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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Statistics
Am I the lucky first on this Palm Sunday?!
130
Congratulations Annie. Wear the honour medal with pride.
80
I’ll do that toorightmate! One needs to look at all the good things so that one isn’t overly downed by the bad.
On second thoughts, perhaps, referring to the previous thread, we should all become snowflakes or precious petals and seek compensation for the distress caused by all the controlling stupidity we see.
120
Made it by 5 minutes!
Tony was probably already typing his contribution when you pressed Send.
40
He must have been; very close. I was ahead only by reason of my facetious brief remark.
40
What’s going to happen to the Labor Party and The Greens for that fact, when in 2030, we find that not one of those States, or for Federal Labor as well, those which promised as part of their platform that they will have 50% Renewables in place.
It will never happen, and in fact is a physical impossibility.
Not only will they have to ramp up all new construction, which if it was even the slightest chance, would need to be happening right now, but virtually every renewable power plant currently in place will need to be replaced.
They will artfully try and con the public by quoting Nameplate, but all you need do is divide that Nameplate by three to find the actual total.
So, what’s going to happen when the public, scratching its head and wondering, point back to these 50% promises and tell Labor/Greens in no uncertain manner how they have failed.
There’ll be nowhere to hide, so what will they do? There’ll be excuses, but they will be transparent.
I just wonder what will actually happen.
Even now they are realising that renewables can’t cut it, so why do they actually persist.
I just wonder that even in the Labor/Greens, (well maybe not the Greens) there must be people who actually KNOW it can’t be done, and why they are not cautioning their Leaders that it can’t be achieved, and surely Leaders MUST take advice before they promise things like this, so why isn’t that advice from the correct sources?
Fancy having to wear that Albatross around your neck for the rest of your life.
At the moment it looks suspiciously to me like ….. Open mouth, change feet.
Tony.
411
Unfortunately Tony, we don’t have either of the major parties uttering anything close to common sense about power generation at present.
There is no sign that anything will change unless shock treatment is applied, such as extended blackouts and $500/month power bills.
Both of these situations are not too far around the next corner.
The CO2 horsesh*t has to stop.
The whole structure of generation and transmission is broken and needs fixing. The fixes are simple and relatively quickly applied. All we need is a FIXER.
260
According to Michael Owen in today’s Australian the Inaugural head of AEMO (Matt Zema) gave repeated warming about the effects of renewables and their subsidies before his sudden, premature death last year. The enormous subsidies for renewables meant that “the system must collapse”. That was before the Northern Power station shut down.
This leads me to the seven stages of government projects
Enthusiasm – when the only planning is for the Press Release.
Planning – when all objections are rejected as improbable
Implementation – when all objections are not heard
Problems – when all objections are ignored
Disaster – when all objections are rejected as “being wise after the event”
Confusion – when everybody runs around in circles shouting “it’s not my fault”
Solution – when the politicians involved are retired (on generous pensions) and write articles about how problems couldn’t have been foreseen.
80
Hmmm…one wonders.
I’ve been wondering how you are faring Tony with the floods in your part of the world? I noticed you were still posting.
90
Thanks Annie,
Before we actually moved here to Rockhampton, in August 2010, we were aware of the flooding propensity for this City.
Then, within 5 Months of arriving, we had our biggest flood of recent time. The owner of the site where I am the Editor asked me to write something about it. Me, well I work on research other than feelings, so I wanted to actually check things out.
The ended in a Series of Posts actually, and during the process, I found so many things that were just so d@amned interesting, and the Barrage, and the engineering behind that was far and away the most interesting of all, and the Fitzroy River Basin itself, and how it is the second largest River Basin in Oz after the Murray Darling Basin, how there are 9 major Rivers and a few large Creeks in that Basin, all flowing into the Dawson and the McKenzie which, at their juncture form the Fitzroy. The Fitzroy River has its actual start point only 80 Miles from where I am sitting, and yet it is 450 River miles from that point to Rockhampton.
In 2011, just like now, every one of those Rivers and Creeks were in Major Flood. The water flows down them all and finally into the Fitzroy. While it looks to be fast flowing, it is actually only moving at 10 MPH, so it takes an age to actually reach here, and all they do is watch the River height at Riverslea, (near the junction point) and know that as soon as it reaches a peak there, then within 48 hours or so, that peak will arrive at Rocky, hence everyone here knows when the flood is actually going to happen, unlike in other places, where it rises almost instantaneously.
At the same time, I found the flood maps for this area, absolutely comprehensive, and knew we would not be affected. So, this time around, I went straight to those flood maps, updated since 2011, and checked again because this time around modelling (oh, not again) said the level this time around would be 9.4M, and it was only 9.1M in 2011. Those updated flood maps showed levels at 9.5M, and the closest lapping edge of the flood waters at 9.5M was not within one kilometre of us here, so again, I knew we would be fine. As it was, this time around, the level only made it to 8.8 Metres, so a full two feet under the original thinking, and that two feet is a lot in a flood situation.
There was no need this time to do Posts on the subject, and I just did the one, because it was easy just to refer back to those old Posts with links.
If any of you are interested, I do have a link to those floods of 2011, and at this link are further links to all the Posts, and if you only look at one of them, read about the Barrage, and see the engineering that is behind that Barrage, and how clever it all is, something taken so utterly for granted here in Rocky. At that Post, check out the third image down, as it’s actually an auto scrolling slide show of a few images.
Also, at the Post on the Fitzroy Basin, there is a wonderful map showing the whole basin.
Queensland Australia Flood Disaster Central – Rockhampton
Tony.
