking points of environmental activist groups…
But at some point after publication, the Times removed the two sentences that undercut the talking points of Sierra Club, NRDC and other critics of the new EPA Administrator. While a correction note was posted for another change made to the story, there was no explanation for the deletion of those two lines…READ ON
http://westernwire.net/nyt-quietly-deletes-section-of-pruitt-e-mail-story-that-contradicted-sierra-club-nrdc-talking-points/
21
This petition from physical scientists to Trump to withdraw from the UNFCCC has just been delivered.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/02/25/richard-lindzen-petition-to-president-trump-withdraw-from-the-un-convention-on-climate-change/
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Interesting range of signatories. High proportion of tenured academics (assuming Prof is tenured) as well as many retired from government and industry. David Evans is there. No Judith Curry; I wonder if she was invited.
50
Trusty TdeF in the list too.
80
Dr. Tom Quirk as well.
20
Do we get a clue?
40
Freeman Dyson is also a signatory. That will carry weight.
10
Canberra had its coldest morning on record the other day, a wakeup call for the brain dead politicians.
http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/awap/temp/index.jsp?colour=colour&time=latest&step=0&map=minanom&period=daily&area=nat
61
I reported that on here the other day… maybe I need to wake up you guys
32
Could you give a reference to that please.
Sincerely Willard
50
Here you go old Mary
from http://joannenova.com.au/2017/02/weekend-unthreaded-152/
10
‘….maybe I need to wake up you guys.’
We appreciate your effort young Gee, its not a cold air outbreak but still significant.
10
This is my submission to the Finkel inquiry. I would appreciate any comments before I submit it.
“Independent Review into the Future Security of the National Electricity Market”
SUBMISSION BY DR DAVID MADDISON
Since this inquiry and submission is being made under the auspices and direction of Australia’s Chief Scientist this inquiry demands that a rigorous application of the scientific method be applied as the economic future of Australia is at stake.
Before discussing solutions to Australia’s energy crisis, the nature of which is expensive and unreliable electricity it is first necessary to question the fundamental premise upon which there has been such a massive and ongoing investment in expensive intermittent, low density energy sources.
The ostensible reason for this investment away from traditional sources of coal and gas fired generation is the hypothesis that emissions of carbon dioxide cause catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW).
There is no evidence whatsoever that this hypothesis is true or even plausible, in fact, it is widely discredited now by honest scientists and the claim has only ever been demonstrable with inappropriately altered historical temperature records.
It surely has not escaped the attention of the Chief Scientist or his staff the extensive alteration of historic temperature records that has occurred with Australia’s and other climate agencies to the effect of cooling the past and warming the present? (e.g. http://joannenova.com.au/2014/08/the-heat-is-on-bureau-of-meteorology-altering-climate-figures-the-australian/, https://realclimatescience.com/history-of-nasanoaa-temperature-corruption/, http://joannenova.com.au/2017/02/noaa-whistleblower-tells-how-they-used-bad-data-to-rub-out-pause-for-paris/ to name a few of thousands of references to this.)
In the light of extensive documentation of the alteration of historical climate records why is not the question of whether there is real anthropogenic global warming considered. The scientific method DEMANDS that if the data is bad then then the results are INVALID.
There are further issues to consider such as:
– CO2 is not a particularly powerful “greenhouse” gas and is present in the atmosphere in only trace quantities. It is estimated that of all the approximate 400ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere, only 4.3% or 17.2ppm is of anthropogenic origin. (http://notrickszone.com/2017/02/25/blockbuster-paper-finds-just-15-of-co2-growth-since-industrialization-is-due-to-human-emissions) It is simply not plausible that the small amount of anthropogenic CO2 in the atmosphere is responsible for the temperature changes claimed. In the past CO2 levels have been much higher than this with commensurate flourishing of plant life and hence all plant life (since CO2 is vital for plant life, a fact that many don’t seem to know).
– The geological record also shows that natural CO2 concentrations lag temperature changes by hundreds of years and do not lead them. This is an undeniable scientific fact. Natural temperature changes are responsible for later changes in CO2.
– The IPCC computer models have no forecasting or hindcasting ability whatsoever, they cannot even make predictions into the past when the answer is known. Therefore they are scientifically invalid. It is questionable whether a chaotic process such as climate can be modelled in any case. There used to be a saying “Garbage In Garbage Out” GIGO. These models represent a tremendous waste of supercomputing resources which should be used on legitimate scientific research.
– There has been no global warming whatsoever for nearly 20 years and only 0.57C over the last 154 years. We are still coming out of an unusually cool period of the last 10,000 years. In any case, climate is not static as many people seem to think and constantly changes with natural cycles such as Milankovitch Cycles and variations in solar output, both phenomena of which are responsible for a vast majority of natural climate variations.
– Global warming is not a bad thing, some of mankind’s greatest achievements happened during naturally warm periods such as the Minoan, Roman and Medieval warm periods. Agricultural output is plentiful in warm periods. This is one reason farmers use greenhouses, often with artificially enhanced CO2 levels which promotes plant growth. During naturally cool periods such as the Maunder Minimum, many people died due to diminished agricultural output and the effects of the cold.
– CO2 is at a very low level in geological terms. The minimum level for plants to thrive is around 200ppm compared to about 400ppm we have now. The very slight amount of CO2 put into the atmosphere by mankind provides an additional buffer to protect plant life from CO2 starvation and hence all life. The more CO2 in the atmosphere the better off plant life and all life is.
The present dogma that there is CAGW lacks scientific integrity and is ultimately one of the biggest failures to correctly apply the scientific method in all of history.
To quote from a reader at comment http://joannenova.com.au/2017/01/unthreaded-week-and-what-a-great-week-it-has-been/ the current “researchers” have the following characteristics:
They don’t adhere to the philosophy of science.
They don’t adhere to the scientific method.
They aren’t remotely sceptical, and indeed shun same.
They’ve never conducted a relevant experiment in their lives.
They have no testable hypothesis.
They’ve never validated their modelling and don’t appear to even consider it necessary.
The hypothesis they’ve been working on for thirty years has no quantification.
Richard Feynman would place it squarely within the vague theory category.
So, no, they aren’t scientists.
They may be government ‘researchers’, but that’s about it.
GLOBAL COOLING
While few honest or serious scientists believe in CAGW (if they are not dependent on research funding for same), there is certainly evidence that the earth is heading for a period of significant global cooling, which unlike harmless global warming even if it were happening to any significant degree, is serious because it will result in reduced agricultural output. Global cooling is likely to happen because the main thing that predicts global mean temperature is solar output, along with where we happen to be within the Milankovitch Cycle.
Scientists such as Piers Corbyn, John Casey and David Dilley have written and spoken extensively about the forthcoming cooling period which we have arguably already entered if unaltered temperature data is examined.
Global cooling will require that we have access to cheap, reliable, high energy density power which windmills, solar and other “green” power generation schemes (even with energy storage) are simply not capable of delivering, not even in principle.
FUTURE POWER GENERATION
It is simply not morally or technically correct that a rich country like Australia has to pay Third World prices for electricity or have Third World levels of supply reliability.
The technologies for cheap, reliable power generation already exist and are well proven. I make the following recommendations.
RECOMMENDATIONS
– Australia should retain existing levels of hydroelectric power production.
– Retain existing fossil fuel powered generators replacing them only as per normal economic necessity.
– When coal fueled power stations need to be replaced they can use the next generation super critical or ultra super critical technologies.
– Install nuclear power generators if economically justified according to whomever wants to build one.
– Thorium reactor technology should be researched.
– Immediately stop all subsidies for solar and wind generation. As we are constantly told that such power generation methodologies are so cheap that they will run fossil generation out of the market without market interference by government, then there is no need for subsidies.
– Investigate and prosecute all those who have inappropriately altered Australia’s historic temperature records.
I refer readers to my articles on “Supercritical and Ultrasupercritical Steam Power Stations in the December 2015 issue of Silicon Chip and “Small Nuclear Reactors – safe power, very low pollution, very low risk” in the June 2016 issue of Silicon Chip.
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My words, if it helps
As the entire CO2 output of Australia is less than the human respiration of the 1.3 Billion people in China, I would submit that the vast economic damage done by Climate Science in Australia is unjustified, whatever the truth. The five billion people on the planet since 1960 are not carbon neutral.
Science and medicine are about choices, balanced decision. Destroying Penalizing the 24 million people in Australia so greatly to assist the other 7,500 million is poor politics is not a practical or justifiable strategy. The destruction of our power stations by the Renewable Electricty Act (2000) and the Clean Energy Commission and the LGCs and STCs are a massive tax on most of the people to suit the preferences of a few. Industry in Australia pays 10x the electricity cost of the US. This is destroying Australian energy security, energy reliability and we have no practical alternative for base load power other than coal and nuclear. We are not allowed build new hydro. We are not allowed build Nuclear. We are not allowed to look for gas. We are not allowed to extract gas by fracking despite not a single failure and a million successful wells.
In short, Smart Australia is anything but smart. The Chief Scientist should at least be able to state that the solution is inappropriate whether or not the problem is deemed to exist. The $3Bn to $5Bn a year in additional taxation simply to build windmills is a medieval solution. Far better that such monies are spent on upgrading coal boilers, building nuclear and researching ways to stop electricity losses in transmission and increasing energy security and dropping prices.
82
Sorry, written quickly just to give you the idea. As Chief Scientist he is obliged to support Climate Change or he would not have the job. However he can still recommend that the treatment is killing the patient, not helping. The RET is simply a subsidy for windmills built overseas with a 20 year lifespan. Windmills will never supply baseload. Solar will never supply baseload. Coal is free. It should not be much of a decision to conclude that the RET is the immediate problem even if CO2 was producing some heating, really nothing much over 30 years. Without modern thermometers, it would not exist.
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Clean Energy Regulator
31
More
and more
and their role
Our role
The Clean Energy Regulator administers schemes legislated by the Australian Government for measuring, managing, reducing or offsetting Australia’s carbon emissions.
Our role is determined by climate change law. We have administrative responsibilities for the:
National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Scheme, under the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Act 2007
Emissions Reduction Fund, under the Carbon Credits (Carbon Farming Initiative) Act 2011
Renewable Energy Target, under the Renewable Energy (Electricity) Act 2000, and
Australian National Registry of Emissions Units, under the Australian National Registry of Emissions Units Act 2011.
and in many places
The compliance monitoring and enforcement function monitors compliance across regulatory schemes and takes appropriate and proportionate action to address non-compliance with the climate change law.
How many people are aware that Climate Change is Australian Federal Law, with penalties, taxes and enforcement? You thought you voted for no Carbon Tax? You thought Abbott stopped it? No. It is killing us and there is a whole department doing it.
41
Thanks TdeF.
50
David,
Can I suggest a slightly better argument RE Co2 fertilisation. Humans are increasing at a rate of around 1%PA and CO2 @ 2PPM per a bum. Growth stasis is 200 PPM current 400PPM so growth goes from zero to 100% over 200 PPM so Co2 fertilisation is producing around 1% food yield increase per year. Without CO2 fertilisation from human emissions food yield will fall behind population growth leading to famine within 30 years.
31
I like it David.
Just one suggestion, in the sentence “This is one reason farmers use greenhouses, often with artificially enhanced CO2 levels which promotes plant growth. ” you point out that these green houses work by retaining air warmed from the sunlight, by preventing its loss by convection. ie. By trapping the hot air, not radiant energy. In particular, not as a result of the extra CO2 you mention.
Best wishes,
Dave B
40
No the extra CO2 has nothing to do with the Greenhouse. CO2 is a useless Greenhouse gas for trapping infrared. Ironic, eh?
The glass is what traps the Ultra violet as infrared heat as glass is opaque to infra red.
The point of adding CO2 is that plants need only sunlight, CO2 and H2O and a few trace minerals. More CO2 means you can grow more.
From that mint leaf to a 50 ton Oak tree, all is made from CO2.
The trace minerals are what is left as ashes after combustion as the Carbon, Hydrogen and Oxygen are gone.
