We found our “free range” chickens liked to lay their eggs in an old tire – I dumped some straw into it, and set it under an old swing-support (handbuilt, wood, had a “roof” and side-benches) and all the ladies would lay there.
Now they have a shed with a water dish and treat-dish in a corner. They all put their eggs in the same area, dipping in and squawking loudly at different times. Sometimes they lay in the far left corner, sometimes in the far right, but so far, never in the yard.
Granted, we have a series of small spaces they get moved around in, so although free range, they aren’t dashing about on acres of field.
Study finds that almost all Easter Eggs sold are not free-range.
It’s worse than that. A new study has conclusively proven that bunnies do not lay eggs. Therefore, as scientists we must replace the Easter Bunny with the Easter Chicken. And being the author of the study I have chosen a suitable Easter Chicken, a very proud, colorful and suitable replacement for the Easter Bunny.
He looks very dignified and distinctive, does he not? Yes, he’s a symbol of strength and leadership. And with him a centuries old injustice to the Easter Egg has been rectified. No more wishy washy Easter Bunnies. We now have a symbol worthy of the day we celebrate, the annual Easter Egg hunt.
And in these times of a world torn apart by strife nearly everywhere, let us not forget that Easter celebrates the birth of The Prince of Peace. And we need him now more than we have for a long time.
It will soon be 2018.
We have made it through in far better shape than the first 18 years of the last century.
My own father was packed like sardine on a ship a sent to fight until victory or his own wounding or death.
For him it was option two.
I am supposed to worry about ‘climate change’.
There is too much violence and poverty, but we are foolish not to realize that in comparison to the past times are good.
The weather is good.
We should teach our children and remind ourselves that these are the best of times.
But there would be no hens without the rooster Annie, and for that matter no roosters either. Definitely a virtual rooster that with the appropriate app would be able to lay virtual eggs.
Wow! I really stated something. A few minutes ago there was a loud angry pounding at my front door and when I opened it there stood the Easter Bunny demanding to know why I had tried to substitute an Easter Chicken for him. Well, I confronted him with the evidence against him from my reasearch and he agreed that if he could lay just one egg my hypothesis would be falsified. So he tried to lay an egg for me but when he couldn’t he had to admit I was right. And then he began to cry. So I comforted him and said, “Maybe if you go find the Easter Chicken and ask very politely he’ll let you be his assistant.” So he began to smile a little and asked where the Easter chicken was and I pointed him in the right direction.
The last I saw of him he was hopping off down the street to find the Easter Chicken. I managed to get this picture of him while he was standing there, just to prove he’d been here. Apparently any resemblance to a certain other well known bunny is intentional. Is one moonlighting for the other? Who knew?
These weekend topics get wilder and wilder. But the Easter Bunny may yet be saved from obscurity by becoming the righthand bunny to the Easter Chicken. I hope so. He seems like a good sort of guy and deserving of the chance. 😉
Mission 2020 campaign by former UN climate chief Christiana Figueres urges decisive action to curb emissions by 2020
Hey, wait a minute! Is tis not the lady who said,
United Nations official Christiana Figueres at a news conference in Brussels. Figueres admitted that the Global Warming conspiracy set by the U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change, of which she is the executive secretary, has a goal not of environmental activists to save the world from ecological calamity, but to destroy capitalism.
A senior environmental official at the United Nations, Noel Brown, says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the earth by rising sea levels if global warming is not reversed by the year 2000.
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY , why do none Americans have so much trouble understanding why Americans defend their second amendment rights , the right to bear arms , when the Romans came to Britain they faced warrior tribes , they promised them membership into the empire if they disarmed , that meant we were easier to control and pacify , but left us vulnerable to invasion after Rome left , it also help them later impose a feudal system that lasted a thousand years against a population that could not fight back , and yet we non Americans still have problems understanding how passionate Americans are about the second amendment , thoughts please
I could probably give you a dozen thoughts. But the one thing that stands out to me is our origin in a rebellion against a tyrannical king. The memory of that war of revolution was so fresh when the Bill of Rights was added to the Constitution that it was personal. And to those of us who know our history and the reasons behind that right to keep and bear arms, nothing seems quite as important except our freedom of religion, speech, peaceful assembly, a free press and the right to petition government for redress of grievance, all guaranteed in the First Amendment. Only those are listed ahead of the right to be armed, the Second Amendment. And that speaks to me from the past about what those who went through the revolution were thinking and about what we should be thinking today.
Perhaps one other thought: Rights are a volatile commodity and there are many people who, for various reasons, all antithetical to personal freedom, work to take away various rights. And once lost those rights are very hard to regain. So we should fight to keep those rights, notwithstanding that an armed public can no longer hope to withstand their government because the government has weapons that we, for good reason, cannot and should not have.
The US Second Amendment is one of the truly great and unique innovations that help guarantee a people’s freedom against a tyrannical government. It was not put there to guarantee a person’s right to shoot targets or hunt, as important as those things maybe from a recreational or survival point of view of those that live off the land. Under Obama and with the possibility of Clinton being elected, it looked very much like the 2nd might need to be exercised and gun sales skyrocketed as the citizenry loaded up on guns and ammo.. At some point the People would have removed Obama or his successor. Fortunately that wasn’t necessary but the 2nd is the “reset” button for the constitution. America will always be fundamentally a freer country than any other because of the legal recognition that the People are meant to be the superior power, not the Government.
Similar with the British navy.In the first half of the
1600’s Barbary Slave traders, authorized by their
governments to attack the shipping of Christian countries ,
according to Admiralty Records, plundered British shipping,
even off the British coast, pretty much at will. The slavers
also raided English and Irish coastal settlements making of
with entire populations of villages. Samuel Pepys, in his
Diary refers to the raids and as Secretary to the Admiralty
helped lay the foundations of a stronger navy as a defense
against the Barbary Coast traders.
WOW!!! You three moderators/editors really socked it to me. Sat me back in my chair, told me how to behave. Sorry.
As for name calling, “crazed red-neck, ignorant, reactionary, trigger-happy ” are all adjectives not names specifically. I didn’t apply that description to all Americans, not even most Americans. But what adjectives are applicable to a couple of teenage boys who rampage through a high-school, shooting kids and teachers at random with semi-auto weapons? What adjectives describe people who have gone into a school and shot to death little kids? What adjectives describe the young man who entered a Afro-American church and gunned down parishioners? All of the shooters without prior criminal records? And what of today where an American randomly shot a 74 year-old man in the street and posted the video of the event on Facebook? Do you have an adjective for that? I would challenge ED on the claim that ignorant rednecks authored the 2nd Amendment – which was obviously meant for defensive community militia, not for recreational shooting of your neighbours.
Why was my comment on “crazed red-neck, ignorant…” shoved down from #3 to #59? And the moderators’ annoyed comments have been removed? Weird! I guess that was their reply? Lol
IMHO had Australia had a 2nd Amendment, its doubtful Bryant ( or whoever it was ) would have gotten as far as he did. Most of the american mass murders happened in ” gun free zones” thus guaranteeing soft undefendable targets…..
Most USA gun problems come from illegal firearms used by criminals.
Agreed, OriginalSteve. If that had happened in a place like Texas, an armed citizen would have taken out the killer before he did much damage and before police arrived (they took a very long time to arrive).
“Most USA gun problems come from illegal firearms used by criminals.”
..and (you should add) mad private citizens who, with no prior criminal record, go out and murder 1,3,6 or 26 other citizens (including children)on an unprovoked whim!!! Most “gun free zones” as you call them, have NO effective means of preventing guns being carried into them from “gun selling zones” and used by crazed citizens. Quite frankly your logic is BS !
Most of the mass murders in the USA have happened within declared gun free zones, which are anathema to spirit if the Second Amendment, in effect a mini Socialist feifdom of gun control…..
How well has that worked?
What annoys me your emotive response to guns and gun control is like CAGW, its all fluff and nonsense and facts don’t back it up….
“Little Johnny Howard”kicked this”Bull$hit”off,with taking away our guns because of the Port Arthur massacre.He also introduced new land clearng laws,all at the behest of the UN.Then he snuck in an ETS before he got the boot,which helped Julia Gillard to bring in a “Carbon Tax”which Abbott got rid of,but Turdbull snuck it back in,at the last sitting in December.Pity he didn’t bother asking,or telling us about it.
Know you now how a “Mushroom feels.
Bryant ( or whoever it was ) managed a shot to kill ratio of a military marksman all while having a very low IQ.
Barry Unsworth some 10 years prior to the Tassie shooting said wed never have uniform gun control unless there was a mass murder in Tasmania. Its in APH Hansard if people want to look it up. I think Barry should off stick tips if he predict that sort of thing in advance.
I recalled this site The truth about Port Arthur that is mostly regarded as a crackpot theory, Bryant with an IQ of 66 had skills obtained by the best special forces counter terrorism operatives in the world.
Abstract: ‘The killer scored twenty head shots, from the right hip, in 90 seconds! There are only about 20 shooters that good (better than Olympians) in the Western World. They are the SPOOKS who work for various governments. The killer stopped shooting after firing 29 shots (of the 30 in a magazine). This leaves a live round in the breech while changing magazines. To count while firing at a rate of 48 rounds per minute is a technique that requires tens of thousands of shots to perfect. It is a military skill-at-arms far beyond a mentally retarded youth who fired at a few tins and bits of cardboard in the bush.’
Are you sure it was Barry Unsworth recorded directly in Hansard? He was reported to have said this at a special premiers conference in Hobart in 1987.
a former public servant has this to say on the matter;
“…I’ve heard subsequently, an apocalyptical story that has been relayed to me by two or three people was that walking out of the Cabinet Room Barrie Unsworth put his arm around John Bennett’s shoulder, John Bennett being the Deputy Premier of Tasmania, and saying ‘John, I suppose it will take a massacre in Tassy to change your mind’. Now, I don’t know, I didn’t hear it myself, other have said that to me, but contemporaneously not after many years during the early ’88 and that sort of thing we were going through that sort of… So that was a pretty obvious thing, a pretty important event when you think of future things that I’ve been involved in…”
(copy/paste from the transcript – possibly the original speech-to-text software made some errors!)
So forcing baseload power stations to close is pure folly. Wind and solar do not replace baseload power, the demand for which remains unchanged. Blowing up power stations is ignorance and arrogance. Unfortunately, this is not news in South Australia.
Greens fall into two groups.
Green voters do not understand that what they want is utterly impractical and will lead to the destruction of the quality of life they enjoy. Often well meaning and economically sheltered public servants or service industries, they have no idea of the real needs of society and how crucial cheap, reliable energy is to their lives. Until the lights go out.
Green politicians want destruction of that very quality of life so that political revolution will follow and they will take over. In the meantime, the salary of a member of parliament or senator is five times average and you get all those free cars and travel and a dream super superannuation plan. A simple strategy for someone who could not get a job.
Left existence is designed to keep people poor otherwise their voters move to the right and they become irrelevant. Poverty leads to fear, hate and jealousy. Greens know that for them to become more relevant they need to project fear as progression, hate as accusing everyone of racism and jealousy as class warfare.
Sounds familiar like 1984?
Judging by the way a colleague works in his capacity as an associate editor of a well known (in his field) journal, I am not remotely surprised by this. The peer-review process is a mockery of its former self (if it ever was successful).
In my experience, there are very few published papers which can be read, and the content ‘digested’ in a matter of a couple of minutes, no matter how much expertise one has on the subject, yet this ‘associate editor’ often “reviews” 5-10 submissions during a 35 minute train journey – and that’s just the start… the sheer volume of papers, a severe case of PhD-inflicted arrogance, and the editorial guidelines just do not allow anyone to properly review anything.
The same person was reviewing abstract submissions for a conference, and his reasons for rejection included ‘no pictures in the abstract’, ‘this author asked me some tough questions at a previous conference’, and ‘if the paper comes from country x, then the English will be poor, so there is no point reading past the title.
When I suggested that this is not a particularly scientific approach, I was told something along the lines of ‘I do not want to lose my position as associate editor, as it looks good on my CV’, along with a not-so-subtle ‘you don’t have a PhD, so you don’t understand the process’ comment.
Mark
It seems as if the max temp for Darwin on the 11th was 21.9C which appears to be the coldest day on record for April beating April 1917 (24.4C).
According to the BoM, Darwin’s coldest day ever was in June, 1904 with 18.4C. http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/tables/cw_014016_All.shtml
David
The DWO, which I quote from above, records the raw temps from each station.
The ‘homogenised’ data is ACORN which came out some 6 years ago. The ACORN model was based on the superseded High Quality Data set which had also been adjusted, quite markedly so for temps prior to 1950.
ACORN http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/change/acorn-sat/#tabs=Data-and-networks
Again, if you look at this page tagged below you can see the adjustments made to the temp record (scroll down to comparison graph). Note the downward adjustments prior to 1960 and the upward adjustments after 1990. I’m unsure if the original data (grey line) is the raw temp or the adjusted HQ data.
The DWO, despite some errors in recording, is the best place to find records based on original raw station data. ACORN is homogenised and seems to been put together haphazardly and without due review.
We had four metres of Biomass Converter fuel delivered yesterday and, with what we have already collected from our local renewable fuel repositories (where no third world people or landscapes were harmed), we should be ready for global warming this Winter.
I live in Victoristan. The ban, as it currently stands, only affects the western/north-western district along the Murray River. But give it time and the bans will cover everything, including farmers’ property as well.
We’ll soon be living in virtual caves with no power, no heat, no light. Of course that won’t apply to the inner-city Greens etc that bring these things about.
I forgot to mention, you can’t collect any firewood from national parks, no matter how many millions of dead sticks there are due to the fires from 2003 onwards. And, as the national parks are extended, that leaves less and less access to wood.
I’m actually surprised that Victoristan isn’t following that example. We have many expansive locations in our High Country where the wind blows regularly, which would be ideal for such an endeavour.
OK, so eagles, hawks, bats and many other avians, as well as local marsupials would be culled as a results, and the landscape would look ugly to all but a Green, but that’s a small price to pay for saving the planet.
And I forgot again. The other thing that removing all the trees in the High Country would do is pretty much stop bush fires and resultant carbon emissions, also saving the planet.
Thanks to Climategate emails, eighty-two years of fake science (1935-2017) are being replaced this Easter with the empirical fact that, “The Universe Is In Good Hands“
Wishing you, Jo, and your family and all bloggers a very Happy Easter.
For us it is a happy sign of the Resurrection that is special and makes everything else worthwhile. 🙂
Happy Easter to you Annie, we non believers in recent years have come to realise how important the Christian faith is in western based societies due to a massive lack of judgement or intent by our elected leaders to allow history to repeat.
Needless to say for a few of us our resolve to restore these values entwined with our laws has been included for the plight of those that hold faith in their god and country but are under constant attack from anti-human elements within the very country they love, nothing good can come from this decay where people that desire open, lawful safe society are concerned and as such must be cleansed from the very fabric of our moral consciousness.
You don’t have to believe the “back stories” to appreciate the morals and values which have been a large part of western civilisation for over 1000 years.
Remember for example King Ælfred’s Domboc which defined a rule of law over the extant rule of men; a work that reflected the King’s interpretation of Christian beliefs.
Such must the weighed against the errant burden placed on populations by a Church that governed the State for centuries after the Crusades. The Crusades were a response to centuries of invasions, wars, plundering and abductions into slavery by Muslims; which saved the Christian Church’s ass, so to speak, but those who “paid” for the Crusades were punished by subjugation to the one religion until centuries later; one dissident monk nailed his ideas to the door of a cathedral; and then later the Enlightenment unshackled State from Church.
For an all too brief period, that separation of church and state worked quite well but over the past 120 years or so, the welfare state has become as worthy of worship as any other false gods have ever been. If you obey the state; the state will provide for all your needs. It’s easy to mistake the womb of mother state as a comfortable place; until one sees that that womb is also a prison where one cannot act according to one’s own, free will.
In an Easter-ly simile, I conclude that the Chicken State is preferable to the Mother State. Once you crack your shell, you’re free to think and do as you see fit. Trying to contain freedom only results in tragedy.
The western view of the world and laws are Biblically based, and conservatism favours families, which us why if Godless socialism isn’t checked soon, loss if Christian influence will create a rudderless ship with no moral absolutes and a Nazi mentality will rise once more…
Victorian wholesale electricity prices double in April following the closure of Hazelwood:
For 2016 the average Victorian wholesale price according to AEMO data files was $46.14/MWhr, with a monthly range from a low of $29.90 in December to a high of $92.77/MWhr in June (in May 2016 South Australia’s last coal fired power station closed, so Victoria increased supply). However through June and July 2016, planned work to upgrade the Heywood interconnector between Victoria and South Australia frequently reduced South Australia’s import capacity.).
In 2017, average monthly Victorian prices have been $62.04/MWhr in Jan, $86.05 Feb, $90.63 March, and April to date $109.68/MWhr (Daily range $71.08-140.99).
As Tony from Oz has so well documented, Hazelwood closed at the end of March, yet during March it delivered more power than all of the wind stations in Australia. While Victoria still has capacity to often send power to SA, NSW and Tas, it appears to be doing so by increasing the use of gas fired stations.
There is an interesting article by the Australian Energy Council in Sept 2016 “South Australia’s power shock delivers important lessons”. (The Australian Energy Council represents 21 major electricity and downstream natural gas businesses operating in competitive wholesale and retail energy markets).
“South Australia is discovering that an energy supply portfolio based on very large amounts of renewable generation is not without its challenges”.
“If a wind generator chooses not to generate, it will effectively lose money since it will not generate a subsidy under the Federal Government’s Renewable Energy Target (RET) scheme… This is why, at times, a wind generator may bid into the market at a negative price – it is prepared to pay the market to take its electricity because it knows it will get revenue from the subsidy.”
“The price cap (maximum price) is currently set at $14,000 MWh. Under a 100 per cent renewable scenario, a maximum price cap of between $60,000 to $80,000 MWh may be required to bring generation into the market when supply is tight. This means that wholesale prices could fluctuate between negative prices to $80,000 MWh.”
Will we see a similar report for Victoria as we head into winter with increased demand for gas heating and wholesale electricity prices in 2017 double those of 2016?
Will the politicians finally demand action? (or simply set up yet another inquiry?)
The next time anyone mentions to you, any of you, anything about the Great South Australian blackout of 28th September 2016, refer them to the image shown at this link.
Se that vertical drop from 950MW of wind back to zero.
The South Oz politicians want you to believe that this is what happened.
The regulators saw that drop to zero. They then informed the relevant authorities, who then informed the Government Minister, who then informed the State premier. They discussed what to do, got back to the regulators, and told them to fire up that Pelican Point plant immediately, not understanding that this CCGT plant would take hours to get back up and running. Told of this, the Premier and his Minster then found that the blame lay solely with the operators of that power plant.
The did all of the above in, umm, 0.8 seconds, the time for that vertical drop you see in the image.
A Happy Easter to readers.
As my previous reminiscence attracted some favour I thought another might be appropriate, but having run out I will ask you to imagine yourselves in the future looking back.
A Future Reminiscence
I was lazing on a hillside enjoying the warmth and looking down on the tropical blue water in the bay, when the voices of the native children at Sunday school floated up to me.
“Though it covers less than a see-through nightie
I still believe The Science of Algore almighty”
I wondered which cult the earlier missionary had belonged to, and when the song had been taught first to the children. It had obviously survived in this idyllic, if out of the way, place untouched by events in the great world. Not that I was complaining about being there, even with the work involved. I was there to measure the sea level rise, which had taken me about 10 seconds yesterday to read the gauge on the jetty. The readings were another holdover from that turbulent earlier time. One day someone would realise that the sea level had been falling for 25 years along with the global temperature, but in the meantime it was a perk of being a public servant to have a two week all expenses paid sojourn here, and escape the bitter weather at home. There were several of us here, some had brought their wives, others had acquired temporary local substitutes.
Global Warming or Climate Change I wondered? thinking of the great schism preceding the collapse. Al Gore had been acclaimed by both as a prophet, and both sects had many adherents, not that anyone admitted to that these days. The differences that split the believers seem trivial now, although it caused much agitation then. The Global Warmers claimed that man made emissions caused the Earth to warm which would change the climate disastrously. The Climate Changers were less precise just claiming that any change in the climate was the fault of mankind. Both agreed that everybody, except themselves, had to change their lifestyle. This in turn caused further schisms e.g. between those who wanted to ban all fires in winter time and those who wanted a complete ban on burning anything but jet fuel. Then the use of candles for lighting was another source of discord. Many in both sects, especially those from parts with high rainfall, were less than enthusiastic about the call for living in mud huts. The debates resulted in a loss of confidence in The Cause.
A further annoyance was the rise of other prophets e.g. in NZ the (self styled) Rev. RahRah Whacko who claimed that Climate Change was caused by purple dragons. He campaigned with a choir of front row rugby forwards; whose singing wasn’t very good but no one dared tell them so.
RahRah Whacko gained quite a following in NZ itself and some in many other parts of the World, and set up the IPPD (International Panel on Purple Dragons). He annoyed the established sects by claiming that his idea was a far more logical cause of Climate Change than anything they had produced and demanded an open debate about the causes. The IPCC was horrified by the idea of public debate and tried to ignore him. Efforts by trolls to denigrate the Rev. RahRah Whacko were stifled by a visit from the choir which caused that troll to sing a different note.
But things started to go downhill for the Climate Change movement. Roger Harrabin, the GateKeeper at the BBC who censored anything not in accordance with the doctrine from being broadcast, was the first in a series of bizarre departures. He was in the party doing a documentary on wonderful wind turbines when one blade broke and a 3 metre long 200 kg. section flew at him at 300 kph and turned him into a mangled wreck. It rather put a dampener on his claim that turbines didn’t kill wildlife. Still, he got 173,907 views on YouTube.
Sir David Attenborough was sacked by the BBC when he used the celebrations for his hundredth birthday to call for compulsory homosexuality as the only way to reduce population growth. “He had been a bit difficult for the last few decades” said a spokesperson for the Corporation “so we have been grooming Brian Cox to take over”. The spokesperson was also promptly sacked as the BBC was still sensitive to words like grooming after the Jimmy Savile scandal.
Cox himself tried to laugh the matter off, but fell off the sundial he was standing on, and died of head injuries. The Coroner said a few pungent words about the script writers’ ideas, which didn’t get broadcast by the BBC.
In desperation the BBC resorted to Cedric the gorilla, who had no known vices save a fondness for bananas.
Odd disasters also befell other icons of the Climate industry at that time. Dr David Viner, the senior research scientist at the CRU (University of East Anglia) who claimed that “Children aren’t going to know what snow is” was struggling through the snow at the foot of a hill when he was struck by a runaway improvised sled carrying 6 children. He died 2 days later of his injuries, never conscious of the irony.
Professor Peter Wadhams was being filmed riding a bicycle down some steps on a Scottish hillside when he was struck by lightning. The Coroner also had pungent words for the script writers’ ideas, which also didn’t get broadcast by the BBC.
Mystery still surrounds the death of William Connelley (of Wikipedia editing infamy) in that the Coroner returned an open verdict. He refused to believe that the deceased had freely chosen to go jogging, in the nude, at night, in February. He called it ‘an unauthorised deletion.’
Tim Flannery was filming in the driest part of Australia for his new documentary “The Rain will Never Fall” when he was drowned in a flash flood.
In a touching Remembrance Service at the MCG, 57,000 sang “It ain’t gunna rain no more, no more, it ain’t gunna rain no more”.
The final disaster was the last International Conference on Climate Change, held as usual in warm, picturesque foreign city, so delegates could have weeks away from the wintry conditions in the Northern Hemisphere. This time it was in Central America. As Al Gore started his opening address he reassured the assembled delegates that the rumblings from the nearby volcano were nothing to worry about. The TV links then went dead but the media next day reported the news – a pyroclastic flow had incinerated 10,076 delegates and approximately 13,000 Greens activists. There! I knew you wanted a happy ending.
Addendum.
The Climate Change movement collapsed. That left no one to argue with, so the Rev. RahRah Whacko retired in a huff (a small Maori dwelling). Yet many Australians are still annoyed at him for, to this day, the NZ flag sports a purple dragon, with a firm grip on the Bledisloe Cup.
Yes indeed when a group has lost the argument they have no where to turn apart from violence and threats. Much like the Christians, the skeptics of AGW will be persecuted and maltreated. Personally I’m looking forward to it as it will polarise the public and bring to a head the real issues instead of putting up with the nonsense and daily boring routine of MSM fake news that only helps perpetuate a brain dead society.
We are talking about a war of words, not sticks and stones, the paradigm will be overturned in due course.
Its time to start the conversation about global cooling signals, without catastrophism, so that Cory Bernardi has the ammunition to take on the Establishment.