230
Your post on the floods reminded me of the levee bank at Tocumwal (NSW), on the north bank of the Murray river. The Tocumwal levee is about 30ft high.
Other NSW and Vic towns are not as well protected.
80
Peter, where did you get the idea that the levee is 30feet high in Toc?
I know much of the levee is around 1-2 metres high.
40
Are levee heights homogenised?
30
Toorightmate, levee heights might not be but minor and major heights are being homogenised by BOM .
50
Ok John,
My observation is looking down to the river from the road into town, just after passing over the bridge. From there it appears to be about 30 ft down to the normal river level. The levee in other parts is probably much less.
If you live there, is the levee adequate?
40
Glad you’re alright Tony. Flooding is very unfunny. One of our nieces was flooded out of her home in the Cockermouth floods and it was months before she and her family could move back in. It’s a nasty business whether the weather is hot or cold.
60
The thing is Tony there is no albatross around their necks. All they care about is the next election cycle, getting in for a couple of terms to lock in the pollies super, and clawing up the food chain rapidly to maximise benefits.
The future? 2030? Someone elses problem
120
Without fraction of a doubt, the single best superannuation scheme in Australia.
After ten years or so for a politician, it’s about ten times what I get, and I served for 25 years in the RAAF, and I don’t get the extra perks they get either.
However, do not ever think I have reason to whinge, because for me, life is good.
Tony.
170
When they say 50 percent renewables I assume they mean 50 percent nameplate?
Since windmills have a capacity factor of around 30 percent it means it can only be possibly a true amount of under 17 percent. That means around 33 percent of generating capacity will be missing altogether i.e. 50 percent renewables is 50 percent baseload plus 17 percent renewable which is only 67 percent of required capacity. And it is worse than that because of the random nature of renewables.
80
Yes, they’ll be transparent, but the MSM will be opaque.
30
how’s the surf these days chez vous? http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-navy-korea-idUSKBN17A0V5
20
https://balance1010.wordpress.com/2017/04/09/do-men-do-gather-grapes-of-thorns-or-figs-of-thistles/
30
https://balance1010.wordpress.com/2017/04/12/boko-haram-update/
00
Here’s a reflection.
Over Chrissy I was sitting with some well off inner-Sydney people who are very much of the green persuasion. The conversation drifted to war and the need for involvement in Syria. I raised the notion of a dismantled Syria enabling a Kurd-free Sunni oil/gas corridor to Turkey as a big factor in the war. One of the company, a very smart bloke who is a frequent international traveller, replied that the sooner we did away with oil the better. The others at the table, all opponents of hydrocarbons and all of them keen travellers with a taste for business and first class, were in full agreement. End of that discussion.
Later, I checked to see how much kerosene is in a fully loaded Airbus. Turns out that three new A380 Airbuses sitting on a runway contain nearly ONE MILLION LITRES of fuel. They would be more efficient than Boeings with the same quantity of fuel in them, and many times more efficient per passenger than a Prius.
And after a long flight…same again! Fill ‘er up. Another 320,000 litres each please.
Sorry about the capitals…but ONE MILLION LITRES in just three passenger planes? And there are smart professional frequent-flyer people who think we can do away with oil? What funny times we live in.
Of course, should oil go to $100+ again, “funny” won’t quite cover what life will be like in a coal-free, deindustrialised Oz.
280
In my discussions with inner city cave dwellers oops I meant cafe dwellers. It always struck me how little they know about their beliefs, for example that if you take a chicken and let it “free range” around a field then that chook will probably be dead within a month due to some predator or another deciding to eat it. Or that the urban trogladites with two potted trees think they know more about land care than a farmer. You can’t even keep a cat around these parts because they are too dumb to keep away from the eastern browns! No clue about anything real, sitting in their reality insulated computer generated ivory towers. Agenda 2030 of course is driving the urban cavemen …. oops cavepeole to become even more ignorant of nature to the point at which they will believe we can control the weather by changing lightbulbs.
230
I just received a photo by text of a Brown Snake shot last week, close to 2 metres in length.
70
Got a black snake in the house on Saturday , with the cats to one side I had to pin it with the size 9 s which then made it latch onto my shoe , lucky it was leather then waited for the wife to bring me a broom to dispatch it with .
80
If you find a Red Bellied Black Snake, don’t kill it.
Just try to relocate it, literally.
Red Bellied blacks have quite short fangs that have difficulty in penetrating clothing. And they are also quite shy and will retreat if not cornered.
But far more importantly Red Bellied blacks are canabillistic when it comes to the deadly and aggressive Brown Snakes which are becoming a lot more common here in SE Australia.
It seems that according to the herpetologists, the Red Bellied Blacks are immune to the Brown Snake venom and they will quite happily have a Brown Snake for a meal.
And Brown Snakes are aggressive and have a large amount of venom plus long fangs which makes them one of Australia’s most deadly snake.
So with brown snakes for most rural people and rural knowledgeable types, a dead brown snake is a good snake.
120
Dog eat Dog really. Black snakes are more massive when mature and they surely eat a lot of Brown snakes. As a lad I came across a large Black with a 4 foot Brown down its gullet. BTW king Browns are Black snakes AKA Mulga snake. Brown snakes are known as Gwardar by Kamilaroi. Eastern Browns that is.
30
Western brown- Gwardar.
20
Kooda been worse. Kooda been a brown.
Brown bad. Black, a bit more predictable.
60
Browns during summer and if they’re on the back verandah or in the house they get the shoe .
50
I think I’d be moving.
🙂 Sounds a bit hairy!
30
Cat got bit by a brown about two foot long , after eating it’s head and playing with it for god knows how long she collapsed , $800 later and the cat has definitely changed but it’s alive .