71
CO2 is not the fertilizer. CO2 is the plant. The trace metals are the fertilizer, plus whatever contains nitrogen as plants get that from compounds in the soil and not from the air, which is a bit odd as the air is 78% nitrogen. Not much nitrogen is needed, but it is critical.
101
Chlorophyll: – C₅₅H₇₂O₅N₄Mg
Lignins, Amino acid, Anthocyanin, fatty acids, amino acids, esters.
ALL are based on ORGANIC chemistry, with minor atoms of nitrogen, magnesium, potassium, sodium etc etc etc
But BY FAR the major structures are CARBON, OXYGEN and HYDROGEN
The whole world is absolutely and totally dependent on those three atoms which are invariably sourced from CO2 and H2O
92
I have read that the earliest light capture molecule was a form of Vitamin A. C20H30O. Chlorophyll is a much later development. Chlorophyll is the key to hydrating CO2. Who needs carbon capture? It is what the Green planet does, or there would be no oxygen.
In fact you have to think that it developed because it was a CO2 world. Oxygen is reactive. Now the green plants, plankton have eaten nearly all the CO2. Greedy sods. Great for humans who eat the plants and burn the oxygen, but as Dr. Patrick Moore suggests, a concentration of CO2 below 0.02% would be lethal for plant life so we are just bouncing off the minimum required.
If CO2 goes up, we could end up with Jurassic Park and the dinosaurs did very well with that for 150Million years. In a water world, it would be self regulating with humidity. Homo Sapiens humans have been around for 0.1Million years and we are trying to save the planet? What hubris. Why not just adapt, as the dinosaurs did so effectively?
50
I mean, if CO2 goes up, plants will grow and grab the extra CO2, a self limiting negative feedback, but you won’t hear anyone talk about the obvious as there is no scare, no dangerous CO2 pollution. Next lettuces will be poisonous.
51
TdeF
The self limiting concept goes back a bit:
http://joannenova.com.au/2011/10/unthreaded-oct-22-2011/#comment-628195
And in quantifying the “human” effect:
http://joannenova.com.au/2011/10/unthreaded-oct-22-2011/#comment-622658
KK
40
yeah it’s nice to spell it out plain as day. maybe you’ll like this too: https://im42na.wordpress.com/2017/02/28/the-atmosphere-cannot-warm-until-the-underlying-surface-warms-first/
10
The lower temperature atmosphere cannot spontaneously transfer power, in any way, including thermal EMR, in the direction of the higher temperature surface. This is J. C. Maxwell’s concession to the second law of thermodynamics. Your political Hog trough Climate Clowns attempt to ignore\’stomp on’ such a profound concession to Law!
11
TdeF,
I think you are both saying the same thing there.
🙂
50
David, some quick comments:
Firstly, they ask for an Executive Summary, so up front spell out your key recommendations.
Secondly, refer to their preliminary report to demonstrate how you are responding to the questions they have posed.
Some of the key questions for the future of our energy system include:
• How do we ensure the NEM can take advantage of new technologies and business models?
• How do we ensure the NEM meets the needs of all consumers, including residential, large-scale industrial and vulnerable consumers?
• What role should the electricity sector play in meeting Australia’s emissions reduction targets?
• What are the barriers to investment in the electricity sector?
• What immediate actions can we take to reduce risks to grid security and reliability?
• Is there a role for technologies at consumers’ premises in improving energy security and reliability?
• What role is there for new planning and technical frameworks to complement current market operations?
• How can markets help support additional system security services?
• How can we improve the supply of gas for electricity generation to contribute to reliability and security?
• How can we ensure that competitive retail markets are effective and consumers are paying no more than necessary for electricity?
• What are the optimal governance structures to support system security, the integration of energy and emissions reduction policy, and affordable electricity?
Note they they don’t ask whether the emissions target should be changed.
“The heart of the Review’s task is to find solutions to address the so-called energy trilemma – policies that simultaneously provide a high level of energy security and reliability, universal access to affordable energy services, and reduced emissions. This is easier said than done.”
The big problem is that government policies, State and Federal, have focused only on reduced emissions. There are no policies to address electricity security, reliability or affordability.
Their premise is: These changes are occurring as we transition to a lower emissions economy. As Australia’s largest single source of emissions, the electricity sector itself understands that it has an important role in meeting our national emissions reduction target.
So they take as a given current government policies. Therefore I think that you should focus more on the inequities and imbalances of current policies, rather than try to get them to be the ones who declare that global warming is a myth.
Love your defining conclusion: It is simply not morally or technically correct that a rich country like Australia has to pay Third World prices for electricity or have Third World levels of supply reliability. Immediately stop all subsidies for solar and wind generation. As we are constantly told that such power generation methodologies are so cheap that they will run fossil generation out of the market without market interference by government, then there is no need for subsidies.
40
Thanks Robber. I am aware that I’m not strictly addressing their questions but at the risk of having my submission rejected, I feel it is important to address the fundamental issue of there not being any CAGW. I am not sure how I can address that question within their constraints.
51
David, you can address it through the cost benefit argument – The IPCC say that 2 degrees of warming is benign (break even) and negative effects occur beyond 2 degrees given that the IPCC modelled range is somewhere from 0.8 up and demostrated sensitivity is of the order of 0.7 this requires three doublings to 1100 PPM at the minimum (and likely) sensitivity. By looking at food yield vs population growth that I mentioned above you can impose a negative “externality” for the reduction of CO2. Indeed reducing CO2 below 250 PPM would approach an existential threat. The Government therefore needs to determine the exact value of CO2 partial pressure that will maximise benefit and minimise the threat of low CO2 in a coald period (due to Oceanic reabsorbtion of CO2).
I would also point out that as plant productivity rises 1% for each 2PPM (CSIRO says 1% for 5PPM by the way) the CO2 usage also rises 1% every 2%, as CO2 is up 30 PPM since 1990 absorbtion is up 15% and given our biosystem absorbtion is over 20 times our emission Australia’s net change in absorbtion already exceeds our emission (by 2 1/2 times) – that is we are already past zero emission thanks to CO2 fertilisation and busy absorbing China’s emissions for them. Even using CSIROs 5PPM for 1% absorbtion is up 6% or 1.2 times our manmade emissions.
Less than 1% of grassland or farmland convertd from small crops to orchard crops would create a sink equivalent to our emissions – This would be much cheaper than the billions used to subsidise wind and solar.
Finally you need to make a strong assertion about the embodied CO2 in the construction of energy scavenging networks (Wind/Solar) including the requirement that they be built on denuded land, the embodied energy + on costs (CO2) need to be compared against reforesting the area the energy scavengers are built upon to determine CO2 saving. On this basis Wind/Solar grid scale development emit more CO2 than the equivalent gas or HELE coal plant. Lifecycle CO2 needs to be accounted. Even if they do save CO2 a substantial portion of the renewables output are simply recovering the embodied CO2 such that Net CO2 savings are likely to be small and therefore high cost. The Chief Scientist needs to understand the lifecycle CO2 including embodied CO2, operational and maintenance, CO2 emissions by the renewable sector and CO2 opportunity cost (Not having trees where the renewables are) in making a decision. There is no point in having renewables if the sum total of generation does not offset the embodied and operational emissions of the entire renewable energy sector – including you local solar installer.
40
David Maddison:
Commend your efforts; suggest some modification.
Integrity and prosecution:
This presupposes there is a case, it is easily established and is politically and tactically of benefit to pursue. This flounders on all those grounds and will be of no interest to Finkel.
Your comment “honest or serious scientists” assumes that most warmers are being dishonest; always a dangerous proposition unless you have clear evidence. It is amazing how the mind can be bent genuinely towards a cause!!
What can be pointed out is that the changes to data are based on algorithms with iterative homogenization processes which do not seem to be stable. They ostensibly were based on a Hansen paper which found an R2 of just over 0.5 that T correlated within 1200km. I guess we only need one station to measure the T of our four Eastern States capital cities!! 🙂
You will find that BOM is following this “world best practice” so no-one is cheating but the results vary over time as would be expected. The algorithms just happen to cause a drift in a positive direction. I say “happen” because if they went the other way the algorithms would be changed. BUT you can’t say that even though we know it!!
Cite the sources of data and some examples from Jennifer Marohasy and Tony Heller and ask for a study to justify such changes physically and not rely on some algorithm.
Perhaps point out that the consequence of these algorithms result in an R2 of 0.98 between CO2 levels and adjustments to T (see Tony Heller’s data). Such a correlation coefficient does not happen by chance; it is too perfect!
El Gordo above referenced
http://jennifermarohasy.com/2017/02/australias-hottest-day-record-ever-deleted/
There you will find an interesting post about Phil Jones and how his T comments have changed for different periods as a consequence.
There is plenty of ammunition without impugning anyone’s integrity. There is no harm in saying it is not following the ‘special integrity requirement’ as espoused by Feynman.
Global Cooling
This assertion has as much science as global warming ie it falters for the same reasons that you give for warming being pseudo science and lacking integrity.
Other
It may be better and more efficient to simply lock in behind Lindzen who is having a go at this pseudo science with his actual comments re the science being corrupted. He has sent a petition to POTUS with notable signatories (WUWT).
Prof Happer has also made some choice comments about this field; ‘ a cult.. They’re glassy-eyed and they chant. It will potentially harm the image of all science. ‘
Summary:
While you cover power sources in the recommendations I think your comments could be modified to focus more on the terms of reference which is power security. Here I think real examples and issues if you have the data may help i.e. Germany, UK etc.
Renewables hurt the poorer people more viz:
a) poorer people are less likely to install solar for lack of money or they rent meaning these people are subsidizing richer people
b) any blackout as a consequence of the high renewable uptake will leave these poorer people without power while those with solar may have power (during the day).
Good luck; go for it!
51
Pertinent advice, TonyM.
You must direct you submission to the invited points.
You must not create any impression of a slur, to people or processes.
Use observation, avoid beliefs you have acquired from others or reading.
You are in bureaucrat domain. They warm to reading submissions in their style.
Geoff
00
Yep, and you also need to work out how to bypass the “no grid, no output from your solar panels” interlock on your solar panels…..with the isolator to the grid opened first, of course….otherwise you are hopeless locked into the whims of power companies and load shedding…..
00
David
The inquiry will not question CAGW. It is given. As soon as you get into that your submission is toast.
As noted above you need to be addressing the questions. There are quite a few specific questions through the preliminary report that are seeking input.
Electricity prices are rising for the poor or those who do not want to take advantage of the way subsidies work. Renewables are highly subsidised and the recovery of those subsidies burden those who cannot access the subsidies. It is not even a regressive tax; rather Robin Hood reversed. Taking from the poor and giving to the rich. I make money out of subsidies. The income is not even taxed.
There is a huge amount of hopium being spread through the CSIRO with regard to renewables. Much of the input to the Finkel inquiry will come from those riding the gravy train and wanting more. I am certain there are large sums going to the CSIRO to develop renewables. They have a strong vested interest.
As tonyM has pointed out the electricity prices are rising. The rise hits those who are not in a position to take advantage of the subsidies – including the base load coal plants. There is no way that you can get cheaper electricity from expensive sources. There needs to be a realistic appraisal of the future prospect for renewables without the CSIRO gloss. My view the push is probably 30 years ahead of what technology can really offer. Should be no more intermittent generation until substantial storage is working. There is likely need for upgraded coal plant before renewable technology has the slightest prospect of being economic.
Up at post #14 I have show a table extracted from the CSIRO roadmap. You will see what CSIRO view as the future household. It is almost laughable that they expect households to be fuelling a little diesel every few days through the winter months. The sizes of components given are also a joke.
30
The saddest thing about the C…O’s involvement is the hollowing it out and turning it into a propaganda factory for the bunkum of the day….
One chap I know who is at a well known Oz university in laser research who spent time in silicon valley, bemoans the relaity Oz is being hollowed out in the science space.
Drawing a long bow here, but as the education standards are driven down ( deliberately ) you wind up with a population who are dumb and fed more propaganda by organisations masquerading as fonts of knowledge….I guess unis also fill that bill too. The Left has destroyed our way of life and we were too dim to see it….