I’m confident, this far out from an election, that it’ll be a ‘shoe in’ for the Coalition because they get the energy balance right.
How many cold signal events will we need to have before people realise that the world is definitely not warming and is most probably cooling and the Greens, politicians, “scientists” and public serpents have been lying to them?
Daily life will be harsh and expensive without the widespread availability of cheap, reliable and environmentally friendly coal, gas and nuclear generation, and hydro where available.
Concentrating on Europe first, another cool wet summer could be in store and then hopefully a return to the winter of 1963. They say it got down to -22 C in some parts of the UK.
In Australia the tropical north should cool and the Alpine snow season starts earlier than anyone can remember.
The paleo data suggests that that with a global cooling cycle the equatorial Tropics don’t actually change very much in temperature at all.
No do the far polar regions get a great deal colder as they are about as cold already as they are likely to get .
The polar ice and snow and sea ice regions do however become very much more extensive in area and extensive in latitude with vast sea ice areas and extensive glacier and with much longer cold seasonal conditions and sea ice extending much further north and south into the lower latitudes from the current polar region sea ice and land ice boundaries.
[ Climate4you; LH Menu; Sea ice; Scroll through for map of historical northern sea ice extent and boundaries as noted from ships logs of the last 400 years. ]
It is those latitudes between the tropical regions of the Equator and the edges of the polar region’s sea ice and and expanded land ice regions that get progressively cooler as one moves north and south from the warm Equatorial regions which will show the greatest cooling and the most increased heat energy gradients in the oceans and the atmosphere.
And that leads to a much stronger temperature gradient across the latitudes.
Which in turn leads to a much greater flow of heat energy from equator to poles.
The polar regions are where the heat energy is radiated out into space but with such a low angle of incidence to the Sun and therefore low levels of incoming solar radiation, the radiated energy in the polar regions is not replaced by the very low angle and therefore low energy incoming solar radiation.
So the heat content of the polar regions if they are not to eventually to fall to the temperatures of space ie; close to absolute Zero due to the long term loss of heat energy to space, rely on the flow of heat energy brought to the polar regions by the ocean and atmospheric mass flows and eddies of equatorial origin, high heat content ocean waters and atmosphere which leads to a much greater turbulence of both atmosphere and ocean as the various masses of increased or decreased in temperature and therefore in heat energy warmer and colder air and water masses intermingle and intermix.
The greater turbulence due to the contrasts in temperature between the various parcels of air and water masses appears in the form of many more and far more intense storms and severe and fast changing weather as well as faster and much stronger in contrast and probably faster moving weather systems.
So a much rougher time for everybody in the next century or so ahead as well as for food crop production, energy use, communications and etc as the world cools as the Sun enters yet another of its great cycles that have no doubt been a part and parcel of the Sun’s existence since it settled down a few billion years ago into another form of a slow pulsing variable Star.
‘….the equatorial Tropics don’t actually change very much in temperature at all.’
That has always been my impression, but we maybe wrong, reading Jennifer Marohasy.
‘As part of ongoing research into natural rainfall patterns in Queensland, Professor John Abbot and I have been studying the temperature record for northeastern Australia, as temperature is a key input variable in our neural network models (e.g. Abbot and Marohasy 2014). Considering the data from the late 1800s until 1960, a cooling trend is evident, followed by warming between 1960 and 2001. In contrast, the last 12 years show quite dramatic cooling, All three periods have occurred while greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide, have been increasing in concentration in the atmosphere.’
EG, it was either ’86 or ’87 that we had -18C in Hampshire, (Dec’86 I think). I decided to defrost the freezer and just put the frozen food in poly bags and slung them out into the snow overnight while waiting; no danger of foxes eating the stuff then!
It was the time our youngest son wanted to go out to play and we wouldn’t let him because the blizzard was such that you couldn’t see to the end of what was a very short garden!
ROM most of the action is taking place in the midlatitudes.
‘Easter is relatively late, and the forecast is now calling for snow to hit large parts of Europe as a low pressure system (OTTO) centered over the Baltic sea will pump polar air across the continent — thus ushering in a nasty and possibly protracted spell of winter.’
The mid latitudes is where the action would be in a cooling world as I attempted to point out.
The correct term “mid latitudes” escaped me when I posted those above comments on how the increasingly large contrasts between the narrow band of the Equatorial regions with its fairly constant temperatures through both warmer and cooler episodes in the Earth’s ever changing and cyclic climate patterns and the expanding areas of very low temperatures in the polar regions high latitudes has created and will again in the future create much greater energy contrasts through the frequent shifts of the past cooling and warming global climate periods.
Those energy contrasts cut right right through the mid latitudes of the planet, between the narrow Equatorial band of the more or less constant average temperatures and the rapidly increasing and expanding areas of colder temperatures of the polar regions leading to very large shifts in the contrasts between the high heat energy content of air and water masses originating near the equator and the emission into space of heat energy from the cold and expanding air and water masses in the polar region latitudes during cooling episodes in the Earth’s ever changing climate .
So heat energy flowed/ flows much faster from the equator to the poles in a cooling climate due to the increased contrasts in available latent heat energy in the form of large masses of air and water inherent in the creation of every weather system leading to all sorts of very sharp contrasts in the temperatures of the various masses of equatorial origin warm air and warm water masses met the contrasting colder air and water masses of the polar latitudes.
Therefore far more turbulent flows of weather systems were created across all latitudes as this global sized transfer of heat energy from the equatorial regions to the colder low heat energy content polar regions and consequently more of and more intense storms and fast changing severe weather conditions particularly where the two contrasting temperature masses of air and water intersected right across the broad mid latitude regions.
All of the above allied with flooding and droughts and rapidly changing weather conditions and even longer term climate conditions coming into play across the globe as the globe cooled.
And as climate history has so often shown to those prepared to look with an open mind, will inevitably cool once again.
A cooling that might already be under way and may yet prove to be as disastrous for humanity as was that 14th century disaster.
————-
From; the University of Wisconsin.
A Distant Mirror – The 14th Century
Europe in 1300 was well on the way to rapid expansion. It was rapidly increasing in intellectual and mathematical sophistication. Technically, thanks to water power and the mechanical discoveries that flowed from it, Europe was in the midst of what many historians call the Medieval Industrial Revolution. One reason there seems to be such a break between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance was that there was in fact a break. The 14th Century was a time of turmoil, diminished expectations, loss of confidence in institutions, and feelings of helplessness at forces beyond human control. Historian Barbara Tuchman entitled her book on this period A Distant Mirror because many of our modern problems had counterparts in the 14th Century. Even the extinction of the human race, something we ponder in discussing nuclear war, was faced by medieval Europeans, in fact, far more directly than we ever have.
Two Great Natural Disasters
The Little Ice Age
Two great natural disasters struck Europe in the 14th Century. One was climatic: the Little Ice Age. This term is used in wildly varied ways by different authors, and there actually seem to have been two cooling episodes: an earlier one from the late 1200’s to 1600 or so, and a later one in the 1700’s and 1800’s. During the earlier one, the Baltic Sea froze over in 1303, 1306 and 1307, something never before recorded. Alpine glaciers advanced. The Norse settlements in Greenland were cut off and grain cultivation ceased in Iceland. The last ship sailed from Iceland to Greenland in the early 1400’s (tantalizingly close to Columbus); when contact was resumed in the 1700’s, the settlements were long abandoned. Starvation, disease, raids by English pirates and conflict with natives have all been suggested as causes, and all probably played a role in the demise of the colonies. In France, crops failed after heavy rains in 1315; there were widespread famine, reports of cannibalism, and epidemics.
The Black Death
If the Little Ice Age weakened Europe’s agricultural productivity and made life uncomfortable, the Bubonic Plague brought life to a virtual standstill.
Does anyone know where to get up to date comparisons of international electricity prices? Here is some old data that shows Australia at 29 US cents/KWhr in 2011, with Canada at 10 cents, USA at 12 cents, Germany at 35 cents, Denmark 41 cents.
The Australian Energy Council (run by electricity suppliers) reported electricity prices in 2014 from leading economies worldwide at equivalent purchasing power exchange rates (so some tricky manipulation): Canada at 8.5 US cents/KWhr, USA 12.5 cents, Australia at 20.5 cents, UK 22.0 cents, Denmark 29.9 cents, and Germany 37.8 cents.
It also reports industrial prices: Canada 8.7 cents, Australia 9.7 cents, USA 10 cents, UK 15.4 cents, Germany 19.7 cents.
Those prices for USA look spot on. I have been paying between 10 – 13 cents per kWHr. In recent time the prices have gone down towards the low end of that range.
As per my calculation, your electricity company pays about 13c kw/hr. Double that and you get 26c. That’s normal business markup. Of course the middle man does nothing, but that is quite normal too.
I believe the conversion into $US is not necessary and even misleading. The gap is much bigger.
The exchange rate is not a measure which can be used for comparison as apart from energy dependent products like aluminium, you cannot trade in electricity and the exchange rate is trade driven.
So we should compare the A29c directly against the US10-13c, 3x the cost. In fact I believe the 29c should be increased for the comparison.
Consider the Big Mac index which shows a Big Mac in the US at $US5.06 and in Australia at $A4.28, which means our domestic buying power relative to wages is higher by 20%, not lower by 25%. This means our energy costs are much higher for Australians, around 36c kw/hr, closer to 4x the cost.
here’s the current cost table (shown at this link) for the U.S. This is from the EIA. This is retail cost, and note the difference between Residential, Commerce and Industry. This current residential cost is around a third of what we pay here at retail in Australia.
The table shown at this link has a State by State breakdown, and note that the highest retail cost is in the North East, and in California, still way lower than what we pay here in Oz. Note for some States, it’s lower than 10 cents/KWH
Two sources. Firstly the carbon tax which has to be paid on coal and gas, currently 8c kw/hr. That makes 12c kw/hr. Then having sold off the distribution, everyone in business doubles their costs, so 24c kw/hr. Then opportunism up to 40c kw/hr.
The 4c kw/hr is all the base load stations get and they do not get that if the sun is shining or the wind is blowing at peak consumption times, so they get nothing and lose 4c kw/hr dumping. So they close. It was all designed to force the coal and gas power stations out of business and to send billions overseas for windmills and solar panels. All working quite nicely while Turnbull debates whether to introduce an ’emissions’ tax, another carbon tax for useless overseas pieces of paper or publicly subsidized imports.
As there is only one Green member of the democratically elected House of Representatives, it is amazing that Australia has by far the highest Carbon tax in the world but none of this is accidental. Whoever framed the RET laws knew what they were doing, even if no one understands it.
Large Generator Certificates have dropped from 8.9c kw/hr to 8.5c kw/hr and rising again. For this you get nothing, not even a piece of paper. Just a right to sell power and the money does not go to the government which administers the scheme electronically. In that way this useless right is not a ‘tax’ and certainly not a ‘carbon tax’. A cunning and probably illegal scheme outside any right of the government to legislate. I just hope Malcolm Roberts takes this to the High Court. It is the sole source of our record electricity prices.
Sorry, a right to buy power. Also the people who receive the money have to build power stations and generate power. The real hand grenade in the scheme is that they do not have to sell this power and get paid simply for producing it, any time they like, even if no one wants it.
Also they get to own the power station or wind or solar farm and get paid for its output, not the people who paid for it who received nothing in return. Contrast this with a tax to pay for windfarms where the people of Australia own the power stations.
So the Government has passed in 2000 a law where we have to GIVE money to people we do not know so they can own windfarms? That is not a power a democratic our government has, outside a communist one. That is why it is illegal. No one, not even the Federal government can force you to give money to strangers to make them rich and us poorer. That is also true for home solar systems. Why should people who get them be given thousands of dollars from other electricity users, again not a tax.
Thanks for the detailed explanation TdeF. Given that all electricity bills have more than doubled due to windmills and solar even though they produce no more than 7% of the electricity, that means somebody (who, exactly?) is making an enormous amount of money from this wealth transfer.
TdeF,
Another scheme for strangers to trouser your money by govt decree is smart meters for electricity. You were required to pay a disguised sum to some parties in the know who bought bulk supplies of meters at a cost less than you paid. How much less is very hard to discover.
I tried hard to get a simple statement that it was compulsory to purchase a meter. Despite loud public statements that they were compulsory, nobody would put that in writing for me.
Perhaps the reason was that our Constitution did not allow the compulsory bit.
The whole smart meter thing was a massive con sold to the public on the message that it was a benefit to all concerned. Why, you could even read your own meter to determine best times to turn on your appliances. Some benefit. Does anyone ever do that?
Waiting for someone less tired than self, to rip into the probity of the smart meter con.
QUOTE
Petrichor (/ˈpɛtrᵻkɔər/) is the earthy scent produced when rain falls on dry soil. The word is constructed from Greek πέτρα petra, meaning “stone”, and ἰχώρ īchōr, the fluid that flows in the veins of the gods in Greek mythology.
[…]
In the article, the authors describe how the smell derives from an oil exuded by certain plants during dry periods, whereupon it is absorbed by clay-based soils and rocks. During rain, the oil is released into the air along with another compound, geosmin, a metabolic by-product of certain actinobacteria, which is emitted by wet soil, producing the distinctive scent; ozone may also be present if there is lightning.
Some of the videos are done in cooperation with Central Washington University’s Nick Zintner and his “2 minute geology” videos.
Near the bottom of the page is a photo of the 3 folks involved.
Thanks, John, they now have an airstrip at the Lodge, and a helicopter pad, though I have landed on the beach in a Cessna. Trikes do fly there from enthusiasts based in Kununurra. They have a fuel dump at the Berkeley, taken by barge. The resort materials were all brought in by barge. Thanks for your comment, but these things scare me.
This week the US used the MOAB bomb to eliminate 36 terrorists in Afghanistan.
Now, in terms of shock and awe, it is a very impressive weapon with its 11 tons equivalent TNT blast yield (8500kg of H-6).
Many media outlets have said it costs US$16 million per piece of ordnance making the cost per kill unreasonably high. In fact, its real cost according to the US Air Force is $170,000 or in this engagement $4,700 per kill which is far more reasonable.
Besides, from the point of view of the US demonstrating to bad guys all around the world (eg Iran, Nth Korea etc) the PR value of demonstrating America is “back in business” again and will not be pushed around as under Obama is priceless.
The number killed is now estimated to be near 100.
However, the number is not a big thing.
What is news to some is that the big bomb exists, can be delivered anywhere in the World, and is very destructive to hardened facilities. (Those that follow such military weapons were already aware of this bomb.)
The attack on the Syrian airfield showed the accuracy of modern GPS guided weapons. Still, I think 2 missiles were used for each structure — a “Double tap.” Courtesy of the Red White and Blue [Toby Keith lyrics]
However, for many around the world this is a holy season.
It would be nice to have a few days of peace.
The Red White and Blue is fine with that, too.
Peace!
I was not sure why they would deploy in effect a dairy cutter ( a bomb designed for open country use ) on caves….surely something like a bunker buster with a micro-nuke ( low yield tactical nuke ) within it would make more sense….odd….
I was not sure why they would deploy in effect a dairy cutter ( a bomb designed for open country use ) on caves….
This one was a fuel / air explosive and was targeted on caves on a valley. Kills by concussion and that concussion / blast wave is VERY good at travelling down inside the cave and killing people. Pentrators are for a different more defined target set, and using nukes for something like this would just be arrant silliness.
The US have a history of dropping their massive ‘daisy-cutter’ bombs in Afghanistan, and that didn’t really seem to make the news for days on end like the MOAB has. Presumably if Trump was not president, the use of such a weapon would be no more than a historical footnote.
Quite frankly, I fail to see what the fuss is about. Numerous nerve agent attacks on civilians in Syria have received far less coverage, and in my mind, are much more important stories which need to be talked about, and investigated to the n-th degree.
The most wonderful thing for me was the bomber a 1950,ties transport aircraft the old Herci bird, Lockheed made a ripper of an airplane plane no less an icon than the DC3 of the 1930,ties.
The engines are a reject from RR, and the propellers are a work of art to make them work, but work they do,reliable and quite. The old DC3 was turned into a gun ship called Puff the magic dragon forty years after it was first manufactured. The Hercules sixty odd years after it took to the skies is dropping the MOAB,s amazing.
On this most sacred of days, let us remind ourselves of the Méssiah’s teaching.
Let us pray.
Our Méssiah who art in Hollywood,
Keanu be thy name.
Thy sadness had come.
Thy will be The One,
In the Matrix as in the Sequels.
Give us this day our Easter Egg,
And forgive us our cruel image memes,
As we “Be excellent to each other”.
And lead us not into Scarlett Johansen,
But John Wick defeat evil.
For thine is the action,
the adventure, and romantic comedy,
for the foreseeable future.
F’kin ‘A’, man.
happy easter to jo & family, and everyone else here…
15 Apr: SanJoseMercuryNews: Editorial: More than symbolism, March For Science a matter of life and death
Here’s how bad things are in America today: Scientists feel so under siege, they have called for a March for Science on Earth Day, April 22.
Of all places, the Bay Area should respond in force. We know the vital role scientific research plays not only in our economy but our very lives.
But now evidence-based research is under attack to a stunning degree. Researchers’ budgets are shrinking fast, and when politicians decide scientific conclusions are not to their liking they simply shut down that line of research.
Science never should be a partisan issue. It is exploratory in nature. Scientific deductions are expected to raise questions and spark honest debate. But that’s where peer review comes in to examine the findings and even try to duplicate the process that led to them. Doubt about results of experiments and research should inspire more investigation, not suppress it…
Scientists try to stay apolitical. We get that. But politics has engulfed them. They have truth on their side, and they need to stand up for themselves — and for the future of America. http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/04/15/editorial-more-than-symbolism-march-for-science-a-matter-of-life-and-death/
editorial does not mention CAGW at all.
3 comments:
Shadrach Smith: It’s a march for AGW research jobs. Best of luck.
Marc Herrington: Is this the science that told us hydrogenated margarine was better for us than real butter? There is so many phony research, it needs to be cut back.
SM650: I don’t think people realize how much science and it’s breakthroughs or discoveries have changed our lives for the better. SCIENCE SAVES LIVES.
15 Apr: Townhall: Paul Driessen: Real Science Must Guide Policy
McKinsey & Company, the UN and assorted activists say the world must spend $93 trillion over the next 15 years to convert completely from fossil fuels to “sustainable” energy! Or it will be too late. Our planet will be doomed.
Claims and demands like those require solid, incontrovertible proof that climate alarmists are right. Not just computer models, repeated assertions, “peer review” among like-minded researchers seeking their next government grant, or a partial-degree of warming amid multiple El Niños and cooling cycles. They require “Red Team” analyses and open, unfettered debate over every aspect of human and natural influences on Earth’s climate, the ways carbon dioxide improves plant growth, and the need for abundant, reliable, affordable electricity and motor fuel for every person in every nation.
11 Apr: HighCountryNews: Gary Wockner: California isn’t accounting for this major emitter
Even though large reservoirs emit methane, the state doesn’t off-set their impact.
(Gary Wockner is the director of the Save The Colorado River Campaign and the author of River Warrior: Fighting to Protect the World’s Rivers)
But there are caveats to (Gov Brown’s) commitment, including the continued growth in fossil fuel extraction in California and the state’s near-explosive population growth, both of which drive emissions up, not down.
There’s another issue that California needs to address, and that’s methane emissions from hydropower, particularly at Hoover Dam, the source of a significant portion of Los Angeles’ electricity.
Twenty-five years ago, a small team of scientists in Brazil started measuring the methane produced at hydropower dams and reservoirs. Led by Philip Fearnside, the scientists found surprising results, indicating that hydropower dams and reservoirs in tropical countries like Brazil emit high levels of methane, sometimes equivalent to as much as a coal-fired power plant. Fearnside referred to these hydropower producers as “methane factories.”…
In September last year, an international team of scientists synthesized dozens of studies around the globe and found that hydropower’s methane emissions have been dramatically under-measured…
Further, another study, published in September 2016 by a team of Swiss scientists, used previous measurements at dams and reservoirs around the world to create a model that estimated methane emissions from nearly 1,500 hydropower plants and other dams and reservoirs across the planet. The study’s conclusions further rocked the climate change world: Climate change emissions from Hoover Dam and Lake Mead on the Colorado River near Las Vegas were found to be about equal to those of coal-fired power plants that produced the same amount of electricity…
About 50 percent of Hoover Dam’s electricity is wired to the Los Angeles area. Yet no greenhouse gas emissions calculations — in Los Angeles or statewide in California — include Hoover Dam’s contribution. That’s like having a large coal-fired power plant burning in downtown Los Angeles whose climate change impact is completely ignored.
California has 1,400 dams and reservoirs. Most of them produce far less methane than Hoover Dam, but many of those dams’ emissions are neither estimated nor measured. It’s time for California to acknowledge its methane emissions from hydropower, measure them, and finally, offset or stop them. http://www.hcn.org/articles/california-isnt-accounting-for-this-major-methane-emitter
The believers in AGW need to get their act together; do they want renewables with storage? In which case they need pumped storage, batteries won’t do it. Otherwise do they propose electricity only when the wind blows or the sun shines? Or are they advocating stopping electricity all together?
16 Apr: Guardian: Kenneth Kimmel: Why scientists are fighting back. We’ve had enough of Trump’s war on facts
The president’s savaging of environmental safeguards is a direct attack on reason and research
(Kenneth Kimmell is president of the Union of Concerned Scientists, a US-based nonprofit organisation)
As a colleague observed: “You know you’re in trouble when scientists take to the streets.” He’s right. I’ve worked closely with scientists for decades and, by training and temperament, they tend to be happiest in the lab, testing and retesting experiment results – among the last groups of people you might expect to find protesting…
Nowhere is the attack more ferocious than on the issue of global warming, where the Trump administration has taken a wrecking ball to the modest but important policies put in place by President Obama…
The attack on science is coming not only from the Trump administration. Private groups, such as the fossil-fuel funded Heartland Institute, have mailed extraordinarily misleading booklets entitled Why Scientists Disagree About Global Warming (sic), vowing to make sure that every school science teacher receives this disinformation presumably to weaken the consensus the climate change is real and burning fossil fuels is its primary cause…
Yet something even bigger also seems to be brewing. For a long time, many of us have believed that facts speak for themselves, and scientists could remain on the sidelines to avoid “politicising” their work…
This fact-based community includes journalists who are calling out falsehoods despite being branded enemies of the American people…
My organisation, the Union of Concerned Scientists, with its more than 500,000 members and supporters, has joined with allies from the climate, environmental justice and labour movements to help organise both the March for Science and the People’s Climate March.
As the demonstrations are likely to show, an enormous number of people understand what is stake. The greatest attack on science in memory may wind up spurring the greatest mobilisation of scientists, and allies far and wide, we have ever seen.
***(Comments will be switched on later) https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/apr/15/why-scientists-are-fighting-back-we-have-had-enough-of-trump-war-on-facts
14 Apr: UK Telegraph: Steven Swinford: Britain preparing to scrap EU green energy targets as part of a bonfire of red tape after Brexit
Britain is preparing to scrap EU green energy targets which will add more than £100 to the average energy bill as part of a bonfire of red tape after Brexit…
The UK is currently on course to miss the target and incur millions of pounds in fines from the European Union.
Government sources told The Daily Telegraph that the target, under the EU Renewable Energy Directive, is likely to be scrapped after Brexit.
The Daily Telegraph has called on the Conservative Party to promise a bonfire of EU red tape (LINK) in its 2020 manifesto to put Britain on a radically different course…
Boris Johnson, the Foreign Secretary, has “applauded” the campaign and he backed calls to sweep away decades of “burdensome” EU regulations after Brexit.
It comes after civil service documents, photographed on a trade, revealed that Britain plans to scale down its concern over climate change after Brexit…
Owen Paterson, a Conservative MP and former Environment Secretary, said: “It’s distorting the whole energy market. It’s like the Sherrif of Nottingham – it transfers money from my poorest constituents to my wealthiest constituents who are putting up pointless wind turbines heavily subsidised.
I would be very happy to see the back of it.”…
EU regulations are estimated to cost Britain a total of more than £120 billion per year…
After Brexit occurs in 2019, the merits of each regulation will be assessed before a decision is made on whether to jettison it or not. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/04/14/britain-preparing-scrap-eu-green-energy-targets-part-bonfire/
15 Apr: SMH: Kelsey Munro: Energy policy: Gladys Berejiklian government might be greener than Mike Baird’s
“Latest figures show our renewable energy sources already contribute 14 per cent to the NSW electricity energy mix,” (new Energy and Resources Minister Don Harwin) told Fairfax Media. “During the state’s heatwave on February 10 this year, at the time of peak demand, renewables provided 29 per cent of total energy generation.”
