JoNova
A science presenter, writer, speaker & former TV host; author of The Skeptic's Handbook (over 200,000 copies distributed & available in 15 languages).
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MSM has been touting cheap wind this week, claiming no need for subsidies etc, but I find it hard to reconcile with all the details in the following two links. look forward to some feedback:
21 Apr: Bloomberg: Gigantic Wind Turbines Signal Era of Subsidy-Free Green Power
by Jess Shankleman, Brian Parkin, and Anna Hirtenstein
Offshore wind turbines are about to become higher than the Eiffel Tower, allowing the industry to supply subsidy-free clean power to the grid on a massive scale for the first time.
Manufacturers led by Siemens AG are working to almost double the capacity of the current range of turbines, which already have wing spans that surpass those of the largest jumbo jets. The expectation those machines will be on the market by 2025 was at the heart of contracts won by German and Danish developers last week to supply electricity from offshore wind farms at market prices by 2025…
Just one giant 15-megawatt turbine would produce power more cheaply than five 3-megawatt machines, or even two with an 8-megawatt capacity. That’s because bigger turbines can produce the same power from a fewer number of foundations and less complex grid connections. The wind farm’s layout can be made more efficient, and fewer machines means less maintenance…
The scale of the turbines may not even stop at 15 megawatts. In Albuquerque, New Mexico, a unit of Lockheed Martin Corp. is working on components for a possible 50-megawatt turbine that would have blades 100 meters long — each stretching further than two soccer fields…
These gigantic blades would be able to fold away to reduce the risk of damage at dangerous wind speeds. Siemens, along with Vestas Wind Systems and General Electric Co., are advising on the research program that’s funded by the U.S. Department of Energy…
In the nearer term, Denmark, the home of wind energy, last month said it would expand the country’s main offshore wind test site to demonstrate turbines that will soar as high as 330 meters, taller than the Eiffel Tower. That could take the generation capacity past 10 megawatts, enabling turbine makers like Vestas and Siemens to challenge the boundaries of current capacity…
The auction in Germany was a jaw-dropping moment for industry analysts, many of whom expected a steady decline in prices but not another record…
The previous record low price was 49.90 euros a megawatt hour, won by Vattenfall AB in September. Bloomberg New Energy Finance had anticipated bids near 55 euros. The average price in the end was just 4.40 euros per megawatt-hour because one Dong Energy project secured a subsidy of 60 euros per megawatt-hour. The others bid zero, meaning they’ll get paid at market electricity prices.
“This option is opening up now as a subsidy-free production of electricity,” said Magnus Hall, chief executive officer of Vattenfall, in an interview in Brussels on Wednesday…
Vestas, which has installed more turbines than any other company, closed a third of its factories and cut more than 3,000 jobs to deal with three years of losses stemming from declining turbine prices.
South Korea’s CS Wind Corp., a turbine-tower maker, cut 54 jobs at a factory in Scotland on April 18, saying that “extremely low prices requested by developers of projects” created gaps in its order book.
“Clearly, this puts us all under pressure,” Ralf Peters, a spokesman for turbine maker Nordex SE, said in a phone interview from Hamburg.
His company, which builds only onshore machines, has already seen how ultra-low bids in the onshore wind market in Chile are squeezing the supply chain.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-20/gigantic-wind-turbines-signal-era-of-subsidy-free-green-power
2 pages: 13 Apr: Reuters: UPDATE 2-Germany approves offshore wind parks beyond 2020 at low cost
The projects, due to be implemented beyond 2020, were cleared at an average price requiring a subsidy of 0.44 euro cent per kilowatt-hour (kWh) of power, the regulator, Bundesnetzagentur, said in a statement.
They were awarded to Denmark’s DONG Energy, the world’s largest offshore wind park operator, and Germany’s EnBW , it said in the conclusion of the first public bidding round that started on April 1…
DONG said it had been awarded three projects with planned commissioning in 2024 and that two of them, OWP West and Borkrum Riffgrund West 2, each 240 MW, will receive no subsidies on top of the wholesale electricity price.
It said the zero subsidy bid was “a breakthrough for the cost competitiveness of offshore wind” and that some of the cost reduction would come from using the next generation of turbines which will be able to produce up to 15 MW each, twice as much as the most powerful turbines on the market now.
Very high wind speeds, the vicinity to an existing maintenance hub and approval from German authorities to extend the operational lifetime to 30 years from 25 years were also factors behind the record-low bid, DONG said…
DONG said that the third project, the 110 MW Gode Wind 3 project, was awarded on a bid price of 6 cents per kWh…
Critics say that even with recent cost reductions, offshore wind remains much more expensive than traditional fossil-fuel electricity generation, while some environmental groups say the huge structures could harm marine life.
In Germany, the technology has attracted high feed-in costs for years as there was little experience of installing turbines far out at sea, which is necessary due to Germany’s geography…
(Reporting by Tom Kaeckenhoff, Vera Eckert and Christoph Steitz, additional reporting by Teis Jensen in Copenhagen,; Editing by Dale Hudson and David Evans)
http://af.reuters.com/article/energyOilNews/idAFL8N1HL36G
132
I have finally discovered the true value of AEMO wind data.
It tells where NOT to go to fly a kite. SA and Vic have been very bad for kite flyers this week. But very good for toasting sandwiches on interconnectors.
210
The star thing for me was when warren buffet said the windmills are useles unless the govt subsidizes them….what more does anyone need to know?
I keep thinking of Don Quixote…how spot on….
60
Yeah, look, I’ll bite, but hey, did any of you expect me not to bite.
I just love these
advertising blurbsinformational articles, most probably generated by the wind turbine and tower manufacturers themselves, and then duly reported by sycophant journalists, averse to fact checking.Point me at just one offshore wind plant here in Oz. None, well, okay then, point me at one offshore wind plant in the U.S. then. Don’t bother looking. There aren’t any there either.
Hmm! Why is that?
Too d@mned expensive, that’s why.
With respect to the U.S. oh thank you Cape Wind for providing me with so much to write about over the years I have been doing this.
It’s finally fallen over, but hey it was a good ride while it did last, and is the archetypal example why only the foolish will run with offshore wind.
Cape Wind was originally proposed in 2001, (from a 1998 thought bubble) yep, 16 years ago, mooted to cost the horrendous sum of $600 Million for just 130 towers. The proposal was approved in 2005, 11 years ago, and never even got close to starting construction. The cost blew out to $2.6 Billion plus, (in 2015) so there went the getting cheaper meme continually pushed around.
In the end, they upgraded the Nameplate from (originally 130X3MW) to 468MW. (same 130 towers, only after soooooo long, even the technology had improved to 3.6MW turbines)
16 years and it still couldn’t get up.
So then, what of these new 15MW monster towers and turbines.
Let’s just do the exercise for the same Nameplate, this offshore wind and a new tech HELE USC coal fired plant, if only to show you one thing, the total end power generated.
Offshore (umm, supposedly) has a higher CF than onshore, so I’ll even use their own figure of 38%, (yeah, good luck with that) and I’ll acttually even say that it will stay at 38% for the life of the plant (yeah, good luck with that too) 25 years. (yeah, good luck with that also)
So, Wind 2000MW Nameplate so 135 towers. (hmm! sounds familiar) CF 38%. – Lifespan 25 years. Total power generated 166.5TWH (166,554,000MWH)
HELE coal fired 2000MW Nameplate from TWO units. CF 80% (probably even on the low side there too) – Lifespan 50 years. Total Power generated 701.3TWH (701,280,000MWH)
So now just for the cost of construction only, that original cost has to be recovered across the life of the plant from the sale of the electricity, and, as you can see, the unit cost for electricity sold would be cheaper for coal than wind.
There is no way known that the coal fired plant would cost 4.2 times as much as an offshore wind plant.
They are way too expensive, and without huge subsidies and guarantees from all levels of government, there is serious doubt as to whether they will go ahead.
That’s a monster new construction of infrastructure as well to get that offshore power to an onshore grid, and new construction onshore to get it to the closest available grid. Maintenance costs for offshore wind are horrendously huge, and with now 135 units spread across a wide area, way way more than two units at the ONE coal fired plant. As to the cost of the coal, build this new HELE at an already existing site where the operator already owns the coal mine, as is the case here in Oz for most of them already.
They can blurb on all they like and explain away everything I have said here, except for this one last thing.
The HELE coal fired plant provides 24/7/365 power.
The wind plant doesn’t.
Like for like!
Tony.
492
“50-megawatt turbine that would have blades 100 meters long — each stretching further than two soccer fields…”
“These gigantic blades would be able to fold away to reduce the risk of damage at dangerous wind speeds.”
Tony, do you have any information or thoughts about blade failure rates? I am a certified pilot, and one of the first things that I was taught, in my first lesson, is inspect the propeller blades very carefully. If there are any cracks in the blades then do not fly. If you have a doubt then ask the instructor to inspect as well. A broken blade on an airplane results in an unbalanced situation, and you have to shot down the motor. If you do not, then you will tear the motor off the mounts, the motor will separate from the aircraft, which which then throw off your weight and balance, and the plane will be uncontrollable. I hate to think what a broken blade would do to a wind turbine.
Given all this information I have a lot of doubt that you can have a blade 100 meters long, which is somehow foldable, and have it working in a windy environment, with lots of salt present, and expect it to perform reliably, year in year out. Air craft propellers have to be removed and tested regularly, in addition to the daily pre-flight inspection.
130
I don’t know about blade failure rates per se but I’d expect that longer blades have to be run at a slower shaft speed. The reason being the maximum tip speed remains unaltered, all other things being equal. They could increase the gearing though.
Presumably Siemens have worked all this out but if the last generation of turbines were on the edge of reliability with their smaller blade and shaft sizes, what is going to make the 15-megawatt turbines more reliable?
60
I did read that gearboxes are a major failure point of Turbines. How many gallons of lubricating oil do they have to leak into the ocean? I think some were going try a direct drive system. But if you do that with lower rpms from larger blades then output will suffer.
40
That is the best understatement that I have read in a long while. It is only topped by a sign in an Iroquois helicopter, “Do not turn off the fan whilst in-flight”.
90
UMM!
Single-blade propeller
Used on the Italian designed and built self launching Alisport Silent 2 Targa single seat glider
20
@James
Did your source perhaps mean “featherable” instead of foldable? I can’t imagine any blade that size being foldable either.
Seems to me the whole project is “verrückt” anyway.
30
People see a wind tower, but only in images mind you, because it’s an entirely different thing to stand alongside one of them and look up, way way up. They see the image and just think it’s a propeller out the front driving a generator, but it’s way way more than that, and consider that everything has to be crammed into that tiny space inside the nacelle, keeping the weight in balance with the blades as it’s all mounted on a shaft for balance.
I have an image (shown at this link) and even this is basic.
People think direct drive, and some are, but most have a gearbox, and just to say it like that ….. a gearbox, well, even that simplifies it. It’s a constant speed drive (CSD shown at arrow 8 on the image) so that the generator (arrow 12 on the image) revolves at a constant speed.
There’s pitch and yaw controls, all of them motor driven, all computer controlled with input from the wind vane anemometer.
The blades
can beare feathered when the unit stops in high or low wind, again also controlled by the computer.As you can see now, even with just this basic information, there is a lot of electric power consumption actually inside the nacelle, and with a number of towers, the overall power output drops because of the actual consumption of each tower nacelle unit itself. That CSD needs oil and in cases of cold temperature, the oil need to be heated, again more electric power.
Some of you may now realise why the actual output of a power plant with a number of towers goes negative power delivery during zero wind, in other words, consuming power from the grid to keep everything in each individual nacelle operational for the time when the wind starts back up again.
Now, remember I asked you to look at an image of the Sydney skyline, and how these behemoth towers a third higher than the tallest building in Sydney. How many of you have actually started on the bottom floor and WALKED to the top of the building up the stairs. Yeah, right! None of you. Okay then, now these towers are a third higher again that the tallest occupied building in Sydney. There’s no d@mned elevator inside these towers, just a spiral staircase.
Any maintenance inside that incredibly tight area inside the nacelle, then the tradesman has to be dropped off by a boat, and climb to the top, do the work and then go down again.
Because of that most maintenance work on these offshore, and now some of the onshore ones, then the worker is lowered by helicopter to a platform on top of the tower.
Oh fun fun fun, just that alone, and then working at that height inside a tiny space. So now you can see how maintenance costs are way exponentially higher than for ground based single units at a coal fired plant, instead of regular maintenance on 100 plus of these nacelles on towers.
Please do not ever tell me that wind plants will ever be cheaper per unit of power generated than any other traditional form of power generation.
Tony.
141
Featherable makes sense to me. Foldable makes no sense at all!
30
.
James @ #1.2.1
Re Blade failures and other wind turbine accidents;
.
UK based ; Caithness Windfarm Information Forum
.
Blade failure
&
Potentially very bad news in the fire prone Australian country side context;
.
Fire
Accident data also includes;
Number of accidents
Fatal accidents; [ from pre 2000 to March 2017 = 130 turbine accidents with 176 fatalities. Just imagine the uproar if this number of accidents occurred to nuclear power generators or fossil fuel fired generators, scale of accidents when measured against the energy generated has been almost criminally ignored by the media, the politicals and the various rabidly psycho environmental outfits where the propaganda impact is regarded to be of more value than the lives of any citizens forced by the politicals to personally endure the highly deleterious to life and health, wind turbines.
This number of fatalities when measured against the turbine KWHrs generated per accident is a massive blight on the turbine industry which is criminally ignored by the media, the politicals and the ever grandiose propagandising of the greens.
Had fossil fueled generators and /or nuclear generators had a similar fatal accident profile per KWHr generated as the wind turbine industry has then there would have been a huge media rumpus, government enquiries en masse, coroner’s condemnations and etc against the fossil fuel and nuclear industries . ]
Human injury
Human health
Blade failure [ as above ]
Structural failure
Ice throw
Transport
Environmental damage;
61
Imagine the infrasound from one of these 50MW monsters, shadow flicker at large distances, the ugly sight for km and many other adverse environmental effects.
111
Perhaps the dead birds dropping into the ocean will make a breeding ground for sharks? It could be good for the shark fishery!
70
Oh goody! Flake for supper!
20
How do they synchronise the the output frequency, from so many “independent” generation sources, and keep them in phase?
90
I believe that the electric output from the generator is converted to DC, the converted back to AC, in the correct phase to the grid using an inverter. So you have a bunch of power electronics, and in affect you have no inertia in the system.
40
If you want to know anything about the dogs breakfast mess that Turbines and Wind farms make of grid stability and how the grid operators are expected to sort it all out so that we have some basic phase and power stability , this rather technical 3 part article [at least technical for this not very electrician educated type ] will probably do for starters;
CAUSES AND EFFECTS OF CURRENT ASYMMETRY ON WIND FARMS
40
So a subsidy for new Euro wind mills of the equivalent of AUD$6.30/MWhr, but that’s on top of a wholesale price of 55 €/MWh in Q4 2016 equal to AUD$78/MWhr. Average Australian wholesale prices in 2016 were about AUD$ 50/MWhr, but in 2017 they have jumped to $90/MWhr with the closure of Hazelwood, and increased use of high priced gas.
100
Robber:
That is why they can claim to be able to “supply electricity from offshore wind farms at market prices by 2025…” First you jack up the market price.
As for the new super-size wind turbines I wonder how they will achieve what they claim. Yes, the winds are more regular off-shore, and sometimes much stronger, but the larger the blade the slower it has to rotate to keep the tip speed below that which causes buffeting from turbulence. That means a mismatch between the wind and blade speed, reducing efficiency. Even at the same tip speed as now the larger diameter blades will experience much higher stress levels in the blades, possibly requiring stronger (and more costly) construction materials, effecting the economics.
There is also the question of maintenance; the UK experience for the close offshore is for costs to be at least 2.5 times that of on-shore wind. Since the latter cost has been estimated at close to 20% of the cost (￡17.6 or $A29 per MWh) the off-shore turbines would need $A73 per MWh on top of the repayment of the capital cost.
Then there is the claim of savings in the footings. The overturning force on the turbine depends on the height of the tower and the blade size, so larger turbines would require heavier footings. Lately the off-shore turbines have been made with 1500 tons of concrete in a tub shape so as to add another 1500 tons of sea water to the deadweight. These bases will certainly have to be bigger. I wouldn’t like to be the designer nor the engineer who certified it as suitable.