20
Good on you David,
I hope that everyone who offered advice makes their own submission? Numbers count!
00
‘The snow amounts in California’s Sierra Nevada mountain range this winter are difficult to wrap your head around, reports Sott.net. In many cases topping 500 inches, they are some of the highest totals in memory.
‘At the Squaw Valley Alpine Meadows resort, seven feet fell in just the past week. The snow is so high that it buried chairlifts and ski patrol shacks.’
Tallbloke’s Talkshop
90
Thinking about snow and ice actually improves concentration and critical thinking 🙂
40
Picture here
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/2017/02/permanent-droug.html
And just upstream of the problem dam too
And in comments!
”
Dirtman | February 26, 2017 1:19 AM | Reply
On Thursday, it announced that its ski area would remain open through July 4. Since 1962, it will mark just the fourth instance of Independence Day skiing (the other years were 1998, 1999, and 2011), according to a resort spokesperson.
============================================
But…but…but that can’t be true! Those were all within the last 20 years, and we know it was the warmest 20 years ever recorded.”
61
Excellent video Presentation. Interesting ideas. In my opinion, both sides of the so called climate debate are grooming a full blown acceptance of nukes in Australia. I expect a major announcement about how Hazelwood will be replaced with a nuke in our backyard in Victoria. Seems pretty obvious to me.
From:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xlc8gIJBPmw
“CO2 Smokescreen: New Nukes Make Global Warming Worse Presentation
fairewindsenergy”
Published on Oct 19, 2016
32
We finally had clean energy, clean brown coal stations and clear skies free from pollution and now the Greens want nuclear? For Victoria which has brown coal but no uranium and not for South Australia which has uranium but not brown coal?
I cannot believe the people who have convinced the world that CO2 is pollution would rather have nuclear radiation in their backyards than CO2. Nuclear power stations should be built far from people and where better than the deserts of South Australia? Having sent us their CO2, they want to send us their uranium. Greens who care only about their backyards.
71
I still think the cost of nuclear cannot be estimated because the spent nuclear fuel pools keep getting more and more crowded like a disaster waiting to happen. And the tailings keep filling the dams that are allegedly built to last forever. Just the tailings dams and the chemical processing waste alone tells me anything to do with nuclear is a dirty business.
Yes the Carbon Green movement focus on Co2 pollution, but have no ability to count the environmental cost of chemical pollution in the ocean, on land, in rivers, and in the food chain itself. It isn’t just about radiation.
In a peaceful world without any wars or crisis, the pumps that keep the nuclear spent fuel cool might be reliable, but we only need the slightest war or black swan geopolitical event and where will the personnel be to keep the pumps operational and the skills to manage the plant be? Would they use Mexicans?
The nuclear industry is drowning in its own toxic mud. It is already a hopeless case and remedial work should begin immediately.
44
You are right. Nuclear waste is a problem which cannot be solved easily and has not been solved. It is urgent and could wipe us out. A little more would not matter.
However we are spending $1.5Trillion dollars building windmills because the bed wetters have a mad theory about CO2 pollution. I know religions which are more based on fact than Global Warming.
41
ES,
You have too little faith in the abilities of scientists and engineers. Nuclear work has long attracted some of the brightest.
I was personally involved with tailings dams at Ranger One in the Top End. They will last for their designed time, after which another ring is simple to build. From a pollution viewpoint, it really does not matter if there is a slow leak. After all, the uranium deposits were sitting at the surface for a very long time before discovery, doing no harm identified by extensive studies. It does not even matter if a dam breaks because it contains only natural material that was at peace with Nature for billions of years. Of course, it would look ugly to you, but that is an aside – the question is whether it would harm Nature and it would not. The radioactivity is is really quite low level as shown by the lack of harm to people working in the open pits all day.
We tend not to use the term ‘nuclear waste’ for the material that is managed by taking it from production when part ‘burned’. It is not waste, it is a valuable fuel resource. It presents only trivial management problems, bit has bad policy political problems. Lawmakers are reluctant to be involved. Yucca Mt repository is deemed by many experts as entirely fit for purpose.
In one helpful view, the used fuel decays away at a rate that makes its gross radioactivity about the same as the ore from which it was mined, in a few hundred years, depending on how it was managed during burn and other matters that are well understood. That few hundred years can easily be made shorter by dilution, asvwith the Synroc process.
This fully puts paid the propaganda that spent fuel must be managed for 1000,000 years, a figure used by greens that has no basis from the science of radioactive materials. If we happily manage the raw ores without harm to man nor beast, we can manage its equivalent in used fuel. Besides, the tonnes of used fuel are trivial compared to other fuels. Among relevant engineers, management of spent fuel is well known, simple, and should have no unknown unknowns to cause future surprises. The concepts are all simple and understood, there are only political problems arising from years of lies about science by protesters.
Geoff
50
You are right about the materials which exist naturally like uranium. However there is a difference between undisturbed in the desert and buried and being extracted, concentrated and released into the rivers and ecosystem.
In reactors we unintentionally make things which do not otherwise exist naturally. Some of the most deadly however have half lives of 100,000 years and a million years from now they will still be deadly. That is because their toxicity is incredible.
Chernobyl will take a million years to solve itself as it destroys the concrete containment. A new shelter was implemented last year.
The key to weapons, Plutonium has a lethal does of 1 picogram. Pu240 has a half life of 6,560 years and is an alpha emitter, the worst. The original bomb on Nagasaki was Plutonium where Hiroshima was Uranium. So there is every reason to be extremely concerned about the disposal of nuclear waste, which is currently impossible. I have heard that in our only reactor at Lucas Heights, it is simply in drums. Someone else’s problem.
My point is with the $1.5Tn a year spent uselessly on windmills with a lifespan of 20 years, scientists might have perfected storage which would outlast our needs and synroc is one and the best so far, putting the worst offenders inside glass to be stored in the desert. Humans really need nuclear. It has changed our world. Now we need to master it. Windmills were discarded two hundred years ago with the discovery of the coal driven steam engine but the anti science greens keep going back to the middle ages for inspiration. Worse, politicians and lawyers are making decisions on science when arithmetic is beyond them.
We need to invest in nuclear research in waste disposal plus hundreds of billions on fusion, which does not produce radiactive waste and has endless input without mining. However our druid politicians insist on worshiping Mother Gaia and destroying the unbelievers or skeptics.
20
Nagasaki has been rebuilt? Or has that toxic plutonium made the whole site a no-go area?
00
TdeF,
Re toxicity of radionuclides.
The shorter the half life, the more decays in a given time,the more alpha beta gamma produced, the more potentially harmful. Can’t have it both ways. Alpha is taken as least harmful, stopped by a sheet of copy paper, unless it can get inside the body as in radon gas and lungs in which case it is rather badder. So I do not support some of your contentions. Source for picogram Pu quote?
I used to have a metal block with Pu-240 in it to scare greenies until some bureaucrat confiscated it illegally. You can easily get far too serious about these radioactivity matters. One big problem should be a big success story instead. It is that our instruments can be highly sensitive, leading users to think that there is more activity than there is. Combine this with fiction like the linear no dose theory and add a lot of invented scares and you get the silliness of managing spent fuel for a million years. You did not seem to accept the ore equivalent approach I mentioned. It is real, as real as the day I stood at ground zero Nagasaki 40 years after the bomb there, completely unperturbed by any actual or invented fear of nuclear radiation. But then, I used to own an accelerator that used the D,T reaction to generate fast neutrons, so I really do not know so much about the radiation topic, I suppose, compared to those who have merely read about it.
Geoff
11
Geoff,I remember that the uranium ore from the El Sharana mine now within Kakadu was processed at the old Nthn Hercules Mine near the Mary River. The tailings were dumped into the river and seem to have done no great harm,downstream somebody dug up river sediments some years ago and detected radiation,but there are no crocodiles or barra sporting 2 heads or deformations of any kind. I think the nuclear waste issue can be overstated,especially from mining,power station waste is no doubt more of a concern ,but will be managed
10
Geoff,I remember that the uranium ore from the El Sharana mine now within Kakadu was processed at the old Nthn Hercules Mine near the Mary River. The tailings were dumped into the river and seem to have done no great harm,downstream somebody dug up river sediments some years ago and detected radiation,but there are no crocodiles or barra sporting 2 heads or deformations of any kind. I think the nuclear waste issue can be overstated,especially from mining,power station waste is no doubt more of a concern ,but it will be managed no doubt.
00
Sorry about the double posting,my right arm is in a sling post op and I am learning to type left handed.
20
“Cancer on the Rise in Post-Fukushima Japan”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_cfaYGCT-k
Published on Mar 16, 2016
In Fairewinds’ latest update of the ongoing nuclear catastrophe at Fukushima Daiichi, Chief Engineer Arnie Gundersen presents two reports that confirm the direct link of numerous cancers in Japan to the triple meltdown. Based upon data from Japanese medical professionals and utility owner of the meltdown site, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), Arnie concludes that heavy radioactive discharges will be the cause of enormous spikes in cancer in Japan.
TEPCO’s press release confirms the leukemia diagnosis for a TEPCO worker due to his ongoing exposure during the last four years to radiation from the Fukushima Daiichi triple meltdown. Sadly, during the early months of the Fukushima Daiichi emergency, most TEPCO workers did not wear the required dosimeters required to measure each employee’s exposure to radiation, which has made accurate assessment of the radiation doses received by TEPCO employees impossible.
The second report, provided by esteemed Japanese medical professionals, reveals that the incidence of thyroid cancer is approximately 230 times higher than normal in the Fukushima Prefecture. This disturbing number for the people of Japan is solely due to the Fukushima Daiichi disaster and the ongoing radioactivity emanating from the decimated nuclear site.
In this video, Arnie recounts his presentation from 2013 at the New York Academy of Medicine where he forecast continuous radiation releases from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, and also the devastating health effects for the Japanese people, despite the chronically underestimated radiation exposure levels propagated by the International Atomic Energy Agency, and the Japanese government.
23
C’mon fellah. Surely you can sensationalise a bit better than that?
70
Uranium isn’t ‘just’ radioactive, it is highly toxic to the liver. One of the consequences of nuclear power is the flourishing of nuclear weapons. Depleted Uranium Oxide is created as Depleted Uranium burns through steel, concrete, and whatever is in the way.
“sensationalise” ?? Nuclear related pastimes makes windmills seem like an all powerful god with the ability to create life on earth from scratch..
From: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2013/oct/13/world-health-organisation-iraq-war-depleted-uranium
“How the World Health Organisation covered up Iraq’s nuclear nightmare”
“For years, medical doctors in Iraq have reported “a high level of birth defects.” Other peer-reviewed studies have documented a dramatic increase in infant mortality, cancer and leukaemia in the aftermath of US military bombardment. In Fallujah, doctors are witnessing a “massive unprecedented number” of heart defects, and an increase in the number of nervous system defects. Analysis of pre-2003 data compared to now showed that “the rate of congenital heart defects was 95 per 1,000 births – 13 times the rate found in Europe.”
The purpose of the WHO study was to probe the data further, but some say the project is deeply flawed.
Here are some pics.
https://www.google.com.au/search?q=depleted+uranium+birth+defects&hs=EV1&channel=fs&biw=1440&bih=718&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjmgv388K3SAhUT9WMKHeRvC78Q_AUICCgB
12
As Chernobyl has taught us, life on earth is amazingly resilient in the face of increased radiation. The rates of death have been hardly distinguishable from cancers which occur naturally. The Russians and Ukranians have been particularly concerned. They get just as scared as anyone else and have great scientists, as the world knows.
However you have to think that the same mechanisms which kills naturally occuring cancer cells will also kill those caused by increased radiation levels. Seven cosmic rays a second go through everyone. There is backround radiation in many parts of the world, some more deadly than others.
The ability of the body to fight cancers is highlighted by Aids, where people with a major immune deficiency can get multiple different cancers simultaneously, previously very rare. This is self evident proof that a healthy body can fight and kill cancer cells and an immune deficiency with poor health or age is a bigger problem along with chemical triggers in the environment.