50
I posted this before but the old guy seems to know snakes better than I do.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myeXMuGJAB8
30
Re Cat: Did you point at it and say “that’s one”?
11
A shovel is much better than a broom,when wrangling a black or brown snake.Much safer too.
30
A few years ago an old bloke from Bundaberg Queensland, who should have known better, chopped the head off a Brown Snake in his backyard using a shovel. He carried the headless body to the rubbish bin and then picked the head up and it bit him.
30
I heard about a tiger snake that was shot apart about a foot behind the head…the head part shot off at high speed down a wombat hole. I wouldn’t have wanted to be near that!
00
Too well I remember a photo in the Townsville Daily Bulletin from around 1965 of the skull of a Taipan prepared by ambulance workers from the freshly killed original. The two front top fangs were reported as one and a quarter inches each. That is 31 mm in newspeak.
Can’t remember how long the snakebwas. Did not seem to matter. It was from the Mt Louise locality where I did some bushwhacking and later some mineral exploration work. Still gives me shudders, that photo. Never got whacked by any snake, but had 3 genuine near misses. One of my crew was hit before I knew him, riding a horse and struck mid-ankle, not by a short snake. Saved by availability of a helicopter and radios.
Geoff.
70
Where ideology rules,
oils ain’t, well, oils.
80
This has been going the rounds. Apologies if you’ve seen it, but I think it is funny and we need a laugh or two these days.
In her radio show, Dr Laura Schlesinger said that, as an observant Orthodox Jew, homosexuality is an abomination according to Leviticus 18:22, and cannot be condoned under any circumstance. The following response is an open letter to Dr. Laura, written by a U.S. University professor
Dear Dr. Laura: Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God’s Law. I have learned a great deal from your show, and try to share that knowledge with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind them that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be an abomination … End of debate.
I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some other elements of God’s Laws and how to follow them.
1. Leviticus 25:44 states that I may possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are from neighbouring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can’t I own Canadians?
2. I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7.
In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?
3. I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her period of Menstrual uncleanliness –
Lev.15: 19-24. The problem is how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offence.
4. When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odour for the Lord – Lev.1:9. The problem is my neighbours. They claim the odour is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?
5. I have a neighbour who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself, or should I ask the police to do it?
6. A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination, Lev. 11:10, it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don’t agree.
Can you settle this? Are there “degrees” of abomination?
7. Lev. 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle-room here?
8. Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev. 19:27. How should they die?
9. I know from Lev. 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?
10. My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev.19:19 by planting two different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them? Lev.24:10-16.
Couldn’t we just burn them to death at a private family affair, like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws? (Lev. 20:14).
I know you have studied these things extensively and thus enjoy considerable expertise in such matters, so I’m confident you can help.
Thank you again for reminding us that God’s word is eternal and unchanging.
Your adoring fan. James M. Kauffman, Ed.D. Professor Emeritus, Dept. Of Curriculum, Instruction, and Special Education University of Virginia PS
(It would be a damn shame if we couldn’t own a Canadian.)
120
The writers of the Bible’s Psalms have had your number for 3,000 years:
Blessed is the man
who walks not in the counsel of the wicked,
nor stands in the way of sinners,
nor sits in the seat of scoffers;
but his delight is in the law of the LORD,
and on his law he meditates day and night.
He is like a tree
planted by streams of water
that yields its fruit in its season,
and its leaf does not wither.
In all that he does, he prospers.
The wicked are not so,
but are like chaff that the wind drives away.
Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,
nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous;
for the LORD knows the way of the righteous,
but the way of the wicked will perish.
(Psalm 1)
Please, repent of your sins before it is too late and your character is permanently wicked and only eternal judgment remains.
30
The letter is even a fake. Dr. Kauffman didn’t write it, but he has made lemonade out of lemons, namely the many, many communications that have been directed to him. He’s categorized them and commented on them too.
http://drlauraletter.com/
40
Thank you for the follow up. I thought it might have been a spoof but beyond checking that Dr. Kauffman was listed at the University didn’t go further. But I still think it is funny.
70
It would be funny if there weren’t so many people deadly serious about lashing out against God in this way. Anyway, cheers!
P.S. Some more respectful Bible humor can he had by listening to Tim Hawkins. Some of it may not make sense outside the U.S., but some no doubt will.
10
Here’s another Christian humor (parody) site. Lots of U. S. culture and subculture references but some will ring true elsewhere too:
http://babylonbee.com
00
Oil free, eh? Wonder if your friends realise how much oil is needed to construct and maintain their wonderbar whirly gigs?
70
But Rob, dincha know, they will build them with eveready batteries charged from trickling brooks, moonbeams and zephyrs.
100
‘The anti-halal certification campaigner Kirralie Smith, who was a NSW Senate candidate for the right-wing Australian Liberty Alliance at the last election, has joined Cory Bernardi’s Australian Conservatives.’
SMH
Good choice, but she might need broaden her knowledge on this bigger platform.
140
I thought she might.
60
I just noticed that beef in the local country town supermarket was halal-certified so I put it back and bought something else for our family celebration. I object to halal ritual slaughter, not because of who it is aimed at but because it seems to me to be unnecessarily cruel.
100
Besides which, why should we be required to buy meat produced for a minority when the majority don’t want it? I don’t see kosher meat on sale here and there must be Jewish people around.
90
There’s plenty of Kosher meat around Balaclava in Melbourne because a large contingent of Jewish people live there and in the neighbouring suburb of Caulfield.
Here’s my Kosher story.