130
The people of Babel said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves …
190
pat mentions this: (my bolding here)
You’ve all seen images of the Sydney skyline.
While the Sydney Tower is around 310 Metres tall, it’s just a platform on a stick really. The tallest actual building with people in it all the time is Chifley Tower, and that’s just 244 Metres, and there are only 9 buildings above 200Metres.
So now imagine if you will my scenario for a Nameplate of 2000MW, so that’s 135 of them, all of them 90 metres taller than anything on that Sydney skyline, in fact a full third higher again.
Imagine the construction of them ….. offshore.
Imagine the cost of all that.
Imagine even just ten of them, and that’s a totally useless 150MW nameplate.
Naah, call me a luddite, but I cannot ever see anything like that getting off the
groundwater here in Australia, no matter how much it gets beaten up by a pliant media.Tony.
341
The Scottish, never ones for making good decisions during their long and colorful history seem to have an abundance of offshore wind generators.
The result of this is yet another price increase for 2016 to 2017.
https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/business/2017/feb/10/scottish-power-customers-to-be-hit-by-78-price-hike
The breakdown of the price increase is amusing (from a skeptics perspective one of “I told you so”) if not one for concern for those on a tight budget.
I get the impression that the Scottish peoples have developed into a culture of wanton masochism.
80
ScotsmanInUtah:
It will be alright. Sturgeon wants Scotland to leave the UK and stay in the EU. She expects to be able to sell wind electricity at high prices to England (and buy it cheaply when the wind drops) and replace the subsidies from Whitehall with as much or more money from the EU.
I have mentally christened this as the Darien 2 scheme. You may prefer to use something containing faeries or unicorns.
150
Has she worked out the welfare cost currently in the UK Government Budgets for people living in Scotland?
60
thanks for the comments. aside from the real costs involved, the size of these proposed giant turbines definitely makes one wonder about matter of maintenance.
40
If it sounds too good to be true, it usually is.
40
The Tower of Babel Project is still underway.
30
‘Of course each of us has to decide
what the right balance is between
being effective and being honest.’
…The old chestnut by Stephen Schneider
that underpins alarmist ‘science’.
211
And given that he was the choir master for so many years, that quotation should be repeated at every available opportunity.
This being a case in point. Nicely done, Beth.
110
Agree Rereke, some things need repeating, like Phil Jones
response to Warwick Hughes’ request for station temperature data:
“We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the
data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something
wrong with it. ”
340
Yes, another one to add to the list. The internet does not forget.
30
http://www.naturalnews.com/2017-04-25-vaccine-skepticism-is-rooted-in-rational-science.html
00
A cool wet summer in Europe is a regional cooling signal and the blocking highs in both hemispheres is a standout, but lets concentrate on Europe.
‘Despite the positive NAO, temperatures are below normal across western Eurasia including much of Europe as a strong block/high pressure has developed in the eastern North Atlantic with a cold, northerly flow downstream of the block across Europe.
‘The blocking high in the eastern North Atlantic is predicted to drift northward contributing to a negative bias to the AO and eventually the NAO over the next two weeks. Therefore, the pattern of cool temperatures across western Eurasia including Europe looks to continue into the foreseeable future.’
Judah Cohen (AER)
142
Question for the Rocket Scientist: Looking at a complaint of mains overvoltage in South Australia Bush, is the heavy reliance on renewables part of the cause?
80
13,000 year old rock carving suggests earth hit by comet.
http://m.disclose.tv/news/ancient_carvings_from_10950bc_confirm_comet_hit_earth_and_triggered_mini_ice_age/138638
60
I think it is a NYT headline (or is it Washington Post?).
30
Fake carving………
50
The lads at the Cosmic Tusk are discussing its legitimacy.
http://cosmictusk.com/datestamp-worlds-oldest-monument-memorializes-younger-dryas-comet-impact/
20
E M Smith in comments reckons its fake news.
https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2017/04/22/ancient-stone-carvings-confirm-comet-struck-earth-in-10950bc/#more-31819
30
What is the Mysterious Handbag Seen in Ancient Carvings Across Cultures and Countries?
http://www.ancient-origins.net/artifacts-other-artifacts/what-mysterious-handbag-seen-ancient-carvings-across-cultures-and-021191
20
What is the Mysterious Handbag Seen in Ancient Carvings Across Cultures and Countries?
What is universal across races, nations and civilisation and in the affairs of men and gods?
The medium of exchange and commerce, ie ; the coin of the realm, money in every society and civilisation that mankind has created.
.
Who was and still is in many nations, responsible for the medium of exchange and commerce retaining its value ?
From the ancient civilisations right through the thousands of years into the early 20th century it was the responsibility of the potentates and powers to ensure that the medium of exchange and commerce was not debased and devalued in the eyes of its users.
.
So what better than a stylised handbag / purse that was used to indicate the power of the potentate over the coin of the realm and its value and supply along with the requirement by the ruled subjects that the same potentate be fully responsible for ensuring that the coin of the realm maintained its purchasing power and not become debased.
All recognised and illustrated by and through many civilisations by the very public appearance of a highly stylised purse / handbag similar to that which many merchants no doubt also used at various times to conduct their own financial dealings from.
Such a stylised purse / handbag held in the hands of the all powerful potentate quite possibly was an indicator of both his responsibility to his subjects re the maintenance of the coin of the realm and its value.
And to his subjects,the holding of the highly visible bag showing his absolute power over that same medium of exchange, the coin of the realm as used and traded by his subjects .
10
The ‘March for Science’, timed to boost Earth Day,
Is global warming folly on display.
To grow large sturdy plants it’s hard to beat,
More CO2 and more degrees of heat.
Australians now will have to pay much more,
For power, than they ever did before.
The cyclones in the Southern Hemisphere,
Have reached a record all time low last year.
The Arctic 1940’s data show,
A warming which the warmists aught to know.
160
I am intrigued by information reported by a Republican Congressman:
http://dailysignal.com/2017/04/14/congressman-says-corruption-in-washington-is-worse-than-you-think/?utm_source=TDS_Email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Top5&mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiTWpjd01tSm1OemszTnpkayIsInQiOiJpd2pTWmJEaFBaMUdNKzFZVDkrazFwRW5TekVicXo0NVlOWklmRVMxRGp1WWMwXC94ZnBqUXpHeVJTUklHV3JySytraUtYSjJ6VU41VGNLd1JzUnNiNnpvU1Z6MitmVnRDQ2NRU1lrVzFTTUdvWVNHSTRVQlBhb1BoQ0hNVlNwam5SeTk4aG1EXC9FMVE2b2pKejdKczZIZz09In0%3D
If true, the unholy alliance of NAS scientists and politicians sprouted in a swamp of corruption in Washington, DC and probably thrives by out-of-sight transfer of public research funds into desperately needed campaign donations for politicians.
80
On 13 June 1936, exactly four months before I would be born on the otter side of the globe, a nineteen-year old student student at the Imperial University of Tokyo – KAZUO KURODA – realized the logical error that Drs. CARL von WEIZSACKER & JAMES CHADWICK made in 1935 in rejecting the suggestion by Prof. ERNEST RUTHERFORD, the father of nuclear physics in 1920 that about half of the mass of ordinary atoms is compacted electron-proton pairs that RUTHERFORD called “NEUTRONS”
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10640850/Nuclear_Energy_Error7.pdf
The rest of this sad story is the enslavement of humanity to hide “powers beyond the dreams of scientific fiction” Nobel Laureate FRANCIS WILLIAM ASTON reported in rest masses of ordinary atoms in 1922.
20
Today we do not know if Trump will be the next savior or destroyer of humanity.
The evolutionary process seems to have first endowed all of us with a tiny reptilian brain for selfish survival, a dominant trait in many leaders and saints, including the Biblical character, Saul who became Paul.
The only hope for humanity may be the benevolent Higher Power that produced a living biosphere on a water-covered planet out of fresh radioactive debris from the supernova explosion that birthed the entire solar system five billion years (5 Ga) ago.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10640850/HIGHER-POWERZ.pdf
I do not understand how that happened, how Saul became Paul, or if Trump will undergo a similar transformation.
20
tosh
00
The next feminist I hear of who is feminine, will be the first.
71
This is a very plausible engineering analysis about how the pyramids were built.
https://youtu.be/Bj0RnvIl9cQ
20
Perhaps but unlikely. I’ve seen better explanations based on a leveraged system that don’t require a ramp. A ramp in itself would take a long time and much effort to build – almost as much as the pyramid itself. It always amazes me how they can set over 2 millions stones so quickly and high accuracy – one every couple of minutes or so. We couldn’t do it today despite the advanced techniques and equipment we have.
60
There are two ramp systems in use, an internal and external one. Using both systems, the external ramp is much more modest than previous ramp designs, and the stones it is built with are actually used in the pyramid so there is no wasted effort building and then later dismantling the ramp – it is eventually incorporated into the pyramid structure.
20
I might have missed it, but, where did they get all those trees from?
10
If they were prepared to retrieve rocks from hundreds of kms away, I’m sure retrieving trees from such distances or greater wouldn’t have bothered them.
10
Interesting documentary about gasoline, including history.
https://youtu.be/m0wxRrmIEUE
20
Wishing a happy St George’s Day to all who celebrate him as patron saint!
20
thanks; https://balance1010.wordpress.com/2017/04/23/the-story-of-saint-george-and-the-dragon/
[Fixed your link so it points to the correct URL.] AZ
20
that’s the correct link https://balance1010.wordpress.com/2017/04/23/the-story-of-saint-george-and-the-dragon/
20
Unbelievable. From Briebart.com.
‘On Friday’s broadcast of HBO’s “Real Time,” host Bill Maher stated that Syria’s dysfunction started due to climate change, and “we talk about Assad gassing people, we’re gassing them too. We’re just doing it slower with CO2.”’
So a 25% increase in CO2 in 100 years suddenly caused the Syrian drought which caused the crops to fail and so the Syrian war. Nothing about Sunni vs Shia, Oil, Kurdistan, racial hatreds, jealousy, Sadam Hussein’s 2,000 tons of Sarin gas, interference by Europe, Obama’s Arab Spring and weapons for the revolution, Russia, Iran, Saudi or any religious or racial conflicts. Or even Kurdish oil.
CO2 is truly an evil gas and cars, planes and factories are evil.
The only saints are in the ABC/SBS/BBC/HBO/CNN/National Geographic/NYT.
Activist journalists, the best paid most cossetted martyrs in history. It’s all about them.
300
Do these people hear themselves or is it just desperate trolling of the highest order?
I’ll go one better, bloke the other day claimed the millions killed by Genghis Khan produced enough CO2 to offset a looming little ice age, I was lost for words until recalling the opposite claim in this gem from 2011 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1350272/Genghis-Khan-killed-people-forests-grew-carbon-levels-dropped.html all urban myths turn up everywhere eventually I guess.
90
Sometimes climate studies contradict each other, but sometimes they mesh. I remember an Adelaide uni study telling us that sharks were having increasing difficulty locating their prey due to higher levels of dissolved CO2. Sometime later an American study found that certain fish become so addled by extra CO2 that they swam towards predators instead of fleeing. Now the sharks and their prey can come together again! I thought isn’t it wonderful how nature has compensated for our evil CO2 emissions.
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One of the Doctors on Fox News Channel medical A team (Siegel?) claimed that increased CO2 concentration is bad for asthmatics. He seems to not understand the difference between carbon monoxide, and carbon dioxide. Needless to say, I no longer watch his segment.
20
You have to forgive Bill Maher I’m afraid. I think he’s doing the best he can. He gets nearly everything wrong. A for effort and F for accomplishment is his record all the way along.
50
That’s absolutely priceless.
CO2 is now the equivalent of Sarin.
Who would have thought. Gives a whole new meaning to bad breath.
Tony.
241
Why is it that we talk about Assad gassing people, but not ISIS gassing people?
How is it that we talk about Russian targeted missiles in Syria, but we don’t talk about indiscriminate US bombing in Iraq?
Would it have something to do with media bias?
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That’s because the MSM typically supports and defends the greater of two evils.
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For the left the enemy of my enemy is my friend until that enemy wins then their attention is turned on them and…..oh wait we didn’t look that far ahead…..
60
Excellent documentary about the diesel engine including its invention and development and the huge and highly efficient diesel engines used in large modern ships.
https://youtu.be/wCA5pInfPpM
20
As for Sarin gas, the real story of the bombing of the airport hanger has not been told. Let’s put the pieces together.
In the 1990s Saddam Hussein boasted about his WMDs, clearly nerve gas like Gadaffi in Libya who surrended his laboratories and stocks. The poor man’s atom bomb. Invented by the Nazis, Sarin gas is 30x more deadly than cyanide. Saddam’s 2,000 tons of it were reported spirited across the border to Assad when the US invaded Iraq. The US soldiers went into Baghdad in 56C dressed in Chemical gear, so you know what they expected.
So in Syria the Sarin stayed. 40 tankers of it. However when Obama promoted the Arab Spring, supplying the weapons and lit up the Middle East from Tunisia to Afghanistan, the Russians were terrified. Assad is no worse than anyone else in the region, but he had 2,000 tons of instant now to go to Obama’s ‘freedom fighters’.
So the Russians turned up on the border in 2014 with their navy and a huge land army and threatened to invade and get the arsenal. The US backed down and everyone joined forces to make Hussain turnover the 2,000 tons. This was all destroyed last year in special incinerator ships in the Meditteranean, a massive exercise in a most deadly chemical. You read nothing of this.
Of course someone cheated. Now Assad is said to have 3 tons from the 2,000 tons but one ton is enough to destroy Paris or New York. The question is Assad in charge of his generals? When the Sarin gas was used so blatantly and unnecessarily, the question was why and who would get the blame.
The US could track backwards from satellite recordings and see whether it was delivered by plane or shelling or truck. They could go back in time and see if it was loaded onto Russian Jets at the airport. They could see where it was stored. The Russians may have been the dupes, the fall guys set to take the blame from the Americans and the Europeans. Putin would not be happy but it is a war zone and someone wanted to trigger a real armageddon.
The US then aimed 57 cruise missiles at one hangar after which the airport was still usable. They warned everyone to get away. Obvious whatever was in the hanger could not be easily moved. Why 57 cruise missiles? Why was the hanger still standing? The airport was not ‘destroyed’ as was reported. This was a surgical operation on a concrete reinforced bunker. The missiles will have all hit at once.
So what was in the concrete reinforced structure was obviously a huge cache of Sarin gas. The 57 missiles were used to create an inferno which destroyed hundreds of tons of Sarin gas at very high temperature. The missiles may have been incendiaries not explosives.
In all this, not a comment from the news services. No brilliant insights by military strategists. No commentary on history of massive WMDs held by Saddam and Assad. Nor the threat of all out war by the Russians to stop the Sarin gas falling into the hands of Obama’s revolutionaries, the ISIL he sponsored. As with Afghanistan, it was the US which trained and armed Osama Bin Laden. The Russian must despair because they are the target, much more than far away US. It was their helicopters shot down by US missiles in Afghanistan, doing what the US then tried to do and failed. Why are the US always the good guys?
Otherwise, someone might explain 57 cruise missiles on one spot. There is so much commentators like Bill Maher miss while he declares CO2 to be the equivalent of Sarin gas? The naivety is incredible.
The WMDs existed and Obama nearly unleashed them on the world and established the new Caliphate. The question is why did Obama do it? There are any number of culprits trying to start WWIII. It is not the Russians and the Middle East is still in flames, thanks to Obama’s Arab Spring. However we hope the Sarin gas is now gone. Turned into deadly CO2.
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No idea why my Sarin gas commentary is in moderation? No mention of religion, race? Perhaps the word naivete?
60
The real evidence is that Sarin attack was faked ..LOL
10
Please explain with evidence and especially the LOL. Also the US response.
30
TDef
“Otherwise, someone might explain 57 cruise missiles on one spot”
They were a tax deduction.
10
A relative recently had a near death experience and was off with the fairies for more than an hour, then his heart started again. They put him into an induced coma and the relatives were assured his brain would be mush, so they booked a cremation.
On his awakening the doctors were surprised to find him talkative and bright, saying how he met his dad and brother, both deceased. The funny thing is that he was saying politically incorrect things, in a course language reminiscent of a bygone era, and his jokes were out of date.