So I would not worry the masses. The tens of tons of plutonium for weapons held by Russia and the USA and others is more of a worry, not only for its explosive effect but its lethal dose of 10-9, one picogram. Still MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) has kept the world safe for 75 years to the point where a new generation does not really believe it would happen.
61
leaders know that it will not be the ICBM’s that are the biggest deterrent….. it is that each side knows that if their spent fuel pools are untended for however long, …..for whatever reason, …..the spent fuel pools will ignite and everyone will given the radiological dose, and chemically toxic dose of a lifetime . The mother of all dirty bombs
Each aging nuclear plant that has been refueled i don’t know, 100 times?? is the dirty bomb equivalent of 100 nuclear power plants if the spent fuel catches fire. Assuming of course they keep their spent fuel on site as most do to save money,
Chernobyl might only have refueled Once????
12
I agree that the world can be a very ugly place and certainly has been, but past is the past and where possible it should be acknowledged and cleaned up.
Continuing the stupid religion of Man Made Global Warming is creating a new set of “ugly” that flies in the face of real science and leaves an unholy mess.
Who is going to clean up the tens of thousands of non functioning wind turbines that litter the earth and who is going to clean up the cess pits left in poor countries where the turbines and solar panel manufacturers just dump toxic waste with no care for people?
71
Keith: Wind-farm land rental contracts contain clauses that require restoration of the land to its original state.
10
That’s nice in theory Jorgekafkazar, but is there a statutory fund in Australia that wind farm companies are compelled to pay into at the time of construction to cover the cost of future remediation of their eyesores, or can they declare bankruptcy and walk away from their responsibilities? Does such a fund actually cover all the costs involved?
Given that the cost of remediation per turbine is currently put at USD$200,000, the figures soon run into the billions. Since wind farms are a scammer’s paradise from the outset, if you are of a scammer frame of mind are you really going to stick around to clean up your mess when the party is over?
41
Billions refers to the current American situation, not to Oz.
20
The wind farm industry could learn a lot about repatriating and cleaning up after itself from the nuclear industry. The vast tailings dams of the Uranium industry will in the future provide the beverage industry with endless material to create water purifiers that will make coconut husks obsolete and the water found in spent fuel pools is amongst the most pure water anywhere on the planet.
If only windmills could be as clean as the nuclear industry.
Cleaning up and even mere procrastination about cleaning up nuclear waste creates employment for thousands of nuclear scientists to figure out what to do with the abundant resource. 97% of nuclear scientist’s agree that nuclear power is so good, it can even be trained to feed on its own waste generating even more jobs and create riches beyond our wildest dreams.
01
“i don’t know”
That’s correct.
00
“Recycling wind turbine blade composite material as aggregate in concrete”
by
Tyler R. Fox
http://www.imse.iastate.edu/files/2014/03/Fox-Tyler-Recycling-wind-turbine-blade-composite-material-as-aggregate-in-concrete.pdf
Donal Rumsfeld:
And there are things that we do not know that we do not know.
Uranium tailings
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_tailings
“Uranium tailings are a waste byproduct (tailings) of uranium mining. In mining, raw uranium ore is brought to the surface and crushed into a fine sand. The valuable uranium-bearing minerals are then removed via heap leaching with the use of acids or bases, and the remaining radioactive sludge, called “uranium tailings”, is stored in huge impoundments. A short ton (907 kg) of ore yield one to five pounds (0.45 to 2.3 kg) of uranium depending on the uranium content of the mineral.[1] Uranium tailings can retain up to 85% of the ore’s original radioactivity.[2]
If uranium tailings are stored aboveground and allowed to dry out, the radioactive sand can be carried great distances by the wind, entering the food chain and bodies of water.[citation needed] The danger posed by such sand dispersal is uncertain at best given the dilution effect of dispersal. The majority of tailing mass will be inert rock, just as it was in the raw ore before the extraction of the uranium, but physically altered, ground up, mixed with large amounts of water and exposed to atmospheric oxygen, which can substantially alter chemical behaviour.
Uranium tailings contain over a dozen radioactive nuclides, which are the primary hazard posed by the tailings. The most important of these are thorium-230, radium-226, radon-222 (radon gas) and the daughter isotopes of radon decay, including polonium-210.
An EPA estimate of risk based on uranium tailings deposits existing in the United States in 1983 gave the figure of 500 lung cancer deaths per century if no countermeasures are taken.[3]“
11
ES,
Depleted uranium metal is insoluble and does not enter the human system life processes if it somehow gets into the body. It is very low in radioactivity and presents no known biological hazard of which I am aware. It is prone to urban myth syndrome.
50
Every kilowatt produced by nukes result in ultra toxic chemical waste. (Not just radiation pollution) Who knows how much is being dumped in the ocean.
Depleted Uranium: It burns. Like nearly everything else associated with the nuclear industry the stockpile of waste grows and grows in containment that is designed to last in terms of decades with respect to waste, not even talking about spent fuel…
From the quotes below: “The long-term storage of DUF6 presents environmental, health, and safety risks because of its chemical instability. When UF6 is exposed to moist air, it reacts with the water in the air and produces UO2F2 (uranyl fluoride) and HF (hydrogen fluoride), both of which are highly soluble and toxic. Storage cylinders must be regularly inspected for signs of corrosion and leaks. The estimated lifetime of the steel cylinders is measured in decades.[162]”
Please not that the wikipedia source is heavily conservative/policed and i would certainly not trust everything that is said said there as merely being ‘roses, roses‘ There is plenty to suggest that the subject, like controlled substances, is kept behind closed doors so as not to alarm the public.
From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depleted_uranium#Chemical_toxicity
And:
02
That’s really really scary ES.
Problem is you have become like the little boy who cried:
WOLF.
That means that you have lost any chance of having credibility here.
21
You are right KK………Time for us all ‘harden up’.
Wind turbines are vastly scarier on the fear index and fortunately there are a growing number who can help us confront the ever present threat that wind turbines pose to mankind.
12
Geoff, the wind turbine lobby is extremely powerful and can command funds at will from any of the central banks….it have been cunningly generating a lot of misinformation about the nuclear industry, the idea that radiation is harmful is a great example of how the Wind Turbine lobby are attacking the nuclear industry.
They are probably even behind the rumors (i have provided links) that suggest Depleted Uranium is actually toxic.
Hope it helps
01
People tend to forget history and that the Dutch wind power elite formed a powerful core and became corrupted by their source of free energy and the power. The Dutch wind turbine energy elite discovered they could use the wind power to operate printing presses, and this gave them for the first time the ability to print money out of thin air. They went on from there and evolved into the first banks.
These secretive have been a thorn in the side of the nuclear power industry and is silently again exerting more and more power and misinformation about the nuclear industry.
01
ES:
I suggest you have a chemist (nuclear or inorganic) vet your stuff before you post. UF ? Do you mean uranium hexafluoride? It is a gas and used in the separation of isotopes. Mildly alkaline water would neutralise the HF, and if it was lime water would precipitate both the fluoride and the uranium. Yes, concentrated HF is nasty stuff, I used it for 6 years and was very careful with it.
00
Graeme No.3: Nearly everything to do with the nuclear industry is dangerous/toxic/etc. When UH hits sea water the chemical soup of life, there are more chemical reactions than the most sophisticated minestrone can have on a clean window glass.
The conversation has moved on and we are now discovering the early history of the Dutch wind power elite and how they for the first time discovered the secret of using their windmills to power money printing presses, hence, the remnant saying known as “Print-Money-Out-Of-Thin-Air”.
One of the early wind power money printing elite was quoted as saying, i care not who or what supplies your energy and power requirements, just let me retain the power to print money out of thin air using windmills and i care not.
01
Most notably, the elite Dutch Windmill owners also tried to scare the population into fearing rising sea levels and from then on were able to disguise the fact that their windmills were printing money practically around the clock without raising a single eyebrow
01
can’t recall seeing this posted in recent days:
22 Feb: BBC: Most scientists ‘can’t replicate studies by their peers’
By Tom Feilden, Science correspondent, Today programme
Science is facing a “reproducibility crisis” where more than two-thirds of researchers have tried and failed to reproduce another scientist’s experiments, research suggests…
From his lab at the University of Virginia’s Centre for Open Science, immunologist Dr Tim Errington runs The Reproducibility Project, which attempted to repeat the findings reported in five landmark cancer studies…
According to a survey published in the journal Nature last summer, more than 70% of researchers have tried and failed to reproduce another scientist’s experiments.
Marcus Munafo is one of them. Now professor of biological psychology at Bristol University, he almost gave up on a career in science when, as a PhD student, he failed to reproduce a textbook study on anxiety.
“I had a crisis of confidence. I thought maybe it’s me, maybe I didn’t run my study well, maybe I’m not cut out to be a scientist.”
The problem, it turned out, was not with Marcus Munafo’s science, but with the way the scientific literature had been “tidied up” to present a much clearer, more robust outcome.
“What we see in the published literature is a highly curated version of what’s actually happened,” he says.
“The trouble is that gives you a rose-tinted view of the evidence because the results that get published tend to be the most interesting, the most exciting, novel, eye-catching, unexpected results.
“What I think of as high-risk, high-return results.”…
The reproducibility difficulties are not about fraud, according to Dame Ottoline Leyser, director of the Sainsbury Laboratory at the University of Cambridge…
She says it’s about the funding bodies that want to secure the biggest bang for their bucks, the peer review journals that vie to publish the most exciting breakthroughs, the institutes and universities that measure success in grants won and papers published and the ambition of the researchers themselves…
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-39054778?SThisFB
AUDIO: 10mins04secs: BBC Radio 4 Today Programme: Science has a ‘reproducibility crisis’
Science is facing a “reproducibility crisis” whereby between 65% and 90% of researchers have tried and failed to reproduce another scientist’s experiments. This is frustrating clinicians and drug developers who want solid foundations of pre-clinical research to build upon.
We have a report from our science editor Tom Feilden, and Professor Mark Walport, the government’s chief scientific adviser and chief executive designate of UK Research and Innovation, says we pay “too much attention to the latest (scientific) finding” and not to the big picture.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04tpmmd
30
Yes they are.
00
Dr Lindzen’s petition to Donald Trump
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/02/25/richard-lindzen-petition-to-president-trump-withdraw-from-the-un-convention-on-climate-change/
May it be successful 🙂
82
The Oregon petition was 30,000 names, addresses and signatures and was ignored and that was 20 years ago. Edward Teller signed it.
However it is a good list and hard to argue ‘the science is settled’. What science?
After 30 years the long incredible and most improbably tale of fossil fueld heating the planet has proven completely wrong but in Australia we actually have a big department for getting rid of coal and gas power based on what they call ‘Climate Laws’ and they inforce the taxes on Carbon Dioxide.
Most Australians have been kept in the dark about this as they avoid talking about Carbon Dioxide, just the Climate. Plus the 350 full time Scientists in the CSIRO who could not find any Climate Change despite spending hundreds of millions looking for it. Our swamp needs draining too.
Not since Piltdown Man has there been a hoax like this and never before has a science hoax turned into punitive taxation.
171
There’s a widespread view that organized religion has been in decline for many decades.
That may be so in that attendance at church has fallen markedly.
What is perhaps not so obvious is that the need for something to believe in still shows through.
Global Warming has become the new, binding belief of our age and it simultaneously gives support and comfort to those needing emotional shelter while providing the avenues for theft and corruption and personal gain for those so inclined to manipulate their neighbors.
As the world changes, it also stays the same.
Exposure of corruption in its many form is a constant need for our society.
KK
60
I was writing something here about the Technical Advisory Forum of the BOM. I had done quite a bit of work to referencing everything. Suddenly it was gone! I don’t know why. It is not the first time.
Mods can you help retieve my comment?
30
Commiserations
Using my phone a lot now and just gotta bump it and boom.
You probably do this but have you scrolled the post from top to bottom?
Can you use the “go back a page” function?
Not much help but good luck.
40
Thanks KK,
Did not find a “go back page”
20
If you write a long, deep, and meaningful comment…
… ALWAYS copy it to a word processor before hitting “post comment”
41
The problem of Man Made Global Warming is still one of perception.