Years ago I attended a BBQ and the sausages were absolutely fantastic. I’m not really a fan of sausages and they certainly aren’t what they used to be. Anyway, I asked the host about said sausages and he told me he gets them from a Kosher butchery in Caulfield.
Next week I went to find this butchery. Upon entering, of course I’m the only gentile in the joint and all the ladies in the crowd look at me funny . . probably thinking I must be lost. They had a weird system of taking a ticket from a lady behind the counter and then fighting your way through the throng to be served. One of the customers had to tell me how it all worked.
So, among all the sideways looks, I got my sausages and proceeded to the small table opposite to pay the white bearded old man wearing a hat who was likely the owner . . and the only other man in the place. To make light of my nervousness I told him I’d been recommended by a friend who said he had the best sausages in the world. He just looked at me blankly though not in any hostile way.
Obviously no sense of humour, I thought . . . but it was quite a weird experience throughout.
20
Australian “permanent drought” update:
2008: “IT MAY be time to stop describing south-eastern Australia as gripped by drought and instead accept the extreme dry as permanent, one of the nation’s most senior weather experts warned yesterday.
“Perhaps we should call it our new climate,” said the Bureau of Meteorology’s head of climate analysis, David Jones.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/environment/this-drought-may-never-break/2008/01/03/1198949986473.html
BoM Drought report, issued April 5, 2017:
“March rainfall was above to very much above average across the east of Australia, extending across eastern Queensland from around Townsville southwards and into central and eastern New South Wales. Severe tropical cyclone Debbie was a major contributor to above average monthly rainfall in Queensland and northern New South Wales. Numerous monthly and daily rainfall records were set in Queensland and New South Wales, with significant flooding ensuing.
Rainfall was also above average for southwestern Victoria and far southeastern South Australia, and across large parts of Western Australia.”
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/drought/?cid=011tw07
170
Mark , I think they would prefer you forget about their predictions that are completely wrong .
130
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-04-09/bom-melbourne-weather-flooding-power-outages-expected-storm/8428558
Even their ABC fails to see the irony.
80
Nothing very much here so far despite my tablet being cluttered up with Vic emergency messages about riverine flooding. I hope it doesn’t happen to anybody but time will tell. Too much hype is crying wolf and then people can be too relaxed when there is a real need for action.
80
The BoM 2008 report was in a time of Global Warming. We are now in an era of Climate Change and extreme flooding is consistent with that.
70
We have a pet cockatiel, Monty, in this household who frequently has the run of a couple of rooms of our house.
He is in love with the cat and escorts the cat around the house when he is allowed out of his cage which is frequently.
The cat just rolls his eyes a bit and goes back to sleep as cats are inclined do whilst the cockatiel finds all sorts of interesting items on the floor that only cockatiels can see and sings love songs to the cat from 5 centimetres away.
The cockatiel is banned from some rooms as his mistress is, to use a domestically acceptable term, a collector but not a disposer of interesting to femininity items so there is a whole range of cardboard boxes and assorted items in a couple of rooms extending half way up to ceiling height which when that damn cockatiel gets in amongst is damn hard to flush out short of using a long stick or maybe sometime in the future, a fire hose.
A few days ago my wife heard a cockatiel calling from a tall tree across the fence in a neighbours property.
I didn’t believe her but Monty, our cockatiel was in his cage which I had wheeled down to near the shed where I build stuff and this stray cockatiel came in and landed on our worldly innocent cockatiel’s cage.
There was considerable panic in the cage until the stray flew into my shed which we think probably looked to him like the shelter found at the back of most aviaries.
The roller door was slammed down and I had stray and very confused and frightened little cockatiel to catch in my shed.
A quick trip down to the street and a very cheap small cage and a butterfly net and we had our cockatiel in the cage.
My daughter put an ad on Facebook and today after a couple of lost cockatiel replies but no owners of our stray, one of the local animal rescue ladies turned up to take and find a new home for the little fellow.
In conversation which somehow got around to wind turbines, the animal rescue lady told of her recent experiences when driving on the Great Ocean Road in SW Victoria,
She and her husband have over the years often travelled along this same stretch of quite winding road without her ever feeling any nausea or having any motion sickness problems at all from the winding road.
This time when they reached the section of road they have travelled many times previously they found that a new wind farm had been established fronting the ocean and the road.
Her description of the sight of all those wind turbines were on the point of being very un-lady like. No love of the sight of turbines there.
But she then went on to describe the constant regular pulsing she felt across her chest which she could not hear but could feel as they drove along the Great Ocean Road where the turbines fronted the road and the Ocean.
She said that she had never felt this before and by the time they reached their destination she was feeling quite nauseated, something she claimed she had never felt before when driving that stretch of road prior to the building of the turbine wind farm.
A bit of questioning and it became obvious she had never heard of wind turbine infra-sound but she unlike her husband was apparently in that 20% or so of individuals who highly susceptible to such turbine generated infrasound.
I asked if she could live there with those turbines and the answer was very strong ,”no way”
This is the first time I have spoken directly to an individual who was quite ignorant about to turbine generated infrasound and its highly damaging health effects on individuals but who had such obvious symptoms and susceptibilities to turbine generated infra sound that she immediately pin pointed where the problem was originating from even though she had no prior knowledge of such health destroying aspects of turbines.
190
Thanks for that first hand account of vlf pulsing.
It is definitely not good for you. I studied it about 16 years ago and was concerned at the political deviousness evident. At that time wind turbines were not an issue but it was obvious that heavy road and rail transport drivers along with operators of heavy machinery, coal mines, could be in trouble.
Funny that there was no research on this issue in modern western economies but there was in poorer countries. I presumed the difference to be financial. You can’t sue your employer in soviet style countries.