He is fully recovered and back to his urbane self, so I asked him if there is anything to fear from life after life?
Not a thing, says he.
50
I experienced something like that years ago. For some unknown reason, while sitting at my desk at work, I suddenly passed out and found myself rocketing towards a bright light inside a very tight tunnel of swirly light or such. I don’t know why, but I forced an arm through the tunnel wall and suddenly found myself on the floor of my office. I was right as rain after that, though had a cut on my head from where it hit the wall. A very weird experience.
50
Sounds like you were born again, were you covered in slime and had the business end of a face hugger stuck to your guts?
20
It does sound like that, doesn’t it? It was more like getting stuck in a waterslide and having to crawl our through some gap. 🙂
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Interesting analogy but it still sounds dodgy 🙂
00
The interesting thing about my relatives’s NDE is that his father died in an industrial accident (totally mangled) three months before he was born.
10
http://www.lowerwolfjaw.com/agw/quotes is now closed and I would hate to lose these quotes from there —
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Global Warming or Cooling?
124 years of Failed Climate and Environmental Predictions
Is our climate changing? The succession of temperate summers and open winters through several years, culminating last winter in the almost total failure of the ice crop throughout the valley of the Hudson, makes the question pertinent. The older inhabitants tell us that the Winters are not as cold now as when they were young, and we have all observed a marked diminution of the average cold even in this last decade. – New York Times June 23, 1890
The question is again being discussed whether recent and long-continued observations do not point to the advent of a second glacial period, when the countries now basking in the fostering warmth of a tropical sun will ultimately give way to the perennial frost and snow of the polar regions – New York Times – February 24, 1895,
The Oceanographic observations have, however, been even more interesting. Ice conditions were exceptional. In fact, so little ice has never been noted. The expedition all but established a record….Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society – January 1905
“Fifth ice age is on the way…..Human race will have to fight for its existence against cold.” – Los Angles Times October 23, 1912
The Arctic ocean is warming up, icebergs are growing scarcer and in some places the seals are finding the water too hot…. Reports from fishermen, seal hunters and explorers, he declared, all point to a radical change in climate conditions and hitherto unheard-of temperatures in the Arctic zone… Great masses of ice have been replaced by moraines of earth and stones, the report continued, while at many points well known glaciers have entirely disappeared. Very few seals and no white fish are found in the eastern Arctic, while vast shoals of herring and smelts, which have never before ventured so far north, are being encountered in the old seal fishing grounds. – Washington Post 11/2/1922
Scientist says Arctic ice will wipe out Canada, Professor Gregory of Yale University stated that “another world ice-epoch is due.” He was the American representative to the Pan-Pacific Science Congress and warned that North America would disappear as far south as the Great Lakes, and huge parts of Asia and Europe would be “wiped out.” – Chicago Tribune August 9, 1923
The discoveries of changes in the sun’s heat and southward advance of glaciers in recent years have given rise to the conjectures of the possible advent of a new ice age – Time Magazine 9/10/1923
America in longest warm spell since 1776; temperature line records a 25 year rise – New York Times 3/27/1933
“Gaffers who claim that winters were harder when they were boys are quite right…weather men have no doubt that the world at least for the time being is growing warmer.” – Time Magazine Jan. 2 1939
More than eighteen years of observing the fluctuations of Arctic weather conditions in the fifty-eight Soviet scientific stations in the Far North….lead Russian meteorologists to a forecast of warmer winters and hotter summers for the North and South Poles. They believe that the earth is entering a new cycle of warmer weather. A series of curious discoveries have been announced in support of this theory. It has been noted that year by year, for the past two decades, the fringe of the Polar icepack has been creeping northward in the Barents Sea. As compared with the year 1900, the total ice surface of this body of water has decreased by twenty per cent. Various expeditions have discovered that warmth-loving species of fish have migrated in great shoals to waters farther north than they had ever been seen before..Our generation is living in a period when remarkable changes are taking place almost everywhere throughout the world. – Examiner April 12, 1939
A mysterious warming of the climate is slowly manifesting itself in the Arctic, engendering a “serious international problem,” – New York Times – May 30, 1947
Greenland’s polar climate has moderated so consistently that communities of hunters have evolved into fishing villages. Sea mammals, vanishing from the west coast, have been replaced by codfish and other fish species in the area’s southern waters. – New York Times August 29, 1954
After a week of discussions on the causes of climate change, an assembly of specialists from several continents seems to have reached unanimous agreement on only one point: it is getting colder. – New York Times – January 30, 1961
Like an outrigger canoe riding before a huge comber, the earth with its inhabitants is caught on the downslope of an immense climatic wave that is plunging us toward another Ice Age. – Los Angeles Times December 23, 1962
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Col. Bernt Balchen, polar explorer and flier, is circulating a paper among polar specialists proposing that the Arctic pack ice is thinning and that the ocean at the North Pole may become an open sea within a decade or two. – New York Times – February 20, 1969
The United States and the Soviet Union are mounting large-scale investigations to determine why the Arctic climate is becoming more frigid, why parts of the Arctic sea ice have recently become ominously thicker and whether the extent of that ice cover contributes to the onset of ice ages. – New York Times – July 18, 1970
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A comparison of climatic data for the eastern United States from the 1830’s and 1840’s with the currently valid climatic normals indicates a distinctly cooler and, in some areas, wetter climate in the first half of the last century. The recently appearing trend to cooler conditions noticed here and elsewhere could be indicative of a return to the climatic character of those earlier years. – Monthly Weather review Feb. 1968 *
The battle to feed humanity is over. In the 1970s, the world will undergo famines. Hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. — Paul Ehrlich – The Population Bomb (1968)
It is now pretty clearly agreed that the CO2 content [in the atmosphere] will rise 25% by 2000. This could increase the average temperature near the earth’s surface by 7 degrees Fahrenheit. This in turn could raise the level of the sea by 10 feet. Goodbye New York. Goodbye Washington, for that matter.- – Presidential advisor Daniel Moynihan 1969
By 1985, air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half…” Life magazine, January 1970.
Get a good grip on your long johns, cold weather haters–the worst may be yet to come. That’s the long-long-range weather forecast being given out by “climatologists.” the people who study very long-term world weather trends…. Washington Post January 11, 1970
Because of increased dust, cloud cover and water vapor “…the planet will cool, the water vapor will fall and freeze, and a new Ice Age will be born,” Newsweek magazine, January 26, 1970.
In ten years all important animal life in the sea will be extinct. Large areas of coastline will have to be evacuated because of the stench of dead fish. — Paul Ehrlich, Earth Day (1970)
“Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind. We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation,” – Barry Commoner Washington University Earth Day 1970
“(By 1995) somewhere between 75 and 85 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct.” Sen. Gaylord Nelson, quoting Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, Look magazine, April 1970.
“By the year 2000…the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America and Australia, will be in famine,” Peter Gunter, North Texas State University, The Living Wilderness, Spring 1970.
Convection in the Antarctic Ice Sheet Leading to a Surge of the Ice Sheet and Possibly to a New Ice Age. – Science 1970 *
“In the next 50 years fine dust that humans discharge into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuel will screen out so much of the sun’s rays that the Earth’s average temperature could fall by six degrees. Sustained emissions over five to 10 years, could be sufficient to trigger an ice age.” – Washington Post – July 9, 1971
“By the year 2000 the United Kingdom will be simply a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry people … If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000.” Paul Ehrlich 1971
New Ice Age Coming—It’s Already Getting Colder. Some midsummer day, perhaps not too far in the future, a hard, killing frost will sweep down on the wheat fields of Saskatchewan, the Dakotas and the Russian steppes…..Los Angles Times Oct 24, 1971
“It is projected that man’s potential to pollute will increase 6 to 8-fold in the next 50 years. If this increased rate of injection… should raise the present background opacity by a factor of 4, our calculations suggest a decrease in global temperature by as much as 3.5°C. Such a large decrease in the average temperature of Earth, sustained over a period of few years, is believed to be sufficient to trigger an ice age. However, by that time, nuclear power may have largely replaced fossil fuels as a means of energy production” – Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide and Aerosols: Effects of Large Increases on Global Climate” Steven Schinder Science July 1971 *
A new glacial insolation regime, expected to last 8000 years, began just recently. Mean global temperatures may eventually drop about 1oC in the next hundred years. Insolation and Glacials -Boreas March 1972 *
Arctic specialist Bernt Balchen says a general warming trend over the North Pole is melting the polar ice cap and may produce an ice-free Arctic Ocean by the year 2000. – Los Angles Times – May 16, 1972
The climatic warming trend since the 1880s, which seems to have been global in extent and was manifested by an upward trend in mean annual (and particularly mean winter) temperatures, seems to have given way since the 1940s to a cooling trend, which is most marked in higher latitudes. -Recent Climatic Change and Increased Glacierization in the Eastern Canadian Arctic. Nature. June 1972 *
For the past 25 to 30 years the Earth has been getting progressively cooler again. Around 1960 the cooling was particularly sharp. And there is by now widespread evidence of a corresponding reverse in the ranges of birds and fish and the success of crops and forest trees near the poleward and altitudinal limits. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization Courier Aug-Sep 1973*
“There is very important climatic change (Global Cooling) going on right now, and it’s not merely something of academic interest. It is something that, if it continues, will affect the whole human occupation of the earth – like a billion people starving. The effects are already showing up in a rather drastic way.” – Fortune Magazine February 1974
“A review of selected literature on latitudinal climatic shifts and atmosphere-ocean interaction suggests some similarities between the patterns of climate in the 1960s and the climate of the Little Ice Age”. – Climate of the American tropics and subtropics in the 1960s and possible comparisons with climatic variations of the last millennium – Quaternary Research June 1974 *Quaternary Research June 1974 *
General agreement that the present warm epoch has reached its final phase, and that disregarding possible man-made effects – the natural end of this interglacial is “undoubtedly near”. – Background to a geophysical model of the initiation of the next glaciation -Quaternary Research Dec 1974 *
“Climatological Cassandras are becoming increasingly apprehensive, for the weather aberrations they are studying may be the harbinger of another ice age” – Time Magazine June 24, 1974
“The western world’s leading climatologists have confirmed recent reports of a detrimental global climatic change. The stability of most nations is based upon a dependable source of food, but this stability will not be possible under the new climatic era. A forecast by the University of Wisconsin projects that the earth’s climate is returning to that of the neo-boreal era (1600-1850) – an era of drought, famine, and political unrest in the western world”… Leaders in climatology and economics are in agreement that a climate change is taking place and that it has already caused major economic problems throughout the world. As it become apparent to the nations around the world that the current trend is indeed a long term reality, new alignments will be made among nations to insure a secure supply of food resources. Assessing the impact of climate change on major nations will in the future, occupy a major portion of the Intelligence Community’s assets. Central Intelligence Agency Report – “A study of Climatological Research as it Pertains to Intelligence Problems” – August 1974
A number of climatologists, whose job it is to keep an eye on long-term weather changes, have lately been predicting deterioration of the benign climate to which we have grown accustomed….Various climatologists issued a statement that “the facts of the present climate change are such that the most optimistic experts would assign near certainty to major crop failure in a decade,” If policy makers do not account for this oncoming doom, “mass deaths by starvation and probably in anarchy and violence” will result. New York Times – December 29, 1974
Regardless of long term trends, such as the return of an Ice Age, unsettled weather conditions now appear more likely than those of the abnormally favorable period which ended in 1972. This possibility and its implications must be considered in planning and determining national and world food policies. There is an urgent need for better understanding and utilization of information on weather variability and climatic change in this context.– Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society – October 10, 1975 *
A RECENT flurry of papers has provided further evidence for the belief that the Earth is cooling. There now seems little doubt that changes over the past few years are more than a minor statistical fluctuation – Nature – March 6, 1975 *
Scientists, these seemingly disparate incidents represent the advance signs of fundamental changes in the world’s weather. The central fact is that after three quarters of a century of extraordinarily mild conditions, the earth’s climate seems to be cooling down. Meteorologists disagree about the cause and extent of the cooling trend, as well as over its specific impact on local weather conditions. But they are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century. – The Cooling World Newsweek, April 28, 1975
The regions that would be most severely affected by a continuation of the cooling trend to the year 2000 would be the higher latitudes (above 50 degrees) where spring wheat is grown and the warm band below 30 degrees latitude where rice is the principal grain crop.- Weather Variability, Climatic Change, and Grain Production – Science May 9, 1975 *
“Scientist ponder why World’s Climate is changing; a major cooling is considered to be inevitable – New York Times May 21, 1975
The trend of world temperature in this century appears to be directly related to the trends of atmospheric carbon dioxide content and atmospheric turbidity (dustiness). Both are believed by various scholars to be related to human activities. Since 1940, the effect of the rapid rise of atmospheric turbidity appears to have exceeded the effect of rising carbon dioxide, resulting in a rapid downward trend of temperature. There is no indication that these trends will be reversed, and there is some reason to believe that man-made pollution will have an increased effect in the future. – The Changing Global Environment 1975, pp 139-147
This cooling has already killed hundreds of thousands of people. If it continues and no strong action is taken, it will cause world famine, world chaos and world war, and this could all come about before the year 2000. — Lowell Ponte “The Cooling”, 1976
An international team of specialists has concluded from eight indexes of climate that there is no end in sight to the cooling trend of the last 30 years, at least in the Northern Hemisphere. – New York Times – January 5, 1978
Move Where (to escape the cold)? The Brutal Buffalo (NY) winter might be common all over the United States. Climate experts believe the next Ice Age is on its way. According to recent evidence, it could come sooner than anyone expected. – In Search of – “The Coming Ice Age” 1978
One of the questions that nags at climatologists asks when and how fast a new ice age might descend. A Belgian scientist suggests this could happen sooner and swifter than you might think. – Christian Science Monitor – Nov 14, 1979
Evidence has been presented and discussed to show a cooling trend over the Northern Hemisphere since around 1940, amounting to over 0.5°C, due primarily to cooling at mid- and high latitudes – Present Climatic Cooling and a Proposed Causative Mechanism – Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society – November 1980 *
A global warming trend could bring heat waves, dust-dry farmland and disease, the experts said… Under this scenario, the resort town of Ocean City, Md., will lose 39 feet of shoreline by 2000 and a total of 85 feet within the next 25 years – San Jose Mercury News – June 11, 1986
Greenhouse Effect Culprit May Be Family Car; New Ice Age by 1995?…As the tropical oceans heat up (due to increased greenhouse gases), more of their moisture is evaporated to form clouds. The increasing pole-tropic wind systems move some of these additional clouds toward the poles, resulting in increased winter rainfall, longer and colder winters and the gradual buildup of the polar ice sheets. This phenomenon has come to be widely recognized by climatologists in recent years. What most of them do not recognize is that this process may be the engine that drives the 100,000-year cycle of major ice ages, for which there is no other plausible explanation….we may be less than seven years away, and our climate may continue to deteriorate rapidly until life on earth becomes all but unsupportable…. New York Times – Larry Ephron , Director of the Institute for a Future – July 15, 1988
[In New York City by 2008] The West Side Highway [which runs along the Hudson River] will be under water. And there will be tape across the windows across the street because of high winds. And the same birds won’t be there. The trees in the median strip will change. There will be more police cars. Why? Well, you know what happens to crime when the heat goes up… Under the greenhouse effect, extreme weather increases. Depending on where you are in terms of the hydrological cycle, you get more of whatever you’re prone to get. New York can get droughts, the droughts can get more severe and you’ll have signs in restaurants saying “Water by request only.” – James Hansen testimony before Congress in June 1988
STUDY FORESEES 86 NEW POWER PLANTS TO COOL U.S. WHEN GLOBE GETS HOTTER: Global warming could force Americans to build 86 more power plants — at a cost of $110 billion — to keep all their air conditioners running 20 years from now, a new study says…Using computer models, researchers concluded that global warming would raise average annual temperatures nationwide two degrees by 2010, and the drain on power would require the building of 86 new midsize power plants – Associated Press May 15, 1989
U.N. OFFICIAL PREDICTS DISASTER SAYS GREENHOUSE EFFECT COULD WIPE SOME NATIONS OFF MAP – 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 – Associated Press June 30, 1989