The government last week backed a Greens motion to support a technical change in the structure of the national energy market that would put batteries and other storage technologies on a level playing field with more established generators, with Mr Harwin saying in parliament he had already communicated that position to the Australian Energy Market Commission…
And the government’s submission to the independent review of the national electricity market, known as the Finkel review, said all options should be on the table, including “a mechanism that provides market signals and framing for orderly generation transition”.
This, Mr Harwin later said, was not code for a “carbon tax” but for an emissions intensity scheme.
Mr Harwin denied any shift in the government’s policy since the ascension of Ms Berejiklian, pointing out the NSW Climate Change Policy Framework was released in November last year, when Mr Baird was still Premier, “and it remains current”.
That document allocated $500 million for renewables over five years and laid out the state’s “aspirational” target of net zero emissions by 2050…
“The Berejiklian government knows renewable energy and climate action are what voters want,” said the NSW Greens energy spokesman Jeremy Buckingham. “They’re clearly and carefully diverging from the fossil fuel dead-enders running the Turnbull government.”…
One significant factor is that the economics have changed dramatically. It is now far cheaper to build large-scale solar or wind than new fossil fuel powered stations, Ms McKenzie (CEO, Climate Council) said, pointing to the Council’s recent report which found electricity from new coal-power stations would cost $160 per megawatt hour, while solar farms are around $110 per megawatt hour and falling.
“There’s no need for an ideological debate on climate or energy policy,” she said. “The debate is over and the economics should be pointing us all in the same direction.”… http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/energy-policy-gladys-berejiklian-government-might-be-greener-than-mike-bairds-20170414-gvkyod.html
16 Apr: Bloomberg: Electric Grid Study Ordered by U.S. Energy Chief to Boost Coal
by Jennifer A Dlouhy and Jennifer Jacobs
U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry is ordering a study of the U.S. electric grid, with an eye to examining whether policies that favor wind and solar energy are accelerating the retirement of coal and nuclear plants critical to ensuring steady, reliable power supplies.
The 60-day review, which Perry set in motion Friday, comes as regulators increasingly wonder how to balance electric reliability with a raft of state policies that prioritize less stable renewable energy sources…
In an April 14 memo obtained by Bloomberg News, Perry highlights concerns about the “erosion” of resources providing “baseload power” — consistent, reliable electricity generated even when the sun isn’t shining and the winds aren’t blowing.
“We are blessed as a nation to have an abundance of domestic energy resources, such as coal, natural gas, nuclear and hydroelectric, all of which provide affordable baseload power and contribute to a stable, reliable and resilient grid,” Perry wrote in the memo to his chief of staff. But in recent years, grid experts have “highlighted the diminishing diversity of our nation’s electric generation mix and what that could mean for baseload power and grid resilience.”…
15 Apr: Sacramento Bee Editorial: Lawmakers face a new decision that will affect your wallet
Cap-and-trade certainly has generated revenue for the state, $4.4 billion and counting. The April 6 decision upholds the current program, but lawmakers should not breathe easily…
To be certain that a new cap-and-trade program would weather a new legal challenge, Brown has urged legislators to approve it by a two-thirds vote, the requirement under state law for authorizing tax and fee increases. That would be wise.
Wise but not easy, not after legislators agreed earlier this month for the first time in two decades to raise gasoline taxes 12 cents a gallon and other fees to generate $5 billion a year to pay for road maintenance and transit. The costs of cap-and-trade ultimately fall on us all…
Last year, Brown signed legislation calling for greenhouse gas emissions to be cut to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030. That’s an especially a tall order, one that will require ever tighter emission controls, more mass transit and still fewer gas-gulping vehicles.
The air resources board has set a goal of 4 million-plus zero-emission vehicles to be on the road by 2030. Even Fremont-based Tesla Motors, the leading electric vehicle maker, says that will be tough to meet given current incentives…
Lawmakers’ resolve will be tested again soon when they decide whether to extend cap and trade and how to alter it. When and if they cast that vote, they would do well to keep in mind that they cannot keep piling costs on motorists, particularly lower-income people who depend on their cars and trucks to make ends meet. http://www.sacbee.com/opinion/editorials/article144554914.html
6 Apr: Economic Times India: Swaminathan S. Anklesaria: Dark side of solar success: It may kill thermal power, banks
The latest solar power auction has yielded an electricity price of just Rs 3.15unit, down from Rs 5 two years ago. This seems competitive with coal-based thermal power…
What’s not to like? Plenty. Solar power has many hidden subsidies. Its true cost is far higher than for thermal power.
A far bigger problem is that solar power is given preference when supply exceeds demand, so thermal plants have to back down. The plant load factor (PLF) or capacity utilisation of coal-based plants was 76% six years ago, but is now just 58%. India used to be perennially short of electricity, but now most regions have surplus. India now exports power to Bangladesh, Nepal and Myanmar…
Around 65GW of new thermal power plants are already in the pipeline. These, plus new solar plants, threaten a rising power surplus at a time of tepid demand growth. The consequent PLF collapse could bankrupt many projects, hugely burdening lenders. Many banks are already staggering under enormous bad debts, and now face the threat of a fresh avalanche. That will hit the whole economy .
In sum, explosive solar power growth looks a blessing, but can become a curse. We should hurry slowly…
Solar power looks great when the sun shines, but stops at sunset, just as power demand soars to its evening peak. Much thermal power has to remain idle during the day, ready to pick up the slack when solar production suddenly stops. This forced idleness carries huge costs hidden by ostensibly cheap solar power quotations.
The notion that solar power has become cheaper than coal-based power is an illusion…An official answer to a question in Parliament said, “The government is promoting solar energy through fiscal and promotional incentives such as capital and or interest subsidies, tax holidays on earnings for 10 years, generation based incentives, accelerated depreciation, viability gap funding, financing rooftop solar as part of home loans, concessional excise and customs duties, preferences for power generated from renewables. “Whew!
Besides, the government offers a 25% capital subsidy for solar equipment production. The solar parks attracting the recent low bids get cheap or free land from state governments, a big implicit subsidy since 1,000MW needs 5,000 acres. At an investor conference last year, one solar entrepreneur estimated the true cost of solar power (sans implicit and explicit subsidies) at Rs 6unit without storage and Rs 8 unit with storage. A captive coal-based power station working flat out yields power at just Rs 2.50unit, far cheaper than solar power. Commercial thermal plants have quoted Rs 1.77 to Rs 4 unit.
Solution is easy for the real power plants, sit on their hands for a few days and do not fire up at night, solar should cover it. When people have had enough of sitting in the dark, things will change the time is rapidly approaching the real business without government prop ups needs to just say no it is my money not yours.
How to Rebuff a Climate Denier
Who denies climate? The report then goes on to provide not one fact about human impact on global warming.
The closest it gets is to quote that old consensus:
“A better headline might have been “EPA Chief Denies Scientific Consensus on Climate Change.” The subsequent text could have explained that, while 97 percent of scientists agree that humans are causing climate change, Pruitt contends there is “tremendous disagreement about the degree of [human] impact.” Pruitt, a longtime ally of fossil fuel companies, stands at odds with NASA, NOAA and the EPA, which state that carbon pollution from burning oil, coal and natural gas is driving the warming trend”.
I got a headache trying to follow their logic Robber. They are saying that you need to keep repeating the “truth” of the 97% consensus until no other opinion can pass the gate to your (now)fully closed mind.
Its going to take a lukewarm strategy from the Coalition to get a debate going, like a HELE close to the Adani mine.
Just spoke to a fella at Easter lunch and he said we don’t care what’s happening with climate change, renewables are cleaner and cheaper than dirty coal. I was armed with the words of Tony (our resident expert) but to no avail, so I let the matter drop.
After only one glass of Chardonnay I accused him of being a pseudo Marxist who wants to deindustrialise Australia. Yes, says he.
Mass delusion is now deeply intrenched and it will require a minor miracle to snap them out of this malaise. Adani maybe the trigger for a serious debate in the MSM.
There’s a dangerous belief that warmer = drier. For some of the world this may be true, but it’s worth considering the civilisation-ending droughts that came with wide scale cooling events like those around 2200BC and 1200BC. And you don’t have to look so far back.
The Northern Hemisphere’s cooling trend in the mid-20th century, which HH Lamb described as “the longest-continued downward trend since temperature records began”, peaked in the 1970s when NH snow and ice area increased very sharply (the earliest sat surveys showing 12% increase from 1967 to 1972).
And how was life in vulnerable regions back around 1972? Drought frequency in India, while not as radical as drought frequency prior to the improving phase 1925-70, had increased after 1960; while in Africa hundreds of thousands were dying at the peak of the Sahel Drought. All of this was in the lead up to the Global Cooling scare.
About the southern hemisphere Lamb wrote in 1977:
“There are indications that corresponding shifts have taken place in the anticyclone and cyclone belts of the southern hemisphere and that the droughts affecting Zambia, Rhodesia and parts of the Transvaal in recent years are essentially part of the same phenomenon.
“At the same time, the shifting positions from month to month, and from one year to the next, occupied by the main anticyclone centres in this belt have introduced an abnormal variability of temperature and precipitation. A similar development may explain the sequence of droughts and floods in different parts of Australia in 1972-3.“
So the smarties who are going to dial in a nicer climate by taxing carbon and erecting white elephants need to be careful which number they dial. Certainly not 1972, for all its ice!
But maybe that nicer/stabler climate never existed, and there’s nothing to dial.
I have a question about the certainty with which we attribute the increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration from 280ppm to 380ppm over the “modern era” largely to anthropogenic emissions. I have set out below what I believe to be the facts and the questions follow.
I am very keen to understand where I have got it wrong.
The facts about CO2 content in the atmosphere and the oceans, which are set out below, are from “Taxing Air – Facts and Fallacies about Climate Change” (2013) by Bob Carter & John Spooner pp 107-114 & 196-197.
There are minor discrepancies between numbers and I am sure that the apparent accuracy of the numbers belies the actual accuracy. However, the general magnitudes seem to be correct and the discrepancies are not relevant in the context of my question.
• The total mass of CO2 in the atmosphere is reported as 3,046Gt which is about 0.038% (380ppm) of the atmosphere.
• The atmospheric CO2 flows (i.e. emissions vs absorption) are largely in balance.
• However, the warmists claim that anthropogenic emissions are upsetting the balance, leading to an increase in the atmospheric CO2, and causing global temperatures to rise.
• Natural emissions are reported to be 743Gt per year, or 96% of all emissions, and human emissions are reported to be 29Gt/yr, or 4% of all emissions.
• The IPCC estimate for annual CO2 emission sources in 2005 is shown below (converted from Gt of carbon to Gt of carbon dioxide and rounded to nearest whole number):
Respiration (humans, animals, phytoplankton) 161 to 192
Ocean outgassing (tropical areas) 333 to 360
Soil bacteria, decomposition 185 to 222
Volcanoes, soil degassing 2 to 7
Forest cutting, forest fires 2 to 10
Anthropogenic emissions 27 to 28
TOTAL 710 to 829
Interestingly, the uncertainty in this estimate is 119Gt of CO2, 15% of total emissions or more than 4 times the quantity of anthropogenic emissions.
• The oceans contain about 38,000Gt of dissolved Carbon in the form of CO2. This is equivalent to about 140,000Gt of CO2 which is nearly 50 times the mass of CO2 in the atmosphere.
• CO2 is less soluble in warm water than in cold water so that, as the oceans warm, CO2 is emitted to the atmosphere (outgassing) and as the oceans cool CO2 is absorbed. Based on the IPCC estimate, between 333 and 370Gt of CO2 were emitted by the oceans in 2005 and this is apparently taken as the normal range under all conditions. This is about 12 times the mass of CO2 released to the atmosphere by way of anthropogenic emissions and the uncertainty of this estimate itself is almost twice the estimated quantity of anthropogenic emissions.
My questions:
1. With the high variability of the flows, particularly ocean outgassing, what is the evidence to support the claim (by skeptics as well as alarmists) that the increase in atmospheric CO2 from 280ppm to 380ppm (approximately 800Gt) in the industrial era is solely or largely attributable to increases in anthropogenic emissions?
2. To what extent is atmospheric CO2 concentration attributable to ocean outgassing?
3. Is there a correlation between ocean temperatures and atmospheric CO2 concentration? and
4. Why do I remember so vividly being taught in science classes at school and engineering lectures at uni, in the 60’s, that the atmospheric CO2 concentration was 0.04% (400ppm), or did I just sleep through those classes?
😀 No, you were wide awake… As were most of the readers here who were taught exactly the same general science facts; as opposed to the current UN Socialist propaganda being taught in the present-day indoctrination programs…
Thinking more about historic CO2 levels I came across the following papers by Ernst-Georg Beck which were published in “Energy and Environment” Vol 18, No2 in 2007 and Vol 19, No7 in 2008 respectively.
Beck was co-founder of the European Institute for Climate and Energy (EIKE) in Jena. Sadly he died in September 2010.
The first paper summarises “more than 90,000 accurate chemical analyses of CO2 in air since 1812” and refers to three high levels in 1825, 1857 and 1942 – at around or above 400ppm. Beck mentions that the IPCC claimed in its TAR that “direct measurements can only be relied on post 1957 and prior direct methods can be disregarded in favour of indirect measurements made of air trapped in ice.” – sounds a bit like Michael Mann and his selected proxies.
You would hate to think that good results from 1850 were ignored for want of ‘accuracy’ when people are claiming a 50% increase in 100 years. It really means modern scientists do not believe the results from 1850 are trustworthy to 50%. That would need explanation. Also I have real concerns about the physics of CO2 capture in ice because of differential leaching between CO2, O2 and N2 and like the tree rings, you have to have great faith in a hypothesis about ice capture against facts measured carefully at the time by many people. What does it matter if modern methods are accurate to ten decimal places if what is being measured has changed over a century?
I also was taught these facts and the average of the world was 14.7 C@1013Mb that was 55years ago when I was in class obviously science could not measure stuff 50 and 100 years ago. These people that call themselves scientists that disregard history need to look into a mirror to see what a fool looks like.
Henry’s law directly connects CO2 levels and ocean surface temperature. Warmer water releases CO2 and colder water absorbs it.
The IPCC get around this by only considering the top 100 metres of water, as if the 98% of CO2 dissolved in the remaining 3.3km of water is of little consequence and takes thousands of years to circulate to the surface. This unsubstantiated logic is very convenient because otherwise the whole story would be discredited. You cannot model a turbulent 3.4km of water in the laboratory, 3400 atmospheres of pressure in the laboratory. We know CO2 rises from the very bottom.
So the big omission is the half life of CO2 in the water, established easily at 14 years and claimed by the IPCC to be variously thousands of years down to 80 years. Quite obviously, they are just making it up. Like so much IPCC ‘science’.
Then there is the C14 measure which shows there is almost no fossil fuel CO2 in the atmosphere. No one debates these things, so you are not wrong. These are the inconvenient truths.
QUOTE
Plant stomata reconstructions (Kouwenberg et al., 2005, Finsinger and Wagner-Cremer, 2009) and contemporary chemical analyses (Beck, 2007) indicate that CO2 levels in the 1930′s to early 1940′s were in the 340 to 400 ppmv range and then declined sharply in the 1950’s. These findings have been rejected by the so-called scientific consensus because this fluctuation is not resolved in Antarctic ice cores. However, MacFarling Meure et al., 2006 found possible evidence of a mid-20th Century CO2 decline in the DE08 ice core…
END QUOTE
The is CO2 generally and a direct measurement is made in Radio carbon dating where the % of C14O2 has been wonderfully stable for 20,000 years at about one atom in a billion. It has only been varied by the atom bomb blasts made in the second half of the 20th century where it suddenly doubled and collapsed back to the old level in a perfect exponential curve, halving every 14 years. What this means is that we have a direct and very accurate measure of fossil fuel CO2 which has no C14 as opposed to modern CO2. We also have proof of the half life and obviously where the additional C14 went into some huge reservoir and there is only one.
So everything is known. Remember the proposition is that man made CO2 is dangerously heating the atmosphere. Radio carbon dating shows that if this is true, it is not man made CO2, which should end the argument. The whole story is so seriously wrong on every level you wonder how it continues.
I also read that we have been given another 10 years to save the planet, now that Gore’s original 10 year deadline has expired. This is so like the Rapture that it would be laughable, if our country was not being destroyed by Green ignorance and the wilful sabotage of professional Green politicians.
More evidence of cooling and yet Australia remains committed to destroying its energy infrastructure (Australia’s building of windmills and solar plant is not true energy infrastructure because it doesn’t produce reliable or cheap energy nor is it environmentally friendly in the case of windmills).
I read that Germany has just exceeded its agreed limit of CO2 emissions for the year 2017. I don’t know what the Merkelian destroyers plan to do to be “carbon neutral” for the next 8 months.
Elections in Germany’s most populous state on the 14th of May will be interesting; not only because of the devastating energy policies but because the traditional workers party (SPD) that’s had its base there since the early days of the federal republic, has parachuted in Sgt Schulz from Brussels to take over the federal reins and the running for Chancellor, later this year. And parachuted he has with a golden one thanks to his “retirement” from the EU, following revelations that he was topping up his allowances by gaming the system, on top of his base salary of €400,000 a year. Two-thirds of it tax-exempt.
The high school dropout and failed book-seller apprentice found his home in politics many years ago; much of it in the sheltered workshops of the EU. It’s pretty obvious where his “skills” lie. And that would earn him no respect at all from the hard working people of Germany; many of them forced out of work by Germany’s energy policy, burdensome regulation and painful taxes on any degree of private business success that is not sponsored by government.
Alas I fear that few Germans still bother to vote, having lost confidence or even hope that elections will provide any sort of real leadership to get them out of the deep manure in which they’re swimming every day. Thanks to the mainstream media and government over-funded electronic media, the German public have no idea that e.g. the “right wing populist” AfD project the spirit of the CDU that helped to build the republic into an “economic miracle” from the ashes of war, under the likes of Ludwig Erhard.
Even if AfD, PDV (Party of Reason; conservative libertarian) and FDP gain substantial ground in Germany’s parliaments, the CDU of the 21st century makes “deals with the devils” in alliances with The Left (decendents of the East German SED), SPD and Greens; just to retain a tenuous majority. A real change is only possible if the newcomers can establish majority governments.
Bernd, do you think Australia or Germany is worse in terms of CO2 madness? I suspect Australia is worse because even Germany is building more coal plant.
Australia is much more vulnerable to the actions of idiots.
Australia has a negligible manufacturing sector and only remnants of a middle tier; that’d be the equivalent of the German Mittelstand with small to medium enterprises filling niche requirements of bigger industry and consumers, while employing a very large part of the productive population. Australia is much more about storing, transporting and selling the “Brummagem goods and the slop”; as Lawson wrote on 1904.
German government cannot afford a collapse of its Mittelstand that is very dependent upon reliable and affordable energy sources. The profitability; indeed their viability; is dependent upon the productivity that such energy sources provide. The German tax base would evaporate. Cities are in financial distress when businesses that paid tax based on turnover to local government, shut their doors and move abroad to where energy is cheaper and more reliable. Those moves are very easy thanks to the proximity of e.g. Czechia and Poland; that do not partake the insanity; and the EU’s trade mechanisms. 😉
Environmental worship is deeply ingrained in Germans; it mainly goes back to the era between the WW1 and WW2; but there are strong threads back to the 18th century (and tenuous threads back to the iron age). To their credit, a growing number of real environmentalists are voicing protest at the prolific manifestations of the environmentally destructive Energiewende. After more than a decade of me pointing out the inevitable “necessity” of pursuit of the Energiewende; they are coming to realize that their precious landscapes, rural regions and parks are being converted to industrial estates.
. .the “right wing populist” AfD project the spirit of the CDU that helped to build the republic into an “economic miracle” from the ashes of war . .
G’day Bern,
My father was a Major in the British Army (Royal Engineers) and was posted to Germany for the rebuilding efforts after WWII.
I was also christened in Germany and apparently have a German Officer as my Godfather – a friend and work colleague of my Father. My Mother told a few amusing tales of their time in Germany, one of which was the exuberant knees-up at my Christening in the Officers Mess.
Germany is renowned for their engineering and I hope my Father’s and Godfather’s meagre contributions won’t go to waste.
My father, as a youth, having fled the Soviet sector in 1948 by wading down drainage ditches with water up to his chin, got scooped up by the British. One of his work assignments was to help expand a large airstrip at Celle-Wietzenbruch for the Berlin Airlift. The blockade ceased before that expansion was fully utilised. But a “line had been drawn” to Soviet expansionist ambitions.
Germans, collectively and individually, should be grateful, especially to the British for the generous management of the post-war situation in Germany, but also to the USA which provided the materiel as well as inspiration for entrepreneurs. Sure; there were some mis-steps but in general, the mood was one or building a Germany that was better for everybody.
I visited the museum at Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin. The amazing things people did to escape the communist ‘paradise’ were very moving. Later on I was given a chunk of the Berlin wall by a friend who was living there at the time the wall came down.
I was born in ’49 and going from photos of my Mum holding me at the christening, I can only guess it must have been somewhere around 1950 or so.
Unfortunately I have no knowledge of any particular project my Father may have been part of but now I’m wondering if my Father might have stumbled across yours.
Small world, as they say.
This comment is further up, but needs repeating for comparison of our energy prices. Exchange rate is misleading.
I believe the conversion of our rates into $US is very misleading because it should relate to our other domestic costs.
The exchange rate is not a measure which can be used for comparison as apart from energy dependent products like aluminium, you cannot trade in electricity and the exchange rate is trade driven. You need to compare domestic costs.
Consider the Big Mac index which shows a Big Mac in the US at $US5.06 and in Australia at $US4.28, which means our domestic buying power relative to wages is higher by 20%, not lower by 25%. Hamburgers, a complex formulaic mix of labour, overhead, wages, taxes are cheaper in Australia. This means our energy costs are much higher for Australians, so you should increases our domestic charges by 20% to compare with US charges.
We are not only charging ourselves far too much for our own coal and gas, we are sending the money overseas under the RET.
What stays in Australia is owned by overseas interests too and we are charged again for the ‘free’ solar and wind. We are not the ‘smart country’.
Frankly it is smarter for Engie/Mitsui to get into the river of easy money than try to sell cheap power when 2x the cash goes to someone else for supplying nothing.
My point is that when comparing the price of anything, you have to consider so many domestic factors none of which is exchange rate. Even within America there are great variations in the cost of a Big Mac as $1 has different buying power. This is no my idea but a well known way of assessing relative costs. Australian electricity is 20% more expensive relatively to our costs than it seems where using the exchange rate is not relevant. Better to scale with the cost of a Big Mac.
I don’t know what they charge in northern NY as I only eat food, but given Americans propensity to eat unhealthy food, the demand may be higher so they can demand a higher price!
These are national averages. It works as an economic indicator even within countries.
The price varies across the US by +/-20%. A big component in the price is rental, which goes way up in the inner city where you have the population densities. The other is transport, obviously a problem in Alaska. So the cheapest is in Kansas at $4.02 (Average). Juneau Alaska is $4.82. I have read that in New York city it is about $6.30 but you would not move to New York to save money.
It’s okay to say that wind power is variable, but even when that is mentioned (very rarely) it’s hidden in the main text of how good wind power is, so people see it and are ambivalent about, mainly because they don’t really know what that means.
You can say that wind has an average Capacity Factor (CF) of 30%, but again, people have no real idea what that means.
So, what do you do when there are times like this.
Over the last seven days here in Australia, wind power is averaging only 515MW average power delivery per day. (and that’s a CF of only 13.2% for seven days now)
There are good days, and there are bad days, and going even deeper, there are good hours and bad hours.
Traditional power generation is at the maximum for each unit, all the time, not up and down. How easy is it for the people working on delivering that power to actually be able to do that when it is a straight line maximum power delivery all the time, knowing well in advance when it is not going to be there, maintenance periods etc, so they can have another power plant of the same power generation ready to take over.
Now we have the case where, even though that maximum Nameplate for wind power is 3900MW, the average (at that 30% CF figure) is only 1150MW, and while you say that’s an average, it’s spread across the whole year, good days, bad days, good hours bad hours. Those controllers have to be ready at a seconds notice to bring those other plants on line to cover when wind generation drops, and then drop them off line also at a moments notice. Or have then running all the time, just waiting.
That’s why power is expensive. On and Off, on and off, all the time, not just run, generate, deliver.
Then you have times like this, the last SEVEN days.
Wind has averaged only 515MW for seven full days and that’s at a CF of only 13.2%.
Until people actually understand that, and realise what it means, then all you’ll get is grumbling about the cost of power, without ever seeing an explanation as to why it is expensive, how unreliable wind is, and the ramifications of what that unreliabilty leads to.
30%. Thats 7.2hours from 24 hours. So seven hour power. About the same with solar.