The facts or science, as I discovered again last night, are simply not up for discussion. In discussing MM global warming with two women in their sixties I was shocked at the intransigence, absolutely no discussion of facts except for the “97%” thing being thrown up as a shield.
One claimed to be a University lecturer in Anthropology but I suspect she had no comprehension of the past influences of massive glaciations on the subject.
In talking to them separately the anger displayed, at my suggestion that scientific analysis did not support the concept of CAGW, was confronting.
Religious fervour , struck dumb, unable to communicate.
Evidently they had never been confronted like this before and I felt very sorry for them and especially for the students being taught this rubbish with our tax dollars.
People want something to believe in.
Whether it’s true or not is irrelevant, the main thing is to be accepted by the group and feel wanted.
KK
81
So am I, All the time.
70
My OH had such an experience this very day. The person concerned screamed at him very rudely, covered her ears and stomped away, all for one short, gently-spoken comment by him.
60
Most of the world’s inhabitants are walking on egg shells mentally.
We are at a difficult time in human development that puts great stress on all of us.
And as for “believing” if you read the Sydney Morning Herald and watch de ABC why would you not believe?
50
Having been taught from birth that the group is all and the individual is nothing without the group, they seek a feeling of safety from belonging to and agreeing with their selected group. The feeling is so strong that they feel they will cease to exist if they disagree with or even consider disagreeing with their group.
The thought that only individual entities exist and that the group is nothing but a mental integration of the group’s individual members is felt as a violent attack on their existence. Hence their obsessive blanking out of any evidence or argument that is counter to their group think.
Unless and until the group member discovers the real “I” within, there is no hope breaking through that solid wall of evasion of what is.
50
Green insanity Ontario style as it mimics South Australia.
50
Money speaks and with Trump, Brexit and maybe France doing a Brexit politics will change.
People don’t like being ripped off.
40
***a subcommittee is the best they can come up with!
26 Feb: DailyTelegraph: Electricity price shock: Small business bills have doubled in the past decade
EXCLUSIVE Sharri Markson
SYDNEY’S small businesses will this year face electricity bills double what they were just a decade ago, federal government calculations show…
The modelling shows a mid-sized restaurant in Sydney’s CBD was paying $8031 a year for electricity in 2007. This is expected to rise to $16,544 this year.
The electricity bill for a hairdressing salon in Auburn in Sydney’s west will this year cost around $4881, up from $2159 10 years ago.
And for a cafe in the marginal seat of Queanbeyan in southern NSW, power bills will go up from $2614 a decade ago to $5385 this year…
The government has released the calculations as Mr Turnbull and Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg will today warn families and businesses that they won’t be able to afford the deeper financial hit from higher renewable energy targets…
Mr Turnbull has set up a new Cabinet committee to formulate national energy policy, and find ways to bring power prices down. Sitting on the ***subcommittee is the Prime Minister, Mr Frydenberg, Julie Bishop, Scott Morrison, Mathias Cormann and Arthur Sinodinos…
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/electricity-price-shock-small-business-bills-have-doubled-in-the-past-decade/news-story/0123b9b50a44b8d25c0dbb35bf00446e
26 Feb: Sky News: AAP: Hazelwood workers call for closure in stages
‘There’s a very strong message and a lot of anger and frustration that Daniel Andrews … they have a policy to close Hazelwood and yet they said they would do it gradually, and that’s simply not happening,’ (local member Russell) Northe told reporters…
Opposition Leader Matthew Guy said the looming closure showed the government was treating the Latrobe Valley ‘with contempt’.
‘We should have kept three of those eight units open until 2025, that’s what I would have done as premier, rather than … walk away and let 700 jobs disappear,’ he said.
Mr Guy said the government needed to work with other companies to ensure ‘no other coal-fired power stations close under their watch…
However, Premier Daniel Andrews told reporters about 150 redundant employees had already been given priority access to vacancies at other power stations, and said ‘exciting’ announcements would soon be made about infrastructure and jobs in the Latrobe Valley…ETC
http://www.skynews.com.au/news/national/vic/2017/02/26/hazelwood-workers-call-for-closure-in-stages.html
41
Thanks Pat. First sign of a break in the dam wall for the government to be considering the impact of ever increasing electricity bills.
I have sent Minister Frydenberg emails highlighting their lack of action on electricity affordability and the impact on consumers and businesses. My local member has responded indicating that this topic is under review.
From the “Preliminary Report of the “Independent Review into the Future Security of the National Electricity Market”: “The heart of the Review’s task is to find solutions to address the so-called energy trilemma – policies that simultaneously provide a high level of energy security and reliability, universal access to affordable energy services, and reduced emissions. This is easier said than done.”
The big problem is that government policies, State and Federal, have focused only on reduced emissions. There are no policies to address electricity security, reliability or affordability.
Governments must change their priorities to focus on the immediate problems of reliability and affordability. Stop the mad rush towards a 23.5% RET by 2020 that mandate wind/solar supplies increasing from 7% to 18% (that’s on average, so supply varying from 0 to 50% of demand depending on sun and wind). Therefore all of the coal and gas stations must be available, else we will have more and more instances of “load shedding (i.e. blackouts), and ever increasing prices.”
Governments must take action NOW.
I have expanded on this theme in a submission to Dr Finkel’s Review.
– Current and proposed government renewable energy targets are reducing electricity network reliability and increasing costs to consumers and industry
– As the sun goes down and the wind drops, base load coal/gas stations must be ready to meet demand or there will be an increasing number of blackouts as SA has already experienced
– The impending closure of Hazelwood will reduce the availability of backup capacity and therefore decrease system reliability
– Massive amounts will have been invested in new wind/solar plant, but there will be no savings, resulting in a continuing escalation in electricity prices
There should be a moratorium placed on achieving Australia’s 2020 23.5% renewables target until electricity supply security and affordability can be guaranteed.
70
Could you please explain how the Target works, other than the Carbon Tax which everyone has to pay in their electricity bills and goes to building windmills? The ‘Target’ was not even mentioned until 2015 in legislation but it has no force in legislation as far as I can see.
Rather it is the Renewable Electricity(Energy) Act of 2000 which was intended to make fossil fuel power generation unprofitable at any price and give all our money to windmill and solar and hot rock companies which cannot ever supply base load for winter, summer, storms, night. Wind and solar are unreliable, unpredictable and unsuitable for the National grid. We are becoming a third world country.
As far as I can see, as producing and selling electricity from fossil fuels is already uneconomic and unsustainable.
Pelican point lost $15M last year. Hazelwood is bleeding hundreds of millions and Victoria has decided to stop subsidizing and finish them off quickly by increasing coal 300%. Industry is already paying 10x the electricity cost of the US. So they will close, despite all the pretence. So will Alcoa, Pt Pirie and all the smelters. It is high farce, massive destruction by our own governments, State and Federal. Governments are only subsidizing these companies so they do not get the blame from angry workers in Portland and elsewhere.
So with collapsing demand from industry, smelters, refineries and other now uneconomic industries the total power need is dropping quickly. Even the proposed submarine factory in Adelaide is buying a $30Million diesel generator so they will have to pay their carbon taxes too, which they will simply add to our bills for useless submarines in a world of smart torpedoes and drones.
If the private companies close their Coal and Gas power stations, by definition Australia’s electricity will be 90% renewables (Snowy and Tasmania) and 1/10th of what we need. Damage done. A political triumph, the destruction of at least heavy manufacturing in Australia and the end of the cheapest, cleanest and most reliable power in the world. For what?
No wonder support for Hanson is rocketing. Both sides of politics are hell bent on crippling Australia so that by our example, the rest of the world will learn how much we care? This is masochism while the politicians seem pleased with themselves because they seem to care, when we now all know only their jobs matter. The ultimate public self servants. Malcolm just wants to parade. Stole someone’s job, stole his policies, trashed his name and could not run a shop. Shorten wants his Harbourside mansion too. The others just want their high paying jobs at $200K plus committees plus the lifelong pension for a decade of turning up. Does no one care at all what they are doing to the place? Did Derryn Hinch even think about what he was doing and did Malcolm really advise him to demand the self defeating delay? Was Malcolm actually blocking Abbot’s bill, the one he used for the double dissolution and using newbie Hinch as the fall guy?
We need conviction politicans. Hanson is one. Abbott is another. Bernadi. There are not many. The others appear to spend their time rorting the perks of office. We have a big swamp too.
Everything was going so well as we stopped the boats, signed trade agreements, brought in sensible policies. Now the destruction of our electricity system is well underway, a long planned dream for some. South Australia is near total collapse enconomically and electrically. Business are fleeing and the people will follow.
Bring Abbott back. Like Rudd before him, on return consign his internal enemies and the ABC/SBS to Siberia before the whole country ends up a wasteland. Balance the budget. Decrease taxes. Shut or stip all the HRC, CSIRO, BOM and Clean Energy Regulator, Clean Energy Finance and all the other fantasy organizations costing billions and tasked with our destruction for the sake of the world’s weather.
Bring back Abbott now.
11
Bring him back home!!
10
read all:
26 Feb: DailyTelegraph: Piers Akerman: Sack ABC board and end the warped bias
Another example of the bias which moderator Jones and editor-in-chief Guthrie failed to block or even remark upon was Ms Plibersek’s statement that the government was cutting the Clean Energy Supplement.
This was put in place by the Gillard Labor government to compensate for its hated carbon tax.
That tax was abolished by the Abbott Coalition government — so there was no longer the need for the supplement.
Under Labor’s six years in office, electricity prices for households increased by 101 per cent. When the Coalition repealed the carbon tax, it led to the largest fall on record in electricity prices, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
Similarly, her claim that the Warburton Review said that more renewables put downward pressure on energy prices should have been challenged.
The Warburton Review said the RET would lead to higher prices — “if incumbent generators shut down permanently … the additional renewable generation capacity deployed as a result of the RET would lead to increased retail electricity prices”.
Further the Australian Energy Market Commission said of a bigger RET in its Integration of Climate & Energy Policy report just last December “as existing generators exit the market, wholesale prices can be expected to rise and consumers will face the full cost of the increased subsidy”.
Ms Plibersek accurately claimed that the cost of solar power has come down by about 80 per cent in the past seven years and wind power has come down by about 50 per cent, but she and the ABC ignored the fact that solar remains the most expensive form of generation…
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/opinion/piers-akerman-sack-abc-board-and-end-the-warped-bias/news-story/4b947a6e558b307e8ae9fa8413d2c10e
51
So our rightful overlord Tony PM yet? 🙂 Lib numbers deep around the S bend according to Newspoll. PHON over taking the Greens?
50
Turnbull is clearly leading the government to defeat at the next election and many of his ministers are too blind to see it. Not sure if TA is the way to go. Peter Dutton may be better. I actually like TA as a leader despite some of his drawbacks but for a few reasons too many voters still hate him. So placing him back as PM probably would be an even greater disaster for the government. Better to pick someone else. Perhaps TA can be a leader many years from now. Our only hope to avoid a crash and burn scenario under Shorten is for Turnbull to be rolled and One Nation to gain enough support to overcome the Greens and other minor parties and enough One Nation preferences going to LNP to guarantee them an absolute majority. What really surprises me despite all things we as a nation supposedly know about the Greens’ agenda and polices they still have a lot of support. They should be almost an extinct party by now. Their polices are a recipe for a complete collapse of our economy and society. One has to be sick in the mind to support them and hence the ALP’s polices which in effect are a slightly watered down version of the Greens.
71
I have always thought that the Green’s vote has been at least doubled by those who don’t want to vote for the major parties. It will be interesting to see how their vote stands up as other parties enter the arena (or perhaps I should say bull pit).
40
Abbott’s problem was the press. Winking on radio. Looking at his watch. Mysogynist. Did what the palace explicitly requested for Prince Phillips’ 90th birthday present, an honour which cost nothing. Wanted for professional women what Public Servants and the ABC already have. What a monster. Pilloried at every opportunity. Even bit an onion. So he was replaced with the rich Dandy the ABC preferred because he was ‘unpopular’. As the byelection in Canning proved the following weekend, he was not unpopular with the public, just with the ABC. Plus the scheming by at least two of his ministers and the nervous nellies who lost at the next election anyway.