‘New York will probably be like Florida 15 years from now,’ – St. Louis Post-Dispatch Sept. 17, 1989
Some predictions for the next decade (1990’s) are not difficult to make… Americans may see the ’80s migration to the Sun Belt reverse as a global warming trend rekindles interest in cooler climates. – Dallas Morning News December 5th 1989
“(By) 1995, the greenhouse effect would be desolating the heartlands of North America and Eurasia with horrific drought, causing crop failures and food riots… “(By 1996) The Platte River of Nebraska would be dry, while a continent-wide black blizzard of prairie topsoil will stop traffic on interstates, strip paint from houses and shut down computers… “The Mexican police will round up illegal American migrants surging into Mexico seeking work as field hands”. – Michael Oppenheimer, The Environmental Defense Fund – “Dead Heat” 1990
Giant sand dunes may turn Plains to desert – Huge sand dunes extending east from Colorado’s Front Range may be on the verge of breaking through the thin topsoil, transforming America’s rolling High Plains into a desert, new research suggests. The giant sand dunes discovered in NASA satellite photos are expected to re- emerge over the next 20 to 50 years, depending on how fast average temperatures rise from the suspected “greenhouse effect,” scientists believe. -Denver Post April 18, 1990
By 2000, British and American oil will have dimished to a trickle……Ozone depletion and global warming threaten food shortages, but the wealthy North will enjoy a temporary reprieve by buying up the produce of the South. Unrest among the hungry and the ensuing political instability, will be contained by the North’s greater military might. A bleak future indeed, but an inevitable one unless we change the way we live…..At present rates of exploitation there may be no rainforest left in 10 years. If measures are not taken immediately, the greenhouse effect may be unstoppable in 12 to 15 years. – 5000 Days to Save the Planet – Edward Goldsmith 1991
”I think we’re in trouble. When you realize how little time we have left – we are now given not 10 years to save the rainforests, but in many cases five years. Madagascar will largely be gone in five years unless something happens. And nothing is happening.” – ABC – The Miracle Planet April 22, 1990
The planet could face an “ecological and agricultural catastrophe” by the next decade if global warming trends continue – Carl Sagan – Buffalo News Oct. 15, 1990
Most of the great environmental struggles will be either won or lost in the 1990s and by the next century it will be too late. — Thomas E. Lovejoy, Smithsonian Institution “Real Goods Alternative Energy Sourcebook,” Seventh Edition: February 1993
Today (in 1996) 25 million environmental refugees roam the globe, more than those pushed out for political, economic, or religious reasons. By 2010, this number will grow tenfold to 200 million. – The Heat is On -The High Stakes Battle Over Earth’s Threatened Climate – Ross Gelbspan – 1996
“It appears that we have a very good case for suggesting that the El Ninos are going to become more frequent, and they’re going to become more intense and in a few years, or a decade or so, we’ll go into a permanent El Nino. So instead of having cool water periods for a year or two, we’ll have El Nino upon El Nino, and that will become the norm. And you’ll have an El Nino, that instead of lasting 18 months, lasts 18 years,” he said. – BBC November 7, 1997
One of the world’s leading climate experts warned of an underestimated threat posed by the buildup of greenhouse gases ‘ an abrupt collapse of the ocean’s prevailing circulation system that could send temperatures across Europe plummeting in a span of 10 years. If that system shut down today, winter temperatures in the North Atlantic region would fall by 20 or more degrees Fahrenheit within 10 years. Dublin would acquire the climate of Spitsbergen, 600 miles north of the Arctic Circle. “The consequences could be devastating,” said Wallace S. Broecker, Newberry Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University’s – Science Magazine Dec 1, 1997
Scientists are warning that some of the Himalayan glaciers could vanish within ten years because of global warming. A build-up of greenhouse gases is blamed for the meltdown, which could lead to drought and flooding in the region affecting millions of people. – The Birmingham Post (England) July 26, 1999
A report last week claimed that within a decade, the disease (Malaria) will be common again on the Spanish coast. The effects of global warming are coming home to roost in the developed world. – The Guardian September 11, 1999
“But it does not take a scientist to size up the effects of snowless winters on the children too young to remember the record-setting blizzards of 1996. For them, the pleasures of sledding and snowball fights are as out-of-date as hoop-rolling, and the delight of a snow day off from school is unknown.” – Dr. Michael Oppenheimer of the Environmental Defense Fund New York Times – January 2000
“We are beginning to approximate the kind of warming you should see in the winter season.” – Star News, Mike Changery, National Climatic Data Center, Mar 11 2000
Britain’s winter ends tomorrow with further indications of a striking environmental change: snow is starting to disappear from our lives. Sledges, snowmen, snowballs and the excitement of waking to find that the stuff has settled outside are all a rapidly diminishing part of Britain’s culture, as warmer winters – which scientists are attributing to global climate change – produce not only fewer white Christmases, but fewer white Januaries and Februaries. – Charles Onians -UK Independent Mar 20, 2000
Within a few years winter snowfall will become a very rare and exciting even. Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” Dr David Viner, Senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia – Mar 20, 2000
“Good bye winter. Never again snow?” Spiegel, 1 April 2000
Officials with the Panama Canal Authority, managers of the locks and reservoirs since the United States relinquished control of the canal in 1999, warn that global warming, increased shipping traffic and bigger seagoing vessels could cripple the canal’s capacity to operate within a decade. CNN November 1, 2000
In ten years time, most of the low-lying atolls surrounding Tuvalu’s nine islands in the South Pacific Ocean will be submerged under water as global warming rises sea levels, CNN Mar 29, 2001
“Globally, 2002 is likely to be warmer than 2001 – it may even break the record set in 1998. – Daily Mirror August 2, 2002
Next year(2003)may be warmest recorded: Global temperatures in 2003 are expected to exceed those in 1998 – the hottest year to date – Telegraph UK- December 30, 2002
(The) extra energy, together with a weak El Nino, is expected to make 2005 warmer than 2003 and 2004 and perhaps even warmer than 1998 – Reuters February 11, 2005
Environmental refugees to top 50 million in 5 years –“There are well-founded fears that the number of people fleeing untenable environmental conditions may grow exponentially as the world experiences the effects of climate change and other phenomena,” says UNU-EHS Director Janos Bogardi. – United Nations University news release – October 11, 2005
NOAA announced its predictions for the 2006 hurricane season, saying it expects an “above normal” year with 13-16 named storms. Of these storms, the agency says it expects four to be hurricanes of category 3 or above, double the yearly average of prior seasons in recorded history. With experts calling the coming hurricane season potentially worse than last year’s, oil prices have jumped 70 cents per barrel in New York and made similar leaps elsewhere. Economists anticipate that demand for oil will rise sharply over the summer, when as many as four major hurricanes could hit the United States. — Seed Magazine 5/19/06
“The more than ‘unusually ‘warm January weather is yet ‘another extreme event’, ‘a harbinger of the winters that are ahead of us’. … The global temperature will ‘increase every year by 0.2°C” Michael Müller, Socialist, State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of Environment, Die Zeit, 15 Jan 2007
This year (2007) is likely to be the warmest year on record globally, beating the current record set in 1998, – ScienceDaily Jan. 5, 2007
Very Active 2007 Hurricane Season Predicted – The U.S. Atlantic basin will likely experience a very active hurricane season, the Colorado State University forecast team announced today, increasing its earlier prediction for the 2007 hurricane season. The team’s forecast now anticipates 17 named storms forming in the Atlantic basin between June 1 and Nov. 30. Nine of the 17 storms are predicted to become hurricanes, and of those nine, five are expected to develop into intense or major hurricanes (Saffir/Simpson category 3-4-5) with sustained winds of 111 mph or greater. – ScienceDaily April 3, 2007
“According to these models, there will be no sea ice left in the summer in the Arctic Ocean somewhere between 2010 and 2015”. “And it’s probably going to happen even faster than that,” Professor Louis Fortier – Université Laval, Director ArcticNet – November 16, 2007
NASA climate scientist Jay Zwally said: “At this rate, the Arctic Ocean could be nearly ice-free at the end of summer by 2012, much faster than previous predictions. – National Geographic Dec. 12, 2007
Scientists in the US have presented one of the most dramatic forecasts yet for the disappearance of Arctic sea ice. Their latest modelling studies indicate northern polar waters could be ice-free in summers within just 5-6 years. Professor Wieslaw Maslowski told an American Geophysical Union meeting that previous projections had underestimated the processes now driving ice loss. “Our projection of 2013 for the removal of ice in summer is not accounting for the last two minima, in 2005 and 2007,” the researcher from the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California, explained to the BBC. “So given that fact, you can argue that may be our projection of 2013 is already too conservative.” Professor Maslowski’s group, which includes co-workers at Nasa and the Institute of Oceanology, Polish Academy of Sciences (PAS), is well known for producing models that are in advance of other teams. – BBC Dec. 12, 2007
Arctic warming has become so dramatic that the North Pole may melt this summer (2008), report scientists studying the effects of climate change in the field. “We’re actually projecting this year that the North Pole may be free of ice for the first time [in history],” David Barber, of the University of Manitoba, told National Geographic News aboard the C.C.G.S. Amundsen, a Canadian research icebreaker. – National Geographic News June 20, 2008
“There is a possibility of an ice-free Arctic Ocean for a short period in summer perhaps as early as 2015. This would mean the disappearance of multi-year ice, as no sea ice would survive the summer melt season….Arctic Marine Shipping Assessment Report – 2009
Habibullo Abdussamatov, head of space research at Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory in St. Petersburg, Russia, predicts that a new “Little Ice Age” could begin in just four years. WND Heartland Institute’s 4th International Conference on Climate Change May 10, 2010
“It could even be this year or next year but not later than 2015 there won’t be any ice in the Arctic in the summer,” he said, pulling out a battered laptop to show a diagram explaining his calculations, which he calls “the Arctic death spiral”. – David Vaughan Glaciologist & IPCC scientist – Financial Times Magazine Aug 8, 2012
Granted, when making projections, it’s good to have sophisticated models. I don’t claim to have used those, but I’ve got a good eye and by the looks of it, sea ice will be gone in September 2014. -Sam Carana Arctic News Sep 21, 2012
For the record—I do not think that any sea ice will survive this summer. An event unprecedented in human history is today, this very moment, transpiring in the Arctic Ocean….” – Paul Beckwith Sierra Club – March 23, 2013
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The question wasn’t “what do people think is caused by global warming”, but “what was predicted by scientists and activists 25 years ago that would be a result of global warming.” Big difference.
OK. Hang on to your hat!
The original post was asking for a list of failed climate predictions, so here are 107:
FAILED CLIMATE PREDICTIONS (and some related stupid sayings)
1. “Due to global warming, the coming winters in the local regions will become milder.”
Stefan Rahmstorf, Potsdam Institute of Climate Impact Research, University of Potsdam, February 8, 2006
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2. “Milder winters, drier summers: Climate study shows a need to adapt in Saxony Anhalt.”
Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Press Release, January 10, 2010.
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3. “More heat waves, no snow in the winter… Climate models… over 20 times more precise than the UN IPCC global models. In no other country do we have more precise calculations of climate consequences. They should form the basis for political planning… Temperatures in the wintertime will rise the most… there will be less cold air coming to Central Europe from the east…In the Alps winters will be 2°C warmer already between 2021 and 2050.”
Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Hamburg, September 2, 2008.
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4. “The new Germany will be characterized by dry-hot summers and warm-wet winters.”
Wilhelm Gerstengarbe and Peter Werner, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), March 2, 2007
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5. “Clear climate trends are seen from the computer simulations. Foremost the winter months will be warmer all over Germany. Depending of CO2 emissions, temperatures will rise by up to 4°C, in the Alps by up to 5°C.”
Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Hamburg, 7 Dec 2009.
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6. “In summer under certain conditions the scientists reckon with a complete melting of the Arctic sea ice. For Europe we expect an increase in drier and warmer summers. Winters on the other hand will be warmer and wetter.”
Erich Roeckner, Max Planck Institute, Hamburg, 29 Sept 2005.
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7. “The more than ‘unusually ‘warm January weather is yet ‘another extreme event’, ‘a harbinger of the winters that are ahead of us’. … The global temperature will ‘increase every year by 0.2°C’”
Michael Müller, Socialist, State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of Environment,
Die Zeit, 15 Jan 2007
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8. “Harsh winters likely will be more seldom and precipitation in the wintertime will be heavier everywhere. However, due to the milder temperatures, it’ll fall more often as rain than as snow.”
Online-Atlas of the Helmholtz-Gemeinschaft, 2010
9. “We’ve mostly had mild winters in which only a few cold months were scattered about, like January 2009. This winter is a cold outlier, but that doesn’t change the picture as a whole. Generally it’s going to get warmer, also in the wintertime.”
Gerhard Müller-Westermeier, German Weather Service (DWD), 26 Jan 2010
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10. “Winters with strong frost and lots of snow like we had 20 years ago will cease to exist at our latitudes.”
Mojib Latif, Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Hamburg, 1 April 2000
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11. “Good bye winter. Never again snow?”
Spiegel, 1 April 2000
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12. “In the northern part of the continent there likely will be some benefits in the form of reduced cold periods and higher agricultural yields. But the continued increase in temperatures will cancel off these benefits. In some regions up to 60% of the species could die off by 2080.”
3Sat, 26 June 2003
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13. “Although the magnitude of the trends shows large variation among different models, Miller et al. (2006) find that none of the 14 models exhibits a trend towards a lower NAM index and higher arctic SLP.”
IPCC 2007 4AR, (quoted by Georg Hoffmann)
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14. “Based on the rising temperature, less snow will be expected regionally. While currently 1/3 of the precipitation in the Alps falls as snow, the snow-share of precipitation by the end of the century could end up being just one sixth.”
Germanwatch, Page 7, Feb 2007
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15. “Assuming there will be a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere, as is projected by the year 2030. The consequences could be hotter and drier summers, and winters warmer and wetter. Such a warming will be proportionately higher at higher elevations – and especially will have a powerful impact on the glaciers of the Firn regions.”
and
“ The ski areas that reliably have snow will shift from 1200 meters to 1500 meters elevation by the year 2050; because of the climate prognoses warmer winters have to be anticipated.”
Scinexx Wissenschaft Magazin, 26 Mar 2002
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16. “Yesterday’s snow… Because temperatures in the Alps are rising quickly, there will be more precipitation in many places. But because it will rain more often than it snows, this will be bad news for tourists. For many ski lifts this means the end of business.”
Daniela Jacob, Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Hamburg, 8 Aug 2006
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17. “Spring will begin in January starting in 2030.”
Die Welt, 30 Sept 2010
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18. “Ice, snow, and frost will disappear, i.e. milder winters” … “Unusually warm winters without snow and ice are now being viewed by many as signs of climate change.”
Schleswig Holstein NABU, 10 Feb 2007
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19. “Good bye winter… In the northern hemisphere the deviations are much greater according to NOAA calculations, in some areas up to 5°C. That has consequences says DWD meteorologist Müller-Westermeier: When the snowline rises over large areas, the bare ground is warmed up even more by sunlight. This amplifies global warming. A process that is uncontrollable – and for this reason understandably arouses old childhood fears: First the snow disappears, and then winter.”
Die Zeit, 16 Mar 2007
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20. “Warm in the winter, dry in the summer … Long, hard winters in Germany remain rare: By 2085 large areas of the Alps and Central German Mountains will be almost free of snow. Because air temperatures in winter will rise more quickly than in summer, there will be more precipitation. ‘However, much of it will fall as rain,’ says Daniela Jacob of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology.”
FOCUS, 24 May 2006
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21. “Consequences and impacts for regional agriculture: Hotter summers, milder plus shorter winters (palm trees!). Agriculture: More CO2 in the air, higher temperatures, foremost in winter.”
Dr. Michael Schirmer, University of Bremen, presentation of 2 Feb 2007
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22. “Winters: wet and mild”
Bavarian State Ministry for Agriculture, presentation 23 Aug 2007
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23. “The climate model prognoses currently indicate that the following climate changes will occur: Increase in minimum temperatures in the winter.”
Chamber of Agriculture of Lower Saxony Date: 6 July 2009
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24. “Both the prognoses for global climate development and the prognoses for the climatic development of the Fichtel Mountains clearly show a warming of the average temperature, whereby especially the winter months will be greatly impacted.”
Willi Seifert, University of Bayreuth, diploma thesis, p. 203, 7 July 2004
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25. “Already in the year 2025 the conditions for winter sports in the Fichtel Mountains will develop negatively, especially with regards to ‘natural’ snow conditions and for so-called snow-making potential. A financially viable ski business operation after about the year 2025 appears under these conditions to be extremely improbable (Seifert, 2004)”.