KK
40
anyone experiencing problems with the $50 billion NBN service?
I hear people complaining on talk back radio saying the speeds they are getting are woeful, no better than what they had pre-NBN, & some family and friends have told me the same thing.
9 Apr: Gizmodo: Adam Turner: NBN Cable Rollout Delayed As HFC ‘False Activations’ Leave Homes Offline For Mo
https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2017/04/nbn-cable-rollout-delayed-as-hfc-false-activations-leave-homes-offline-for-months/
7 Apr: news.com.au: AAP: ACCC to find out how fast the NBN really is, and why your speeds may be sluggish
http://www.news.com.au/technology/online/nbn/accc-to-find-out-how-fast-the-nbn-really-is-and-why-your-speeds-may-be-sluggish/news-story/7daf92f7565b6065f5dd3622c8b9da79
60
Is this NBN’s biggest design flaw?
One of the biggest changes the introduction of the NBN has created for disaster management is the loss of home landlines.
In previous emergency situations that caused blackouts, homeowners could still use their home phones, if it was a model that didn’t require an external power source, to keep in touch with friends, relatives and authorities.
http://www.news.com.au/technology/online/nbn/is-this-nbns-biggest-design-flaw/news-story/9e38c6da88201eddc7403dab4c1240ab
90
Certainly looks like it.
Is the NBN a communications Kevin Rudd and Malcolm Turnbull Communications disaster?
60
My parents have an emergency phone dialler in case they get into trouble, but it relies on a phone line to work. With analogue phone it has battery backup, so power loss means they can still dial out for an ambulance etc.
Along comes the NBN – phone line is now dead, have to buy now a VDSL modem, if power in the street goes down, so does your phone line. Sooooo…..your average pensioner now has to fork out an extra $200 to buy a cellular backup module, so if the dialer cant find a VDSL generated dial tone, it uses the cellular network.
Good thing I git them to put solar on their roof, so at least they have soem backup when the inevitable “save Gaia” rolling power blackouts come. Int intersting – from a technocracy point of view, the technocrats envision a totally smart meter controlled grid that ( ahem ) perfectly balances power usage and generation…. never mind it ignores engineering realities. The dsytopian and uninformed view of the world assumes people dont mind having their home cut off from the grid to “save Gaia” but also shoves the population around so they know thier place…..
My rels in regional victoria now have an NBN line and it was either have the NBN or no home phone. The internet speeds are now worse that ADSL times, and they have to pay for the damn thing.
60
I have a contract for 25 mbs and get 23 which is much faster than the 6 I used to get with adsl. The problem is it keeps cutting out, sometimes days at a time and it is impossible to contact the the ISP. I have had it connected 5 months and would have lost 20 days. I don’t know how a small business could cope with this.
60
sounds like what I’ve heard…no connection for lengthy periods of time.
yet, from what I understand, once it’s available in your area, u have no choice but to sign on!
madness.
50
Yes, it reminds you who is boss and it will be shoved down your throat and you will smile as you choke on it….
40
Here in the Blue Mountains the local paper is full of people complaining about the NBN, which arrived about 3 months ago. Slow speeds, loss of service, appointments from techs not kept seem to be commonplace. Twice I have had “engineers” from Telstra (my telco) ring me to “convert” me to NBN. Twice I have told them that I don’t want to be “converted” at $105pm but wanted their $90 package with 100mps. Twice they have claimed ignorance of such packages (despite them being advertised on the Telstra web site), twice they have promised to get back to me and twice they have failed to do so. I have 18 months to sign up, so I will be waiting until the situation has improved. Rudd and Turnbull have a lot to answer for.
100
They are just the office boys for the globalists….
50
My sister got one of the first mainland connections ( Wilunga, SA ). It has been cr@p from day one. I wound up getting her $3000 out of Telstra’s Customer Service Guarantee. Five months with no landline phone, no way of contacting T, as she would be left on hold, on her mobile, for two hours or more. It took me talking to the TIO on her behalf to get anything done. It’s still rubbish, with regular dropouts, and they dug up her driveway and garden to install it. This isn’t one of the cheap FTTN setups like I’m supposed to be getting next year, mind you. No, this is the full bells and whistles FTTP setups.
Now, where are those red underpants?
60
Strike Two coming up, Xi told Donald he doesn’t want a bar of it, not in my backyard, nevertheless Beijing has agreed to turn a blind eye until the deed is done.
‘The US Navy cancelled planned port calls in Australia amid speculation North Korea may try another weapons test in coming days.’
40
Great thread on “NotaLotof….
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.files.wordpress.com/2017/04/image38.png
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2017/04/08/the-great-folly-of-our-age-booker/
83
Devastating article by Chritopher Booker!
And yet still Britain does not change. We are also motoring on to our own catastrophe.
What is more Matt Zema, the head of the AEMO (now deceased) told Jay Weatherill over and over that his renewables would lead to a collapse of the electricty grid. Despite praising his knowledge Weatherill ignored his advice/
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/mining-energy/energy-experts-warnings-on-renewables-ignored-by-government/news-story/d5f91f87a23281b0bfc10fd03b7fd911
Sorry it is paywalled.
10
google cache
00
Andrew Liveris is the Australian CEO of Dow Chemical in the US.
QUOTE: (Click on link for whole article.)
Andrew Liveris bluntly calls Australia’s energy policy a “calamity – but not a natural one”.
Instead, the Australian-born chairman and chief executive of Dow Chemical says the paradox of an “existential energy crisis” in an energy-rich nation reflects the cascading effect of human decisions … inaction, inertia and short-sightedness on the part of policymakers in both major parties.