So what has been acheived since? If it were not for Dan Andrews showing just what Labor will do in Victoria, Bill Shorten would have been PM. Now the Senate is even worse, if possible and Turnbull hates the Abbott policies he inherited but has none of his own. His attack on the new US President was cringeworthy, but the ABC would have loved it as would Shorten who had called Trump ‘barking mad’.
What on earth did we do to deserve Turnbull and Trump. Apart from what you read in the press, what was so unpopular about Abbott. Even Malcolm’s Liberal party has tried to remove him, but he is too popular.
No, Abbott would not win, but he is a fighter. Malcolm has been to WA an entire 24 hours since he was Prime Minister. Elections are hard work. Better to take someone else’s job and their six years hard work. Just tell everyone you are a better communicator, even with no idea what to say.
Abbott is the only hope. However he recognizes that getting control of the Senate is the big task where Turnbull is quite happy to have every act defeated. They were Tony’s ideas anyway.
21
Sorry. I typed Trump instead of Shorten. Hardly a typo, just typing on automatic. Communications problem with the fingers.
Abbott’s problem was the press. Winking on radio. Looking at his watch. Mysogynist. Did what the palace explicitly requested for Prince Phillips’ 90th birthday present, an honour which cost nothing. Wanted for professional women what Public Servants and the ABC already have. What a monster. Pilloried at every opportunity. Even bit an onion. So he was replaced with the rich Dandy the ABC preferred because he was ‘unpopular’. As the byelection in Canning proved the following weekend, he was not unpopular with the public, just with the ABC. Plus the scheming by at least two of his ministers and the nervous nellies who lost at the next election anyway.
So what has been acheived since? If it were not for Dan Andrews showing just what Labor will do in Victoria, Bill Shorten would have been PM. Now the Senate is even worse, if possible and Turnbull hates the Abbott policies he inherited but has none of his own. His attack on the new US President was cringeworthy, but the ABC would have loved it as would Shorten who had called Trump ‘barking mad’.
What on earth did we do to deserve Turnbull and Shorten. Apart from what you read in the press, what was so unpopular about Abbott. Even Malcolm’s Liberal party has tried to remove him, but he is too popular.
No, Abbott would not win, but he is a fighter. Malcolm has been to WA an entire 24 hours since he was Prime Minister. Elections are hard work. Better to take someone else’s job and their six years hard work. Just tell everyone you are a better communicator, even with no idea what to say.
Abbott is the only hope. However he recognizes that getting control of the Senate is the big task where Turnbull is quite happy to have every act defeated. They were Tony’s ideas anyway.
10
Maybe Abbott would win, if anyone can. I would hope so. The energy disaster is every bit as important as stopping the boats before industries are irreparably damaged, gone forever like car manufacture.
The flight of 10% of Australia to Hanson are people who would vote for Abbott, the ‘deluded conservatives’, the ‘deplorables’ who have had enough. Malcolm lost all of Abbott’s huge lead and nearly the $1.75Million he paid for his new job. Bernadi and others might come home. Joyce and the Nationals might just be starting to realize that they will be wiped out for supporting Turnbull.
Abbott is a good fighter. Three degrees and three daughters and a Blue in Boxing at Oxford. He is fearless in the ocean or a fight. He just needs to stop being so nice to his enemies. He does not even backstab but tells everyone what needs to be done. You have to admire him. There are so few we can admire.
01
If the Liberal party put Abbott back, he could force a double dissolution election. He has to do so. Parliament cannot function. The democratically elected parliament cannot pass laws.
Even South Australia has had enough to clean out the chicken coop. Victoria has had enough, especially with Daniel Andrews and if Hazelwood closes, they will vote Liberal. Tasmania too, after an annus horribulus with power. Queensland want change. Western Australia want their GST back and do not see why half of it should go to masochistic South Australians.
Abbott’s announced policies were an election platform. Remove the RET. Close the HRC. Halve the ABC/SBS or sell them. Halve the CSIRO, if they can have 350 scientists studying nothing, achieving nothing. The Clean Energy Authorities and Funds and all the supervisory bodies. Tell the councils to get rid of their climate change nonsense. Sell the windmills to people who need them. Stop sending money overseas to the UN and other charities like the Clinton’s. Make peace with Donald Trump and stop this insane refugee swap. Stop paying public servants faster and more than people who really pay taxes.
There is so much to be done but first, dump the RET and watch electricity prices halve overnight, then halve again.
The planet can look after itself, as it has always done.
00
Besides, the ABC will change its name from to the SBC. Sydney Broadcasting Company. More harbourside mansions. Not a peep from Turnbull as the ABC staff all move house.
00
Peter Dutton is the front runner to get Talcum’s job, while Tony deserves a front bench seat with any portfolio that takes his fancy, it should work.
Assuming they scrap the RET and Paris accord and review immigration.
51
I’ve always had my suspicions about Turnbull given he was from Goldman Sacs and always had a bias towards the left. My suspicions will be confirmed if he manages to keep his role up to the election. His goal will then be clear to all – to destroy the Liberal Party and help to put in place an extreme left biased government for the purpose of building their fortunes to be made via ETS or similar climate change schemes. It was always their goal to put that in place across the globe until Trump came along. A possible albeit unlikely scenario to save us at least for the medium term is for Australia to become another state of the US. I know – it won’t happen. Too bad since we have no one that comes even lose to being a Trump like leader here.
30
‘Too bad since we have no one that comes even lose to being a Trump like leader here.’
We have Peter Dutton, a climate change skeptic, who has a ‘bovver boy’ approach to politics, think of Paul Keating.
Before Xmas this populist has the potential to become PM and turn Oz politics on its head.
12
I don’t know a lot about him. Perhaps he is an even better than Trump. The odd thing though is Australian voters in general don’t like people who are sensible, smart and truly intelligent. They just want more handouts. The will get the government they deserve eventually, which means a crash and burn scenario.
10
Nobody is better suited to bring about a political revolution than Donald Trump, a charismatic leader who has come from outside the political establishment.
He is also a master of communication and Peter Dutton isn’t in the same class.
Until recently the Australian electorate has had little choice in their voting habits, but that is changing fast as the Westminster System takes a pounding.
Imagine after the next election ACP and One Nation coalition having more seats than the Greens in the Senate. Believe it.
‘They will get the government they deserve eventually …’
Yep and its looking good from where I’m standing.
21
Turnbull twist on a past leader’s speech …
Ask not what I can do for my country but rather,
what my country …
40
Biggest country in the world, by area, syas climate change is a western hoax!! Of course it is.
Go Russia!
http://russia-insider.com/en/russia-already-knows-man-made-climate-change-hoax-now-west-waking/ri19041
40
In this mornings HeraldSun.
Melbourne ratepayers will stump up almost $700,000 dollars to pay a swedish professor to make the city more resilient in the face of global warming.
Melbourne already has a “chief resilience officer” funded by the Rockefeller Foundation(I never knew).
Job description:
Critics (deniers no doubt) say the council should concentrate on roads and rubbish.
60
Rollo:
By that job description it is clear they are indeed concentrating on rubbish!
00
Testing…
http://ice-glaces.ec.gc.ca/Ice_Can/ANIM-CMMBCTCA.gif
20
***ABC doesn’t note white lab coats were given out to activisits, so the pic does not necessariy show “scientists”.
25 Feb: ABC The Science Show: Fears of a rough ride ahead for US science
PHOTO CAPTION: ***Scientists rally for science in Boston
The election of President Trump saw immediate gag orders on communications from federal agencies. Scientific information was taken off government websites. There were hiring freezes and halts on grants and contracts. Last weekend a thousand scientists rallied in Boston. Meanwhile, John Holdren, president Obama’s science advisor says the numbers associated with promises don’t add up, meaning discretionary spending on things such as research and development will come under pressure. Then there’s the shift in culture, where president Trump resists facts which don’t fit his predetermined positions. A range of speakers presented their fears for science at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Boston in February 2016.
Read Robyn Williams’ article
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/scienceshow/fears-of-a-rough-ride-ahead-for-us-science/8300660
Williams’s article:
25 Feb: ABC: US scientists prepare to fight back against Trump’s ‘war on science’
Analysis RN By Robyn Williams for The Science Show
Updated about 2 hours ago
PHOTO: (PROTESTERS IN WHITE LAB COATS) (Supplied: ClimateTruth.org/Amanda Kowalski)
A few hundred demonstrators were already in Copley Square when I arrived 20 minutes early. Hundreds more came by noon, some in white coats, many carrying signs saying “STAND UP FOR SCIENCE” and “WE DON’T WANT ALTERNATIVE FACTS”…
One who addressed the crowd was the famed Naomi Oreskes, professor of the history of science at Harvard…
Before the rally, John Holdren of Harvard, who was President Obama’s chief scientific adviser, deplored the way scientists have been painted as “elite” — once a desirable term, now an indication you are remote from the real people out there…
“I’m particularly worried about R&D at the Department of Energy, where clean energy and energy efficiency are likely to be slashed — I’m worried, of course, about the EPA, all the more since [new EPA head and climate sceptic Scott] Pruitt’s confirmation…
Professor Holdren said the research under threat encompasses climate change, environmental toxins, particle accelerators, telescopes, high-capacity computing and satellites.
This list is clearly shocking. If Professor Holdren’s fears are realised, and they are shared by many I spoke to in Boston, there could be generational damage to US R&D and therefore to international research, including that done in Australia…
“It is pretty clear by now that we have a President who resists facts that don’t comport with his predetermined positions,” he said.
“That bodes ill for the emphases on scientific integrity, transparency and public access and fact-based decision-making…
Science has faced detractors before; this battle is not new. But this particular skirmish feels different — and it is only just beginning.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-02-25/us-scientists-prepare-to-fight-trumps-war-on-science/8296892
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on program’s homepage:
25 Feb: ABC The Science Show: Science in the era of Trump
Science was taken seriously by the Obama administration. Things have changed. Many Republican politicians accept without question all the ways their lives have been improved by science but continue to doubt climate science…
from the segment’s own page:
Barbara Schaal, President of The American Association for the Advance of Science says scientists are worried and anxious about their future…
Since the election of new US President Donald Trump, there has been silence regarding science and no appointment of a science advisor. Meanwhile, members of congress are prepared to state they don’t accept the climate is changing and if they do, they don’t accept that human activity is a major contributor. This is part of the outrage as climate science is not a political construct.
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/scienceshow/science-in-the-era-of-trump/8301058
27 Feb: DailyMail: Brianne Tolj: Australia’s eyebrow queen loved by Kim Kardashian and Beyonce flies to Los Angeles to tend to Leonardo DiCaprio’s brows before the Oscars
•Australian eyebrow aficionado Sharon-Lee Hamilton has headed to the Oscars
•Ms Hamilton will tend to the eyebrows of celebrities Leonardo DiCaprio
•She will also help out Tobey Maguire and other celebrities while in Los Angeles
•Ms Hamilton’s shop is based in Woollahra in Sydney’s eastern suburbs
TOP COMMENT: More global carbon footprints by the Hollywood hypocritical liberal elite!
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-4261350/Sharon-Lee-Sydney-s-Los-Angeles-Leonardo-DiCaprio-Oscars.html
Fairfax had this story first, also without a hint about CAGW alarmist Leo’s LARGE “carbon footprint”.
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If Climate Change is not a political construct, then she could explain the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change formed in 1988?
This is a purely political body, formed by politicians and for governments who believe they can and do control the world’s many climates. It is not a body of scientists. Of course man made Global Warming was the immediate consequence. Or is it all a big understanding? Even Christiana Figures of the family which dominated Costa Rica and head of the IPCC says it is about wealth distribution. Where is the Science? Such scientists as they rent are only there to give credibility to a political wealth distribution system and provide funding to the IPCC itself and their friends and family.