Andreas Matzarakis, University of Freiburg Meteorological Institute, 26 July 2006
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26. “Skiing among palm trees? … For this reason I would advise no one in the Berchtesgadener Land to invest in a ski-lift. The probability of earning money with the global warming is getting less and less.”
Hartmut Graßl, Director Emeritus,
Max Planck-Institute for Meteorology, Hamburg, page 3, 4 Mar 2006
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27. “Climate warming leads to an increasingly higher snow line. The number of future ski resorts that can be expected to have snow is reducing. […] Climate change does not only lead to higher temperatures, but also to changes in the precipitation ratios in summer and winter. […] In the wintertime more precipitation is to be anticipated. However, it will fall more often as rain, and less often as snow, in the future.”
Hans Elsasser, Director of the Geographical Institute of the University of Zurich, 4 Mar 2006
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28. “All climate simulations – global and regional – were carried out at the Deutschen Klimarechenzentrum [German Climate Simulation Center]. […] In the winter months the temperature rise is from 1.5°C to 2°C and stretches from Scandinavia to the Mediterranean Sea. Only in regions that are directly influenced by the Atlantic (Great Britain, Portugal, parts of Spain) will the winter temperature increase be less (Fig. 1).”
Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Press Release, Date: December 2007/January 2013.
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29. “By the year 2050 … temperatures will rise 1.5ºC to 2.5°C (summer) and 3°C (winter). … in the summer it will rain up to 40% less and in the winter up to 30% more.
German Federal Department of Highways, 1 Sept 2010
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30. “We are now at the threshold of making reliable statements about the future.”
Daniela Jacob, Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Hamburg, page 44, 10/2001
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31. “The scenarios of climate scientists are unanimous about one thing: In the future in Germany we will have to live with drier and drier summers and a lot more rain in the winters.”
Gerhard Müller-Westermeier, German Weather Service (DWD), 20 May 2010
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32. “In the wintertime the winds will be more from the west and will bring storms to Germany. Especially in western and southern Germany there will be flooding.” FOCUS / Mojib Latif, Leibniz Institute for Ocean Sciences of the University of Kiel, 27 May 2006.
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33. “While the increases in the springtime appear as rather modest, the (late)summer and winter months are showing an especially powerful warming trend.”
State Ministry of Environment, Agriculture and Geology, Saxony, p. 133, Schriftenreihe Heft 25/2009.
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34. “Warm Winters Result From Greenhouse Effect, Columbia Scientists Find, Using NASA Model … Despite appearing as part of a natural climate oscillation, the large increases in wintertime surface temperatures over the continents may therefore be attributable in large part to human activities,”
Science Daily, Dr. Drew Shindell 4 June 1999
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35. “Within a few years winter snowfall will become a very rare and exciting event. … Children just aren’t going to know what snow is.”
David Viner, Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia, 20 March 2000
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36. “This data confirms what many gardeners believe – winters are not as hard as they used to be. … And if recent trends continue a white Christmas in Wales could certainly be a thing of the past.”
BBC, Dr Jeremy Williams, Bangor University, Lecturer in Geomatics, 20 Dec 2004
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37. The rise in temperature associated with climate change leads to a general reduction in the proportion of precipitation falling as snow, and a consequent reduction in many areas in the duration of snow cover.”
Global Environmental Change, Nigel W. Arnell, Geographer, 1 Oct 1999
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38. “Computer models predict that the temperature rise will continue at that accelerated pace if emissions of heat-trapping gases are not reduced, and also predict that warming will be especially pronounced in the wintertime.”
Star News, William K. Stevens, New York Times, 11 Mar 2000
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39. “In a warmer world, less winter precipitation falls as snow and the melting of winter snow occurs earlier in spring. Even without any changes in precipitation intensity, both of these effects lead to a shift in peak river runoff to winter and early spring, away from summer and autumn.”
Nature, T. P. Barnett et. al., 17 Nov 2005
*****
40. “We are beginning to approximate the kind of warming you should see in the winter season.”
Star News, Mike Changery, National Climatic Data Center, 11 Mar 2000
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41. “Milder winter temperatures will decrease heavy snowstorms but could cause an increase in freezing rain if average daily temperatures fluctuate about the freezing point.”
IPCC Climate Change, 2001
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42. “Global climate change is likely to be accompanied by an increase in the frequency and intensity of heat waves, as well as warmer summers and milder winters…9.4.2. Decreased Mortality Resulting from Milder Winters … One study estimates a decrease in annual cold-related deaths of 20,000 in the UK by the 2050s (a reduction of 25%)”
IPCC Climate Change, 2001
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43. “The lowest winter temperatures are likely to increase more than average winter temperature in northern Europe. …The duration of the snow season is very likely to shorten in all of Europe, and snow depth is likely to decrease in at least most of Europe.”
IPCC Climate Change, 2007
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44. “Snowlines are going up in altitude all over the world. The idea that we will get less snow is absolutely in line with what we expect from global warming.”
WalesOnline, Sir John Houghton – atmospheric physicist, 30 June 2007
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45. “In the UK wetter winters are expected which will lead to more extreme rainfall, whereas summers are expected to get drier. However, it is possible under climate change that there could be an increase of extreme rainfall even under general drying.”
Telegraph, Dr. Peter Stott, Met Office, 24 July 2007
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46. “Winter has gone forever and we should officially bring spring forward instead. … There is no winter any more despite a cold snap before Christmas. It is nothing like years ago when I was younger. There is a real problem with spring because so much is flowering so early year to year.”
Express, Dr Nigel Taylor, Curator of Kew Gardens, 8 Feb 2008
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47. “The past is no longer a guide to the future. We no longer have a stationary climate,”…
Independent, Dr. Peter Stott, Met Office, 27 Jul 2007
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48. “It is consistent with the climate change message. It is exactly what we expect winters to be like – warmer and wetter, and dryer and hotter summers. …the winter we have just seen is consistent with the type of weather we expect to see more and more in the future.”
Wayne Elliott, Met Office meteorologist, BBC, 27 Feb 2007
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49. “ If your decisions depend on what’s happening at these very fine scales of 25 km or even 5 km resolution then you probably shouldn’t be making irreversible investment decisions now.”
Myles Allen, “one of the UK’s leading climate modellers”, Oxford University, 18 June 2009
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50. “It’s great that the government has decided to put together such a scientifically robust analysis of the potential impacts of climate change in the UK.”
Keith Allott, WWF-UK, 18 June 2009
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51. “The data collected by experts from the university [of Bangor] suggests that a white Christmas on Snowdon – the tallest mountain in England and Wales – may one day become no more than a memory.”
BBC News, 20 Dec 2004
[BBC 2013: “Snowdon Mountain Railway will be shut over the Easter weekend after it was hit by 30ft (9.1m) snow drifts.”]
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52. “Spring is arriving earlier each year as a result of climate change, the first ‘conclusive proof’ that global warming is altering the timing of the seasons, scientists announced yesterday.”
Guardian, 26 Aug 2006.
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53. “Given the increase in the average winter temperature it is obvious that the number of frost days and the number of days that the snow remains, will decline. For Europe the models indicate that cold winters such as at the end of the 20th century, that happened at an average once every ten years, will gradually disappear in the course of the century.” (p. 19), and
“…but it might well be that nothing remains of the snowjoy in the Hautes Fagnes but some yellowed photos because of the climate change … moreover an increase in winter precipitation would certainly not be favorable for recreation!” (p38)
Jean-Pascal van Ypersele and Philippe Marbaix, Greenpeace, 2004
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54. “Shindell’s model predicts that if greenhouse gases continue to increase, winter in the Northern Hemisphere will continue to warm. ‘In our model, we’re seeing a very large signal of global warming and it’s not a naturally occurring thing. It’s most likely linked to greenhouse gases,’ he said.
NASA, GISS, 2 June 1999
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55. “We have seen that in the last years and decades that winters have become much milder than before and that there isn’t nearly as much snowfall. All simulations show this trend will continue in the future and that we have to expect an intense warming in the Alps…especially in the foothills, snow will turn to rain and winter sports will no longer be possible anymore.”
Mojib Latif, Leibnitz Institute for Oceanography, University of Kiel, February 17, 2005
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56. Planning for a snowless future: “Our study is already showing that that there will be a much worse situation in 20 years.”
Christopher Krull, Black Forest Tourism Association / Spiegel, 17 Feb 2005
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57. “Rhineland-Palatinate, as will be the case for all of Central Europe, will be affected by higher than average warming rates and winters with snow disappearing increasingly.”
Prof. Dr. Hartmut Grassl, “internationally renowned meteorologist”, Director Emeritus, Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Hamburg, 20 Nov 2008
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58. “With the pace of global warming increasing, some climate change experts predict that the Scottish ski industry will cease to exist within 20 years.”
Guardian, 14 February 2004
[4 January 2013: “Nevis Range, The Lecht, Cairngorm, Glenshee and Glencoe all remain closed today due to the heavy snow and strong winds.”]
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59. “Unfortunately, it’s just getting too hot for the Scottish ski industry.”
David Viner, Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia, 14 Feb 2004
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60. “For the Baltic ringed seal, climate change could mean its demise” warned a team of scientists at the Baltic Sea Experiment (Baltex) conference in Goteborg. “This is because the warming leads to the ice on the Baltic Sea to melt earlier and earlier every year.”
Spiegel, 3 June 2006
[The Local 2013: “Late-season freeze sets Baltic ice record … I’ve never seen this much ice this late in the season.”]
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61. Forecasters Predict More Mild Winter for Europe
Reuters, Nov 09, 2012
FRANKFURT – European weather in the coming winter now looks more likely to be mild than in previous studies, German meteorologist Georg Mueller said in a monthly report.
“The latest runs are generally in favor of a milder than normal winter, especially over northern Europe.”
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62. “Spring is arriving earlier each year as a result of climate change, the first ‘conclusive proof’ that global warming is altering the timing of the seasons, scientists announced yesterday.”
Guardian, 26 August 2006.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2006/aug/26/climatechange.climatechangeenvironment
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63. “Given the increase in the average winter temperature it is obvious that the number of frost days and the number of days that the snow remains, will decline. For Europe the models indicate that cold winters such as at the end of the 20th century, that happened at an average once every ten years, will gradually disappear in the course of the century.” (p19)
“…but it might well be that nothing remains of the snowjoy in the Hautes Fagnes but some yellowed photos because of the climate change … moreover an increase in winter precipitation would certainly not be favorable for recreation!” (p38)
Impact of the climate change in Belgium (translated from Dutch).
Jean-Pascal van Ypersele and Philippe Marbaix for Greenpeace, 2004
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64. “The hottest year since 1659 spells global doom”
Telegraph December 14, 2006
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1536852/The-hottest-year-since-1659-spells-global-doom.html
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65. “Jay Wynne from the BBC Weather Centre presents reports for typical days in 2020, 2050 and 2080 as predicted by our experiment.”
BBCs Climate Change Experiment
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/climateexperiment/whattheymean/theuk.shtml
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66. “Cold winters would gradually disappear.” (p.4)
67. “In Belgium, snow on the ground could become increasingly rare but there would be plenty of grey sky and rain in winter..” (p.6)
The Greenpeace report “Impacts of climate change in Belgium” is available in an abbreviated version in English:
http://www.greenpeace.org/belgium/PageFiles/19049/SumIB_uk.pdf
Impacts of climate change in Belgium
Jean-Pascal van Ypersele and Philippe Marbaix for Greenpeace, 2004
Climate scientist van Ypersele is Vice Chair of the IPCC.
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68. “Warmer and Wetter Winters in Europe and Western North America Linked to Increasing Greenhouse Gases.”
NASA, June 2, 1999
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/19990602/
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69. “The global temperature will increase every year by 0.2°C”
Michael Müller, Socialist, State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of Environment, in Die Zeit, January 15, 2007
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70. “Unfortunately, it’s just getting too hot for the Scottish ski industry. It is very vulnerable to climate change; the resorts have always been marginal in terms of snow and, as the rate of climate change increases, it is hard to see a long-term future.”
David Viner, of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.
February 14, 2004
http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2004/feb/14/climatechange.scotland
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71. “Climate change will have the effect of pushing more and more winter sports higher and higher up mountains,…”
Rolf Burki and his colleagues at the University of Zurich
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/dec/03/research.sciencenews
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72. “ In the future, snowdrops will be out in January, primroses in February, mayflowers and lilac in April and wild roses in May, the ponds will be full of tadpoles in March and a month later even the oaks will be in full leaf. If that isn’t enough, autumn probably won’t begin until October.”
Geraint Smith, Science Correspondent, Standard
http://www.standard.co.uk/news/british-seasons-start-to-shift-6358532.html
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73. “The West Side Highway [which runs along the Hudson River] will be under water. And there will be tape across the windows across the street because of high winds. And the same birds won’t be there. The trees in the median strip will change….There will be more police cars….[since] you know what happens to crime when the heat goes up.”
Dr. James Hansen, 1988, in an interview with author Rob Reiss.
Reiss asked how the greenhouse effect was likely to affect the neighborhood below Hansen’s office in NYC in the next 20 years.
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74. March 20, 2000, from The Independent, According to Dr David Viner of the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit, snowfall in Britain would become “a very rare and exciting event” and “children just aren’t going to know what snow is.”
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75. September 2006, Arnold Schwarzenegger signing California’s anti-emissions law, “We simply must do everything in our power to slow down global warming before it is too late…The science is clear. The global warming debate is over.”
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76. 1990 Actress Meryl Streep “By the year 2000 – that’s less than ten years away–earth’s climate will be warmer than it’s been in over 100,000 years. If we don’t do something, there’ll be enormous calamities in a very short time.”
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77. April 2008, Media Mogul Ted Turner on Charlie Rose (On not taking drastic action to correct global warming) “Not doing it will be catastrophic. We’ll be eight degrees hotter in ten, not ten but 30 or 40 years and basically none of the crops will grow. Most of the people will have died and the rest of us will be cannibals.”
[Strictly speaking, this is not a failed prediction. It won’t be until at least 2048 that our church-going and pie-baking neighbors come after us for their noonday meal. But the prediction is so bizarre that it is included it here.]
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78. January 1970 Life Magazine “Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support …the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution…by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half…”
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79. “Earth Day” 1970 Kenneth Watt, ecologist: “At the present rate of nitrogen build-up, it’s only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable.”
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80. “Earth Day” 1970 Kenneth Watt, ecologist: “The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years. If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.”
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81. April 28, 1975 Newsweek “There are ominous signs that Earth’s weather patterns have begun to change dramatically….The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it….The central fact is that…the earth’s climate seems to be cooling down…If the climate change is as profound as some of the pessimists fear, the resulting famines could be catastrophic.”
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82. 1976 Lowell Ponte in “The Cooling,”: “This cooling has already killed hundreds of thousands of people. If it continues and no strong action is taken, it will cause world famine, world chaos and world war, and this could all come about before the year 2000.”
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83. July 9, 1971, Washington Post: “In the next 50 years fine dust that humans discharge into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuel will screen out so much of the sun’s rays that the Earth’s average temperature could fall by six degrees. Sustained emissions over five to ten years, could be sufficient to trigger an ice age.”
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84. June, 1975, Nigel Calder in International Wildlife: “The continued rapid cooling of the earth since WWII is in accord with the increase in global air pollution associated with industrialization, mechanization, urbanization and exploding population.”
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85. June 30, 1989, Associated Press: U.N. OFFICIAL PREDICTS DISASTER, SAYS GREENHOUSE EFFECT COULD WIPE SOME NATIONS OFF MAP–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 added that governments have a 10-year window of opportunity to solve the greenhouse effect.
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86. Sept 19, 1989, St. Louis Post-Dispatch: “New York will probably be like Florida 15 years from now.”
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87. December 5, 1989, Dallas Morning News: “Some predictions for the next decade are not difficult to make…Americans may see the ’80s migration to the Sun Belt reverse as a global warming trend rekindles interest in cooler climates.”
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88. Michael Oppenheimer, 1990, The Environmental Defense Fund: “By 1995, the greenhouse effect would be desolating the heartlands of North America and Eurasia with horrific drought, causing crop failures and food riots…”(By 1996) The Platte River of Nebraska would be dry, while a continent-wide black blizzard of prairie topsoil will stop traffic on interstates, strip paint from houses and shut down computers…The Mexican police will round up illegal American migrants surging into Mexico seeking work as field hands.”