Andrew Liveris is convinced of the need for a major policy re-orientation.
Photo: Simon Dawson
The result, according to Liveris, is that rather than Australia having the competitive advantage of affordable power, it now has a power supply that is both unaffordable and interrupted.
“These cost escalations have been signalled from long ago and now they have arrived,” he told a business lunch in Melbourne yesterday.
That makes it what he calls a profound challenge to Dow as well as other big manufacturers to maintain their operations here.
“There’s no reason to re-invest here and every reason to leave,” he said.
His hope is that the impact of Australia’s” self-defeating” policy will cause a rethink by governments on the basis of the now familiar logic of never letting a good crisis go to waste.
https://amp.afr.com/opinion/columnists/andrew-liveris-lays-down-the-law-on-energy-20170323-gv4xbs
111
Yes once the Comrades in Prada ( some key pollies ) realize they will be likely lynched by the population as the populations jobs disappear, there likely wont be enough riot police to keep them safe.
Either the powers that be have hidden extra military protection we dont know about, or they are supremely clueless.
I’d go for the first thought….you cant accidentally stuff up power management this bad, by accident. Its not possible.
If its not by accident, then we will have major unrest in this country until significant energy policy direction change.
40
Afternoon OS,
You might be interested to know that some one is cheering:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-04-10/south-australia-renewable-energy-target-reached-early/8429722
claiming SA has already reached it’s 50%… A rather clever way of describing the closure of the reliables to get a smaller devisor in his % calculation.
Cheers,
Dave B
50
I suppose much the same way as those responsible celebrate collapsing a perfectly good economy…I see no joy in it…
No doubt the hammer and sickle flag is flying high somewhere,.
Bring on the Climate Nuremberg Trials I say…the Klimate Collaborators will be running for the exits on that day.
30
The “Lucky Country”.
But only if you are a politician.
The two very basic essentials being discussed above
In the past two years our very basic services, electricity and communications (internet & phone) have been disconnected for periods running to the best part of a week in each case.
Both outages were a result of the new “mind over matter” type politics where the objective of “privatisation” stood above all other considerations.
As has been indicated by several writers above, communicating with your “supplier” then becomes your responsibility despite being near impossible.
Politicians have gotten away with “freeing up” the buckets of money “tied up” in these public services but when they get to something more visible, only the, possibly, will the voters wake up.
I’m waiting for them to privatise sewage removal and treatment along with the rail services. Only then will the voters see what privatisation is really about and revolt.
But it will be O.K.
Politicians don’t use public transport and their effluent doesn’t stink.
We are being badly served. How can the realities of modern life be ignored like this?
They must be held to account, ignorance is NOT and never will be and excuse for crashing basic public services.
KK
10
The world’s first parachute riding spider?
On Friday night I was visiting a mother and her two young children and they were terrified of a huntsman spider (usually misidentified in Australia as a tarantula) and they wanted me to get rid of it but not kill it.
I encouraged it into a plastic shopping bag and took it upstairs to their rooftop deck to release it there. It then crawled out of the bag to the outside of the bag so I tossed the bag over the edge and the spider gently descended three floors to the ground parachute-style where it went into the garden.
Perhaps the world’s first parachuting huntsman spider?
50
Very brave of you using a plastic bag – it might have run up your arm. Despite having over 30 years in the professional pest management industry, and despite knowing full well that huntsmen spiders are totally harmless, I still use a plastic box and a sheet of cardboard to gently rehouse these giant mossie catchers back into their natural habitat.
70
I’ve no idea whether that’s a first but we’ve had very many, very large huntsmen this summer. We use a large plastic beaker so that we don’t damage the legs and then slide a thin piece of cardboard over the top. I generally take the spider right up to the end of the home paddock and sling it onto a woodpile. Yesterday though I dropped it into the chook run with our new pullets…spider didn’t last long…yummo thought the chooks!
50
Peter Dutton has plans to encourage the 190,000 annual intake of new immigrants to go bush.
“If we can encourage more of that – people moving away from capital cities – then I think that’s something we can embrace.”
This type of decentralisation won’t work, they need to make it more palatable for the born and bred to leave Sydney and Melbourne.
30
Decentralisation will never work in Australia until the labour market is deregulated. People have to be paid the same wages in city or country even though housing costs are lower in the country so there is no incentive for companies to establish themselves in more remote areas where there could possibly be lower wage costs if the market was allowed to operate.
33
David there has been no wages growth anywhere in Australia for at least five years and a deregulated labour market is not the answer. A continental bullet train network attached to satellite cities is the only way to go.
Beijing would be delighted if they could use the CLARA model.
41
Maybe lower housing costs but higher everything else costs. More fuel for transport as buses are one per day and not at a useful time; no trains without having to drive for an hour first. Food in shops costs more, etc
00
I made this video today of a Siemens Double Current morse key. I believe this is similar or the same as used on the Titanic. It was at the exhibit of the Historic Radio Society of Australia.
https://youtu.be/lfkUnBX362U
20
BOM have not quite got the warnings advice right for Victoriastan, we are in the northeast well out of the shaded area and we’re coping a flogging from the wind gusts at the moment .
60
They can no longer be relied upon because they no longer follow the scientific method or an evidence-based approach.
71
It’s very quiet atm in this part of nth central Vic but it seems there’s more on the way. When it’s windy there is a banshee howling in the stove flue.