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25 Feb: Guardian: Robin McKie: Biologists say half of all species could be extinct by end of century
Scientists at Vatican conference are searching for a solution to the manmade ‘major extinction event’
“The living fabric of the world is slipping through our fingers without our showing much sign of caring,” say the organisers of the Biological Extinction conference held at the Vatican this week…
“Rich western countries are now siphoning up the planet’s resources and destroying its ecosystems at an unprecedented rate,” said biologist Paul Ehrlich, of Stanford University in California. “We want to build highways across the Serengeti to get more rare earth minerals for our cellphones. We grab all the fish from the sea, wreck the coral reefs and put carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. We have triggered a major extinction event. The question is: how do we stop it?”…
“We are wrecking our planet’s life support systems. We have the capacity to stop that. The trouble is that the ***danger does not seem obvious to most people, and that is something we must put right.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/feb/25/half-all-species-extinct-end-century-vatican-conference
***Ehrlich – the very real danger of not properly maintaining critical infrastructure, such as the erosion of the Oroville spillway, was not obvious to Gov Brown:
26 Feb: ABC30: After rains soak California, Gov. Brown seeks $437 million for flooding repairs
By Dale Yurong
The governor sent President Donald Trump a request for federal assistance.
The winter soaking is far from over, but Brown says $437 million is needed for the state’s most pressing flood control problems. $50 million would come from the general fund, and he’s asking lawmakers to approve $387 million in water bond money.
“The recent storms have had a real impact,” Brown said. “We’ve got dam spillways eroding. We’ve got roadways crumbling. We have aging infrastructure and it’s maxed out.”…
Caltrans estimated the cost to repair flood damaged roads at $600 million.
The governor’s budget advisor says state costs for responding to the winter storms will likely exceed $1 billion.
http://abc30.com/news/after-rains-soak-california-gov-brown-seeks-$437-million-for-flooding-repairs/1771750/
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Once again the Vatican shows it does not really believe in evolution. By the end of this century almost all living things will be dead, except trees. Hotter or colder, what will be alive will be the result of selection and the population will keep growing. That is how evolution works. Christianity itself is in more danger of going extinct than people or species which adapt.
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Consider Roaches! Earth’s next ‘top predator’. Some may actually culture\husband ‘earthling slaves’, for their cleverness\protein!!
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SURE, CANDACE, WHATEVER U SAY.
ABC CANNOT ACCEPT THE CHANGE OF GOVT IN THE US:
27 Feb: ABC AM: Transition to renewables in the US ‘inevitable’ despite Trump: Energy expert
SABRA LANE: …The former president of the United States, Barack Obama, stepped up the country’s plans to reduce carbon emissions, but Donald Trump has promised to bring back what he calls “beautiful, clean coal”, and he’s called climate change a hoax.
It’s a debate echoed here in Australia. Candace Vahlsing was one of president Barack Obama’s energy and environment policy advisors. She’s currently in Australia to give the key speech to the National Community Energy Conference in Melbourne, and she joins me now…
CANDACE VAHLSING: As you said, president Obama has taken the US to a place where the transition to clean energy is inevitable.
We are not as… There are many different sources that are able to back up generation of clean energy, whether it’s storage or others.
So, we are headed in a good direction and confident that clean energy, including renewables in particular, are going to provide a solid source of energy for the future…
CANDACE VAHLSING: Sure. So, obviously everyone on the…is interested in the news of the day, and we’ve seen some things from the current administration saying that there’s going to be a focus on other sources other than renewables, but I think the message there is that we’ve seen both in the US, and, I think, even in Australia, that renewable energy – solar, wind, others – are very cost effective, are more cost effective, in some states in the US, than solar and gas, or, excuse me, than gas and coal, and that in Australia we’ve seen a recent survey that shows that renewables are the same way – are cheaper than gas and coal.
As far as your question about other countries, you know, as I said, the transition to clean energy is inevitable. I think last year we saw new power generation from renewable energy surpass coal. And so that’s just another proof point about this transition and how it’s going to happen…
We in the US are transitioning towards renewable energy sources in a way that is most effective to the consumers. I can speak to that in Australia too, but what I can say is that we are seeing more and more people choose renewable energy, and that will continue.
SABRA LANE: The Australian Government’s talking up the prospect of clean coal. How long before carbon capture and storage is a viable proposition?
CANDACE VAHLSING: Sure. Again, I can’t answer that on the timeline question, but I can say that in the US, there’s been a lot of research that we have…a number of demonstration projects and some facilities that are coming on-line. And so there… It is more than just a prospect, it is a reality around the world.
But if you look at the economics, it seems that, at least for Australia, that solar and wind seem to make a little bit more sense…
CANDACE VAHLSING: Sure. I mean, I can’t predict the future, but I think renewable energy will continue to grow, as I said. You’ve seen a lot of states take their own actions and set their own renewable energy targets. You’ve also seen, as you said, the private sector step up.
http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2016/s4626764.htm
Community Energy Conference 2017 – supporters: Platinum, Silver, Bronze. Partners plus Congress Organising Team
(CLICK ON PROGRAM AT TOP OF PAGE TO FIND ‘PRESENTERS’ PAGE – WHAT A TALKFEST THIS WILL BE)
http://c4ce.net.au/congress/supporters/
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Candace Vahlsing
Senior Policy Advisor for Energy and Climate Change at White House Domestic Policy Council
University of California, Berkeley,
Master of Public Policy (MPP), Goldman School of Public Policy
Master of Science (MS), Environmental Health Sciences
Hampshire College, Bachelor of Arts (BA), International Environmental Policy
No wonder all her science is wrong. This is the religion of Environmentalism. Carbon capture is not necessary. The planet already does that. It’s called the ocean.
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Perhaps her children make better BBQ!
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who is paying for this “‘independent voice’ for the river”? any CAGW sceptics being considered for the “council”? lol.
read all for details of the new regulations:
25 Feb: The Age: Tougher planning rules to protect Melbourne’s Yarra River
by Farrah Tomazin
The Yarra River will be subject to tougher planning rules and a new council will be created to oversee it under the latest state government plan to protect the waterway from inappropriate development.
After years of encroachment, the Andrews government is set to announce mandatory height restrictions on new properties, minimum setbacks for buildings, and tighter controls designed to reduce overshadowing.
A new Birrarung Council – comprising traditional owners and representatives from environmental, farming and community bodies – will also be established to advise the government and act as an “independent voice” for the river…
“Climate change is also a threat to the Yarra, with projections of declining rainfall, higher temperatures, longer droughts and more frequent storms and bushfires.”
http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/tougher-planning-rules-to-protect-melbournes-yarra-river-20170225-gul7qi.html
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Longer droughts and more frequent storms? I presume these are dust storms?
It’s better than Flannery’s Longer and more frequent droughts.
Don’t people realise this is just contradictory nonsense?
Why would CO2 make weather events more frequent or more severe? Has anyone even tried to justify or explain these illogical conclusions?
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27 Feb: news.com.au: Senator gets lesson in questioning
by Katina Curtis, AAP
It’s only the second time Malcolm Roberts has played the Senate estimates game, so perhaps the One Nation senator could be forgiven for not knowing all the rules.
But he received a crash course in phrasing questions from the environment department boss early on Monday.
“Do you agree that much of the strategic direction of the department is underpinned by the belief that coal-fired power stations are not clean and that their emitted carbon dioxide will cause catastrophic heating of the planet so they must be replaced by wind and solar power?” was the climate-change-sceptic senator’s opening gambit.
“You’ve asked my opinion,” department boss Gordon de Brouwer replied.
Committee chair Linda Reynolds intervened with a warning to Senator Roberts it wasn’t appropriate to ask officials for their personal opinion, only questions on matters of policy or fact.
Nevertheless, the senator continued undeterred for 15 minutes, with nearly every question using the word “belief” politely batted away with an, “I think you’re asking for my opinion, senator.”…READ ON
http://www.news.com.au/national/breaking-news/senator-gets-lesson-in-questioning/news-story/9294f42ecc859a3f76424c61f5651e80
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Good for Senator Roberts! Hold government officials toes to the fire at all times! Can they think sufficiently to even have an opinion? They certainly get paid enough for that! ‘Tis the Serf that answers “yes sir, yes sir, three bags FULL”! That Serf would be a more productive government official!
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Verrender begins & ends with CAGW propaganda, whilst all his analysis is in the middle and is about tax reform!
27 Feb: ABC: Malcolm Turnbull faces growing discontent from the middle, not just the fringes
Analysis by business editor Ian Verrender
First off the mark was business lobby outfit the Australian Industry Group, with a point-blank rebuttal of the Government’s suggestions it remained open to a coal-fired future.
Given no bank on the planet is willing to finance new coal-powered generators, the response was understandable and highlighted the growing frustration among industry, particularly manufacturers, that as the nation’s ageing generators are shut, nothing serious is being done to address the impending energy crisis.
Next came a full page advertisement in a national daily from Energy Australia, owner of one of the country’s dirtiest coal-powered generators at Yallourn, urging the Government to commit to renewables.
As if that wasn’t enough, National Australia Bank chairman Ken Henry let loose with a vitriolic spray about the “trench warfare” in Canberra as politicians hunkered down in a “dreadful spectacle” over increasingly urgent issues such as budget repair, tax reform, population growth, infrastructure, energy security and ***climate change…
The Prime Minister is a strong advocate that political endorsement and legitimacy comes from the middle ground, not the fringes. When it comes to climate and energy policy, the calls from the middle are becoming increasingly louder…
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-02-27/verrender-demoralising-time-to-be-prime-minister/8305006
how much lower can the Coalition go in the polls, if the PM believes & acts on your analysis, Verrender?
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I thought I posted this before but..The largest (in land) country is now a climate skeptik..Russia!
http://russia-insider.com/en/russia-already-knows-man-made-climate-change-hoax-now-west-waking/ri19041
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The end of the article is the key, another waste of time and money …
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-02-27/100-per-cent-renewable-network-possible/8306482
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Did you notice Dennis , that it’s ok to build dams for pumped hydro storage but not for drought mitigation ?
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That’s because dams trap happy water which should run free. Pumped hydro is more entertaining for the water. Like a wet and wild for water.
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They’ve found a bunch of places along the east coast where a reservoir would have more than 300m of head above turbines, which surprises me as I generally think of the place as being quite flat.
https://cloudstor.aarnet.edu.au/plus/index.php/s/ZZ1x58deOuutLed/download?path=%2F&files=Potential%20areas%20for%20off-river%20pumped%20hydro%20energy%20storage.jpg
And in all cases the other requirement is that the river must always have enough flow to feed the uptake part of the cycle without leaving the downstream critters high and dry. They compute the total water uptake needed to power all of Australia “represents 0.3% of current water extraction from rivers under Murray Darling Basin Authority control.”
Yes in total that sounds great, but it only works virtually every reservoir involved his its source river running, and running high enough to not be a load of mud. Still sounding too good to be true.
Get the whole report and related images here: https://cloudstor.aarnet.edu.au/plus/index.php/s/ZZ1x58deOuutLed
That’ll be one for TonyFromOz to foam about, for sure.
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George Soros has been arrested …
https://cairnsnews.org/2017/02/27/soros-arrested-and-held-in-us-on-orders-from-trump/
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If true, this is a BIG step forward towards saving the world’s civilisations..
Can anyone actually verify if this is true ???
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http://www.snopes.com/george-soros-arrested/
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snopes = leftist, unreliable.
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https://www.mintpressnews.com/congress-begins-investigating-george-soros-influence-in-european-politics/225227/
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I apologise, apparently the “news” is not true. I thought Cairns News Australia was a reliable website.
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** chuckle **
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Sounds like Fake news, designed to suck in Trump supporters. April 1 is coming.
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you would never find fake news on an upstanding news-site like this one http://thelastlineofdefense.org/
by the way, if he were arrested, would you belive this if they were the charges?
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No, its a satirical blog run by devout Christians, here is their disclaimer.
‘The Resistance may include information from sources that may or may not be reliable and facts that don’t necessarily exist. All articles should be considered satirical and any and all quotes attributed to actual people complete and total baloney. Pictures that represent actual people should be considered altered and not in any way real.’
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That disclaimer should be for the ABC !
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thanks I knew that. Cairns news and AndyG were, sadly, not being satirical.