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89. April 18, 1990, Denver Post: “Giant sand dunes may turn Plains to desert–huge sand dunes extending east from Colorado’s Front Range may be on the verge of breaking through the thin topsoil, transforming America’s rolling High Plains into a desert, new research suggests. The giant sand dunes discovered by NASA satellite photos are expected to re-emerge over the next 20 t0 50 years, depending on how fast average temperatures rise from the suspected ‘greenhouse effect’ scientists believe.”
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90. Edward Goldsmith, 1991, (5000 Days to Save the Planet): “By 2000, British and American oil will have diminished to a trickle….Ozone depletion and global warming threaten food shortages, but the wealthy North will enjoy a temporary reprieve by buying up the produce of the South. Unrest among the hungry and the ensuing political instability, will be contained by the North’s greater military might. A bleak future indeed, but an inevitable one unless we change the way we live…At present rates of exploitation there may be no rainforest left in 10 years. If measures are not taken immediately, the greenhouse effect may be unstoppable in 12 to 15 years.”
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91. April 22, 1990 ABC, The Miracle Planet: “I think we’re in trouble. When you realize how little time we have left–we are now given not 10 years to save the rainforests, but in many cases five years. Madagascar will largely be gone in five years unless something happens. And nothing is happening.”
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92. February 1993, Thomas E. Lovejoy, Smithsonian Institution: “Most of the great environmental struggles will be either won or lost in the 1990s and by the next century it will be too late.”
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93. November 7, 1997, (BBC commentator): “It appears that we have a very good case for suggesting that the El Niños are going to become more frequent, and they’re going to become more intense and in a few years, or a decade or so, we’ll go into a permanent El Nino. So instead of having cool water periods for a year or two, we’ll have El Niño upon El Niño, and that will become the norm. And you’ll have an El Niño, that instead of lasting 18 months, lasts 18 years.”
****
94. July 26, 1999 The Birmingham Post: “Scientists are warning that some of the Himalayan glaciers could vanish within ten years because of global warming. A build-up of greenhouse gases is blamed for the meltdown, which could lead to drought and flooding in the region affecting millions of people.”
****
95. October 15, 1990 Carl Sagan: “The planet could face an ‘ecological and agricultural catastrophe’ by the next decade if global warming trends continue.”
****
96. Sept 11, 1999, The Guardian: “A report last week claimed that within a decade, the disease (malaria) will be common again on the Spanish coast. The effects of global warming are coming home to roost in the developed world.”
****
97. March 29, 2001, CNN: “In ten year’s time, most of the low-lying atolls surrounding Tuvalu’s nine islands in the South Pacific Ocean will be submerged under water as global warming rises sea levels.”
****
98. 1969, Lubos Moti, Czech physicist: “It is now pretty clearly agreed that CO2 content [in the atmosphere] will rise 25% by 2000. This could increase the average temperature near the earth’s surface by 7 degrees Fahrenheit. This in turn could raise the level of the sea by 10 feet. Goodbye New York. Goodbye Washington, for that matter.”
****
99. 2005, Andrew Simms, policy director of the New Economics Foundation: “Scholars are predicting that 50 million people worldwide will be displaced by 2010 because of rising sea levels, desertification, dried up aquifers, weather-induced flooding and other serious environmental changes.”
****
100. Oct 20, 2009, Gordon Brown UK Prime Minister (referring
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Regarding your Point 98, Mr. Motl was born in 1973. Your other points were probably researched equally responsibly.
21
Thank-you for the info.
20
That one name in the middle of the pile – Ross Gelbspan – is not just some book author making a wildly unsupportable quote. He is part what I term “the epicenter” of the smear effort to portray skeptic climate scientists as paid liars working for ‘Big Coal & Oil’. I further say that if one particular political leader had taken the time to fact-check just one specific label in Gelbspan’s book, we would not be discussing the AGW issue today.
00
The original quote was by Daniel Moynihan in 1969.
“Motl has drawn up a handy chart that demonstrates just how wide of the mark these predictions were. Rather than increasing by 81 parts per million as the “pretty clearly agreed” experts feared, CO2 rose by only 45 parts per million.
Rather than spiking by 3.9 C (7 degrees F), the actual temperature increase between 1969 and the year 2000 was a practically imperceptible 0.3 C. Which means the experts were off by 1200 percent.”
60
Very good. You have to love all the predictions of mass extinctions inside 10 or 15 years or a decade, including that of Al Gore which is missing.
50
Mr. Gore, unlike the rest of us, will no doubt say that is a fortunate thing.
I guess it really is an ill wind that blows nobody good.
00
LoL
Solar Energy Company Goes Bankrupt Despite Millions In Obama Admin Handouts.
https://milo.yiannopoulos.net/2017/04/solar-energy-bankrupt/
40
For those interested here is a link to the UK power production dashboard.
http://gridwatch.co.uk/
40
This article is misleading. They claim no coal use for 24hrs but I don’t know how that is even possible because the coal stations would have to be kept running on “spinning reserve” wouldn’t they?
Also half the power came from gas, a quarter from nuclear and plus there were imports. It doesn’t say how much wind was producing but it wouldn’t have been much. Right now the UK is producing 2.8% from wind, 48.3% from gas, 27.6% from nuclear plus imports and other sources. Still 0% from coal.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/day-without-coal-uk-135-years-energy-mix-happen-more-frequently-national-grid-a7696611.html
51
1963 Chrysler Turbine car. It had reasonable highway gas mileage but appalling city mileage.
https://youtu.be/b2A5ijU3Ivs
40
N. Korea puts Australia under its crosshairs
As Australia continues its support of long time ally the US, N Korea has today made a threat against OZ in response to a statement made by Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop.
Apparantly N Korea is threatening a strike against the land of OZ.
https://www.rt.com/news/385720-north-korea-australia-threat/
.. and with all the focus on Green energy and news of domestic blackouts I wonder if Australia’s CAGWers understand what is happening on their doorstep 😮
50
It was inevitable. I wonder where the Greens will now stand? Will they support our US ally or will they support North Korea by their silence?
30
knock knock nuke nuke nk nk
20
https://balance1010.wordpress.com/2017/04/24/today-67-americans-say-democratic-party-out-of-touch-with-peoples-concerns-abcwapo-poll/
10
NK is incredibly dysfunctional. If it has nukes anf icbms its because another country has sold it to them.
Having said that often the spectre of war is as effective as actual war…..
10
1909 Baker Electric car. The description starts at about the 3 min mark. They were marketed as women’s shopping cars which is still all they are good for except the tax payer subsidised toy of rich people, the Tesla.
https://youtu.be/OhnjMdzGusc
31
Visitor Information Centre Goulburn has a bank of Tesla recharge points. The first day I was there no cars were recharging and on the second day there was one.
20
Hello Dennis, what is the point you are trying to make with that observation?
35
You can’t work that out Willard?
50
Hello Annie, seeing as you’re happy to speak on the behalf of Dennis what point do you believe he’s making?
24
Tesla put in the recharge stations at Goulburn and Wodonga ‘to enable owners to travel between Sydney and Melbourne.’
Dennis was suggesting there isn’t much demand.
50
Dennis sure has a lot of people to speak on his behalf.
24
No, Willard you appeared not to understand the obvious. Annie was just being kind. Seek help.
43
Dennis
They will probably shut them down soon!
Tesla is in BIG trouble!
1. Customers sue TESLA Car maker For ‘Non-Functional’ Autopilot.
2. Falling EV Battery Prices make TESLA too expensive
3. One TESLA Supplier bought 23 models in promise for more work?
4. TESLA skimping on testing before release – causing huge re-calls!
I don’t think I would buy shares & definitely can’t to buy the car!
10
And this
TESLA lag behind in Self Driving Cars!
But ultimately – TESLA is for the very GREEN RICH!
10
Dennis even has a research analyst.
13
Are you actually going to contribute constructively to the conversation?
30
Will do, just waiting for a response from Dennis on my original question concerning his original statement. So far 5 members of his staff have put up responses but none from the OP.
(So far you behave like a concern troll) CTS
01
Not bad, the job of resident troll is still open.
The splitting hair technique works better when its about climate change (the possibilities are endless) and only pseudo Marxists have faith in batteries.
10
I live in Goulburn and regularly bemoan the fact there are eight empty car parks reserved for electric cars and nowhere for me to park.
10
Any one see that story the other day about this 300MW solar far in QLD its going to cost $2 billion dollars. This is unbelievable if any govt money goes into this scam we need to to class action lawsuit against the government. $2 billion for a pathetic 300MW nameplate which is probably more like 50MW most of the time being solar.
110
That’s what socialism does. It will be the destroyer of this nation if enough people do not wake up soon. But as Martin Armstrong keeps explaining the end of socialism will be a tumultuous hard landing in any case since they will be kicking and screaming all the way. See https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/international-news/politics/end-of-socialism-will-be-a-tumultuous-hard-landing/
30
A Serf Lament.
Class action against guv-uh-mints
playin’ ducks ‘n drakes with
citizens’ hard-earned cash,*
turnin’ off lights, substitutin’
medieval tech for ol’King-Coal-
efficiencies; imposin’18c constraints
on free speech or cits’ justifiable complaints
regardin’ high-way robbery by the elected
public servants, (masters) of the people.
Here’s the AGW church and here’s the steeple,
wherein climate modellers in cloud towers
while away the tenured hours costing us heaps
in so many ways, arrestin’ all change, hey
serfs – back ter the Dark Ages!
(Time ter revolt.*)
https://beththeserf.wordpress.com/2017/04/14/45th-edition-serf-under_ground-journal/
60
Go Figure …
09 April 2017: Paintings, sunspots and frost fairs: rethinking the Little Ice Age
The whole concept of the ‘Little Ice Age’ is ‘misleading’, as the changes were small-scale, seasonal and insignificant compared with present-day global warming, argue a group of solar and climate scientists.
http://www.ras.org.uk/news-and-press/2969-paintings-sunspots-and-frost-fairs-rethinking-the-little-ice-age
April 20 2017: Penguins and sea lions beat a retreat to NZ during the Little Ice Age: Otago research
“Penguins and sea lions beat a retreat to mainland New Zealand during the 500-year Little Ice Age, researchers say.
A University of Otago team has discovered the centuries-long cold spell caused shifts in wildlife habitats in the Southern Hemisphere.
The climate variation lasted from around 1300 until the mid-19th century.”
http://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/climate-news/91730312/penguins-and-sea-lions-beat-a-retreat-to-nz-during-the-little-ice-age-otago-research
10
Global Warming causes less snow if you want to ski, but it causes *more* snow if we need to assign blame for avalanches …
January 12, 2016: Is [Global Warming] ruining skiing in the Alps?
https://theconversation.com/is-climate-change-ruining-skiing-in-the-alps-52886
April 20, 2017; [Global Warming]: the people in Norway living in fear of avalanches
http://www.itv.com/news/2017-04-20/climate-change-the-people-in-norway-living-in-fear-of-avalanches/
40
Another wonderfully
informedNOT news article on SBS tonight. China has said its curbing carbon polution! Yep they agree with Obummer on Paris .. well actually NOT. Yep they are curbing carbon polution..as in CARBON PARTICLES , not really caring less about life giving CO2. This of course was totally lost on SBS who continued to equate carbon (element) to CO2 the gas, which of course was what the fraudulent Paris debacle was all about (secretly about de-industrialization not CO2).50
Surely the best way of curbing real carbon pollution is to ensure complete combustion of all carbon into the life giving CO2
00
More people should know that the IPCC reports are written by politicians not scientists.
More exactly, some scientists write a report which is then altered by politicians, diplomats and bureaucrats.
The most quoted bits of the IPCC reports were written by politicians NOT scientists and often have no basis in what the scientists actually said.
I evidence this claim in my blog article :-
http://steelydanswarandpeace.blogspot.co.uk/2010/09/ipcc-reports-are-poltics-not-science.html
20
Windowsontheworld with Piers Corbyn, he talks about the idiot statements about the great barrier reef supposedly disappearing, its about 8 mins into the video.
20
Another $258 million blown on a Victoriastan wind subsidy farm claimed to power 60,000 homes but nameplate capacity not given. 44 windmills to be installed.
http://www.geelongadvertiser.com.au/news/work-starts-on-mt-gellibrand-wind-farm/news-story/b2d5e8562ec5f354f5289cc17dadb9cc
41
I looked up the project website:
“Up to” 132MW of dirty, expensive, intermittent power, but really about 40MW at 30% capacity factor.
Location
25 kilometres east of Colac and 17 kilometres west of Winchelsea in Victoria
Project Configuration
Up to 44 x AW3000 3MW turbines
Start of construction
Major civil construction works to commence early 2017
Expected completion
Mid-2018
Expected capacity
Up to 132 MW
Energy production
Equivalent to 100,000 households
Project value
Up to A$275M
30
Greenie friends of dirt like to tell us that coal fired power plants are closing hand over fist over the last ten years or so.
Yep! All true.
Those plants closing are those of them constructed up to 50 years ago, and some way more than that age even.
Those ancient old plants vary in output from 20 to as high as 100MW, average output around 40 or 50MW.
Hundreds of ’em, all around the World, going unreplaced, but hey they don’t need to replace them, because they could close a hundred of them, and replace them ALL with just ONE large scale new tech plant, and end up emitting barely a fraction of the CO2 those ancient plants emitted.
And here we are now, constructing these wind plants with an average output of only 40MW, intermittent as opposed to those original now closed coal fired babies, 24/7 power.
And hey, only $285 Million for this (equivalent) 40MW plant.
So, scaling that up to 2000MW, we have a cost of $14.2 Billion.
A new 2000MW HELE coal fired plant with a construction cost of $14.2 Billion. Don’t make me laugh.
Wind power cheaper than coal fired power. Yeah, Right! Don’t make me laugh again.
Tony.
81
Tony, as our energy infrastructure ages disgracefully we might look at keeping coal power by putting heritage orders on the venerable plants. You know the drill: unique historical and architectural significance, storylines of our national narrative (or is it narratives of our national storyline?), role of women and immigrants in coal etc etc. Why, demolishing some of the oldest coal power facilities in the world would be like shooting Skippy!
A lot of coal will get wasted in aging clunkers, but better a dinged-up old Falcon than a new dinky toy.
60
23 Apr: South China Morning Post: AP: IMF and World Bank drop protectionism and climate change from closing statement
Global finance leaders on Saturday dropped a sharp condemnation of trade protectionism and references to climate change from a closing statement that wrapped up the spring meetings of the 189-nation International Monetary Fund and the World Bank…
The new statement also dropped any mention of the threat of climate change…
At a closing news conference, IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde and Agustin Carstens, head of the Bank of Mexico and chair of the IMF’s policy committee, sought to downplay the changes…
Eswar Prasad, a trade economist at Cornell University, said the changes in the IMF and G-20 communiques showed the Trump administration’s desire to signal that US policy will be different under a new president.
“The G-20 consensus on issues such as free trade and combating climate change is crumbling in the face of the Trump administration’s hostility to those positions,” Prasad said…
The spring IMF and World Bank meetings took place against the backdrop of an improving global economy, helped by better performances in the United States and China, the world’s two biggest economies, and in a rise in commodity prices which has helped many developing nations. The IMF’s latest economic forecast projects global growth of 3.5 per cent this year, which would be the fastest pace in five years and up from 3.1 per cent last year…
http://www.scmp.com/business/global-economy/article/2089892/imf-and-world-bank-drop-protectionism-and-climate-change
21
comment in moderation re: 23 Apr: South China Morning Post: AP: IMF and World Bank drop protectionism and climate change from closing statement
01
What do people think of the “electric universe” theory? I haven’t looked too deeply into it but I see no reason why a galaxy couldn’t carry a net electric charge which might result in intergalactic current flows via plasma.
Any thoughts?
22
David , in my opinion this blogs purpose is mainly to disprove a hypothesis that mans emissions of CO2 could cause a problem in the future because CO2 is a green house gas , as of yet that hypothesis has not made it to theory level , because there is no actual real world evidence that supports it , as for your electric universe hypothesis , there is no real world evidence for that either , so it is just a distraction
21
doubtingdave, this is “Weekend Unthreaded”. Any topic is up for discussion, that is the purpose for this thread.