40
Well, we have the banshee howling (nothing rare about that in this valley, it’s been like it in all the time we’ve had this place, over 19 years) this morning and sunshine. The forecast rain for this area kept being moved back and doesn’t seem to have happened, judging by the depth of water in what was an empty bowl in the chook pen. Nothing out of the ordinary here from our point of view but I daresay we will be told we are having ‘extreme weather’ due to…guess what?
00
Who said closing Hazelwood would stop Global Warming?
60
I don’t share all his opinions, and he’s anti-Brexit, but thought I’d post his CAGW thoughts:
9 Apr: Irish Independent: Mark O’Regan: Ryanair’s O’Leary refuses to accept global warming is a reality
“I don’t accept the connection between carbon consumption and climate change,” he told RTE Radio 1’s Countrywide programme.
“People use very short term weather analysis to justify climate change is happening.”
Mr O’Leary said nuclear power needed to be considered as a possible future energy source and added: “If you ask Mary Robinson and the climate justice mob what they think of nuclear power, they recoil in horror.
“I will always be wary of these people who are very extreme in their views and that the end of the world is nigh.
“I think the human race will continue. The obvious challenge for the human race is that we’re exploding in terms of population.
“This kind of nonsense that we all need to cut back on beef production, or that we all need to eat vegetables or go vegan, and all start cycling bicycles is not the way forward. I don’t believe them. I think it’s complete and utter rubbish.
“They remind me of these people who used to hang around the market square 2,000 years ago saying the end of the world is nigh.
“You go back to London in the 18th century, they thought they were all going to die from smog. There is always some lunatic out there who points to a load of rubbish science; science changes.”
Last night, Green Party deputy leader Catherine Martin severely criticised Michael O’Leary for making “highly irresponsible” comments about climate change…
http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/ryanairs-oleary-refuses-to-accept-global-warming-is-a-reality-35607246.html
60
O’Leary has gone up in my estimation.
50
I’ll have O’Leary over Clifford any day.
30
Love the disconnect/red herring/tilt at the windmill that Martin produces.
” .. accept the connection between carbon consumption and climate change,”
” …accept that global warming is a reality”
Martin obfuscates.
40
50% “Renewables” on grid generation.
I am a retired professional electrical engineer in the UK. As the problems with adding a high percentage of intermittent wind power generation into a generation mix are blindingly obvious to any professional working in the field there is one thing I just do not understand. If anyone here knows why I would like to hear it. Why have the professionals not been “screaming” at the politicains that the idea is really stupid, not cost effective and fraught with difficulties ? There must be dozens of top notch people in any country and all they surely need to do is get together and write an open letter explaining how these things realy work and what you can and cannot do sensibly.
90
Badger, politicians are surrounded by professional political advisers who monitor public attitudes, and when in government by leftist public servants. Universities used to be a place of logical thinkers, but now they have been infiltrated by leftists who toe the politically correct lines. I even see energy companies advertising their “green” credentials, so their engineers have to keep silent publicly. You only have to read some of the public submissions to the NEM review in Australia led by Dr Alan Finkel, Chief Scientist, to realize how the CAGW religion is driving attitudes. On this site and in government submissions Tony from Oz has tried valiantly to educate politicians and public servants, but they will not listen while they believe that they are saving the world.
81
There is a huge amount of money going into renewables. It all involves electrical engineering. A huge proportion of the money spent on renewables goes into electrical trades and electrical profession. They are big machines with interesting circuitry.
Even fifty years ago electrical engineers specialising in power systems were exposed to electronics and these were technology of the future. It was much more desirable to be in the electronics lab with an oscilloscope identifying why the inverter was locking up than chasing down a fault in the coal mill.
How many electrical engineers in the Anglospere have built a coal fired power station in the last 20 years? If Australia was to build a coal fired station it is likely it would be engineered in China. I doubt that any recent electrical engineering graduate in Australia would be excited by the prospect of working in a power station.
60
Good point, I have had conversations with an Electrical Engineer who knows his own field backwards which is transmission lines and transformers,I remember asking about solar panel generation in the NT and he told me that this form of generation contained “efficiencies”,on being pressed he declined to state what these efficiencies were he would not offer any information. I think engineers know their own field well ,but not understand anything about closely related specialised fields.
10
May I use this W/E unthreaded site to ask for criticisms, comments and/or corrections on two papers that quantify the impact on independent governments and on government-sponsored science after nations and national academies of sciences were united under the UN on 24 Oct 1945 to save frightened world leaders and the world from possible nuclear annihilation ??
1. Denying the future right of the people to create or abolish governments depending on their ability to ensure our “inalienable rights to enjoy life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” as Thomas Jefferson had written in the 1776 Declaration of Independence?
2. Promoting Weizsacker’s and Chadwick’s 1935 misunderstanding of the nuclear energy Einstein had discovered in 1905, E = mc^2:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10640850/Nuclear_Energy_Error7.pdf
3. Hiding from the public “powers beyond the dreams of scientific fiction,” i.e., “the power of God” that Aston discovered and reported in rest masses of ordinary atoms in 1922:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10640850/HIGHER-POWERZ.pdf
Has this unholy alliance of politicians and scientists kept humanity living in total ignorance of abundant “powers beyond the dreams of scientific fiction“ that exist in ordinary atoms since 24 Oct 1945?
40
Can you point to papers which argue directly against the physics presented here.?
30
Regretfully, farmerbraun, Weizsacker and Chadwick are both dead.
Proof of W & C’s 1935 ERROR in insisting the neutron remains 0.782 MeV more mass than the hydrogen atom (when these combine to form heavier elements) is self-evident in the actual amount of energy released in every known beta decay. The actual decay energy is always
_ a.) 0.782 MeV greater than the W & C model predicts for every negatron (electron) emission, but
_ b.) 0.782 MeV less than the W & C model predicts for every every positron emission or electron capture
That is why the W & C model incorrectly predicts, for example, that
_ c.) He-3 decays to H-3 (tritium)
_ d.) N-14 decays to C-14 (radiocarbon)
_e.) Mg-26 decays to Al-26, etc., etc.