On demand? Never.
So the base load remains unchanged and you have to pay for that as well, so there is no saving in replaceables.
Far worse is that the billions we are paying directly in our electricity bills just to build windmills are going to private companies who will then charge what they like for something which cost them nothing, especially when we shut down and blow up our parents’ billion dollar power stations which work.
So there is no point to solar or wind, except for places where there is simply nothing else. I have been in India when the whole factory shut down for half an hour because there was no wind. That is not a factory.
Two weeks ago I posted about wind farms near to Goulburn and Crookwell NSW that I observed over a couple of days, at one site most turbines not rotating and at another none rotating.
And right now NSW wind farms are generating about 2 MW, compared to a registered capacity of 651 MW according to the Aneroid website. While SA and Vic wind farms are each delivering about 50 MW each. Hydro is delivering 500 MW, and solar 200 MW. But those nasty fossil stations are delivering 18,000 MW to keep our lights on.
While in the south east of SA last week I slipped over the border to visit the Heywood interconnector just to see what it is. I figured I could find it by looking for large transmission pylons and lines. Sure enough, I saw a set heading towards SA at right angles to another set coming from Portland, most likely connecting the windmills near Cape Bridgewater. It is about 5km south of Heywood not far from the road to Portland.
It’s an impressive looking beast to say the least. Took a few photos.
16 Apr: Local Sweden: White Easter: Sweden wakes up to snow and record low temperatures
In Örebro, the mercury dropped to -14C, making it the coldest April night since 1944, according to P4 Örebro.
In Karlstad, Sweden’s meteorological institute SMHI said temperatures reached -9C, meaning it was the coldest night of April since 1985.
In Floda, Södermanland, things were even colder, reaching -17C. That was the coldest night measured since the local weather monitoring station was set up in 1995…
In Götaland, since the start of the 2000s, the mercury has only slipped below the -10C mark four times… https://www.thelocal.se/20170416/white-easter-sweden-wakes-up-to-record-low-temperaturs
***imagine the carbon footprint of Andy Murray and his entourage annually.
16 Apr: BBC: Paul Rincon: Green groups warn of ‘race to the bottom’
Environmental groups have urged the prime minister to avoid watering down legislation on climate change and wildlife protection after Brexit.
The letter, signed by WWF, Greenpeace and others, says action is needed to halt ongoing environmental decline…
Campaign groups that have signed the letter include WWF, the Born Free Foundation, Cafod, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace and Oxfam.
A number of high-profile individuals are also signatories: they include ***Andy Murray, Anna Friel, Will Young, Lord Stuart Rose and environmentalist Sir Crispin Tickell… http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-39592515
16 Apr: Mashable: Bill Nye and Tyler, The Creator just dropped the hottest theme song ever
by Keith Wagstaff
The beloved TV show host tweeted this amazing encounter on Saturday. It shows the two talking about the theme song for Bill Nye Saves the World, which hits Netflix on April 21…
“That show, it got kids to not hate science class,” Tyler said of the original Bill Nye the Science Guy, which had a “really sick” theme song.
“You take out that snare, it could be a house song.”
Damn, I didn’t know learning about science was that cool.
Bill’s new show will be targeted more toward adults, with celeb guest stars and segments on topics like global warming…
Bill had plenty of praise for Tyler.
“I love you man!” he said.
OFWGKTA forever, Bill.
Bill Nye at the end, indicating Tyler…”original gangstas”…see Tyler’s face:
Their ABC is reporting on methane bubbling / escaping into the Condamine river , I’m sure that the seeps were there before the CSG industry but not according to the watermelons.
17 Apr: Gladstone Observer: Chris Lees: ‘My bill went up $1300’: Residents launch petition in fury over power price
A petition was launched by Sarah Lowcock, calling on more alternative choices to Ergon Energy for Central Queenslanders, after being slapped with a $2185.94 power bill.
“My bill went up like $1300 from the last bill and nothing’s changed,” she claimed.
“I’ve seen bills higher than mine too.”
The Gracemere resident is clearly not alone in her struggle with her quarterly bill having secured 3538 supporters…
Vikki Miro Valle, the director of Vikki Ship Supplies said electricity bills were one of their business killers and cost up to $3700 per month…
“Central Queenslanders only have access to one power company and we are all fed up with our high bills and no explanation into why they are so high,” the petition reads…
An Ergon spokesman said Ergon Energy does not set electricity prices for regional Queenslanders.
“They are set by the independent Queensland Competition Authority,” he said… https://www.gladstoneobserver.com.au/news/my-bill-went-up-1300-residents-launch-petition-in-/3167137/
17 Apr: EurasiaReview: Why India’s Economic Reforms Are Climate Unfriendly – Analysis
by Niharika Tagotra, Researcher, CRP
Budget 2017, in a major push towards achieving greater energy security, introduced policies for the conventional energy sector. These included setting up of two new strategic crude oil reserves in Odisha and Rajasthan; and a significant cut in the import duty on Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) from 5 per cent to 2.5 per cent…
Moreover, the Budget 2017 was silent on the most pressing issues concerning the renewable energy sector, including the extension of the Generation Based Incentive (GBI) scheme for the wind energy sector that expired on 31 March, 2017. This scheme, which has incentivised investments in the sector, was not extended further by the union government, and this is bound to affect the viability of the sector.
The budget also failed to provide incentives for the rooftop solar project that could contribute approximately 15 GW of energy by 2022…
Additionally, the budget was silent on the issue of strengthening the Renewable Purchase Obligations (RPO) market for the RE sector, the sluggishness of which has contributed to the low demand and lower investments in the sector…
For the RE sector, inputs such as solar panels and wind turbines will be taxed at 18 per cent under the new tax regime, up from the current 12 per cent, with no benefit of input tax credit. This will most likely result in a major cascading effect for the sector, thus pushing up prices. On the contrary, the GST is expected to bring down prices for coal as many state cesses that were previously charged on the dry fuel are expected to be subsumed under the GST…READ ON http://www.eurasiareview.com/17042017-why-indias-economic-reforms-are-climate-unfriendly-analysis/
17 Apr: The Hindu: R Srikanth: Solar plant installers feel the heat
Though Tangedco’s petition for the implementation of the new system is yet to be taken up for hearing by Tamil Nadu Electricity Regulatory Commission (TNERC), the move has confirmed the fears of solar installers who were wondering about the reasons for the delay in the installation of net meters for several rooftop solar plants…READ ON http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/chennai/solar-plant-installers-feel-the-heat/article18074948.ece
lol:
16 Apr: Hindustan Times: Sweta Goswami: Solar panel registrations begin in Delhi but applying remains a challenge
“A resident can visit our Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy Management (EE&REM) Centre page in the Delhi government website for registration. Scanned copies of the filled forms should be sent by email or in person,” an official said.
(Hindustan Times), however, later figured out that the government had failed to mention any email id where the filled applications could be mailed…
Here are some relevant parts of the ABC (fake) news on their website. My bolding
In a report to be released today, the University of Melbourne Energy Institute states the continued depressurisation of coal seams, combined with groundwater extraction by industry and landholders, “could significantly increase gas releases from weak or porous zones such as the Condamine River” in southern Queensland.
“CSG is one of the actors and it’s an actor that has increased activity quite recently, so there is certainly a correlation,” Melbourne University’s chair of geology Mike Sandiford, the report’s other author, told the ABC.
But the authors found a “paucity of data makes it impossible to definitively assess the impact” CSG production may have had on creating unintended gas leaks.
Gas seeps can occur naturally and contributory factors can include drought and flood cycles and an area’s geology.
In a statement to the ABC, Origin Energy said it had new data which showed methane emissions from the Condamine River had fallen significantly.
“Our data and CSIRO flux measurements show that peak rates of late 2015 to early 2016 have reduced substantially and we recently saw the lowest measurement since recordings began in 2013 — a reduction of over 60 per cent in the last six months,” it said.
“We have been monitoring the Condamine River seeps since they were first observed to have increased in 2012 and continue to work with independent researchers including the CSIRO to better understand the local geology and possible causes,” it said.
This seems to be how their ABC works, take some weak correlation and report it as fact with a suitable scary headline
Those who lack comprehension skills only read the headline and assume its true.
It would seems to me that if the coal seam is depressurised the seepage would diminish but “lets don’t let the facts get in the way of a good story”
ABC is fake indeed. So is the rest of the MSM, which is now just a propaganda machine for the socialists, and so the systemic crash and burn scenario is getting much closer.
Earlier this year the Hockey Schtick ran a story on a new paper which pours cold water on the theory that global warming causes more severe storms. So all intense and unseasonal storms can now be blamed on global cooling.
‘A paper published today in Science contradicts the prior belief that global warming, if it resumes, will fuel more intense storms, finding instead that an increase in water vapor and strengthened hydrological cycle will reduce the atmosphere’s ability to perform thermodynamic Work, thus decreasing the formation of intense winds, storms, and hurricanes. The authors demonstrate instead that if warming resumes:
“Although the hydrological cycle may increase in intensity, it does so at the expense of its ability to do work, such as powering large-scale atmospheric circulation or fueling more very intense storms.”
Old Sol quietly slumbering whilst the warmanists scream catastrophe, if one looks at the only reason the earth survives, the sun and its history, it is not hard to see patterns,cycles within cycles,I am not real bright but the near future looks cooler. This for me is important as I keep my woman warm with fire wood,as a young man of 72 years of age the less fire wood I need to cut carry and split the better.This AGW stuff is wearing rather thin when all things point to colder.I live in southern Vic and about six weeks time are heading to southern Qld on my Harley to visit my daughter I am wishing for global warming.
I have seen so much crap propounded as science in my life that the main stream of life have lost me, hermit tho’ I be i am doing exotic science, that is now finished shall put up a web site with a doco shortly for some impossible science that has been double proven.
16 Apr: LA Times: That $52-billion road bill just made California’s next climate change move a heavy lift
By Melanie Mason and Chris Megerian
It took late-night cajoling and nearly $1 billion in deal sweeteners for Gov. Jerry Brown and top Democrats to muscle through a $52-billion tax-and-fee plan just over a week ago to repair California’s roads.
Now they have to do it all again. Brown and legislative leaders have another daunting battle ahead over the fate of the cap-and-trade program, the centerpiece of California’s efforts to combat climate change.
The program requires companies to buy permits to release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and just like the road plan, it’s expected to require a two-thirds vote. That’s a tall order, even for Democrats who hold supermajorities in both chambers; the transportation legislation squeaked through without a vote to spare…
Extending the cap-and-trade program could mean an additional gasoline price increase of between 24 and 73 cents a gallon by 2031, according to the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office…
“A lot of my families in the district do have to drive long distances to work,” Assemblywoman Sabrina Cervantes (D-Riverside) said, adding that “it’s hard for my district to get access to clean vehicles” that require less gas.
She acknowledged that climate change is an “existential threat,” but said she’s uncommitted on cap and trade right now…
The environmental lobby, meanwhile, is split between national organizations that want to continue cap and trade and environmental justice groups that are concerned the program isn’t doing enough to alleviate local pollution.
Those groups felt particularly burned by the transportation deal, which gave the trucking industry a break on future antipollution regulations…
Now they have to do it all again. Brown and legislative leaders have another daunting battle ahead over the fate of the cap-and-trade program, the centerpiece of California’s efforts to combat climate change.
The program requires companies to buy permits to release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere,
That being the case then, the three CSP Plants (Solar thermal) in California will be subject to that cap and trade, as they burn significant amounts of natural Gas.
That must be a tad embarrassing, for renewable power plants being among those emitters eh!.
17 Apr: US Spectator: Stephen Moore: President Trump is the king of coal
(Stephen Moore is an economic consultant with Freedom Works and co-author of Fueling Freedom: Exposing the Mad War Against Energy)
Buried in an otherwise humdrum jobs report for March was the jaw-dropping pronouncement by the Labor Department that mining jobs in America were up by 11,000 in March. Since the low point in October 2016 and following years of painful layoffs in the mining industry, the mining sector has added 35,000 jobs…
Coal is indispensable today, even if renewable “green” energy starts to catch on, because wind and solar power are only viable with coal burning power plants as a backup for when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine. Without coal, green energy means rolling blackouts across America…
The climate change industrial complex pontificates that the U.S. has to stop using coal to save the planet. But even if the U.S. cut our own coal production to zero, China and India are building hundreds of coal plants. By not suspending American coal production, we are merely transferring jobs from the U.S. Do liberals care more about jobs in India and China than in America?
Renewable energy is at best one or two decades away from being a major energy source for the world, so until that happens, coal and natural gas will compete as low-priced and super-abundant, domestically produced energy sources for 21st century America
Coal isn’t dead in America. It is unleashed. As a Washington Times editorial put it very well recently, “The left gave up on the 100,000 coal workers in America more than a decade ago. Donald Trump has not.” Remember this the next time Elizabeth Warren or Nancy Pelosi lecture us about how much they care about the working class in America. https://spectator.org/coals-colossal-comeback/
what a turnaround, tho still couched in CAGW terms & exaggerating the extent of coal industry’s desire to stay in the Paris Agreement.
17 Apr: E&E News: Jean Chemnick: Climate and coal policies may sink or swim together
A safe climate and a future for the coal industry have long been viewed as diametric opposites, but in a world where the Paris Agreement is in force and Donald Trump is in the White House, their fortunes may now be linked…
Some environmentalists are also cautiously embracing the (CCS) technology’s development as one climate strategy that could actually win GOP support during the Trump administration.
“For us to have what we want, we have to take the long view,” said Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead (R). “The brightest future is continued use of coal, not only in the United States but in foreign markets,” he added. “And if country A and country B have strong feelings about climate change and how carbon dioxide affects that, we have to, in order to market coal, not only provide them with the coal, we need to provide them a solution that’s acceptable to them as relates to CO2.”
Greens, for their part, say they also are taking a long view — for the planet.
“Supporting carbon capture technology would meet the Trump administration’s objective of helping coal, but it will also be important for gas and manufacturing. In short, it’s a necessary technology for getting to the Paris Agreement goal of a global energy system that’s free from carbon emissions,” said Kurt Waltzer, special projects director at the Clean Air Task Force.
Cloud Peak’s CEO, Colin Marshall, wrote in a recent letter to Trump that staying in Paris would allow the United States to negotiate access to CCS financing from the World Bank, the United Nations’ Green Climate Fund and other institutions that have been more heavily weighted toward renewable projects (E&E News PM, April 6) (LINK).
No CCS projects have yet applied for funding under the nascent GCF, which aims to help poor countries ramp up low-carbon development and adapt to warming…
Not all U.S. coal companies share Cloud Peak’s view that staying in Paris and advancing CCS are top priorities. The National Mining Association and the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE) have opted to remain agnostic on the wisdom of staying in the U.N. agreement, while Murray Energy Corp. has pushed for a withdrawal. The trade groups back CCS development, but keeping the current U.S. coal fleet online is higher on their to-do list…READ ALL https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/stories/1060053140/feed
if u can’t read at E&E link, search headline and read from cached version.
Was that glacier even in existence at the Holocene optimum? CBC has two or three of these alarmists headlines a week and generally no comments allowed. CBC is a shrill of the liberal government headed Trudeau 2.0 and the fiberals sorry liberals, may bring in a carbon tax so using the CBC for build up.
Nice article. So something changed. And so what? They assume contemporary climate change without even skipping a beat. Never mind that contemporary climate hasn’t changed any time recently and worldwide not by enough to call a problem. They should be asking what local phenomenon might be responsible but there’s a really handy scapegoat to lay it on — global warming, AKA CO2.
As I remember, global warming was blamed for the retreating icecap on Mt. Kilimanjaro, never mind that the ice had been retreating for at least the last hundred years, possibly longer but no one was there recording the situation. The real problem was shifting precipitation so that part of Africa was drying out slowly. QED: Less snow, retreating icecap. And it began a long time before anyone blamed humans for it.
What could be acting locally to cause the melting? That is the question. And we know that Arctic ice has thinned out and now seems to be coming back. They aren’t asking the right question by assuming contemporary climate change.
So guess what. Someone will get that coveted feather in his cap early in his career but it will be at the expense of better science.
I just received an electricity supply offer from Red Energy which I understand are owned by the Snowy Mountains Hydro scheme.
For the second time in a few years, the first when my electricity provider was acquired by a larger company, the offer is directed to a meter (NMI) number that is not my address NMI and has solar which I do not have. This does not give me confidence in the billing system and meter reading.
My reply via email included that I do not have a solar system or accept so called renewable energy is acceptable when subsidised by governments using taxpayer’s monies that also penalise fossil fuel fired power stations. I pointed out the Tasmania and South Australia electricity supply problems of recent times. And that foreign countries such as Germany are discarding subsidies and are now constructing new coal fired power stations.
Hopefully if we all make our opinions known to the electricity industry and governments the madness will become a major issue and changes at least considered?
Please don’t get me wrong. I’ve commented on this before. Guns may a necessary evil in our of the way country areas.
In the cities where police can usually respond in 10 minutes I think it’s safer if only police have guns.
Unfortunately for that situation, governments are under pressure to let the business of gun selling operate under the same level of scrutiny as a pie shop.
In Sydney there seems to be a shooting every two weeks and this is not fair to police or ordinary citizens.
If politicians did their job there would be no need for citizens to arm themselves.
Please don’t get me wrong. I’ve commented on this before. Guns may a necessary evil in our of the way country areas.
In the cities where police can usually respond in 10 minutes I think it’s safer if only police have guns.
Unfortunately for that situation, governments are under pressure to let the business of gun selling operate under the same level of scrutiny as a pie shop.
In Sydney there seems to be a shooting every two weeks and this is not fair to police or ordinary citizens.
If politicians did their job there would be no need for citizens to arm themselves.
Study finds that almost all Easter Eggs sold are not free-range.
240
Where are “Easter Eggs” supposed to come from anyway?
60
Easter bunnies, of course!
(No…. don’t ask…)
140
Bunnies are cute but finding a Hare in your egg………
140
I used to know a guy who was bald.
He had rabbits tattooed on his head because from a distance they looked like hares . . .
190
This joke is in the running for Dad joke of the year…. *grin*
60
Hehe . . true enough but I’m blaming it on Yonniestone. 🙂
50
True, but we’ve raised “free range” hens and finding their eggs can be a tedious chore.
Further, how does one know if they all have been found?
100
Count your chickens after they’ve hatched.
110
Sounds like you need a laying box with shell grit to attract the mothers to be.
20
We found our “free range” chickens liked to lay their eggs in an old tire – I dumped some straw into it, and set it under an old swing-support (handbuilt, wood, had a “roof” and side-benches) and all the ladies would lay there.
Now they have a shed with a water dish and treat-dish in a corner. They all put their eggs in the same area, dipping in and squawking loudly at different times. Sometimes they lay in the far left corner, sometimes in the far right, but so far, never in the yard.
Granted, we have a series of small spaces they get moved around in, so although free range, they aren’t dashing about on acres of field.
30
It’s worse than that. A new study has conclusively proven that bunnies do not lay eggs. Therefore, as scientists we must replace the Easter Bunny with the Easter Chicken. And being the author of the study I have chosen a suitable Easter Chicken, a very proud, colorful and suitable replacement for the Easter Bunny.
So effective immediately, here is your new secular symbol for Easter. Everyone say hello to the Easter Chicken.
He looks very dignified and distinctive, does he not? Yes, he’s a symbol of strength and leadership. And with him a centuries old injustice to the Easter Egg has been rectified. No more wishy washy Easter Bunnies. We now have a symbol worthy of the day we celebrate, the annual Easter Egg hunt.
70
You will notice that I’ve appointed the rooster. After all there would be no eggs without him.
And Happy Easter to one and all. 🙂
50
And in these times of a world torn apart by strife nearly everywhere, let us not forget that Easter celebrates the birth of The Prince of Peace. And we need him now more than we have for a long time.
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Very right Roy.
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It will soon be 2018.
We have made it through in far better shape than the first 18 years of the last century.
My own father was packed like sardine on a ship a sent to fight until victory or his own wounding or death.
For him it was option two.
I am supposed to worry about ‘climate change’.
There is too much violence and poverty, but we are foolish not to realize that in comparison to the past times are good.
The weather is good.
We should teach our children and remind ourselves that these are the best of times.
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rebirth of Christ, or resurrection. https://balance1010.wordpress.com/2017/04/17/the-golden-pot-at-the-end-of-the-rainbow-of-lights-extension/
20
Surely there’d be no hatchable eggs without the rooster? Hens lay eggs perfectly happily without him! No replacement stock, that’s all.
100
But there would be no hens without the rooster Annie, and for that matter no roosters either. Definitely a virtual rooster that with the appropriate app would be able to lay virtual eggs.
81
Besides which, the hen is rather dull and drab, lacking the fancy coloring and the cocky attitude of the rooster.
This is about the best candidate I can find and no comparison.
60
Very handsome.
It’s a chicken and egg situation…which came first?. Groan…
30
How dare you post a “privileged white male”. Please apply for retraining.
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My Dear R2,
That is the privileged white female of the species. Honest! I wouldn’t try to fool anyone. The matter is too serious to take lightly. 😉
30
Roy
Another choice
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_Bilby
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They sell beautifully made wooden bilbies in Alexandra (Vic, Australia) and the funds go to charity…
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Only if they lay eggs don’t you think? 😉
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A very handsome rooster indeed!
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I’ve had henough of these yokes!!!
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eggs-actly!!
50
Shell I keep going?
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I’ll be glad when this sub-thread’s ova.
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Eventually the axe must fall.
20
Chomp!
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Wow! I really stated something. A few minutes ago there was a loud angry pounding at my front door and when I opened it there stood the Easter Bunny demanding to know why I had tried to substitute an Easter Chicken for him. Well, I confronted him with the evidence against him from my reasearch and he agreed that if he could lay just one egg my hypothesis would be falsified. So he tried to lay an egg for me but when he couldn’t he had to admit I was right. And then he began to cry. So I comforted him and said, “Maybe if you go find the Easter Chicken and ask very politely he’ll let you be his assistant.” So he began to smile a little and asked where the Easter chicken was and I pointed him in the right direction.
The last I saw of him he was hopping off down the street to find the Easter Chicken. I managed to get this picture of him while he was standing there, just to prove he’d been here. Apparently any resemblance to a certain other well known bunny is intentional. Is one moonlighting for the other? Who knew?
50
These weekend topics get wilder and wilder. But the Easter Bunny may yet be saved from obscurity by becoming the righthand bunny to the Easter Chicken. I hope so. He seems like a good sort of guy and deserving of the chance. 😉
Have a Happy Easter, one and all.
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Strange Roy, most rabbits around here lay little brown eggs by the thousands, maybe Easter Bunny is a bit backed up from too much chocolate?
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There are two things my scout leaders told me never to eat, yellow snow and little brown eggs. 😉
40
My sheep lay small brown eggs too! I don’t think I’ll sample them though…they can stay on the paddock.
20
Ah, yes! But is he agile and innovative?
20
Easter Good news!
Climate Doomsday Delayed!
20 years to save the planet, carbon emission experts warn
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/world-zero-carbon-emissions-before-2040-two-decades-climate-change-global-warming-greenhouse-gases-a7682001.html
In 1989 it was 10 years:
GRIM FORECAST
A senior environmental official at the United Nations, Noel Brown, says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the earth by rising sea levels if global warming is not reversed by the year 2000.
Coastal flooding and crop failures would create an exodus of “eco-refugees,” threatening political chaos, said Brown, director of the New York office of the U.N. Environment Program.
He said governments have a 10-year window of opportunity to solve the greenhouse effect before it goes beyond human…
San Jose Mercury News (CA) – June 30, 1989
http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_product=SJ&s_site=mercurynews&p_multi=SJ&p_theme=realcities&p_action=search&p_maxdocs=200&p_topdoc=1&p_text_direct-0=0EB7304FF9A84273&p_field_direct-0=document_id&p_perpage=10&p_sort=YMD_date:D&s_trackval=GooglePM
Wait!
‘We have three years to act on climate change’
“Mission 2020 campaign by former UN climate chief Christiana Figueres urges decisive action to curb emissions by 2020”
http://www.ethicalcorp.com/2020dontbelate-we-have-three-years-act-climate-change
. . .
Christiana Figueres and the word ‘ethical’ in the same sentence?
It’s a sign!
81
The cycle of Nature repeats itself again, Happy Easter, everyone
20
What is waiting for me in the new cycle (60 years)?
https://image.freepik.com/darmowe-wektory/r%C4%99cznie-rysowane-t%C5%82a-dla-chi%C5%84skiego-nowego-roku-z-kolorowych-koguta_23-2147586212.jpg
20
Hey, wait a minute! Is tis not the lady who said,
I think she speaketh with a forked tongue.