40
Its been discussed here a few times David, http://www.electricuniverse.info/Introduction a very interesting idea that is plausible from what we already know to exist, an electromagnetic field can only exist in space if there are particles there to carry it.
42
Yonniestone April 24, 2017 at 5:37 am · Reply
“Introduction a very interesting idea that is plausible from what we already know to exist, an electromagnetic field can only exist in space if there are particles there to carry it.”
Where the hell did that nonsense come from?? Only the local plasmas require mass! All the rest are electric with force proportional to 1/r Coulomb, magnetic force proportional to 1/r³ Gaussian, and the cyclic electromagnetic proportional to 1/r² Maxwellian! What may you possibly mean by particles? 🙂 Must be some enemy invasion of indigo\cobalt quanta. Oh woha are we!
00
We are in a bubble.
https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2017/04/25/cassini-voyager-missions-suggest-new-picture-of-suns-interaction-with-galaxy/
00
Bill Nye says that proof that Science is political can be found in the US constitution: ‘to promote the progress of science and useful arts.’ “http://www.breitbart.com/video/2017/04/22/bill-nye-science-political/” He is apparently quoting, out of context, a part of Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the United States Constitution which refers to Copyrights: “The Congress shall have Power To…promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries….”. Personally, I think that his interpretation of this clause of the US Constitution is a very big stretch. Bill Nye may be a “Science Guy” but I don’t think he is much of a Constitutional Scholar.
30
While on the Subject of Bill Nye
http://dailycaller.com/2017/04/23/bill-nye-freaks-out-after-scientist-schools-him-on-climate-change/
30
News Flash …. According to Bill and Neil, democracy in danger from White House Denialati.
https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/bill_nye_barack_obama_and_neil_degrasse_tyson_selfie_2014-998×6651.jpg
00
That is all about patents, not politics.
00
President Eisonhower said it best , way back in 1961 , beware of the military industrial complex , here is the whole speech , make of it what you will ;
Military-Industrial Complex Speech, Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1961
Public Papers of the Presidents, Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1960, p. 1035- 1040
My fellow Americans:
Three days from now, after half a century in the service of our country, I shall lay down the responsibilities of office as, in traditional and solemn ceremony, the authority of the Presidency is vested in my successor.
This evening I come to you with a message of leave-taking and farewell, and to share a few final thoughts with you, my countrymen.
Like every other citizen, I wish the new President, and all who will labor with him, Godspeed. I pray that the coming years will be blessed with peace and prosperity for all.
Our people expect their President and the Congress to find essential agreement on issues of great moment, the wise resolution of which will better shape the future of the Nation.
My own relations with the Congress, which began on a remote and tenuous basis when, long ago, a member of the Senate appointed me to West Point, have since ranged to the intimate during the war and immediate post-war period, and, finally, to the mutually interdependent during these past eight years.
In this final relationship, the Congress and the Administration have, on most vital issues, cooperated well, to serve the national good rather than mere partisanship, and so have assured that the business of the Nation should go forward. So, my official relationship with the Congress ends in a feeling, on my part, of gratitude that we have been able to do so much together.
II.
We now stand ten years past the midpoint of a century that has witnessed four major wars among great nations. Three of these involved our own country. Despite these holocausts America is today the strongest, the most influential and most productive nation in the world. Understandably proud of this pre-eminence, we yet realize that America’s leadership and prestige depend, not merely upon our unmatched material progress, riches and military strength, but on how we use our power in the interests of world peace and human betterment.
III.
Throughout America’s adventure in free government, our basic purposes have been to keep the peace; to foster progress in human achievement, and to enhance liberty, dignity and integrity among people and among nations. To strive for less would be unworthy of a free and religious people. Any failure traceable to arrogance, or our lack of comprehension or readiness to sacrifice would inflict upon us grievous hurt both at home and abroad.
Progress toward these noble goals is persistently threatened by the conflict now engulfing the world. It commands our whole attention, absorbs our very beings. We face a hostile ideology — global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose, and insidious in method. Unhappily the danger is poses promises to be of indefinite duration. To meet it successfully, there is called for, not so much the emotional and transitory sacrifices of crisis, but rather those which enable us to carry forward steadily, surely, and without complaint the burdens of a prolonged and complex struggle — with liberty the stake. Only thus shall we remain, despite every provocation, on our charted course toward permanent peace and human betterment.
Crises there will continue to be. In meeting them, whether foreign or domestic, great or small, there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties. A huge increase in newer elements of our defense; development of unrealistic programs to cure every ill in agriculture; a dramatic expansion in basic and applied research — these and many other possibilities, each possibly promising in itself, may be suggested as the only way to the road we wish to travel.
But each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration: the need to maintain balance in and among national programs — balance between the private and the public economy, balance between cost and hoped for advantage — balance between the clearly necessary and the comfortably desirable; balance between our essential requirements as a nation and the duties imposed by the nation upon the individual; balance between actions of the moment and the national welfare of the future. Good judgment seeks balance and progress; lack of it eventually finds imbalance and frustration.
The record of many decades stands as proof that our people and their government have, in the main, understood these truths and have responded to them well, in the face of stress and threat. But threats, new in kind or degree, constantly arise. I mention two only.
IV.
A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction.
Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.
Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.
This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.
In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.
The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present
and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientifictechnological elite.
It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system — ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.
V.
Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society’s future, we — you and I, and our government — must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.
VI.
Down the long lane of the history yet to be written America knows that this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.
Such a confederation must be one of equals. The weakest must come to the conference table with the same confidence as do we, protected as we are by our moral, economic, and military strength. That table, though scarred by many past frustrations, cannot be abandoned for the certain agony of the battlefield.
Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose. Because this need is so sharp and apparent I confess that I lay down my official responsibilities in this field with a definite sense of disappointment. As one who has witnessed the horror and the lingering sadness of war — as one who knows that another war could utterly destroy this civilization which has been so slowly and painfully built over thousands of years — I wish I could say tonight that a lasting peace is in sight.
Happily, I can say that war has been avoided. Steady progress toward our ultimate goal has been made. But, so much remains to be done. As a private citizen, I shall never cease to do what little I can to help the world advance along that road.
VII.
So — in this my last good night to you as your President — I thank you for the many opportunities you have given me for public service in war and peace. I trust that in that service you find some things worthy; as for the rest of it, I know you will find ways to improve performance in the future.
You and I — my fellow citizens — need to be strong in our faith that all nations, under God, will reach the goal of peace with justice. May we be ever unswerving in devotion to principle, confident but humble with power, diligent in pursuit of the Nation’s great goals.
To all the peoples of the world, I once more give expression to America’s prayerful and continuing aspiration:
We pray that peoples of all faiths, all races, all nations, may have their great human needs satisfied; that those now denied opportunity shall come to enjoy it to the full; that all who yearn for freedom may experience its spiritual blessings; that those who have freedom will understand, also, its heavy responsibilities; that all who are insensitive to the needs of others will learn charity; that the scourges of poverty, disease and ignorance will be made to disappear from the earth, and that, in the goodness of time, all peoples will come to live together in a peace guaranteed by the binding force of mutual respect and love.
[PS from Jo — This was a great speech. Can I add tho, this weekend’s zeitgeist is to post long comments. All long comments get delayed automatically, sometimes for hours. Normally shorter comments are better. -Jo]
11
Thanks doubtingdave. Sometime an Audio can be easier to digest. Less is more an all that. Present leaders might do well to listen to the whole 18 mins but the familiar bit starts from 8m20s in.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CWiIYW_fBfY
00
Now think of that last paragraph , that starts ” to all the peoples of the world ” do you really want the world to be controlled by a select elite that can control us all by regulation , disappear borders and create trade deals that mean they control food and energy supplies , is it not a new feudal system , are the councils at Paris any different from the councils of Nicea , when Constantine centralised religion to Rome , and started a feudal system in Europe that lasted a thousand years
60
One world leader is now awakening to the danger:
https://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2017/04/23/trump-the-man-vs-his-ideas/
20
The problem is no person in any nation can be elected to save that nation’s problems let alone the world’s problems. That would require a lot of special interest groups to be torn down. Instead such special interest groups would tear down anyone who threatens them. Trump simply was a man who happened to be at the the right place at the right time to take advantage of the backlash from the people against the likes of Obama who stands for socialism. Trump has no magical power. He is just a man. Wait until Trump disappoints – the public will turn on him. Then the descent into the abyss will accelerate. It’s just history repeating itself over and over. We never learn.
10
Peter
So far so good.
00
MSM still ignoring this story (cannot find Reuters/BBC/Guardian/ABC/Fairfax coverage etc).
read a Financial Times piece last nite which seemed to suggest CAGW was at the centre of talks, but can’t even find that now.
with two marches for CAGW getting maximum PR from the MSM, we can’t have anything negative getting in the way, presumably.
Japan Times carrying this AFP piece with headline: “Trump administration’s climate stance sees issue swept under carpet at World Bank-IMF spring meet”:
23 Apr: Yahoo7: AFP: In Washington, the economic world meets Trump climate skepticism
by Antonio RODRIGUEZ, Jeremy TORDJMAN
The Trump administration’s climate skepticism and its possible withdrawal from the landmark Paris Agreement of 2015 drew a cloud over this week’s grand economic conclave in Washington…
… this week’s lofty junket, which wraps up Saturday in the US capital, underscored the directional shift driven by Donald Trump’s rise to the White House: climate is no longer a consensus matter…
These days, the White House doubts the reality of climate change, and has so far not ruled out exiting the Paris Agreement, urgently negotiated in 2015 to reduce countries’ greenhouse gas emissions…
Downplaying American skittishness, the World Bank — which regularly sounds the alarm on the economic dangers of global warming — said the funding available to fight climate change should not decrease.
“The science of climate change didn’t change with any particular election and I don’t see that it will,” the bank’s president Jim Yong Kim said.
Describing the need to invest in future clean technologies, he said financial costs are a central question.
Large holders of conservatively invested capital may be interested in the climate, he said, “but they would need help with, you know, guarantees, risk mitigation etc., in investing in climate change activities in poor countries.”
On Friday, the World Bank announced the launch of a $2 billion “green” bond fund with the European asset manager Amundi to finance low-carbon investments in emerging markets.
Some observers wonder whether Washington’s retreat on the climate will not paradoxically strengthen climate action by shifting focus to the private sector.
“Because of what we’re seeing from that administration, there’s now going to be even more pressure on the private sector not to be financially associated with projects or technology harmful for the environment,” Oxfam America’s climate and energy director Heather Coleman said.
Meanwhile, France, which pushed to reach the climate agreement in Paris two years ago, hopes the Trump era will not see a decline in climate action.
“It shouldn’t be that a single individual, whom I won’t name, suddenly calls this objective into doubt,” French Finance Minister Michel Sapin said Saturday.
“Because it is clear. We must fight global warming.”
https://au.news.yahoo.com/world/a/35129234/in-washington-the-economic-world-meets-trump-climate-skepticism/#page1
in above, AFP gives a re-run to an Al Gore piece they ran two days previously, repeating the following quotes:
21 Apr: Yahoo: AFP: ‘Excellent chance’ US will stay in Paris agreement—Al Gore
WASHINGTON — The United States has a better-than-even chance of sticking with a landmark 2015 global agreement on climate change, former US Vice President Al Gore said Friday.
“I think that there’s an excellent chance, far better than 50-50, that the United States will decide to stay in the Paris Agreement,” Gore said during a roundtable discussion at this week’s spring meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund
“Solar jobs in the US are now growing 17 times faster than job growth in the economy,”Gore said…
https://www.yahoo.com/news/excellent-chance-us-stay-paris-agreement-al-gore-221800376.html
01
Interesting to note that the French election has resulted in the elimination of the two mainstream parties. That’s exactly what’s needed here – both the ALP and the LNP must go as they have well passed their use by date. Of course most of us are still asleep so it won’t happen any time soon.
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Refreshing politics, we need a republic too.
10
No we need a new earth.
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Hey, they found one only last week, barely 39 Light Years away.
This Greens Party guy will have us there in a flash.
Tony.
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Astronomers estimate its average temperature is around 370 C. No thanks.
10
What, a republic, and risk an outcome like in Turkey at this time?
Australia is an independent sovereign nation, our parliaments make the laws, the highest court of appeal is the High Court of Australia.
The Queen of Australia is only Queen when she is on our soil, at all other times our ceremonial head of state is the Governor General who has very few powers.
During the 1960s a young female student attending a Church of England private school in Sydney was heard to say that one day her father would be president of Australia, as her father was at the time leader Of The Opposition (Labor) people thought she meant to say he would one day be prime minister as he became a year or two later. His name was Gough Whitlam.
I believe that other Labor PMs have or had ambition to be president and I suspect that the present Liberal PM would like that job if the republican movement could convince a majority of Australians via referendum in every state and territory to make that rather dangerous and for citizens, a change not needed if independent Australia is their desire. They have it now.
40
Republics are vastly overrated. In fact the difference between a democracy such as ours and a republic such as the US is cosmetic at best. In theory there is a lot of difference but in reality those differences are removed by the games they all play to fool the people into believing they have a proper and honest form of representative government. The fuel for our bad governments are very influential special interest groups some with loud voices and others that are silent but powerful that are never elected by the people. We are silly to believe becoming a republic will make an iota of difference. It will be a waste of time and money.
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Why? I don’t see a presidential system as any improvement on our present one when you consider the likely candidates for president! Heaven preserve us from the present mob in politics in this country. 🙁
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The vast majority of republics around the world seem a lot less stable than the monarchies.
40
That is true but eventually they all fail catastrophically. History has proven it many times.
10
I have never been convinced by the ‘arguments’ put forth by the Australian republican movement.
I’m not against change, and am not particularly pro- or anti-monarchy, but if we are to fundamentally change the way Australia is governed, then I would like the new system to an overall improvement on what we have now – with tangible, and clear evidence for such, not the arm-waving, emotive, and hollow arguments used by the likes of aspiring narcissistic dictators like Malcolm Turnbull.
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The system of government we have in Australia is based on the UK Westminster System and some elements of the US system. Outs has worked very well and is considered to be one of the best examples of democratic government in the world today.
00
The people wouldn’t mind a popular vote for a president, but how much power should he get?
Its the only option if we are to have a charismatic leader, the Westminster system is too restrained with the upper and lower houses and three tiers of government.
Young people think a dictatorship might be the best way to save the planet, I respectfully disagree.
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23 Apr: MediaMaxNetwork: Museveni: I love that man Trump
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has urged African leaders to stop “ideological meandering”. Leaders, he said, should thoroughly discuss and distill positions which can help their people transform and develop using their natural resources.
Museveni added that focus should be on home-based solutions and self-reliance. He said new US President Donald Trump’s “America First” policies will jolt Africans into the reality of their situation.
“I love Trump. I love that man Trump because that man has told you that he is not your uncle. And I think it is good. For those Africans who feel orphaned, am sorry for them. Let’s come back to our continent and mind our own affairs,” Museveni said.
He was speaking Saturday at a discussion on “Managing Natural Resources In Africa: Challenges and Prospects,” at the ongoing sixth High Level Forum on security in Africa in Bahir Dar, Ethiopia.
The president spoke passionately about processing Africa’s minerals from Africa to create jobs and get more value from their resources, illustrating his point by saying it was “foolish to give your neighbor firewood when you don’t have firewood in your house”.
“We have a lot of Uranium. Canadians came and said they wanted to take (it) to Canada to process it from there and I said it will stay in the ground until we build own nuclear power station because (I) am not a fool to give firewood to my neighbor when I don’t have firewood in my house,” he said.
http://www.mediamaxnetwork.co.ke/news/320519/museveni-love-man-trump/
20 Apr: Bloomberg: Natural Gas Moves to the Naughty List
by Jennifer A Dlouhy and Mark Chediak, With Tim Loh and Sandrine Rastello
Think coal’s got it bad in the fight against climate change? Watch what happens to natural gas…
But U.S. environmentalists have vowed to go after gas-fired power plants with the same vengeance they’ve used to force the retirements of hundreds of coal facilities…
Green groups that once celebrated gas as a “bridge fuel,” helping the world transition from dirty coal to zero-emission energy such as wind, solar, and other renewable sources, are now fighting it. Lena Moffitt, a program director at the Sierra Club, says there’s a “growing recognition that it’s a fuel we’ll have to leave behind.”