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Yeah well … we can all fall into that trap.
The ABC spews out alternative news which passes for satire, but it doesn’t get many laffs.
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I discovered something really interesting, well, to me anyway.
As you all know, I love my crime fiction.
That all started when I began reading the Arthur W Upfield novels about his character ‘Bony’ in the late 1960s, and there were 29 of those novels.
However, I always liked crime fiction, and I have read some from other authors across the years.
Far and away my favourite author from that crime fiction genre is Val McDermid, and I have read fourteen of her novels. That started back in 1997, when I heard a radio interview with her. She was touring Australia following the release of her new novel. That interview was so interesting, I immediately went out and purchased the two novels she was speaking about, The Mermaids Singing and the most recent one The Wire In The Blood. They were without doubt, the best crime fiction I had ever read. These two novels introduced the characters of Tony Hill the Psychologist/Profiler, and Carol Jordan the Police Detective Inspector, later promoted to DCI.
Okay then, you know how when you read something, you make up an image in your mind’s eye of what you perceive the main characters to look like, sort of like building the drama in your mind. I read the novels in 1997, and then followed that with each new novel as she released them.
Late in 2002, ITV in the UK started the Series on those two characters, titled The Wire In The Blood, and the first two episodes were those two novels. They were okay I guess, but nowhere near as graphic and detailed as the novels, quite naturally, as they would have never got to air. Those two main characters looked nothing at all like I imagined the characters to look like when I first envisaged them, based loosely around their descriptions in the novel, and how I pictured them. Totally nothing like I imagined.
I enjoyed the TV Series, but only watched that first Series of three episodes, and then the second series of four episodes, and then lost interest, as, from those first two episodes on TV, ITV developed their own plot lines, not related to any further novels by McDermid, but just using those two main characters.
Recently, I decided to re-read those first two novels of hers, now 20 years since they were first published.
What I found was that no matter how I thought of it, this time around, every time those characters were mentioned, I immediately pictured them as Robson Green ad Hermione Norris, the two TV characters. It was actually quite novel really, because it gave a whole new perspective to each of those two novels, as the characters in the TV Series were nuanced differently than they were in the novels.
I mentioned it to our daughter last Friday and she mentioned that something similar had happened to her as well. She had avidly read the novel Fifty Shades Of Grey, (evidently in one sitting she told me) and imagined the two main characters in her mind, only to find that in the movie, they looked nothing like the way she perceived them both from the novel. She mentioned that the movie was just okay, and was somewhat spoiled for her in that specific aspect, that the characters looked different to what she imagined them to be, and that the movie, quite naturally, did not cover a fraction of what was in the novel.
I remember watching the Upfield Bony character TV Series back when it came out in the 1970’s, but something like this didn’t happen to me then, as, well, the TV Series bore little resemblance to the novels anyway, as the TV Series brought the novels into a different time frame, as the novels were set between 1929 and 1963, and all the TV programs were set in the style and surroundings of the 1970’s.
When re-reading these two McDermid novels, I had to occasionally pinch myself because the characters, while still the same were totally different to what I originally imagined them to be.
Two great crime fiction novels, if you’re interested, and I highly recommend them both, and also her masterpiece, the stand alone novel A Place Of Execution.
Tony.
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download audio from left column:
AUDIO: 3mins28secs: 26 Feb: NPR: Fearing Climate Change Policy Under Trump, STEM Group Works To Get Scientists Elected
Michael Martin, All Things Considered
Scientists across the country are planning to go to Washington — and take office. Shaughnessy Naughton is the founder of 314 Action a non profit that helps scientists run for office.
http://www.npr.org/2017/02/26/517394115/fearing-climate-change-policy-under-trump-stem-group-is-working-to-get-scientist
Shaughnessy has expeerience of running and losing…as a Democrat (surprise, which NPR doesn’t mention). she wants diversity of experience in government.
Ballotpedia: Shaughnessy Naughton was a 2016 Democratic candidate who sought election to the U.S. House to represent the 8th Congressional District of Pennsylvania. Naughton was defeated by Steve Santarsiero in the primary.
She was a 2014 Democratic candidate who sought election to the U.S. House to represent the 8th Congressional District of Pennsylvania. She lost the Democratic nomination in the primary on May 20, 2014.
9 Feb: CornellDailySun: Student Assembly Narrowly Votes Down Resolution to Increase Faculty ‘Ideological Diversity’
By Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs
(Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs is a member of the Class of 2019 in the College of Arts and Sciences. He is a staff writer for the news department)
A contentious Student Assembly meeting on Thursday ended with the Assembly chair breaking a tie by voting against a resolution that would have created a task force to investigate and increase faculty “ideological diversity.”…
Mitchell McBride ‘17, the resolution’s sponsor and vice president for internal operations, pushed back against assemblymembers who said the resolution was solely aimed toward hiring more politically conservative faculty members, countering that it was about broadening general class discussion.
“Having more ideological diversity on campus would help students because I think that if students go into class and are faced with a professor with different views than them, then they’re tasked with challenging every single subtle assumption the teacher puts out,” McBride said.
But many members of the Assembly did not buy that argument — noting that the resolution refers to a 2015 report in The Sun that showed 96 percent of faculty donations over four years went to Democratic campaigns — and some people speaking in favor of the resolution contradicted McBride’s statements.
“We are a severe political minority on campus,” Cornell Republicans Chairwoman Olivia Corn ’19 said, referring to Republican-leaning students. Corn and others in favor of the resolution frequently cited the majority of liberal-leaning professors in several departments.
McBride told The Sun after the meeting that he saw the addition of that amendment, which passed 14 to 4, as a “poison pill amendment to kill the bill.” He maintained that the lack of conservatives among Cornell faculty is a problem and said it was “disheartening and demoralizing” that the resolution did not pass.
“If we are truly going to live up to our university motto, we must have free and diverse thought, and this requires professors who come from different perspectives, in order to foster that critical thinking which is the purpose of a university,” he said…
The resolution is dead unless, at the next Assembly meeting, one of the members who voted against the bill motions to resurrect it and two-thirds of the Assembly agrees.
http://cornellsun.com/2017/02/09/student-assembly-narrowly-votes-down-resolution-to-increase-faculty-ideological-diversity/
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where’s the mailbox so they can send President Trump the bills?
26 Feb: BBC: Is there a US diplomacy vacuum at the UN in Geneva?
By Imogen Foulkes, Geneva
In Geneva, not only are there no US ambassadors to the United Nations, there are no nominees either, meaning replacements are likely to be months away…
“We can’t communicate a message until we know what the message is,” are words heard regularly from permanent staff now manning the phones at empty US embassies across Europe.
Sources, preferring to remain anonymous, have confirmed that embassy staff have been told by Washington not to talk to the press at all. Some, not wishing to cut all ties with correspondents with whom they regularly communicate US policy, have taken to contacting journalists ***via Skype, from home, presumably so that their calls cannot be traced…
“It is clear the United States is opting out of global governance,” says Jean-Pierre Lehmann, emeritus professor at the International Institute for Management Development in Lausanne. “It’s ‘America First’… and populism really doesn’t translate to humanitarianism.”…
The problem for the big UN agencies is not only that some of their activities may be less well-received in a Washington which has voiced scepticism about climate change and opposition to accepting refugees, it is that the UN is ***reliant on US funding for all its activities…
So what can the UN do to make its case in the new Washington? Mr Halle advises patience, he hopes to see “a ***growing up of this administration” over time…
In the absence of partners in the embassies or in the state department, some UN figures are “reaching out” to members of the US Congress for support…
Others are still puzzling. As one senior UN official remarked, “it is not clear who we need to talk to… ***or where the mailbox is”…
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-39080204
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26 Feb: UK Express: Theresa May facing embarrassing Brexit defeat as House of Lords rebels plot veto on bill
PRIME Minister Theresa May is preparing for a tough fight as House of Lords rebels push back on her Brexit plans.
By Siobhan McFadyen
The moves by the unelected Lords are only set to infuriate members of the public who voted for Brexit last June…
The strategy is being hatched by Lord Peter Mandelson who last week announced his involvement in the Open Britain think tank.
He was helped by former Prime Minister Tony Blair who was ridiculed for a speech he gave calling for disruption.
Lord Mandelson said he is absolutely within in his rights to attempt to stall the process because the Labour party appointed his Lords position…
He said “Critics say ‘what right have I, an unelected peer, to oppose this Bill or even seek to radically amend it?’
“But I was appointed by my party.”…
http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/772060/Brexit-Theresa-May-House-of-Lords-veto
26 Feb: UK Express: Brexit bombshell: Why is this parliamentary report talking about RE-JOINING the EU?
DOWNING Street has slammed the contents of a commons report which advised Members of Parliament that the UK COULD RE-JOIN the EU.
By Siobhan McFadyen
The report was circulated among MPs ahead of the crucial vote held in Westminster earlier this month and repeatedly referred to Article 49 which allows for the re-joining of the EU…
http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/771995/Brexit-Britain-Commons-Report-EU-Exit-Article-50-Article-49-Lisbon-Treaty
reminder of Soros interview with Bloomberg at Davos:
20 Jan: Guardian: Graeme Wearden: Davos 2017: Soros says UK in denial over Brexit, and May won’t last – Day Three as it happened
Soros: “The divorce is going to take a very long time. Its much harder to divorce than to get married, so I think the desire for rapprochement will develop, and in theory or maybe even in practice you could have a situation in 2019 or 2020 when Britain will leave the EU because it does have to take place, but they could leave on a Friday but join over the weekend and have the new arrangement in place in Monday morning.”..
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Peter Prince of Darkness Mandelson, who resigned in disgrace from cabinet twice, before being appointed to that body for just such circumstances to make a new name for himself wielding power as an unelected EU Commissioner.
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Amazing
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More fun on capitol hill…https://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/congress/item/25468-bill-to-eliminate-environmental-protection-agency-introduced-in-congress?utm_source=iContactPro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=TNA+Top+Daily+Headlines&utm_content=TNA+Top+Daily+Headlines+Feb+24+17
Any bets on the probability of this getting passed? 😉
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There seems to be Hell to pay over the decision last week by the “Fair Work Commission” to reduce “penal rates”.
If this is a penalty, then who is being “penelised” and for what crime?
Is it the employee who would be willing to to work for less, but cannot because of bureaucrats in a “commission”
Is it the employer, who only wants to provide a service to the public and be rewarded for his trouble?
This country is headed down the gurgler because the imbeciles who “debate” in the House of Reprehensibles debate about the wrong issue.
Shouldn’t the issue be that in a society in which Liberty is paramount that wages should be a negotiated arrangement between an employee and an employer? Not some hoity toity bunch of vandals in a “commission”.
Thoughts on this?
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Rod , big fan ,
Penalty rates should only ever be decided by negotiating between employers and workers , the unions have shown that they can’t be trusted to do the bargaining .
Employees have their bias , employers have their bias , each wanting a different thing .
Personally if you can get a better deal in giving up the Sunday penalty and you’re ok with it why not , more so if you’re no worse off but I guess that’s the clincher ” not worse off” .
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Rod
Imagine being a Hindu or something and wanting to negotiate a different set of days off with your boss. No chance. You will observe Christian days or else!
I call it enforced religion.
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A bit difficult when days off are when the workplace is fully closed! In Dubai, for example, the ‘weekend’ is Friday/Saturday. Christian expats have to work on Sunday; the churches there adapt and have their services on Friday. There is a large area given to the churches to use and you will find a row of different ones all very well patronised!
You really don’t need to call that enforced religion, not in my view anyway.
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Bill Nye the Science Guy? Not according to Tucker Carslon.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bmw5KcWWfPI
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Not sure if anyone saw this recent News article [10 Feb 2017]:
[Climate] Scientist says Trump could destroy the world
A World-leading scientist has warned Donald Trump may signal the end of the world — and Australia could be first to face the catastrophic consequences.
Michael Mann claims Mr Trump’s relationship to “post-truth” politics and “alternative facts” is much more than just embarrassing for the US and has the potential to destroy civilisation.
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Mickey Mann-mouse is a just trying to out prophesy Tim Flannelpants.
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