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Named and Shamed!
http://rootsofpeace.org/team/dr-noel-brown
30
He does seem to move around quite a bit.
10
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY , why do none Americans have so much trouble understanding why Americans defend their second amendment rights , the right to bear arms , when the Romans came to Britain they faced warrior tribes , they promised them membership into the empire if they disarmed , that meant we were easier to control and pacify , but left us vulnerable to invasion after Rome left , it also help them later impose a feudal system that lasted a thousand years against a population that could not fight back , and yet we non Americans still have problems understanding how passionate Americans are about the second amendment , thoughts please
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Dave,
I could probably give you a dozen thoughts. But the one thing that stands out to me is our origin in a rebellion against a tyrannical king. The memory of that war of revolution was so fresh when the Bill of Rights was added to the Constitution that it was personal. And to those of us who know our history and the reasons behind that right to keep and bear arms, nothing seems quite as important except our freedom of religion, speech, peaceful assembly, a free press and the right to petition government for redress of grievance, all guaranteed in the First Amendment. Only those are listed ahead of the right to be armed, the Second Amendment. And that speaks to me from the past about what those who went through the revolution were thinking and about what we should be thinking today.
Perhaps one other thought: Rights are a volatile commodity and there are many people who, for various reasons, all antithetical to personal freedom, work to take away various rights. And once lost those rights are very hard to regain. So we should fight to keep those rights, notwithstanding that an armed public can no longer hope to withstand their government because the government has weapons that we, for good reason, cannot and should not have.
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“A man with a firearm is a citizen, without one he is a Subject”
00
The US Second Amendment is one of the truly great and unique innovations that help guarantee a people’s freedom against a tyrannical government. It was not put there to guarantee a person’s right to shoot targets or hunt, as important as those things maybe from a recreational or survival point of view of those that live off the land. Under Obama and with the possibility of Clinton being elected, it looked very much like the 2nd might need to be exercised and gun sales skyrocketed as the citizenry loaded up on guns and ammo.. At some point the People would have removed Obama or his successor. Fortunately that wasn’t necessary but the 2nd is the “reset” button for the constitution. America will always be fundamentally a freer country than any other because of the legal recognition that the People are meant to be the superior power, not the Government.
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For a people who are free, and who mean to remain so,
a well-organized and armed militia is their best security.
Thomas Jefferson
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Heh, Yonniestone, channeling …
https://beththeserf.wordpress.com/2017/04/14/45th-edition-
serf-under_ground-journal/
Similar with the British navy.In the first half of the
1600’s Barbary Slave traders, authorized by their
governments to attack the shipping of Christian countries ,
according to Admiralty Records, plundered British shipping,
even off the British coast, pretty much at will. The slavers
also raided English and Irish coastal settlements making of
with entire populations of villages. Samuel Pepys, in his
Diary refers to the raids and as Secretary to the Admiralty
helped lay the foundations of a stronger navy as a defense
against the Barbary Coast traders.
50
WOW!!! You three moderators/editors really socked it to me. Sat me back in my chair, told me how to behave. Sorry.
As for name calling, “crazed red-neck, ignorant, reactionary, trigger-happy ” are all adjectives not names specifically. I didn’t apply that description to all Americans, not even most Americans. But what adjectives are applicable to a couple of teenage boys who rampage through a high-school, shooting kids and teachers at random with semi-auto weapons? What adjectives describe people who have gone into a school and shot to death little kids? What adjectives describe the young man who entered a Afro-American church and gunned down parishioners? All of the shooters without prior criminal records? And what of today where an American randomly shot a 74 year-old man in the street and posted the video of the event on Facebook? Do you have an adjective for that? I would challenge ED on the claim that ignorant rednecks authored the 2nd Amendment – which was obviously meant for defensive community militia, not for recreational shooting of your neighbours.
I await your reply.
20
I read those comments earlier but can’t remember the offending item.
I agree with the two comments you wrote that are still there.
Australia needs to ruthlessly remove all unlicensed guns from holders and gaol them for a min of 6 months per weapon.
Politicians must support police in this.
KK
10
Why was my comment on “crazed red-neck, ignorant…” shoved down from #3 to #59? And the moderators’ annoyed comments have been removed? Weird! I guess that was their reply? Lol
00
IMHO had Australia had a 2nd Amendment, its doubtful Bryant ( or whoever it was ) would have gotten as far as he did. Most of the american mass murders happened in ” gun free zones” thus guaranteeing soft undefendable targets…..
Most USA gun problems come from illegal firearms used by criminals.
112
Agreed, OriginalSteve. If that had happened in a place like Texas, an armed citizen would have taken out the killer before he did much damage and before police arrived (they took a very long time to arrive).
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“Most USA gun problems come from illegal firearms used by criminals.”
..and (you should add) mad private citizens who, with no prior criminal record, go out and murder 1,3,6 or 26 other citizens (including children)on an unprovoked whim!!! Most “gun free zones” as you call them, have NO effective means of preventing guns being carried into them from “gun selling zones” and used by crazed citizens. Quite frankly your logic is BS !
32
Most of the mass murders in the USA have happened within declared gun free zones, which are anathema to spirit if the Second Amendment, in effect a mini Socialist feifdom of gun control…..
How well has that worked?
What annoys me your emotive response to guns and gun control is like CAGW, its all fluff and nonsense and facts don’t back it up….
11
“Little Johnny Howard”kicked this”Bull$hit”off,with taking away our guns because of the Port Arthur massacre.He also introduced new land clearng laws,all at the behest of the UN.Then he snuck in an ETS before he got the boot,which helped Julia Gillard to bring in a “Carbon Tax”which Abbott got rid of,but Turdbull snuck it back in,at the last sitting in December.Pity he didn’t bother asking,or telling us about it.
Know you now how a “Mushroom feels.
10
Tasmania was a “gun toting zone” where Bryant (no criminal record) quite legally obtained his semi-automatic weapon to blow away civilians
31
Bryant ( or whoever it was ) managed a shot to kill ratio of a military marksman all while having a very low IQ.
Barry Unsworth some 10 years prior to the Tassie shooting said wed never have uniform gun control unless there was a mass murder in Tasmania. Its in APH Hansard if people want to look it up. I think Barry should off stick tips if he predict that sort of thing in advance.
Riddle me that, Batman….
21
What’s APH Hansard? You should provide a link if you think there is one.
11
I recalled this site The truth about Port Arthur that is mostly regarded as a crackpot theory, Bryant with an IQ of 66 had skills obtained by the best special forces counter terrorism operatives in the world.
Abstract: ‘The killer scored twenty head shots, from the right hip, in 90 seconds! There are only about 20 shooters that good (better than Olympians) in the Western World. They are the SPOOKS who work for various governments. The killer stopped shooting after firing 29 shots (of the 30 in a magazine). This leaves a live round in the breech while changing magazines. To count while firing at a rate of 48 rounds per minute is a technique that requires tens of thousands of shots to perfect. It is a military skill-at-arms far beyond a mentally retarded youth who fired at a few tins and bits of cardboard in the bush.’
31
Little Johnny Howard,has a lot to answer for.A friend to”We the People”he is NOT.
00
Are you sure it was Barry Unsworth recorded directly in Hansard? He was reported to have said this at a special premiers conference in Hobart in 1987.
a former public servant has this to say on the matter;
“…I’ve heard subsequently, an apocalyptical story that has been relayed to me by two or three people was that walking out of the Cabinet Room Barrie Unsworth put his arm around John Bennett’s shoulder, John Bennett being the Deputy Premier of Tasmania, and saying ‘John, I suppose it will take a massacre in Tassy to change your mind’. Now, I don’t know, I didn’t hear it myself, other have said that to me, but contemporaneously not after many years during the early ’88 and that sort of thing we were going through that sort of… So that was a pretty obvious thing, a pretty important event when you think of future things that I’ve been involved in…”
(copy/paste from the transcript – possibly the original speech-to-text software made some errors!)
20
“Why Wind Power Does Not Greatly Reduce Fossil Fuel Use”
http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2017/04/why-wind-power-does-not-greatly-reduce-fossil-fuel-use.html
And the comments
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So forcing baseload power stations to close is pure folly. Wind and solar do not replace baseload power, the demand for which remains unchanged. Blowing up power stations is ignorance and arrogance. Unfortunately, this is not news in South Australia.
Greens fall into two groups.
Green voters do not understand that what they want is utterly impractical and will lead to the destruction of the quality of life they enjoy. Often well meaning and economically sheltered public servants or service industries, they have no idea of the real needs of society and how crucial cheap, reliable energy is to their lives. Until the lights go out.
Green politicians want destruction of that very quality of life so that political revolution will follow and they will take over. In the meantime, the salary of a member of parliament or senator is five times average and you get all those free cars and travel and a dream super superannuation plan. A simple strategy for someone who could not get a job.
300
Left existence is designed to keep people poor otherwise their voters move to the right and they become irrelevant. Poverty leads to fear, hate and jealousy. Greens know that for them to become more relevant they need to project fear as progression, hate as accusing everyone of racism and jealousy as class warfare.
Sounds familiar like 1984?
101
Jo FYI!
“Discussion: Five reasons blog posts are of higher scientific quality than journal articles”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/04/15/discussion-five-reasons-blog-posts-are-of-higher-scientific-quality-than-journal-articles/
112
Judging by the way a colleague works in his capacity as an associate editor of a well known (in his field) journal, I am not remotely surprised by this. The peer-review process is a mockery of its former self (if it ever was successful).
In my experience, there are very few published papers which can be read, and the content ‘digested’ in a matter of a couple of minutes, no matter how much expertise one has on the subject, yet this ‘associate editor’ often “reviews” 5-10 submissions during a 35 minute train journey – and that’s just the start… the sheer volume of papers, a severe case of PhD-inflicted arrogance, and the editorial guidelines just do not allow anyone to properly review anything.
The same person was reviewing abstract submissions for a conference, and his reasons for rejection included ‘no pictures in the abstract’, ‘this author asked me some tough questions at a previous conference’, and ‘if the paper comes from country x, then the English will be poor, so there is no point reading past the title.
When I suggested that this is not a particularly scientific approach, I was told something along the lines of ‘I do not want to lose my position as associate editor, as it looks good on my CV’, along with a not-so-subtle ‘you don’t have a PhD, so you don’t understand the process’ comment.
71
On quick reflection, I would change my wording: “…do not
allowencourage anyone to properly review anything.If people in these positions really wanted the system to change, they could do it.
20
Their abc announces record cold in Darwin and blames it on the wind direction …
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-04-12/darwin-weather-april-coldest-day-since-1968/8436068
When its too hot their abc blames it on carbon (sic) …
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-04-01/march-temperatures-sets-record-as-hottest-ever,-bom-says/7293500
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Mark
It seems as if the max temp for Darwin on the 11th was 21.9C which appears to be the coldest day on record for April beating April 1917 (24.4C).
According to the BoM, Darwin’s coldest day ever was in June, 1904 with 18.4C.
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/tables/cw_014016_All.shtml
70
When looking at historic BoM records how does one know if they’ve been “homogenised” or not?
92
David
The DWO, which I quote from above, records the raw temps from each station.
The ‘homogenised’ data is ACORN which came out some 6 years ago. The ACORN model was based on the superseded High Quality Data set which had also been adjusted, quite markedly so for temps prior to 1950.
ACORN
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/change/acorn-sat/#tabs=Data-and-networks
Again, if you look at this page tagged below you can see the adjustments made to the temp record (scroll down to comparison graph). Note the downward adjustments prior to 1960 and the upward adjustments after 1990. I’m unsure if the original data (grey line) is the raw temp or the adjusted HQ data.
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/change/acorn-sat/#tabs=Methods
The DWO, despite some errors in recording, is the best place to find records based on original raw station data. ACORN is homogenised and seems to been put together haphazardly and without due review.
82
Thanks Ian G.
40
Wind fraud uncovered…and trouble is brewin…
http://www.northbaybusinessjournal.com/industrynews/technology/6890744-181/tilting-at-windmill-fraud
Guess these guys tried the UPC/First Wind/Longroad energy partners model but weren’t well connected enough to get away with it (so far)….
10
Speaking of UPC Renewables and Brian Caffyn….
https://www.hackneycitizen.co.uk/2017/02/23/benefactor-ld50-art-gallery-denies-interest-involvement-activities/
20
“Why I object to Gov’t backdoors”
Link re Windows hacking
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/2017/04/why-i-object-to.html#comments
30
We had four metres of Biomass Converter fuel delivered yesterday and, with what we have already collected from our local renewable fuel repositories (where no third world people or landscapes were harmed), we should be ready for global warming this Winter.
90
In Victoria they banned people collecting firewood from state forests. I hope you live in a less eco-Marxist state.
81
I live in Victoristan. The ban, as it currently stands, only affects the western/north-western district along the Murray River. But give it time and the bans will cover everything, including farmers’ property as well.
We’ll soon be living in virtual caves with no power, no heat, no light. Of course that won’t apply to the inner-city Greens etc that bring these things about.
140
I forgot to mention, you can’t collect any firewood from national parks, no matter how many millions of dead sticks there are due to the fires from 2003 onwards. And, as the national parks are extended, that leaves less and less access to wood.
100
Germany has an interesting approach to national parks.
They clear-fell them to make way for wind turbines. 🙁
160
I’m actually surprised that Victoristan isn’t following that example. We have many expansive locations in our High Country where the wind blows regularly, which would be ideal for such an endeavour.
OK, so eagles, hawks, bats and many other avians, as well as local marsupials would be culled as a results, and the landscape would look ugly to all but a Green, but that’s a small price to pay for saving the planet.
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And I forgot again. The other thing that removing all the trees in the High Country would do is pretty much stop bush fires and resultant carbon emissions, also saving the planet.
101
Not in our area. There are stated periods in which local residents may collect firewood for their own use, up to a certain amount.
20
Thanks to Climategate emails, eighty-two years of fake science (1935-2017) are being replaced this Easter with the empirical fact that, “The Universe Is In Good Hands“
71
The amount of energy released in every known beta-decay refutes Weizsacker’s & Chadwick’s 1935 model of the nucleus.
See the information posted here yesterday on “There goes that scare: Antarctic . . .“, and
https://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2017/04/15/your-life-outside-matrix/#comment-221172
40
Wishing you, Jo, and your family and all bloggers a very Happy Easter.
For us it is a happy sign of the Resurrection that is special and makes everything else worthwhile. 🙂
161
Happy Easter to you Annie, we non believers in recent years have come to realise how important the Christian faith is in western based societies due to a massive lack of judgement or intent by our elected leaders to allow history to repeat.
Needless to say for a few of us our resolve to restore these values entwined with our laws has been included for the plight of those that hold faith in their god and country but are under constant attack from anti-human elements within the very country they love, nothing good can come from this decay where people that desire open, lawful safe society are concerned and as such must be cleansed from the very fabric of our moral consciousness.
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You don’t have to believe the “back stories” to appreciate the morals and values which have been a large part of western civilisation for over 1000 years.
Remember for example King Ælfred’s Domboc which defined a rule of law over the extant rule of men; a work that reflected the King’s interpretation of Christian beliefs.
Such must the weighed against the errant burden placed on populations by a Church that governed the State for centuries after the Crusades. The Crusades were a response to centuries of invasions, wars, plundering and abductions into slavery by Muslims; which saved the Christian Church’s ass, so to speak, but those who “paid” for the Crusades were punished by subjugation to the one religion until centuries later; one dissident monk nailed his ideas to the door of a cathedral; and then later the Enlightenment unshackled State from Church.
For an all too brief period, that separation of church and state worked quite well but over the past 120 years or so, the welfare state has become as worthy of worship as any other false gods have ever been. If you obey the state; the state will provide for all your needs. It’s easy to mistake the womb of mother state as a comfortable place; until one sees that that womb is also a prison where one cannot act according to one’s own, free will.
In an Easter-ly simile, I conclude that the Chicken State is preferable to the Mother State. Once you crack your shell, you’re free to think and do as you see fit. Trying to contain freedom only results in tragedy.
70
Interesting Bernd. I like the idea of the higher court of appeal but as you suggest, it depends who is interpreting the higher ground.
00
Capital G for God.
42
The western view of the world and laws are Biblically based, and conservatism favours families, which us why if Godless socialism isn’t checked soon, loss if Christian influence will create a rudderless ship with no moral absolutes and a Nazi mentality will rise once more…
40
Thanks Yonnie. 🙂
20
Victorian wholesale electricity prices double in April following the closure of Hazelwood:
For 2016 the average Victorian wholesale price according to AEMO data files was $46.14/MWhr, with a monthly range from a low of $29.90 in December to a high of $92.77/MWhr in June (in May 2016 South Australia’s last coal fired power station closed, so Victoria increased supply). However through June and July 2016, planned work to upgrade the Heywood interconnector between Victoria and South Australia frequently reduced South Australia’s import capacity.).
In 2017, average monthly Victorian prices have been $62.04/MWhr in Jan, $86.05 Feb, $90.63 March, and April to date $109.68/MWhr (Daily range $71.08-140.99).
As Tony from Oz has so well documented, Hazelwood closed at the end of March, yet during March it delivered more power than all of the wind stations in Australia. While Victoria still has capacity to often send power to SA, NSW and Tas, it appears to be doing so by increasing the use of gas fired stations.
There is an interesting article by the Australian Energy Council in Sept 2016 “South Australia’s power shock delivers important lessons”. (The Australian Energy Council represents 21 major electricity and downstream natural gas businesses operating in competitive wholesale and retail energy markets).
“South Australia is discovering that an energy supply portfolio based on very large amounts of renewable generation is not without its challenges”.
“If a wind generator chooses not to generate, it will effectively lose money since it will not generate a subsidy under the Federal Government’s Renewable Energy Target (RET) scheme… This is why, at times, a wind generator may bid into the market at a negative price – it is prepared to pay the market to take its electricity because it knows it will get revenue from the subsidy.”
“The price cap (maximum price) is currently set at $14,000 MWh. Under a 100 per cent renewable scenario, a maximum price cap of between $60,000 to $80,000 MWh may be required to bring generation into the market when supply is tight. This means that wholesale prices could fluctuate between negative prices to $80,000 MWh.”
Will we see a similar report for Victoria as we head into winter with increased demand for gas heating and wholesale electricity prices in 2017 double those of 2016?
Will the politicians finally demand action? (or simply set up yet another inquiry?)
140
The next time anyone mentions to you, any of you, anything about the Great South Australian blackout of 28th September 2016, refer them to the image shown at this link.
Se that vertical drop from 950MW of wind back to zero.
The South Oz politicians want you to believe that this is what happened.
The regulators saw that drop to zero. They then informed the relevant authorities, who then informed the Government Minister, who then informed the State premier. They discussed what to do, got back to the regulators, and told them to fire up that Pelican Point plant immediately, not understanding that this CCGT plant would take hours to get back up and running. Told of this, the Premier and his Minster then found that the blame lay solely with the operators of that power plant.
The did all of the above in, umm, 0.8 seconds, the time for that vertical drop you see in the image.
Yep!
We all believe that, right!
Tony.
161
A Happy Easter to readers.
As my previous reminiscence attracted some favour I thought another might be appropriate, but having run out I will ask you to imagine yourselves in the future looking back.
A Future Reminiscence
I was lazing on a hillside enjoying the warmth and looking down on the tropical blue water in the bay, when the voices of the native children at Sunday school floated up to me.
“Though it covers less than a see-through nightie
I still believe The Science of Algore almighty”
I wondered which cult the earlier missionary had belonged to, and when the song had been taught first to the children. It had obviously survived in this idyllic, if out of the way, place untouched by events in the great world. Not that I was complaining about being there, even with the work involved. I was there to measure the sea level rise, which had taken me about 10 seconds yesterday to read the gauge on the jetty. The readings were another holdover from that turbulent earlier time. One day someone would realise that the sea level had been falling for 25 years along with the global temperature, but in the meantime it was a perk of being a public servant to have a two week all expenses paid sojourn here, and escape the bitter weather at home. There were several of us here, some had brought their wives, others had acquired temporary local substitutes.
Global Warming or Climate Change I wondered? thinking of the great schism preceding the collapse. Al Gore had been acclaimed by both as a prophet, and both sects had many adherents, not that anyone admitted to that these days. The differences that split the believers seem trivial now, although it caused much agitation then. The Global Warmers claimed that man made emissions caused the Earth to warm which would change the climate disastrously. The Climate Changers were less precise just claiming that any change in the climate was the fault of mankind. Both agreed that everybody, except themselves, had to change their lifestyle. This in turn caused further schisms e.g. between those who wanted to ban all fires in winter time and those who wanted a complete ban on burning anything but jet fuel. Then the use of candles for lighting was another source of discord. Many in both sects, especially those from parts with high rainfall, were less than enthusiastic about the call for living in mud huts. The debates resulted in a loss of confidence in The Cause.
A further annoyance was the rise of other prophets e.g. in NZ the (self styled) Rev. RahRah Whacko who claimed that Climate Change was caused by purple dragons. He campaigned with a choir of front row rugby forwards; whose singing wasn’t very good but no one dared tell them so.
RahRah Whacko gained quite a following in NZ itself and some in many other parts of the World, and set up the IPPD (International Panel on Purple Dragons). He annoyed the established sects by claiming that his idea was a far more logical cause of Climate Change than anything they had produced and demanded an open debate about the causes. The IPCC was horrified by the idea of public debate and tried to ignore him. Efforts by trolls to denigrate the Rev. RahRah Whacko were stifled by a visit from the choir which caused that troll to sing a different note.
But things started to go downhill for the Climate Change movement. Roger Harrabin, the GateKeeper at the BBC who censored anything not in accordance with the doctrine from being broadcast, was the first in a series of bizarre departures. He was in the party doing a documentary on wonderful wind turbines when one blade broke and a 3 metre long 200 kg. section flew at him at 300 kph and turned him into a mangled wreck. It rather put a dampener on his claim that turbines didn’t kill wildlife. Still, he got 173,907 views on YouTube.
Sir David Attenborough was sacked by the BBC when he used the celebrations for his hundredth birthday to call for compulsory homosexuality as the only way to reduce population growth. “He had been a bit difficult for the last few decades” said a spokesperson for the Corporation “so we have been grooming Brian Cox to take over”. The spokesperson was also promptly sacked as the BBC was still sensitive to words like grooming after the Jimmy Savile scandal.
Cox himself tried to laugh the matter off, but fell off the sundial he was standing on, and died of head injuries. The Coroner said a few pungent words about the script writers’ ideas, which didn’t get broadcast by the BBC.
In desperation the BBC resorted to Cedric the gorilla, who had no known vices save a fondness for bananas.
Odd disasters also befell other icons of the Climate industry at that time. Dr David Viner, the senior research scientist at the CRU (University of East Anglia) who claimed that “Children aren’t going to know what snow is” was struggling through the snow at the foot of a hill when he was struck by a runaway improvised sled carrying 6 children. He died 2 days later of his injuries, never conscious of the irony.
Professor Peter Wadhams was being filmed riding a bicycle down some steps on a Scottish hillside when he was struck by lightning. The Coroner also had pungent words for the script writers’ ideas, which also didn’t get broadcast by the BBC.
Mystery still surrounds the death of William Connelley (of Wikipedia editing infamy) in that the Coroner returned an open verdict. He refused to believe that the deceased had freely chosen to go jogging, in the nude, at night, in February. He called it ‘an unauthorised deletion.’
Tim Flannery was filming in the driest part of Australia for his new documentary “The Rain will Never Fall” when he was drowned in a flash flood.
In a touching Remembrance Service at the MCG, 57,000 sang “It ain’t gunna rain no more, no more, it ain’t gunna rain no more”.
The final disaster was the last International Conference on Climate Change, held as usual in warm, picturesque foreign city, so delegates could have weeks away from the wintry conditions in the Northern Hemisphere. This time it was in Central America. As Al Gore started his opening address he reassured the assembled delegates that the rumblings from the nearby volcano were nothing to worry about. The TV links then went dead but the media next day reported the news – a pyroclastic flow had incinerated 10,076 delegates and approximately 13,000 Greens activists.
There! I knew you wanted a happy ending.
150
Addendum.
The Climate Change movement collapsed. That left no one to argue with, so the Rev. RahRah Whacko retired in a huff (a small Maori dwelling). Yet many Australians are still annoyed at him for, to this day, the NZ flag sports a purple dragon, with a firm grip on the Bledisloe Cup.
71
Yes indeed when a group has lost the argument they have no where to turn apart from violence and threats. Much like the Christians, the skeptics of AGW will be persecuted and maltreated. Personally I’m looking forward to it as it will polarise the public and bring to a head the real issues instead of putting up with the nonsense and daily boring routine of MSM fake news that only helps perpetuate a brain dead society.
91
We are talking about a war of words, not sticks and stones, the paradigm will be overturned in due course.