Her organization is increasingly focused on stopping gas-fired power plants and pipelines from being built. Among recent targets: a proposed $250 million gas-fueled plant near Los Angeles and the $1 billion Constitution Pipeline Williams Partners LP wants to construct to bring gas to New York City from Pennsylvania…
(The bottom line: Natural gas supplies about a third of power in the U.S., but environmental groups have begun a campaign to lower its use.)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-20/natural-gas-moves-to-the-naughty-list
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MSM will love this:
23 Apr: ABC America: AP: Steve Peoples: Bloomberg to world leaders: Ignore Trump on climate
Bloomberg, who considered a presidential bid after serving three terms as New York City’s mayor, addressed his intensifying focus on climate change in an interview with The Associated Press. He said there was no political motive tied to last week’s release of his new book, “Climate of Hope: How Cities, Businesses, and Citizens Can Save the Planet,” co-authored by former Sierra Club executive director Carl Pope.
“I’m not running for office,” the 75-year-old Bloomberg said…
“Washington won’t determine the fate of our ability to meet our Paris commitment,” he said in an email Saturday to the AP. “And what a tragedy it would be if the failure to understand that led to an unraveling of the agreement. We hope this book will help to correct that wrong impression — and help save the Paris deal.”…
In his new focus on climate change, Bloomberg directs particularly aggressive language at the coal industry.
“I don’t have much sympathy for industries whose products leave behind a trail of diseased and dead bodies,” he wrote in the book. He added: “But for everyone’s sake, we should aim to put them out of business…”
“The fact is, coal in Appalachia is running out,” he said, adding that “Washington can’t put generations of people back to work in a dying industry.”…
Saying that coal miners “have paid a terrible price,” Bloomberg also disclosed for the first time plans to donate $3 million to organizations that help unemployed miners and their communities find new economic opportunities. Bloomberg Philanthropies highlights the plight of coal miners in a new film to be featured at the Tribeca Film Festival on Wednesday.
He avoided condemning the Trump administration directly, however, largely casting the new president’s steps on climate change as irrelevant. The White House declined to comment when asked about Bloomberg’s statements…
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/bloomberg-world-leaders-ignore-trump-climate-46969984
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Note the strict conditions placed on support of the march & recongition of the earth-day connection :
http://axial.acs.org/2017/03/15/acs-support-march-science/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email0317&utm_campaign=Axial
“The March for Science occurs on the same day and provides another means of expressing support for science in the U.S., and its contributions toward improving people’s lives, protecting our nation, creating jobs, driving innovation and facilitating economic growth.
With these thoughts in mind, ACS offers its support for the March for Science, predicated upon two essential conditions:
•That the March adhere strictly to its established and publicly posted mission and principles, which closely mirror ACS’ own vision, mission and goals
•That the March continues to be a nonpartisan celebration of science focused on its many positive contributions toward improving the human condition and addressing the world’s most pressing challenges
The March for Science will take place in Washington, D.C., with satellite marches taking place in cities across the country. ACS is exploring opportunities to conduct CCED activities in Washington, D.C., in ways that are supportive of the March, and it is encouraging ACS local sections to do the same in their local communities.
ACS looks forward to a positive and peaceful march that everyone, scientists and non-scientists alike, can be proud of and fully support.”
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I’m using my phone to post this. Hope it works.
https://twitter.com/pajoflynn/status/856095571827994624
Sickening scenes on the telly of 50,000 English people chasing 10 Kenyan men through the streets of London.
#TheresaMay ..this your England https://t.co/BiUWD0VcoU
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MSM love Dooley, who linked up with The Sierra Club in 2013 to promote solar:
24 Apr: Bloomberg: Joe Ryan: Republican Cracks Emerging in Trump’s Coal-Heavy Energy Plan
“The genie is already out of the bottle,” said Debbie Dooley, a Tea Party organizer and solar energy activist. “Renewables are popular among conservatives.”…
On Tuesday, U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry will shed light on the debate at a Bloomberg New Energy Finance gathering in New York, which will also feature Dooley and Myron Ebell, an avowed climate-change denier who headed Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency transition team.
Ebell said the book is closing on clean power.
“This large-scale effort to move the grid to solar and wind is a dead end,” Ebell, director of the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Center for Energy and Environment, said in an interview. “The wind and solar industries have peaked.”…
“These are conservative values: jobs, energy freedom, choice, personal liberty,” Dooley said. “There is really a green revolution going on within the Republican party.”
Ebell doesn’t buy it. And he doesn’t see Trump backing away from his pledge to back fossil fuels.
“The president has a very definite agenda on increasing oil and gas production,” Ebell said. “Wind and solar are always going to be secondary. They are always going to be a pain in the neck.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-23/republican-cracks-emerging-in-trump-s-coal-heavy-energy-plan
however, Dooley said in December she supports coal and other fossil fuels:
Dec 2016: Daily Climate: Peter Dykstra: Meet Debbie Dooley. Her candidate won the White House. Can she still win with clean energy?
DOOLEY: I consider [Al Gore] a friend, even though we disagree on a lot. We both like solar, we both like energy freedom, and we don’t like monopolies…
DOOLEY: I’m not anti- any energy form but I happen to prefer clean energy when needed, like to make things carbon-neutral. We’ll need for coal to be around, we’ll need natural gas but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t search around for alternatives. I supported the Keystone Pipeline. I supported drilling in ANWR (Arctic National Wildlife Refuge). But you need to pull out all the stops to protect the environment…
DYKSTRA: You have friends and partners in the Sierra Club whose heads explode if you mention Donald Trump…
more on Dooley:
2015: Heartland: H. Sterling Burnett: Florida Tea Party Unanimously Rejects Solar Power Amendment
The solar power industry and the so-called Green Tea Party suffered a crushing defeat last week as The Villages Tea Party voted overwhelmingly to oppose a Florida constitutional amendment to give the solar power industry special rights to sell power directly to electricity consumers. The vote followed a highly publicized debate between Alexander Snitker, representing the Libertarian Party of Florida, and Heartland Institute Vice President of External Relations James Taylor at The Villages Tea Party’s weekly meeting.
Atlanta-based Green Tea Party founder and solar power activist Debbie Dooley was scheduled to debate Taylor at the June 15 Villages Tea Party meeting, but Dooley called in sick claiming health issues prevented her from debating Taylor…
After an hour-long debate, Villages Tea Party president Aileen Milton asked attendees for a show of hands supporting and opposing the proposed amendment. Just one person supported the amendment while 70 people opposed it. Milton later pointed out that the one person who supported the amendment was not a member of The Villages Tea Party, meaning The Villages Tea Party unanimously opposed the proposed amendment…
Environmental activist groups have coordinated with Dooley to schedule public appearances on behalf of solar power throughout the country. Dooley also joined Al Gore at a recent public rally for solar power and global warming activism…
https://www.heartland.org/news-opinion/news/florida-tea-party-unanimously-rejects-solar-power-amendment
01
not everyone is embracing solar & wind:
23 Apr: FingerLakesTimesNY: David L. Shaw: Solar farm moratorium proposed
SENECA – A public hearing on the proposed local law will be conducted at the board’s May 16 meeting.
Town Supervisor Drew Wickham said the moratorium affects new solar arrays built for commercial, electricity-generating purposes. It will not affect solar installations for residential uses, he noted.
“The concern is we want time to review whether large commercial solar installations are compatible with the town’s comprehensive plan, which emphasizes agriculture,” Wickham said. “The solar farms already in the town take up a lot of the town’s valuable agricultural land.”
Any applications for a commercial solar project already submitted and under consideration will be allowed to continue, but no new applications will be accepted if the local law is adopted…
30 Mar: BuffaloNewsNY: Jane Kwiatkowski Radlich: Lancaster OKs moratorium on commercial solar farms
When the Lancaster Town Board unanimously approved a six-month moratorium on commercial solar development, it joined a growing list of municipalities that are revising their town codes to keep pace with the skyrocketing industry.
Lancaster’s moratorium will end Sept. 20, said Matt Fischione, Lancaster code enforcement officer.
“I’ve received inquiries by phone and email from commercial solar developers looking to lease farmland for the establishment of solar farms,” Fischione said. “We need to address it in our town zoning codes so we don’t run in to any problems. It’s a brand new industry.”…
Other area towns who have recently revamped codes to govern solar development include Hamburg, Lockport, Wheatfield, Grand Island, Batavia and Aurora.
11 Apr: DailyNews: MALLORY DIEFENBACH: Albion Town Board (NY) tables extending solar moratorium
The Albion Town Board decided to wait until May to extend the moratorium on solar farms…
Albion put the original moratorium in place in November, and Passarell said he hasn’t received any contact from any solar companies trying to develop anything commercially — which are the only solar projects affected by the moratorium. Residential and personal use can just apply for a building permit for solar projects.
“Commercial would probably — I would think — tie up a lot of land, and we are a right to farm community,” he said. “That’s our big thing in our Comprehensive Plan. Putting solar in there kind of affects where we want to go with the town.”
Darlene Benton, a councilperson for the town, added the community doesn’t benefit from commercial solar; generally the energy is shipped downstate, so there is no decrease in the area’s utility costs.
15 Mar: Daily Chronicle: Stephanie Markham: DeKalb County Board (Illinois) approves moratorium on wind, solar farms
During this time, the county will assess the effects wind towers have had on the community, and the board cannot issue special-use permits for wind farms or take any action on commercial solar farms.
NextEra Energy Resources gained a special-use permit in 2009 to build a wind farm in Afton, Clinton, Milan and Shabbona townships.
In February, EDF Renewable Development petitioned the board to build two 200-foot wind testing towers in South Grove Township south of Kirkland to determine whether conditions are favorable to build wind turbines in that area.
The moratorium does not prohibit the company from building the testing towers…
He said the Planning and Zoning Committee would evaluate ordinances from other communities, compare the height of DeKalb County’s wind turbines to those in other communities, and listen to pros and cons from residents living near solar and wind farms.
Possible wind tower effects listed in the ordinance include the value of surrounding properties; aesthetics near wind towers; shadow flicker; noise; effects on birds and bats; drainage around the towers; construction traffic near the towers; effects on aerial spraying of adjoining farms; and effects on TV, radio, microwave and internet reception…
http://www.daily-chronicle.com/2017/03/15/dekalb-county-board-approves-moratorium-on-wind-solar-farms/alth8w2/
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They should be using their natural gas resources. For the same amount of energy you have a much much smaller footprint, and you can easily hide the well behind some trees if you want once it is operational. There are a lot of gas wells in the Finger Lakes, despite the best efforts of some to stop this energy!
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23 Apr: Nikkei: Japan’s solar panel makers cut output as clouds gather
Demand shrinks along with feed-in tariffs, even as foreign rivals drive down prices
TOKYO — Japanese solar panel makers are slashing domestic production, looking to reduce costs and rethink sales strategies in the face of shrinking demand and price competition from foreign rivals.
Kyocera halted production at a solar panel assembly plant in Mie Prefecture, south of Nagoya, as of the end of March. The Kyoto-based company, Japan’s second-biggest panel maker, will keep producing photovoltaic cells at two plants in neighboring Shiga Prefecture. But it is has decided to outsource panel assembly to group plants in China or outside manufacturers to trim costs. Employees at the Mie plant will be relocated.
Solar Frontier, a unit of oil distributor Showa Shell Sekiyu, slashed panel output roughly 30% in January at several domestic plants including a main one in the southwestern prefecture of Miyazaki after producing at full capacity through last year. The company has suspended shipments bound overseas, where price competition is even stiffer.
Panasonic has had panel production on hold since February 2016 at a mainstay Osaka area plant, bringing its combined domestic and overseas capacity utilization for panels to 50-60%. While throttling back output at home, the company plans to use Malaysia as an export base in a bid to boost U.S. panel sales with partner Tesla.
Demand for solar panels in Japan has faded as feed-in tariff rates for solar power have roughly halved since their introduction in fiscal 2012. Utilities now pay 21 yen (19 cents) per kilowatt-hour for output from industrial solar power installations, down from the initial 40 yen, taking some of the shine off solar as an investment. Domestic panel shipments are forecast to remain in decline at least until fiscal 2020, according to Tokyo market research firm Fuji Keizai…READ ON
http://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Trends/Japan-s-solar-panel-makers-cut-output-as-clouds-gather
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23 Apr: Daily Caller: Andrew Follett: Official Pledges ‘No Quarter’ In Fight Against Wind Turbines In New York
An upstate New York local official has promised “no quarter” in his town’s battle against a planned wind power farm that has Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s support.
Yates town councilman John Riggi opposes Apex Clean Energy’s plan to build a 200-megawatt wind turbine project over the objections of local officials and a majority of voters.
Riggi says he’s not opposed to green energy, but doesn’t want it nearby if his constituents don’t support it. He wrote an editorial (LINK) in a local paper this week pledging to accept “no quarter” in the fight against the Lighthouse Wind farm.
“The main concern is the desires of the constituency who are massively opposed to this project,” Riggi told The Daily Caller New Foundation. “It is like 87 percent opposed.”…
“Some of these turbines would be 750 feet high,” Riggi said. “They want to put 70 of them in a 24 square mile area.”
“It would completely change the community into something very different from how it feels,” Riggi said. “People live here because they like rural living. They don’t want their areas turned into industrialized zones.”
Lighthouse Wind could also run into opposition from environmentalists, who are increasingly turning against wind power at the local level.
Environmentalists have become concerned with wind powers impact on birds and bats…
Wind farms are projected to kill 1.4 million birds annually by 2030. (LINK)…
“We also have an Air Force base 30 miles from the proposed project site,” Riggi said. “The base is concerned about the wind project because it would mess with the radar. We have an aerial refueling and drone mission there. It could impact how they’re performing as well.”
The wind farm could make a nearby military base, which is a critical part of the local economy, much less useful. The base pumps $200 million a year into the region and employs over 2,600 people…
Riggi is also worried about the health concerns involving wind turbines. One of most common complaints about wind turbines by local residents is that they cause “flickering” when the sun is behind their blades. This is generally agreed to be incredibly annoying and there’s evidence that it can cause headaches, sleep disorders, anxiety and depression symptoms in people who live nearby.(LINK)…
http://dailycaller.com/2017/04/23/official-pledges-no-quarter-in-fight-against-wind-turbines-in-new-york/
21
Hey….use the rotten things for bombing practice…..
30
23 Apr: KnoxNewsTennessee: Alexander praises House wind power moratorium
NASHVILLE – U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander, a longtime critic of wind-powered electricity generation, is praising a state House vote to place a partial moratorium on such developments in Tennessee while a special committee of state lawmakers drafts rules for regulating them.
“This will give Tennesseans the opportunity to evaluate whether we want our landscape littered with wind turbines that are over two times as tall as the skyboxes at the University of Tennessee football stadium and produce only a small amount of unreliable electricity,” Alexander said in an emailed statement.
The bill approved by the House 85-3 on Thursday (HB1021) amounts to a compromise that sponsor Rep. Cameron Sexton, R-Crossville, said had been agreed upon by “all stakeholders.” That includes Apex Energy Solutions, which has stirred considerable controversy in Cumberland County with plans to spend $130 million erecting at least 20 electricity-generating turbines on a mountain near Crab Orchard.
As approved by the House, after a somewhat convoluted history in committees, the bill creates a task force of six legislators – three from the House, three from the Senate with speakers of the two chambers appointing the members later – to draft legislation that would establish regulations for state oversight of wind-powered facilities in Tennessee, completing its work by Jan. 1, 2018.
Tennessee is now one of just four states in the nation with no state regulation of wind power generation…
But the moratorium doesn’t cover preliminary work, such as preparing environmental impact statements required by federal law. Apex hopes to have its Cumberland County facility operational in 2019…
The deal also exempts counties that have approved local regulations authorizing a project prior to July 1, 2017…
Alexander and U.S. Rep. Diane Black, whose congressional district includes Cumberland County and who is considering seeking election as governor next year, have declared their opposition to the Cumberland County project previously.
***Several environmental groups have also criticized the project…
http://www.knoxnews.com/story/news/2017/04/23/political-notebook-alexander-praises-house-wind-power-moratorium/100763996/
21
The ABC news is reporting applauding a 9 yo is suing Trump over his actions on Climate Change.
They see this as a great philosophical event.
I hope it gets to court quickly and that a true scientific debate takes place under oath.
It could well be a turning point in the alarmism on display so often.
10
Family First to amalgamate with ACP.
00