Its time to start the conversation about global cooling signals, without catastrophism, so that Cory Bernardi has the ammunition to take on the Establishment.
I’m confident, this far out from an election, that it’ll be a ‘shoe in’ for the Coalition because they get the energy balance right.
91
How many cold signal events will we need to have before people realise that the world is definitely not warming and is most probably cooling and the Greens, politicians, “scientists” and public serpents have been lying to them?
Daily life will be harsh and expensive without the widespread availability of cheap, reliable and environmentally friendly coal, gas and nuclear generation, and hydro where available.
131
When I was in the Victoria Snowy Mountains a week ago there was snow on the higher peaks and locals said the falls were about two months early.
80
‘How many cold signal events will we need …’
Concentrating on Europe first, another cool wet summer could be in store and then hopefully a return to the winter of 1963. They say it got down to -22 C in some parts of the UK.
In Australia the tropical north should cool and the Alpine snow season starts earlier than anyone can remember.
42
The paleo data suggests that that with a global cooling cycle the equatorial Tropics don’t actually change very much in temperature at all.
No do the far polar regions get a great deal colder as they are about as cold already as they are likely to get .
The polar ice and snow and sea ice regions do however become very much more extensive in area and extensive in latitude with vast sea ice areas and extensive glacier and with much longer cold seasonal conditions and sea ice extending much further north and south into the lower latitudes from the current polar region sea ice and land ice boundaries.
[ Climate4you; LH Menu; Sea ice; Scroll through for map of historical northern sea ice extent and boundaries as noted from ships logs of the last 400 years. ]
It is those latitudes between the tropical regions of the Equator and the edges of the polar region’s sea ice and and expanded land ice regions that get progressively cooler as one moves north and south from the warm Equatorial regions which will show the greatest cooling and the most increased heat energy gradients in the oceans and the atmosphere.
And that leads to a much stronger temperature gradient across the latitudes.
Which in turn leads to a much greater flow of heat energy from equator to poles.
The polar regions are where the heat energy is radiated out into space but with such a low angle of incidence to the Sun and therefore low levels of incoming solar radiation, the radiated energy in the polar regions is not replaced by the very low angle and therefore low energy incoming solar radiation.
So the heat content of the polar regions if they are not to eventually to fall to the temperatures of space ie; close to absolute Zero due to the long term loss of heat energy to space, rely on the flow of heat energy brought to the polar regions by the ocean and atmospheric mass flows and eddies of equatorial origin, high heat content ocean waters and atmosphere which leads to a much greater turbulence of both atmosphere and ocean as the various masses of increased or decreased in temperature and therefore in heat energy warmer and colder air and water masses intermingle and intermix.
The greater turbulence due to the contrasts in temperature between the various parcels of air and water masses appears in the form of many more and far more intense storms and severe and fast changing weather as well as faster and much stronger in contrast and probably faster moving weather systems.
So a much rougher time for everybody in the next century or so ahead as well as for food crop production, energy use, communications and etc as the world cools as the Sun enters yet another of its great cycles that have no doubt been a part and parcel of the Sun’s existence since it settled down a few billion years ago into another form of a slow pulsing variable Star.
62
‘….the equatorial Tropics don’t actually change very much in temperature at all.’
That has always been my impression, but we maybe wrong, reading Jennifer Marohasy.
‘As part of ongoing research into natural rainfall patterns in Queensland, Professor John Abbot and I have been studying the temperature record for northeastern Australia, as temperature is a key input variable in our neural network models (e.g. Abbot and Marohasy 2014). Considering the data from the late 1800s until 1960, a cooling trend is evident, followed by warming between 1960 and 2001. In contrast, the last 12 years show quite dramatic cooling, All three periods have occurred while greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide, have been increasing in concentration in the atmosphere.’
51
EG, it was either ’86 or ’87 that we had -18C in Hampshire, (Dec’86 I think). I decided to defrost the freezer and just put the frozen food in poly bags and slung them out into the snow overnight while waiting; no danger of foxes eating the stuff then!
It was the time our youngest son wanted to go out to play and we wouldn’t let him because the blizzard was such that you couldn’t see to the end of what was a very short garden!
10
ROM most of the action is taking place in the midlatitudes.
‘Easter is relatively late, and the forecast is now calling for snow to hit large parts of Europe as a low pressure system (OTTO) centered over the Baltic sea will pump polar air across the continent — thus ushering in a nasty and possibly protracted spell of winter.’
– See more at: http://notrickszone.com/#sthash.BU0nTKau.dpuf
00
The mid latitudes is where the action would be in a cooling world as I attempted to point out.
The correct term “mid latitudes” escaped me when I posted those above comments on how the increasingly large contrasts between the narrow band of the Equatorial regions with its fairly constant temperatures through both warmer and cooler episodes in the Earth’s ever changing and cyclic climate patterns and the expanding areas of very low temperatures in the polar regions high latitudes has created and will again in the future create much greater energy contrasts through the frequent shifts of the past cooling and warming global climate periods.
Those energy contrasts cut right right through the mid latitudes of the planet, between the narrow Equatorial band of the more or less constant average temperatures and the rapidly increasing and expanding areas of colder temperatures of the polar regions leading to very large shifts in the contrasts between the high heat energy content of air and water masses originating near the equator and the emission into space of heat energy from the cold and expanding air and water masses in the polar region latitudes during cooling episodes in the Earth’s ever changing climate .
So heat energy flowed/ flows much faster from the equator to the poles in a cooling climate due to the increased contrasts in available latent heat energy in the form of large masses of air and water inherent in the creation of every weather system leading to all sorts of very sharp contrasts in the temperatures of the various masses of equatorial origin warm air and warm water masses met the contrasting colder air and water masses of the polar latitudes.
Therefore far more turbulent flows of weather systems were created across all latitudes as this global sized transfer of heat energy from the equatorial regions to the colder low heat energy content polar regions and consequently more of and more intense storms and fast changing severe weather conditions particularly where the two contrasting temperature masses of air and water intersected right across the broad mid latitude regions.
All of the above allied with flooding and droughts and rapidly changing weather conditions and even longer term climate conditions coming into play across the globe as the globe cooled.
And as climate history has so often shown to those prepared to look with an open mind, will inevitably cool once again.
A cooling that might already be under way and may yet prove to be as disastrous for humanity as was that 14th century disaster.
————-
From; the University of Wisconsin.
00
Australia produces less than 5 percent of electricity from windmills and about 2 percent from solar.
Given such low proportions how are they capable of giving some of the world’s most expensive electricity.
I know how a fossil producer has to pay 9c per kWh for the “right” to produce, but where is all the money going?
The US has a roughly similar proportion of solar and wind and yet pay normal electricity prices. What is the difference?
121
Does anyone know where to get up to date comparisons of international electricity prices? Here is some old data that shows Australia at 29 US cents/KWhr in 2011, with Canada at 10 cents, USA at 12 cents, Germany at 35 cents, Denmark 41 cents.
The Australian Energy Council (run by electricity suppliers) reported electricity prices in 2014 from leading economies worldwide at equivalent purchasing power exchange rates (so some tricky manipulation): Canada at 8.5 US cents/KWhr, USA 12.5 cents, Australia at 20.5 cents, UK 22.0 cents, Denmark 29.9 cents, and Germany 37.8 cents.
It also reports industrial prices: Canada 8.7 cents, Australia 9.7 cents, USA 10 cents, UK 15.4 cents, Germany 19.7 cents.
50
Those prices for USA look spot on. I have been paying between 10 – 13 cents per kWHr. In recent time the prices have gone down towards the low end of that range.
30
In Oz I am currently paying about A$29 cents/KWh equals US$ 22 cents, plus a connect fee of A$1.00/day.
30
As per my calculation, your electricity company pays about 13c kw/hr. Double that and you get 26c. That’s normal business markup. Of course the middle man does nothing, but that is quite normal too.
20
I believe the conversion into $US is not necessary and even misleading. The gap is much bigger.
The exchange rate is not a measure which can be used for comparison as apart from energy dependent products like aluminium, you cannot trade in electricity and the exchange rate is trade driven.
So we should compare the A29c directly against the US10-13c, 3x the cost. In fact I believe the 29c should be increased for the comparison.
Consider the Big Mac index which shows a Big Mac in the US at $US5.06 and in Australia at $A4.28, which means our domestic buying power relative to wages is higher by 20%, not lower by 25%. This means our energy costs are much higher for Australians, around 36c kw/hr, closer to 4x the cost.
10
Robber,
here’s the current cost table (shown at this link) for the U.S. This is from the EIA. This is retail cost, and note the difference between Residential, Commerce and Industry. This current residential cost is around a third of what we pay here at retail in Australia.
The table shown at this link has a State by State breakdown, and note that the highest retail cost is in the North East, and in California, still way lower than what we pay here in Oz. Note for some States, it’s lower than 10 cents/KWH
Tony.
81
Two sources. Firstly the carbon tax which has to be paid on coal and gas, currently 8c kw/hr. That makes 12c kw/hr. Then having sold off the distribution, everyone in business doubles their costs, so 24c kw/hr. Then opportunism up to 40c kw/hr.
The 4c kw/hr is all the base load stations get and they do not get that if the sun is shining or the wind is blowing at peak consumption times, so they get nothing and lose 4c kw/hr dumping. So they close. It was all designed to force the coal and gas power stations out of business and to send billions overseas for windmills and solar panels. All working quite nicely while Turnbull debates whether to introduce an ’emissions’ tax, another carbon tax for useless overseas pieces of paper or publicly subsidized imports.
As there is only one Green member of the democratically elected House of Representatives, it is amazing that Australia has by far the highest Carbon tax in the world but none of this is accidental. Whoever framed the RET laws knew what they were doing, even if no one understands it.
161
Large Generator Certificates have dropped from 8.9c kw/hr to 8.5c kw/hr and rising again. For this you get nothing, not even a piece of paper. Just a right to sell power and the money does not go to the government which administers the scheme electronically. In that way this useless right is not a ‘tax’ and certainly not a ‘carbon tax’. A cunning and probably illegal scheme outside any right of the government to legislate. I just hope Malcolm Roberts takes this to the High Court. It is the sole source of our record electricity prices.
140
Sorry, a right to buy power. Also the people who receive the money have to build power stations and generate power. The real hand grenade in the scheme is that they do not have to sell this power and get paid simply for producing it, any time they like, even if no one wants it.
130
Also they get to own the power station or wind or solar farm and get paid for its output, not the people who paid for it who received nothing in return. Contrast this with a tax to pay for windfarms where the people of Australia own the power stations.
So the Government has passed in 2000 a law where we have to GIVE money to people we do not know so they can own windfarms? That is not a power a democratic our government has, outside a communist one. That is why it is illegal. No one, not even the Federal government can force you to give money to strangers to make them rich and us poorer. That is also true for home solar systems. Why should people who get them be given thousands of dollars from other electricity users, again not a tax.
150
Thanks for the detailed explanation TdeF. Given that all electricity bills have more than doubled due to windmills and solar even though they produce no more than 7% of the electricity, that means somebody (who, exactly?) is making an enormous amount of money from this wealth transfer.
31
TdeF,
Another scheme for strangers to trouser your money by govt decree is smart meters for electricity. You were required to pay a disguised sum to some parties in the know who bought bulk supplies of meters at a cost less than you paid. How much less is very hard to discover.
I tried hard to get a simple statement that it was compulsory to purchase a meter. Despite loud public statements that they were compulsory, nobody would put that in writing for me.
Perhaps the reason was that our Constitution did not allow the compulsory bit.
The whole smart meter thing was a massive con sold to the public on the message that it was a benefit to all concerned. Why, you could even read your own meter to determine best times to turn on your appliances. Some benefit. Does anyone ever do that?
Waiting for someone less tired than self, to rip into the probity of the smart meter con.
01
Did anyone get as much rest over the Easter weekend as Australia’s wind turbine bearings?
20
Enhance your vocabulary.
Petrichor.
This term was coined by two Australian researchers in 1964 and used in an article in Nature.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrichor
QUOTE
Petrichor (/ˈpɛtrᵻkɔər/) is the earthy scent produced when rain falls on dry soil. The word is constructed from Greek πέτρα petra, meaning “stone”, and ἰχώρ īchōr, the fluid that flows in the veins of the gods in Greek mythology.
[…]
In the article, the authors describe how the smell derives from an oil exuded by certain plants during dry periods, whereupon it is absorbed by clay-based soils and rocks. During rain, the oil is released into the air along with another compound, geosmin, a metabolic by-product of certain actinobacteria, which is emitted by wet soil, producing the distinctive scent; ozone may also be present if there is lightning.
90
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyjcxXiqnRY
10
Two bison delicately sculpted from clay by firelight 14,000 years ago deep in the West Cave at ‘Montesquieu-Avantès’, only reachable by boat
https://twitter.com/ticiaverveer/status/852259414694297601
Fish are rare in IceAgeArt but the Abri du Poisson contains this remarkable life-sized carving of a salmon.
It is about 25,000 years old.
https://twitter.com/Jamie_Woodward_/status/848252219216494592
30
For something different
“How do I do this??”
http://www.yesterdaystractors.com/cgi-bin/viewit.cgi?bd=ttalk&th=1813725
20
Happy Easter to all those who manage and visit this site. Some pics put together for your enjoyment of the remote Berkeley River country of the NE Kimberley.
https://pindanpost.com/2017/04/14/holiday-snaps-from-the-remote-berkeley-river/
50
Nice photos, Tom. Thanks.
Seems this is a difficult place to get from place to place.
I think you need a Trike!
http://www.hugefloods.com/Trike-Flying.html
Some of the videos are done in cooperation with Central Washington University’s Nick Zintner and his “2 minute geology” videos.
Near the bottom of the page is a photo of the 3 folks involved.
20
Thanks, John, they now have an airstrip at the Lodge, and a helicopter pad, though I have landed on the beach in a Cessna. Trikes do fly there from enthusiasts based in Kununurra. They have a fuel dump at the Berkeley, taken by barge. The resort materials were all brought in by barge. Thanks for your comment, but these things scare me.
10
Here is another 20 pics from the same area: https://pindanpost.com/2017/04/17/remote-snaps-at-the-berkeley-river-part-2/
00
This week the US used the MOAB bomb to eliminate 36 terrorists in Afghanistan.
Now, in terms of shock and awe, it is a very impressive weapon with its 11 tons equivalent TNT blast yield (8500kg of H-6).
Many media outlets have said it costs US$16 million per piece of ordnance making the cost per kill unreasonably high. In fact, its real cost according to the US Air Force is $170,000 or in this engagement $4,700 per kill which is far more reasonable.
Besides, from the point of view of the US demonstrating to bad guys all around the world (eg Iran, Nth Korea etc) the PR value of demonstrating America is “back in business” again and will not be pushed around as under Obama is priceless.
BTW, “shock and awe” is a genuine military doctrine.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shock_and_awe
30
The number killed is now estimated to be near 100.
However, the number is not a big thing.
What is news to some is that the big bomb exists, can be delivered anywhere in the World, and is very destructive to hardened facilities. (Those that follow such military weapons were already aware of this bomb.)
The attack on the Syrian airfield showed the accuracy of modern GPS guided weapons. Still, I think 2 missiles were used for each structure — a “Double tap.”
Courtesy of the Red White and Blue [Toby Keith lyrics]
However, for many around the world this is a holy season.
It would be nice to have a few days of peace.
The Red White and Blue is fine with that, too.
Peace!
41
These weapons are not the infallible, the USA just yesterday bombed a bus killing 30 odd civilians. They also successfully tested a new gravity nuke.
Our bombs good…….their bombs bad
15
Brainwashed morons and their red thumbs
41
I was not sure why they would deploy in effect a dairy cutter ( a bomb designed for open country use ) on caves….surely something like a bunker buster with a micro-nuke ( low yield tactical nuke ) within it would make more sense….odd….
00
Sorry….must need breakfast….”dairy” should read “daisy”….perhaps said bomb reduces cow numbers too…..less CO2 and methane in one swoop…. 🙂
10
Perhaps they were putting on a demonstration for others to see or the target was not in a cave.
As you say the moab is an air burst weapon so no caves were injured during this exercise
01
This one was a fuel / air explosive and was targeted on caves on a valley. Kills by concussion and that concussion / blast wave is VERY good at travelling down inside the cave and killing people. Pentrators are for a different more defined target set, and using nukes for something like this would just be arrant silliness.
00
Brainwashed people and their red thumbs make me laugh
01
The US have a history of dropping their massive ‘daisy-cutter’ bombs in Afghanistan, and that didn’t really seem to make the news for days on end like the MOAB has. Presumably if Trump was not president, the use of such a weapon would be no more than a historical footnote.
Quite frankly, I fail to see what the fuss is about. Numerous nerve agent attacks on civilians in Syria have received far less coverage, and in my mind, are much more important stories which need to be talked about, and investigated to the n-th degree.
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The most wonderful thing for me was the bomber a 1950,ties transport aircraft the old Herci bird, Lockheed made a ripper of an airplane plane no less an icon than the DC3 of the 1930,ties.
The engines are a reject from RR, and the propellers are a work of art to make them work, but work they do,reliable and quite. The old DC3 was turned into a gun ship called Puff the magic dragon forty years after it was first manufactured. The Hercules sixty odd years after it took to the skies is dropping the MOAB,s amazing.
00
So, quick survey.
How many people had Cadbury Easter Eggs today and are feeling oddly like changing their religion?? 🙂
Got to be careful of those gay mind control techniques being adopted by the “others” out there.
that said, happy easter peeps. 🙂
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On this most sacred of days, let us remind ourselves of the Méssiah’s teaching.
Let us pray.
Our Méssiah who art in Hollywood,
Keanu be thy name.
Thy sadness had come.
Thy will be The One,
In the Matrix as in the Sequels.
Give us this day our Easter Egg,
And forgive us our cruel image memes,
As we “Be excellent to each other”.
And lead us not into Scarlett Johansen,
But John Wick defeat evil.
For thine is the action,
the adventure, and romantic comedy,
for the foreseeable future.
F’kin ‘A’, man.
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Who prays to their imaginary friend for that??
🙂 Very strange.
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Jo, the numbering is messed up again. Replies to comments are coming out as fresh comments.
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happy easter to jo & family, and everyone else here…
15 Apr: SanJoseMercuryNews: Editorial: More than symbolism, March For Science a matter of life and death
Here’s how bad things are in America today: Scientists feel so under siege, they have called for a March for Science on Earth Day, April 22.
Of all places, the Bay Area should respond in force. We know the vital role scientific research plays not only in our economy but our very lives.
But now evidence-based research is under attack to a stunning degree. Researchers’ budgets are shrinking fast, and when politicians decide scientific conclusions are not to their liking they simply shut down that line of research.
Science never should be a partisan issue. It is exploratory in nature. Scientific deductions are expected to raise questions and spark honest debate. But that’s where peer review comes in to examine the findings and even try to duplicate the process that led to them. Doubt about results of experiments and research should inspire more investigation, not suppress it…
Scientists try to stay apolitical. We get that. But politics has engulfed them. They have truth on their side, and they need to stand up for themselves — and for the future of America.
http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/04/15/editorial-more-than-symbolism-march-for-science-a-matter-of-life-and-death/
editorial does not mention CAGW at all.
3 comments:
Shadrach Smith: It’s a march for AGW research jobs. Best of luck.
Marc Herrington: Is this the science that told us hydrogenated margarine was better for us than real butter? There is so many phony research, it needs to be cut back.
SM650: I don’t think people realize how much science and it’s breakthroughs or discoveries have changed our lives for the better. SCIENCE SAVES LIVES.
15 Apr: Townhall: Paul Driessen: Real Science Must Guide Policy
McKinsey & Company, the UN and assorted activists say the world must spend $93 trillion over the next 15 years to convert completely from fossil fuels to “sustainable” energy! Or it will be too late. Our planet will be doomed.
Claims and demands like those require solid, incontrovertible proof that climate alarmists are right. Not just computer models, repeated assertions, “peer review” among like-minded researchers seeking their next government grant, or a partial-degree of warming amid multiple El Niños and cooling cycles. They require “Red Team” analyses and open, unfettered debate over every aspect of human and natural influences on Earth’s climate, the ways carbon dioxide improves plant growth, and the need for abundant, reliable, affordable electricity and motor fuel for every person in every nation.
We haven’t had any of that so far. Up to now, climate chaos is just one more Club of Rome supposedly looming disaster, supposedly caused by human intervention in natural processes, supposedly requiring immediate, fundamental changes in human behavior, to avoid supposed global calamities – threats to the very survival of our wildlife, civilization and planet. It’s all assertions, devoid of persuasive evidence…READ ALL
https://townhall.com/columnists/pauldriessen/2017/04/15/real-science-must-guide-policy-n2313721?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&newsletterad=
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???
11 Apr: HighCountryNews: Gary Wockner: California isn’t accounting for this major emitter
Even though large reservoirs emit methane, the state doesn’t off-set their impact.
(Gary Wockner is the director of the Save The Colorado River Campaign and the author of River Warrior: Fighting to Protect the World’s Rivers)
But there are caveats to (Gov Brown’s) commitment, including the continued growth in fossil fuel extraction in California and the state’s near-explosive population growth, both of which drive emissions up, not down.
There’s another issue that California needs to address, and that’s methane emissions from hydropower, particularly at Hoover Dam, the source of a significant portion of Los Angeles’ electricity.
Twenty-five years ago, a small team of scientists in Brazil started measuring the methane produced at hydropower dams and reservoirs. Led by Philip Fearnside, the scientists found surprising results, indicating that hydropower dams and reservoirs in tropical countries like Brazil emit high levels of methane, sometimes equivalent to as much as a coal-fired power plant. Fearnside referred to these hydropower producers as “methane factories.”…
In September last year, an international team of scientists synthesized dozens of studies around the globe and found that hydropower’s methane emissions have been dramatically under-measured…
Further, another study, published in September 2016 by a team of Swiss scientists, used previous measurements at dams and reservoirs around the world to create a model that estimated methane emissions from nearly 1,500 hydropower plants and other dams and reservoirs across the planet. The study’s conclusions further rocked the climate change world: Climate change emissions from Hoover Dam and Lake Mead on the Colorado River near Las Vegas were found to be about equal to those of coal-fired power plants that produced the same amount of electricity…
About 50 percent of Hoover Dam’s electricity is wired to the Los Angeles area. Yet no greenhouse gas emissions calculations — in Los Angeles or statewide in California — include Hoover Dam’s contribution. That’s like having a large coal-fired power plant burning in downtown Los Angeles whose climate change impact is completely ignored.
California has 1,400 dams and reservoirs. Most of them produce far less methane than Hoover Dam, but many of those dams’ emissions are neither estimated nor measured. It’s time for California to acknowledge its methane emissions from hydropower, measure them, and finally, offset or stop them.
http://www.hcn.org/articles/california-isnt-accounting-for-this-major-methane-emitter
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The believers in AGW need to get their act together; do they want renewables with storage? In which case they need pumped storage, batteries won’t do it. Otherwise do they propose electricity only when the wind blows or the sun shines? Or are they advocating stopping electricity all together?
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16 Apr: Guardian: Kenneth Kimmel: Why scientists are fighting back. We’ve had enough of Trump’s war on facts
The president’s savaging of environmental safeguards is a direct attack on reason and research
(Kenneth Kimmell is president of the Union of Concerned Scientists, a US-based nonprofit organisation)
As a colleague observed: “You know you’re in trouble when scientists take to the streets.” He’s right. I’ve worked closely with scientists for decades and, by training and temperament, they tend to be happiest in the lab, testing and retesting experiment results – among the last groups of people you might expect to find protesting…
Nowhere is the attack more ferocious than on the issue of global warming, where the Trump administration has taken a wrecking ball to the modest but important policies put in place by President Obama…
The attack on science is coming not only from the Trump administration. Private groups, such as the fossil-fuel funded Heartland Institute, have mailed extraordinarily misleading booklets entitled Why Scientists Disagree About Global Warming (sic), vowing to make sure that every school science teacher receives this disinformation presumably to weaken the consensus the climate change is real and burning fossil fuels is its primary cause…
Yet something even bigger also seems to be brewing. For a long time, many of us have believed that facts speak for themselves, and scientists could remain on the sidelines to avoid “politicising” their work…
This fact-based community includes journalists who are calling out falsehoods despite being branded enemies of the American people…
My organisation, the Union of Concerned Scientists, with its more than 500,000 members and supporters, has joined with allies from the climate, environmental justice and labour movements to help organise both the March for Science and the People’s Climate March.
As the demonstrations are likely to show, an enormous number of people understand what is stake. The greatest attack on science in memory may wind up spurring the greatest mobilisation of scientists, and allies far and wide, we have ever seen.
***(Comments will be switched on later)
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/apr/15/why-scientists-are-fighting-back-we-have-had-enough-of-trump-war-on-facts
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14 Apr: UK Telegraph: Steven Swinford: Britain preparing to scrap EU green energy targets as part of a bonfire of red tape after Brexit
Britain is preparing to scrap EU green energy targets which will add more than £100 to the average energy bill as part of a bonfire of red tape after Brexit…
The UK is currently on course to miss the target and incur millions of pounds in fines from the European Union.
Government sources told The Daily Telegraph that the target, under the EU Renewable Energy Directive, is likely to be scrapped after Brexit.
The Daily Telegraph has called on the Conservative Party to promise a bonfire of EU red tape (LINK) in its 2020 manifesto to put Britain on a radically different course…
Boris Johnson, the Foreign Secretary, has “applauded” the campaign and he backed calls to sweep away decades of “burdensome” EU regulations after Brexit.
It comes after civil service documents, photographed on a trade, revealed that Britain plans to scale down its concern over climate change after Brexit…
Owen Paterson, a Conservative MP and former Environment Secretary, said: “It’s distorting the whole energy market. It’s like the Sherrif of Nottingham – it transfers money from my poorest constituents to my wealthiest constituents who are putting up pointless wind turbines heavily subsidised.
I would be very happy to see the back of it.”…
EU regulations are estimated to cost Britain a total of more than £120 billion per year…
After Brexit occurs in 2019, the merits of each regulation will be assessed before a decision is made on whether to jettison it or not.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/04/14/britain-preparing-scrap-eu-green-energy-targets-part-bonfire/
15 Apr: SMH: Kelsey Munro: Energy policy: Gladys Berejiklian government might be greener than Mike Baird’s
“Latest figures show our renewable energy sources already contribute 14 per cent to the NSW electricity energy mix,” (new Energy and Resources Minister Don Harwin) told Fairfax Media. “During the state’s heatwave on February 10 this year, at the time of peak demand, renewables provided 29 per cent of total energy generation.”
The government last week backed a Greens motion to support a technical change in the structure of the national energy market that would put batteries and other storage technologies on a level playing field with more established generators, with Mr Harwin saying in parliament he had already communicated that position to the Australian Energy Market Commission…
And the government’s submission to the independent review of the national electricity market, known as the Finkel review, said all options should be on the table, including “a mechanism that provides market signals and framing for orderly generation transition”.
This, Mr Harwin later said, was not code for a “carbon tax” but for an emissions intensity scheme.
Mr Harwin denied any shift in the government’s policy since the ascension of Ms Berejiklian, pointing out the NSW Climate Change Policy Framework was released in November last year, when Mr Baird was still Premier, “and it remains current”.
That document allocated $500 million for renewables over five years and laid out the state’s “aspirational” target of net zero emissions by 2050…
“The Berejiklian government knows renewable energy and climate action are what voters want,” said the NSW Greens energy spokesman Jeremy Buckingham. “They’re clearly and carefully diverging from the fossil fuel dead-enders running the Turnbull government.”…
One significant factor is that the economics have changed dramatically. It is now far cheaper to build large-scale solar or wind than new fossil fuel powered stations, Ms McKenzie (CEO, Climate Council) said, pointing to the Council’s recent report which found electricity from new coal-power stations would cost $160 per megawatt hour, while solar farms are around $110 per megawatt hour and falling.
“There’s no need for an ideological debate on climate or energy policy,” she said. “The debate is over and the economics should be pointing us all in the same direction.”…
http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/energy-policy-gladys-berejiklian-government-might-be-greener-than-mike-bairds-20170414-gvkyod.html
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16 Apr: Bloomberg: Electric Grid Study Ordered by U.S. Energy Chief to Boost Coal
by Jennifer A Dlouhy and Jennifer Jacobs
U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry is ordering a study of the U.S. electric grid, with an eye to examining whether policies that favor wind and solar energy are accelerating the retirement of coal and nuclear plants critical to ensuring steady, reliable power supplies.
The 60-day review, which Perry set in motion Friday, comes as regulators increasingly wonder how to balance electric reliability with a raft of state policies that prioritize less stable renewable energy sources…
In an April 14 memo obtained by Bloomberg News, Perry highlights concerns about the “erosion” of resources providing “baseload power” — consistent, reliable electricity generated even when the sun isn’t shining and the winds aren’t blowing.
“We are blessed as a nation to have an abundance of domestic energy resources, such as coal, natural gas, nuclear and hydroelectric, all of which provide affordable baseload power and contribute to a stable, reliable and resilient grid,” Perry wrote in the memo to his chief of staff. But in recent years, grid experts have “highlighted the diminishing diversity of our nation’s electric generation mix and what that could mean for baseload power and grid resilience.”…
Perry asked his chief of staff, Brian McCormack, to develop a plan for evaluating to what extent regulatory burdens, subsidies, and tax policies “are responsible for forcing the premature retirement of baseload power plants.” …
https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-04-15/electric-grid-study-ordered-by-u-s-energy-chief-to-boost-coal
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Just send U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry a copy of the reports from South Australia on grid instability.
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The SA Labor government maintains that there was no instability but fail to explain why they need interconnectors to access interstate electricity.
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That’s so they can export instability to other States. And import reliable cheaper electricity into SA.
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15 Apr: Sacramento Bee Editorial: Lawmakers face a new decision that will affect your wallet
Cap-and-trade certainly has generated revenue for the state, $4.4 billion and counting. The April 6 decision upholds the current program, but lawmakers should not breathe easily…
To be certain that a new cap-and-trade program would weather a new legal challenge, Brown has urged legislators to approve it by a two-thirds vote, the requirement under state law for authorizing tax and fee increases. That would be wise.
Wise but not easy, not after legislators agreed earlier this month for the first time in two decades to raise gasoline taxes 12 cents a gallon and other fees to generate $5 billion a year to pay for road maintenance and transit. The costs of cap-and-trade ultimately fall on us all…
Last year, Brown signed legislation calling for greenhouse gas emissions to be cut to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030. That’s an especially a tall order, one that will require ever tighter emission controls, more mass transit and still fewer gas-gulping vehicles.
The air resources board has set a goal of 4 million-plus zero-emission vehicles to be on the road by 2030. Even Fremont-based Tesla Motors, the leading electric vehicle maker, says that will be tough to meet given current incentives…
Lawmakers’ resolve will be tested again soon when they decide whether to extend cap and trade and how to alter it. When and if they cast that vote, they would do well to keep in mind that they cannot keep piling costs on motorists, particularly lower-income people who depend on their cars and trucks to make ends meet.
http://www.sacbee.com/opinion/editorials/article144554914.html
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“ to make ends meet ”
The first time I heard this (age 5 or so) I heard “meat.”
So “ends meat” suggested a part of a cow I did not want to eat.
30
My butcher likes to meat people.
00
6 Apr: Economic Times India: Swaminathan S. Anklesaria: Dark side of solar success: It may kill thermal power, banks
The latest solar power auction has yielded an electricity price of just Rs 3.15unit, down from Rs 5 two years ago. This seems competitive with coal-based thermal power…
What’s not to like? Plenty. Solar power has many hidden subsidies. Its true cost is far higher than for thermal power.
A far bigger problem is that solar power is given preference when supply exceeds demand, so thermal plants have to back down. The plant load factor (PLF) or capacity utilisation of coal-based plants was 76% six years ago, but is now just 58%. India used to be perennially short of electricity, but now most regions have surplus. India now exports power to Bangladesh, Nepal and Myanmar…
Around 65GW of new thermal power plants are already in the pipeline. These, plus new solar plants, threaten a rising power surplus at a time of tepid demand growth. The consequent PLF collapse could bankrupt many projects, hugely burdening lenders. Many banks are already staggering under enormous bad debts, and now face the threat of a fresh avalanche. That will hit the whole economy .
In sum, explosive solar power growth looks a blessing, but can become a curse. We should hurry slowly…
Solar power looks great when the sun shines, but stops at sunset, just as power demand soars to its evening peak. Much thermal power has to remain idle during the day, ready to pick up the slack when solar production suddenly stops. This forced idleness carries huge costs hidden by ostensibly cheap solar power quotations.
The notion that solar power has become cheaper than coal-based power is an illusion…An official answer to a question in Parliament said, “The government is promoting solar energy through fiscal and promotional incentives such as capital and or interest subsidies, tax holidays on earnings for 10 years, generation based incentives, accelerated depreciation, viability gap funding, financing rooftop solar as part of home loans, concessional excise and customs duties, preferences for power generated from renewables. “Whew!
Besides, the government offers a 25% capital subsidy for solar equipment production. The solar parks attracting the recent low bids get cheap or free land from state governments, a big implicit subsidy since 1,000MW needs 5,000 acres. At an investor conference last year, one solar entrepreneur estimated the true cost of solar power (sans implicit and explicit subsidies) at Rs 6unit without storage and Rs 8 unit with storage. A captive coal-based power station working flat out yields power at just Rs 2.50unit, far cheaper than solar power. Commercial thermal plants have quoted Rs 1.77 to Rs 4 unit.
Solar power is intermittent. It fails at night and works weakly on cloudy or foggy days…
Breakneck speed for solar power will break the neck of thermal plants and banks.
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/energy/power/dark-side-of-solar-success-it-may-kill-thermal-power-banks/articleshow/58202191.cms
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Solution is easy for the real power plants, sit on their hands for a few days and do not fire up at night, solar should cover it. When people have had enough of sitting in the dark, things will change the time is rapidly approaching the real business without government prop ups needs to just say no it is my money not yours.
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How to Rebuff a Climate Denier
Who denies climate? The report then goes on to provide not one fact about human impact on global warming.
The closest it gets is to quote that old consensus:
“A better headline might have been “EPA Chief Denies Scientific Consensus on Climate Change.” The subsequent text could have explained that, while 97 percent of scientists agree that humans are causing climate change, Pruitt contends there is “tremendous disagreement about the degree of [human] impact.” Pruitt, a longtime ally of fossil fuel companies, stands at odds with NASA, NOAA and the EPA, which state that carbon pollution from burning oil, coal and natural gas is driving the warming trend”.
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I got a headache trying to follow their logic Robber. They are saying that you need to keep repeating the “truth” of the 97% consensus until no other opinion can pass the gate to your (now)fully closed mind.
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‘….serpents have been lying to them?’
Its going to take a lukewarm strategy from the Coalition to get a debate going, like a HELE close to the Adani mine.
Just spoke to a fella at Easter lunch and he said we don’t care what’s happening with climate change, renewables are cleaner and cheaper than dirty coal. I was armed with the words of Tony (our resident expert) but to no avail, so I let the matter drop.
We need a satirist, urgently.
70
Too many Australians believe the propaganda, that so called renewables are cleaner and cheaper than coal or other fossil fuel sources.
30
After only one glass of Chardonnay I accused him of being a pseudo Marxist who wants to deindustrialise Australia. Yes, says he.
Mass delusion is now deeply intrenched and it will require a minor miracle to snap them out of this malaise. Adani maybe the trigger for a serious debate in the MSM.
50
I am starting a movement, every easter everyone should flog a banker, its what Jesus would have done
40
I read that as ‘snog a banker’ and… ummm… I think I will just stop talking now. 😛
00
Jesus probably would have done that at easter as well
00
There’s a dangerous belief that warmer = drier. For some of the world this may be true, but it’s worth considering the civilisation-ending droughts that came with wide scale cooling events like those around 2200BC and 1200BC. And you don’t have to look so far back.
The Northern Hemisphere’s cooling trend in the mid-20th century, which HH Lamb described as “the longest-continued downward trend since temperature records began”, peaked in the 1970s when NH snow and ice area increased very sharply (the earliest sat surveys showing 12% increase from 1967 to 1972).
And how was life in vulnerable regions back around 1972? Drought frequency in India, while not as radical as drought frequency prior to the improving phase 1925-70, had increased after 1960; while in Africa hundreds of thousands were dying at the peak of the Sahel Drought. All of this was in the lead up to the Global Cooling scare.
About the southern hemisphere Lamb wrote in 1977:
“There are indications that corresponding shifts have taken place in the anticyclone and cyclone belts of the southern hemisphere and that the droughts affecting Zambia, Rhodesia and parts of the Transvaal in recent years are essentially part of the same phenomenon.
“At the same time, the shifting positions from month to month, and from one year to the next, occupied by the main anticyclone centres in this belt have introduced an abnormal variability of temperature and precipitation. A similar development may explain the sequence of droughts and floods in different parts of Australia in 1972-3.“
So the smarties who are going to dial in a nicer climate by taxing carbon and erecting white elephants need to be careful which number they dial. Certainly not 1972, for all its ice!
But maybe that nicer/stabler climate never existed, and there’s nothing to dial.
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This Easter I am spending in Perth.
One? 24/7 electricity.
Two? I really wanted to see it one last time before the Ghost Metropolis happens. 🙂
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I hear the quokkas will be running the place by the end of next year.
30
They can come over and run Adelaide anytime they want. Tell them I will pick them up from the airport. 🙂
40
I have a question about the certainty with which we attribute the increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration from 280ppm to 380ppm over the “modern era” largely to anthropogenic emissions. I have set out below what I believe to be the facts and the questions follow.
I am very keen to understand where I have got it wrong.
The facts about CO2 content in the atmosphere and the oceans, which are set out below, are from “Taxing Air – Facts and Fallacies about Climate Change” (2013) by Bob Carter & John Spooner pp 107-114 & 196-197.
There are minor discrepancies between numbers and I am sure that the apparent accuracy of the numbers belies the actual accuracy. However, the general magnitudes seem to be correct and the discrepancies are not relevant in the context of my question.
• The total mass of CO2 in the atmosphere is reported as 3,046Gt which is about 0.038% (380ppm) of the atmosphere.
• The atmospheric CO2 flows (i.e. emissions vs absorption) are largely in balance.
• However, the warmists claim that anthropogenic emissions are upsetting the balance, leading to an increase in the atmospheric CO2, and causing global temperatures to rise.
• Natural emissions are reported to be 743Gt per year, or 96% of all emissions, and human emissions are reported to be 29Gt/yr, or 4% of all emissions.
• The IPCC estimate for annual CO2 emission sources in 2005 is shown below (converted from Gt of carbon to Gt of carbon dioxide and rounded to nearest whole number):
Respiration (humans, animals, phytoplankton) 161 to 192
Ocean outgassing (tropical areas) 333 to 360
Soil bacteria, decomposition 185 to 222
Volcanoes, soil degassing 2 to 7
Forest cutting, forest fires 2 to 10
Anthropogenic emissions 27 to 28
TOTAL 710 to 829
Interestingly, the uncertainty in this estimate is 119Gt of CO2, 15% of total emissions or more than 4 times the quantity of anthropogenic emissions.
• The oceans contain about 38,000Gt of dissolved Carbon in the form of CO2. This is equivalent to about 140,000Gt of CO2 which is nearly 50 times the mass of CO2 in the atmosphere.
• CO2 is less soluble in warm water than in cold water so that, as the oceans warm, CO2 is emitted to the atmosphere (outgassing) and as the oceans cool CO2 is absorbed. Based on the IPCC estimate, between 333 and 370Gt of CO2 were emitted by the oceans in 2005 and this is apparently taken as the normal range under all conditions. This is about 12 times the mass of CO2 released to the atmosphere by way of anthropogenic emissions and the uncertainty of this estimate itself is almost twice the estimated quantity of anthropogenic emissions.
My questions:
1. With the high variability of the flows, particularly ocean outgassing, what is the evidence to support the claim (by skeptics as well as alarmists) that the increase in atmospheric CO2 from 280ppm to 380ppm (approximately 800Gt) in the industrial era is solely or largely attributable to increases in anthropogenic emissions?
2. To what extent is atmospheric CO2 concentration attributable to ocean outgassing?
3. Is there a correlation between ocean temperatures and atmospheric CO2 concentration? and
4. Why do I remember so vividly being taught in science classes at school and engineering lectures at uni, in the 60’s, that the atmospheric CO2 concentration was 0.04% (400ppm), or did I just sleep through those classes?
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😀 No, you were wide awake… As were most of the readers here who were taught exactly the same general science facts; as opposed to the current UN Socialist propaganda being taught in the present-day indoctrination programs…
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Thinking more about historic CO2 levels I came across the following papers by Ernst-Georg Beck which were published in “Energy and Environment” Vol 18, No2 in 2007 and Vol 19, No7 in 2008 respectively.
“180 Years of Atmospheric CO2 Gas Analysis by Chemical Methods” – http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/Reference_Docs/180_yrs_Atmos_CO2_Analysis_by_chemical_methods_Beck_2007.pdf
and
“50 Years of Continuous Measurement of CO2 on Mauna Loa” – http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1260/095830508786238288
Beck was co-founder of the European Institute for Climate and Energy (EIKE) in Jena. Sadly he died in September 2010.
The first paper summarises “more than 90,000 accurate chemical analyses of CO2 in air since 1812” and refers to three high levels in 1825, 1857 and 1942 – at around or above 400ppm. Beck mentions that the IPCC claimed in its TAR that “direct measurements can only be relied on post 1957 and prior direct methods can be disregarded in favour of indirect measurements made of air trapped in ice.” – sounds a bit like Michael Mann and his selected proxies.
Both papers are authoritative and worth reading.
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You would hate to think that good results from 1850 were ignored for want of ‘accuracy’ when people are claiming a 50% increase in 100 years. It really means modern scientists do not believe the results from 1850 are trustworthy to 50%. That would need explanation. Also I have real concerns about the physics of CO2 capture in ice because of differential leaching between CO2, O2 and N2 and like the tree rings, you have to have great faith in a hypothesis about ice capture against facts measured carefully at the time by many people. What does it matter if modern methods are accurate to ten decimal places if what is being measured has changed over a century?
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I also was taught these facts and the average of the world was 14.7 C@1013Mb that was 55years ago when I was in class obviously science could not measure stuff 50 and 100 years ago. These people that call themselves scientists that disregard history need to look into a mirror to see what a fool looks like.
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Henry’s law directly connects CO2 levels and ocean surface temperature. Warmer water releases CO2 and colder water absorbs it.
The IPCC get around this by only considering the top 100 metres of water, as if the 98% of CO2 dissolved in the remaining 3.3km of water is of little consequence and takes thousands of years to circulate to the surface. This unsubstantiated logic is very convenient because otherwise the whole story would be discredited. You cannot model a turbulent 3.4km of water in the laboratory, 3400 atmospheres of pressure in the laboratory. We know CO2 rises from the very bottom.
So the big omission is the half life of CO2 in the water, established easily at 14 years and claimed by the IPCC to be variously thousands of years down to 80 years. Quite obviously, they are just making it up. Like so much IPCC ‘science’.
Then there is the C14 measure which shows there is almost no fossil fuel CO2 in the atmosphere. No one debates these things, so you are not wrong. These are the inconvenient truths.
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Sorry, again 340 atmospheres of pressure at the bottom. 340 ton per square inch.
30
Fingers out of control. Thinking one thing and typing another. 340 tons per square FOOT.
20
I would not want 340tonnes/sq ft standing on my toe.
10
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/12/07/a-brief-history-of-atmospheric-carbon-dioxide-record-breaking/amp/
QUOTE
Plant stomata reconstructions (Kouwenberg et al., 2005, Finsinger and Wagner-Cremer, 2009) and contemporary chemical analyses (Beck, 2007) indicate that CO2 levels in the 1930′s to early 1940′s were in the 340 to 400 ppmv range and then declined sharply in the 1950’s. These findings have been rejected by the so-called scientific consensus because this fluctuation is not resolved in Antarctic ice cores. However, MacFarling Meure et al., 2006 found possible evidence of a mid-20th Century CO2 decline in the DE08 ice core…
END QUOTE
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The is CO2 generally and a direct measurement is made in Radio carbon dating where the % of C14O2 has been wonderfully stable for 20,000 years at about one atom in a billion. It has only been varied by the atom bomb blasts made in the second half of the 20th century where it suddenly doubled and collapsed back to the old level in a perfect exponential curve, halving every 14 years. What this means is that we have a direct and very accurate measure of fossil fuel CO2 which has no C14 as opposed to modern CO2. We also have proof of the half life and obviously where the additional C14 went into some huge reservoir and there is only one.
So everything is known. Remember the proposition is that man made CO2 is dangerously heating the atmosphere. Radio carbon dating shows that if this is true, it is not man made CO2, which should end the argument. The whole story is so seriously wrong on every level you wonder how it continues.
I also read that we have been given another 10 years to save the planet, now that Gore’s original 10 year deadline has expired. This is so like the Rapture that it would be laughable, if our country was not being destroyed by Green ignorance and the wilful sabotage of professional Green politicians.
60
Here you go we have icebergs icebergs and icebergs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1lEmS7bGvg&feature=share
10
More evidence of cooling and yet Australia remains committed to destroying its energy infrastructure (Australia’s building of windmills and solar plant is not true energy infrastructure because it doesn’t produce reliable or cheap energy nor is it environmentally friendly in the case of windmills).
71
CO2 Limits
I read that Germany has just exceeded its agreed limit of CO2 emissions for the year 2017. I don’t know what the Merkelian destroyers plan to do to be “carbon neutral” for the next 8 months.
Elections in Germany’s most populous state on the 14th of May will be interesting; not only because of the devastating energy policies but because the traditional workers party (SPD) that’s had its base there since the early days of the federal republic, has parachuted in Sgt Schulz from Brussels to take over the federal reins and the running for Chancellor, later this year. And parachuted he has with a golden one thanks to his “retirement” from the EU, following revelations that he was topping up his allowances by gaming the system, on top of his base salary of €400,000 a year. Two-thirds of it tax-exempt.
The high school dropout and failed book-seller apprentice found his home in politics many years ago; much of it in the sheltered workshops of the EU. It’s pretty obvious where his “skills” lie. And that would earn him no respect at all from the hard working people of Germany; many of them forced out of work by Germany’s energy policy, burdensome regulation and painful taxes on any degree of private business success that is not sponsored by government.
Alas I fear that few Germans still bother to vote, having lost confidence or even hope that elections will provide any sort of real leadership to get them out of the deep manure in which they’re swimming every day. Thanks to the mainstream media and government over-funded electronic media, the German public have no idea that e.g. the “right wing populist” AfD project the spirit of the CDU that helped to build the republic into an “economic miracle” from the ashes of war, under the likes of Ludwig Erhard.
Even if AfD, PDV (Party of Reason; conservative libertarian) and FDP gain substantial ground in Germany’s parliaments, the CDU of the 21st century makes “deals with the devils” in alliances with The Left (decendents of the East German SED), SPD and Greens; just to retain a tenuous majority. A real change is only possible if the newcomers can establish majority governments.
80
Bernd, do you think Australia or Germany is worse in terms of CO2 madness? I suspect Australia is worse because even Germany is building more coal plant.
50
Australia is much more vulnerable to the actions of idiots.
Australia has a negligible manufacturing sector and only remnants of a middle tier; that’d be the equivalent of the German Mittelstand with small to medium enterprises filling niche requirements of bigger industry and consumers, while employing a very large part of the productive population. Australia is much more about storing, transporting and selling the “Brummagem goods and the slop”; as Lawson wrote on 1904.
German government cannot afford a collapse of its Mittelstand that is very dependent upon reliable and affordable energy sources. The profitability; indeed their viability; is dependent upon the productivity that such energy sources provide. The German tax base would evaporate. Cities are in financial distress when businesses that paid tax based on turnover to local government, shut their doors and move abroad to where energy is cheaper and more reliable. Those moves are very easy thanks to the proximity of e.g. Czechia and Poland; that do not partake the insanity; and the EU’s trade mechanisms. 😉
Environmental worship is deeply ingrained in Germans; it mainly goes back to the era between the WW1 and WW2; but there are strong threads back to the 18th century (and tenuous threads back to the iron age). To their credit, a growing number of real environmentalists are voicing protest at the prolific manifestations of the environmentally destructive Energiewende. After more than a decade of me pointing out the inevitable “necessity” of pursuit of the Energiewende; they are coming to realize that their precious landscapes, rural regions and parks are being converted to industrial estates.
40
G’day Bern,
My father was a Major in the British Army (Royal Engineers) and was posted to Germany for the rebuilding efforts after WWII.
I was also christened in Germany and apparently have a German Officer as my Godfather – a friend and work colleague of my Father. My Mother told a few amusing tales of their time in Germany, one of which was the exuberant knees-up at my Christening in the Officers Mess.
Germany is renowned for their engineering and I hope my Father’s and Godfather’s meagre contributions won’t go to waste.
50
My father, as a youth, having fled the Soviet sector in 1948 by wading down drainage ditches with water up to his chin, got scooped up by the British. One of his work assignments was to help expand a large airstrip at Celle-Wietzenbruch for the Berlin Airlift. The blockade ceased before that expansion was fully utilised. But a “line had been drawn” to Soviet expansionist ambitions.
Germans, collectively and individually, should be grateful, especially to the British for the generous management of the post-war situation in Germany, but also to the USA which provided the materiel as well as inspiration for entrepreneurs. Sure; there were some mis-steps but in general, the mood was one or building a Germany that was better for everybody.
60
I visited the museum at Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin. The amazing things people did to escape the communist ‘paradise’ were very moving. Later on I was given a chunk of the Berlin wall by a friend who was living there at the time the wall came down.
Celle is a very attractive place.
10
I was born in ’49 and going from photos of my Mum holding me at the christening, I can only guess it must have been somewhere around 1950 or so.
Unfortunately I have no knowledge of any particular project my Father may have been part of but now I’m wondering if my Father might have stumbled across yours.
Small world, as they say.
00
I was there later Raven…about 1973 or1974.
00
This comment is further up, but needs repeating for comparison of our energy prices. Exchange rate is misleading.
I believe the conversion of our rates into $US is very misleading because it should relate to our other domestic costs.
The exchange rate is not a measure which can be used for comparison as apart from energy dependent products like aluminium, you cannot trade in electricity and the exchange rate is trade driven. You need to compare domestic costs.
Consider the Big Mac index which shows a Big Mac in the US at $US5.06 and in Australia at $US4.28, which means our domestic buying power relative to wages is higher by 20%, not lower by 25%. Hamburgers, a complex formulaic mix of labour, overhead, wages, taxes are cheaper in Australia. This means our energy costs are much higher for Australians, so you should increases our domestic charges by 20% to compare with US charges.
We are not only charging ourselves far too much for our own coal and gas, we are sending the money overseas under the RET.
What stays in Australia is owned by overseas interests too and we are charged again for the ‘free’ solar and wind. We are not the ‘smart country’.
Frankly it is smarter for Engie/Mitsui to get into the river of easy money than try to sell cheap power when 2x the cash goes to someone else for supplying nothing.
40
My point is that when comparing the price of anything, you have to consider so many domestic factors none of which is exchange rate. Even within America there are great variations in the cost of a Big Mac as $1 has different buying power. This is no my idea but a well known way of assessing relative costs. Australian electricity is 20% more expensive relatively to our costs than it seems where using the exchange rate is not relevant. Better to scale with the cost of a Big Mac.
20
You must have got you Big Mac in NYC, LA or SF because here in Lancaster PA it is $3.99
20
I don’t know what they charge in northern NY as I only eat food, but given Americans propensity to eat unhealthy food, the demand may be higher so they can demand a higher price!
20
These are national averages. It works as an economic indicator even within countries.
The price varies across the US by +/-20%. A big component in the price is rental, which goes way up in the inner city where you have the population densities. The other is transport, obviously a problem in Alaska. So the cheapest is in Kansas at $4.02 (Average). Juneau Alaska is $4.82. I have read that in New York city it is about $6.30 but you would not move to New York to save money.
10
What do you do when you have times like this?
It’s okay to say that wind power is variable, but even when that is mentioned (very rarely) it’s hidden in the main text of how good wind power is, so people see it and are ambivalent about, mainly because they don’t really know what that means.
You can say that wind has an average Capacity Factor (CF) of 30%, but again, people have no real idea what that means.
So, what do you do when there are times like this.
Over the last seven days here in Australia, wind power is averaging only 515MW average power delivery per day. (and that’s a CF of only 13.2% for seven days now)
There are good days, and there are bad days, and going even deeper, there are good hours and bad hours.
Traditional power generation is at the maximum for each unit, all the time, not up and down. How easy is it for the people working on delivering that power to actually be able to do that when it is a straight line maximum power delivery all the time, knowing well in advance when it is not going to be there, maintenance periods etc, so they can have another power plant of the same power generation ready to take over.
Now we have the case where, even though that maximum Nameplate for wind power is 3900MW, the average (at that 30% CF figure) is only 1150MW, and while you say that’s an average, it’s spread across the whole year, good days, bad days, good hours bad hours. Those controllers have to be ready at a seconds notice to bring those other plants on line to cover when wind generation drops, and then drop them off line also at a moments notice. Or have then running all the time, just waiting.
That’s why power is expensive. On and Off, on and off, all the time, not just run, generate, deliver.
Then you have times like this, the last SEVEN days.
Wind has averaged only 515MW for seven full days and that’s at a CF of only 13.2%.
Until people actually understand that, and realise what it means, then all you’ll get is grumbling about the cost of power, without ever seeing an explanation as to why it is expensive, how unreliable wind is, and the ramifications of what that unreliabilty leads to.
Tony.
141
30%. Thats 7.2hours from 24 hours. So seven hour power. About the same with solar.
On demand? Never.
So the base load remains unchanged and you have to pay for that as well, so there is no saving in replaceables.
Far worse is that the billions we are paying directly in our electricity bills just to build windmills are going to private companies who will then charge what they like for something which cost them nothing, especially when we shut down and blow up our parents’ billion dollar power stations which work.
So there is no point to solar or wind, except for places where there is simply nothing else. I have been in India when the whole factory shut down for half an hour because there was no wind. That is not a factory.
60
Two weeks ago I posted about wind farms near to Goulburn and Crookwell NSW that I observed over a couple of days, at one site most turbines not rotating and at another none rotating.
70
And right now NSW wind farms are generating about 2 MW, compared to a registered capacity of 651 MW according to the Aneroid website. While SA and Vic wind farms are each delivering about 50 MW each. Hydro is delivering 500 MW, and solar 200 MW. But those nasty fossil stations are delivering 18,000 MW to keep our lights on.
70
That’s ok, batteries will save us! They will provide ALL the power we need when the wind isn’t blowing so much. (sarc)
90
Batteries loom large in their perspective, they have put a lot of faith in them.
60
I wont be long.
I am just going to toast my crumpet on an interconnector.
30
While in the south east of SA last week I slipped over the border to visit the Heywood interconnector just to see what it is. I figured I could find it by looking for large transmission pylons and lines. Sure enough, I saw a set heading towards SA at right angles to another set coming from Portland, most likely connecting the windmills near Cape Bridgewater. It is about 5km south of Heywood not far from the road to Portland.
It’s an impressive looking beast to say the least. Took a few photos.
20
One way of highlighting a problem
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2017/04/04/tips-april-2017/#comment-82133
20
16 Apr: Local Sweden: White Easter: Sweden wakes up to snow and record low temperatures
In Örebro, the mercury dropped to -14C, making it the coldest April night since 1944, according to P4 Örebro.
In Karlstad, Sweden’s meteorological institute SMHI said temperatures reached -9C, meaning it was the coldest night of April since 1985.
In Floda, Södermanland, things were even colder, reaching -17C. That was the coldest night measured since the local weather monitoring station was set up in 1995…
In Götaland, since the start of the 2000s, the mercury has only slipped below the -10C mark four times…
https://www.thelocal.se/20170416/white-easter-sweden-wakes-up-to-record-low-temperaturs
***imagine the carbon footprint of Andy Murray and his entourage annually.
16 Apr: BBC: Paul Rincon: Green groups warn of ‘race to the bottom’
Environmental groups have urged the prime minister to avoid watering down legislation on climate change and wildlife protection after Brexit.
The letter, signed by WWF, Greenpeace and others, says action is needed to halt ongoing environmental decline…
Campaign groups that have signed the letter include WWF, the Born Free Foundation, Cafod, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace and Oxfam.
A number of high-profile individuals are also signatories: they include ***Andy Murray, Anna Friel, Will Young, Lord Stuart Rose and environmentalist Sir Crispin Tickell…
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-39592515
31
how low can Bill Nye go?
16 Apr: Mashable: Bill Nye and Tyler, The Creator just dropped the hottest theme song ever
by Keith Wagstaff
The beloved TV show host tweeted this amazing encounter on Saturday. It shows the two talking about the theme song for Bill Nye Saves the World, which hits Netflix on April 21…
“That show, it got kids to not hate science class,” Tyler said of the original Bill Nye the Science Guy, which had a “really sick” theme song.
“You take out that snare, it could be a house song.”
Damn, I didn’t know learning about science was that cool.
Bill’s new show will be targeted more toward adults, with celeb guest stars and segments on topics like global warming…
Bill had plenty of praise for Tyler.
“I love you man!” he said.
OFWGKTA forever, Bill.
Bill Nye at the end, indicating Tyler…”original gangstas”…see Tyler’s face:
15 Apr: Youtube: 1min39secs: NEW! Tyler, The Creator For Bill Nye (The Science Guy)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgkvewpribE
the hypocrisy of the CAGW mob:
Wikipedia: Tyler, The Creator
Controversies…READ ALL OF THIS SECTION
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyler,_The_Creator
21
note – I think there is a link to the entire Nye/Tyler theme song in the comments. I didn’t bother to listen to it.
11
oops… in the youtube comments, that is.
11
Their ABC is reporting on methane bubbling / escaping into the Condamine river , I’m sure that the seeps were there before the CSG industry but not according to the watermelons.
81
You’d think the watermelons would be supporting the CSG industry.
After all, they are trying to get rid of all that methane. 😉
00
read all:
17 Apr: Gladstone Observer: Chris Lees: ‘My bill went up $1300’: Residents launch petition in fury over power price
A petition was launched by Sarah Lowcock, calling on more alternative choices to Ergon Energy for Central Queenslanders, after being slapped with a $2185.94 power bill.
“My bill went up like $1300 from the last bill and nothing’s changed,” she claimed.
“I’ve seen bills higher than mine too.”
The Gracemere resident is clearly not alone in her struggle with her quarterly bill having secured 3538 supporters…
Vikki Miro Valle, the director of Vikki Ship Supplies said electricity bills were one of their business killers and cost up to $3700 per month…
“Central Queenslanders only have access to one power company and we are all fed up with our high bills and no explanation into why they are so high,” the petition reads…
An Ergon spokesman said Ergon Energy does not set electricity prices for regional Queenslanders.
“They are set by the independent Queensland Competition Authority,” he said…
https://www.gladstoneobserver.com.au/news/my-bill-went-up-1300-residents-launch-petition-in-/3167137/
31
17 Apr: EurasiaReview: Why India’s Economic Reforms Are Climate Unfriendly – Analysis
by Niharika Tagotra, Researcher, CRP
Budget 2017, in a major push towards achieving greater energy security, introduced policies for the conventional energy sector. These included setting up of two new strategic crude oil reserves in Odisha and Rajasthan; and a significant cut in the import duty on Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) from 5 per cent to 2.5 per cent…
Moreover, the Budget 2017 was silent on the most pressing issues concerning the renewable energy sector, including the extension of the Generation Based Incentive (GBI) scheme for the wind energy sector that expired on 31 March, 2017. This scheme, which has incentivised investments in the sector, was not extended further by the union government, and this is bound to affect the viability of the sector.
The budget also failed to provide incentives for the rooftop solar project that could contribute approximately 15 GW of energy by 2022…
Additionally, the budget was silent on the issue of strengthening the Renewable Purchase Obligations (RPO) market for the RE sector, the sluggishness of which has contributed to the low demand and lower investments in the sector…
For the RE sector, inputs such as solar panels and wind turbines will be taxed at 18 per cent under the new tax regime, up from the current 12 per cent, with no benefit of input tax credit. This will most likely result in a major cascading effect for the sector, thus pushing up prices. On the contrary, the GST is expected to bring down prices for coal as many state cesses that were previously charged on the dry fuel are expected to be subsumed under the GST…READ ON
http://www.eurasiareview.com/17042017-why-indias-economic-reforms-are-climate-unfriendly-analysis/
17 Apr: The Hindu: R Srikanth: Solar plant installers feel the heat
Though Tangedco’s petition for the implementation of the new system is yet to be taken up for hearing by Tamil Nadu Electricity Regulatory Commission (TNERC), the move has confirmed the fears of solar installers who were wondering about the reasons for the delay in the installation of net meters for several rooftop solar plants…READ ON
http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/chennai/solar-plant-installers-feel-the-heat/article18074948.ece
lol:
16 Apr: Hindustan Times: Sweta Goswami: Solar panel registrations begin in Delhi but applying remains a challenge
“A resident can visit our Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy Management (EE&REM) Centre page in the Delhi government website for registration. Scanned copies of the filled forms should be sent by email or in person,” an official said.
(Hindustan Times), however, later figured out that the government had failed to mention any email id where the filled applications could be mailed…
11
Former Labor Minister Garrett is touring again with his band, new name “Midnight Foil”.
Their top song will be: How can you tell when you’re ceiling’s burning”.
They will be backed by renewable energy wind musical instruments and have solar guitars connected to battery packs.
Peter’s dance movements will be enhanced by wiring connected to the battery packs.
80
Very very funny Dennis , well done
10
Here are some relevant parts of the ABC (fake) news on their website. My bolding
In a report to be released today, the University of Melbourne Energy Institute states the continued depressurisation of coal seams, combined with groundwater extraction by industry and landholders, “could significantly increase gas releases from weak or porous zones such as the Condamine River” in southern Queensland.
“CSG is one of the actors and it’s an actor that has increased activity quite recently, so there is certainly a correlation,” Melbourne University’s chair of geology Mike Sandiford, the report’s other author, told the ABC.
But the authors found a “paucity of data makes it impossible to definitively assess the impact” CSG production may have had on creating unintended gas leaks.
Gas seeps can occur naturally and contributory factors can include drought and flood cycles and an area’s geology.
In a statement to the ABC, Origin Energy said it had new data which showed methane emissions from the Condamine River had fallen significantly.
“Our data and CSIRO flux measurements show that peak rates of late 2015 to early 2016 have reduced substantially and we recently saw the lowest measurement since recordings began in 2013 — a reduction of over 60 per cent in the last six months,” it said.
“We have been monitoring the Condamine River seeps since they were first observed to have increased in 2012 and continue to work with independent researchers including the CSIRO to better understand the local geology and possible causes,” it said.
This seems to be how their ABC works, take some weak correlation and report it as fact with a suitable scary headline
Those who lack comprehension skills only read the headline and assume its true.
It would seems to me that if the coal seam is depressurised the seepage would diminish but “lets don’t let the facts get in the way of a good story”
61
ABC is fake indeed. So is the rest of the MSM, which is now just a propaganda machine for the socialists, and so the systemic crash and burn scenario is getting much closer.
61
Good news story from Eric Worrall at wuwt.
‘Britain preparing to scrap EU green energy targets as part of a bonfire of red tape after Brexit.’
They were going to miss their targets and get a hefty fine from the EU, the party is over.
50
Earlier this year the Hockey Schtick ran a story on a new paper which pours cold water on the theory that global warming causes more severe storms. So all intense and unseasonal storms can now be blamed on global cooling.
‘A paper published today in Science contradicts the prior belief that global warming, if it resumes, will fuel more intense storms, finding instead that an increase in water vapor and strengthened hydrological cycle will reduce the atmosphere’s ability to perform thermodynamic Work, thus decreasing the formation of intense winds, storms, and hurricanes. The authors demonstrate instead that if warming resumes:
“Although the hydrological cycle may increase in intensity, it does so at the expense of its ability to do work, such as powering large-scale atmospheric circulation or fueling more very intense storms.”
10
Old Sol quietly slumbering whilst the warmanists scream catastrophe, if one looks at the only reason the earth survives, the sun and its history, it is not hard to see patterns,cycles within cycles,I am not real bright but the near future looks cooler. This for me is important as I keep my woman warm with fire wood,as a young man of 72 years of age the less fire wood I need to cut carry and split the better.This AGW stuff is wearing rather thin when all things point to colder.I live in southern Vic and about six weeks time are heading to southern Qld on my Harley to visit my daughter I am wishing for global warming.
I have seen so much crap propounded as science in my life that the main stream of life have lost me, hermit tho’ I be i am doing exotic science, that is now finished shall put up a web site with a doco shortly for some impossible science that has been double proven.
21
16 Apr: LA Times: That $52-billion road bill just made California’s next climate change move a heavy lift
By Melanie Mason and Chris Megerian
It took late-night cajoling and nearly $1 billion in deal sweeteners for Gov. Jerry Brown and top Democrats to muscle through a $52-billion tax-and-fee plan just over a week ago to repair California’s roads.
Now they have to do it all again. Brown and legislative leaders have another daunting battle ahead over the fate of the cap-and-trade program, the centerpiece of California’s efforts to combat climate change.
The program requires companies to buy permits to release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and just like the road plan, it’s expected to require a two-thirds vote. That’s a tall order, even for Democrats who hold supermajorities in both chambers; the transportation legislation squeaked through without a vote to spare…
Extending the cap-and-trade program could mean an additional gasoline price increase of between 24 and 73 cents a gallon by 2031, according to the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office…
“A lot of my families in the district do have to drive long distances to work,” Assemblywoman Sabrina Cervantes (D-Riverside) said, adding that “it’s hard for my district to get access to clean vehicles” that require less gas.
She acknowledged that climate change is an “existential threat,” but said she’s uncommitted on cap and trade right now…
The environmental lobby, meanwhile, is split between national organizations that want to continue cap and trade and environmental justice groups that are concerned the program isn’t doing enough to alleviate local pollution.
Those groups felt particularly burned by the transportation deal, which gave the trucking industry a break on future antipollution regulations…
Others say a hard vote only becomes more difficult with time.
“If we don’t do it now, are we going to do it in an election year?” state Sen. Bob Wieckowski (D-Fremont) said. “It’s a much tougher vote in May 2018.”…
http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-sac-transportation-climate-change-politics-20170414-story.html
01
Oh dear, how sad!
That being the case then, the three CSP Plants (Solar thermal) in California will be subject to that cap and trade, as they burn significant amounts of natural Gas.
That must be a tad embarrassing, for renewable power plants being among those emitters eh!.
Tony.
11
17 Apr: US Spectator: Stephen Moore: President Trump is the king of coal
(Stephen Moore is an economic consultant with Freedom Works and co-author of Fueling Freedom: Exposing the Mad War Against Energy)
Buried in an otherwise humdrum jobs report for March was the jaw-dropping pronouncement by the Labor Department that mining jobs in America were up by 11,000 in March. Since the low point in October 2016 and following years of painful layoffs in the mining industry, the mining sector has added 35,000 jobs…
Coal is indispensable today, even if renewable “green” energy starts to catch on, because wind and solar power are only viable with coal burning power plants as a backup for when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine. Without coal, green energy means rolling blackouts across America…
The climate change industrial complex pontificates that the U.S. has to stop using coal to save the planet. But even if the U.S. cut our own coal production to zero, China and India are building hundreds of coal plants. By not suspending American coal production, we are merely transferring jobs from the U.S. Do liberals care more about jobs in India and China than in America?
Renewable energy is at best one or two decades away from being a major energy source for the world, so until that happens, coal and natural gas will compete as low-priced and super-abundant, domestically produced energy sources for 21st century America
Coal isn’t dead in America. It is unleashed. As a Washington Times editorial put it very well recently, “The left gave up on the 100,000 coal workers in America more than a decade ago. Donald Trump has not.” Remember this the next time Elizabeth Warren or Nancy Pelosi lecture us about how much they care about the working class in America.
https://spectator.org/coals-colossal-comeback/
11
what a turnaround, tho still couched in CAGW terms & exaggerating the extent of coal industry’s desire to stay in the Paris Agreement.
17 Apr: E&E News: Jean Chemnick: Climate and coal policies may sink or swim together
A safe climate and a future for the coal industry have long been viewed as diametric opposites, but in a world where the Paris Agreement is in force and Donald Trump is in the White House, their fortunes may now be linked…
Some environmentalists are also cautiously embracing the (CCS) technology’s development as one climate strategy that could actually win GOP support during the Trump administration.
“For us to have what we want, we have to take the long view,” said Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead (R). “The brightest future is continued use of coal, not only in the United States but in foreign markets,” he added. “And if country A and country B have strong feelings about climate change and how carbon dioxide affects that, we have to, in order to market coal, not only provide them with the coal, we need to provide them a solution that’s acceptable to them as relates to CO2.”
Greens, for their part, say they also are taking a long view — for the planet.
“Supporting carbon capture technology would meet the Trump administration’s objective of helping coal, but it will also be important for gas and manufacturing. In short, it’s a necessary technology for getting to the Paris Agreement goal of a global energy system that’s free from carbon emissions,” said Kurt Waltzer, special projects director at the Clean Air Task Force.
Cloud Peak’s CEO, Colin Marshall, wrote in a recent letter to Trump that staying in Paris would allow the United States to negotiate access to CCS financing from the World Bank, the United Nations’ Green Climate Fund and other institutions that have been more heavily weighted toward renewable projects (E&E News PM, April 6) (LINK).
No CCS projects have yet applied for funding under the nascent GCF, which aims to help poor countries ramp up low-carbon development and adapt to warming…
Not all U.S. coal companies share Cloud Peak’s view that staying in Paris and advancing CCS are top priorities. The National Mining Association and the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE) have opted to remain agnostic on the wisdom of staying in the U.N. agreement, while Murray Energy Corp. has pushed for a withdrawal. The trade groups back CCS development, but keeping the current U.S. coal fleet online is higher on their to-do list…READ ALL
https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/stories/1060053140/feed
if u can’t read at E&E link, search headline and read from cached version.
01
A headline from Canada’s CBC, our version of the taxpayer funded ABC, BBC
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/climate-change-yukon-river-piracy-1.4070153?cmp=rss
Was that glacier even in existence at the Holocene optimum? CBC has two or three of these alarmists headlines a week and generally no comments allowed. CBC is a shrill of the liberal government headed Trudeau 2.0 and the fiberals sorry liberals, may bring in a carbon tax so using the CBC for build up.
10
Nice article. So something changed. And so what? They assume contemporary climate change without even skipping a beat. Never mind that contemporary climate hasn’t changed any time recently and worldwide not by enough to call a problem. They should be asking what local phenomenon might be responsible but there’s a really handy scapegoat to lay it on — global warming, AKA CO2.
As I remember, global warming was blamed for the retreating icecap on Mt. Kilimanjaro, never mind that the ice had been retreating for at least the last hundred years, possibly longer but no one was there recording the situation. The real problem was shifting precipitation so that part of Africa was drying out slowly. QED: Less snow, retreating icecap. And it began a long time before anyone blamed humans for it.
What could be acting locally to cause the melting? That is the question. And we know that Arctic ice has thinned out and now seems to be coming back. They aren’t asking the right question by assuming contemporary climate change.
So guess what. Someone will get that coveted feather in his cap early in his career but it will be at the expense of better science.
20
Electricity Generated in Ontario
Apr 17 2017 16:45
94.4% from Hydro(34%) and Nuclear(60.4%).
https://www.cns-snc.ca/media/ontarioelectricity/ontarioelectricity.html
And we still pay close to the highest prices in North America due green schemes.
20
I just received an electricity supply offer from Red Energy which I understand are owned by the Snowy Mountains Hydro scheme.
For the second time in a few years, the first when my electricity provider was acquired by a larger company, the offer is directed to a meter (NMI) number that is not my address NMI and has solar which I do not have. This does not give me confidence in the billing system and meter reading.
My reply via email included that I do not have a solar system or accept so called renewable energy is acceptable when subsidised by governments using taxpayer’s monies that also penalise fossil fuel fired power stations. I pointed out the Tasmania and South Australia electricity supply problems of recent times. And that foreign countries such as Germany are discarding subsidies and are now constructing new coal fired power stations.
Hopefully if we all make our opinions known to the electricity industry and governments the madness will become a major issue and changes at least considered?
30
KinkyKeith April 18, 2017 at 3:44 pm
“I read those comments earlier but can’t remember the offending item.”
Who made the comments? Peter, PeterS, PeterW, or some-else? 🙁
10
Assuming it’s Peter.
Please don’t get me wrong. I’ve commented on this before. Guns may a necessary evil in our of the way country areas.
In the cities where police can usually respond in 10 minutes I think it’s safer if only police have guns.
Unfortunately for that situation, governments are under pressure to let the business of gun selling operate under the same level of scrutiny as a pie shop.
In Sydney there seems to be a shooting every two weeks and this is not fair to police or ordinary citizens.
If politicians did their job there would be no need for citizens to arm themselves.
KK
00
Assuming it’s Peter.
Please don’t get me wrong. I’ve commented on this before. Guns may a necessary evil in our of the way country areas.
In the cities where police can usually respond in 10 minutes I think it’s safer if only police have guns.
Unfortunately for that situation, governments are under pressure to let the business of gun selling operate under the same level of scrutiny as a pie shop.
In Sydney there seems to be a shooting every two weeks and this is not fair to police or ordinary citizens.
If politicians did their job there would be no need for citizens to arm themselves.
KK
00