10
Historically, the work of Einstein (1905), Rutherford (1920), Aston (1922) and Chadwick (1932) describe a beautifully simple, infinite, and cyclic universe that is alive and dynamic because, . .
The Hydrogen Atom and the Neutron are
the Alpha & Omega of atoms and the cosmos
Expanding as Hydrogen Atoms => Neutrons
Collapsing as Neutrons => Hydrogen Atoms
The papers by Weizsacker (1935) and Chadwick (1935) instead replaced human understanding of a beautiful, bountiful, rational universe with
1. The inflated egos of pseudo-scientists giving
2. The public altered awareness of the universe:
_ An inexplicable BIG BANG, followed by
_ QUANTUM MECHANICAL changes
10
This may be better explained here, farmerbraun:
https://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2017/04/10/the-cruel-autism-trick-played-on-vaccine-damaged-children/#comment-220410
10
Interesting ! Little snippets of comments about atomic reactions seem to be popping up in random places now . I tend to take brownian motion walks around the internet, blogosphere,climate sites,etc and this appears to be a new phenomena, in the past 3 months. I need to do some more detailed research but a bit of not very thorough critical thinking seems to be this…
In a nuclear reactor power generation plant we put 100’s kg of radioactive material in the core, arrange it physically to go critical and extract masses of heat. In a nuclear bomb we put 2 or 3 kg of radioactive material,arrange them to just touch and destroy a whole town. So… if a nuclear power plant goes into meltdown and all 100’s kg of material are in one blob, i.e. touching, why does it not blow up and destroy everything for miles around.
21
A typical large scale Nuclear Power Plant will consume (around) 24 Tonnes of Nuclear fuel every 15 to 18 Months or so, depending on how judiciously the process is carried out.
I was in (email) contact a few times with someone who worked at the Diablo Canyon Power Plant in California and he told me that they carry out the refuels on one reactor at a time, usually at the 18 Month mark, so the other one is still operational.
Depending on whether it is a BWR or a PWR, and both use different rod assemblies, the rods are used in rotation so that they are all close to being consumed at around the same time after that operational period.
Rather than explain the whole process to you, I have a link to a Post of mine from the Series I wrote about Nuclear Power Generation at my home site.
Nuclear Electrical Power Generation – Why The Fuss? (Part 5)
Tony.
60
This Diablo Canyon Plant has a lifetime Capacity Factor approaching 90%.
I was told that each Unit regularly runs at full capacity from refuel to refuel. At those refuels, all the scheduled maintenance is carried out.
Following one refuel, Unit 2 with a Nameplate of 1118MW ran constantly until the next refuel. It happened that the refuel was prior to the yearly data keeping for U.S. electrical power beginning in January, and ending in December, and the next refuel for that Unit was not until after that year had ended.
That Unit 2 delivered 9,945GWH of power over that 12 Month recording period at a Capacity Factor of just under 102%
For some perspective, EVERY wind plant in Australia has a total Nameplate of 3900MW, and will generate less power over 12 Months than this ONE UNIT did in 2006.
The Greenies want it shut down, and that is projected to happen in 2025/26, after 40 years operation.
The image at this link shows one of the Turbine Decks. For perspective, note the man at left starting to descend the stairs. The generator itself is the (narrower) round structure between the turbine and the block house.
Tony.
30
The sad thing about the civilian nuclear fuel cycle is that when the “waste” is buried it still has something like 98% of its energy content within it which could be liberated by burning it in a breeder reactor. Once that fuel was consumed the waste would be much less radioactive.
10
A couple of references re nuclear bombs and nuclear reactors;
Nuclear Reactors
Nuclear Reactors and Nuclear Bombs: What Defines the Differences?
The information in those above articles is very basic and nuclear technology has moved on a lot from the information provided there.
Note that nuclear bomb material has to enriched to over 90% of U235 or Plutonium 239 otherwise it doesn’t work as the neutron flux from the decay of the radioactive uranium or plutonium is not high enough to create a chain reaction where the neutrons from the normal spontaneous break down of the radio active materials break up the other U or P atoms leading to more and more neutrons resulting in a nuclear explosion.
A too small a mass of U or P and enough of the quite normal spontaneously generated neutrons can escape to outside of the U or P mass of material that they are not effective in generating a chain reaction in the Uranium or Plutonium mass.
That is where the term “critical mass” comes from, the minimum sized mass of highly radioactive , neutron emitting material that will keep a sufficient number of the spontaneously generated neutrons inside of the total mass so that a chain reaction is initiated,ie; a very rapid escalation of the neutron flux inside of the mass and we get a nuclear explosion.
———-
For nuclear power reactors the object is to control the amount and number of neutrons being emitted so that they are at a high level in the critical mass of material with a nuclear reaction ongoing but are held at a level where the radioactive uranium or plutonium with the deadly and very tiny amount of the highly poisonous Polonium as a critical initiator of the reaction leading to very large amounts of heat being generated in nuclear controlled conditions.
This reaction uses control rods made up of an outer sheaf often of zirconium and the inside of the rod holding a carefully researched mix of moderating material an interspersed with pellets of enriched fuel but enriched to only about 4% of the total mass of radioactive fuel.
Boron is used in control rods that are interspersed with the power rods, to soak up excess neutrons with the control rods being lifted out to allow a higher neutron flux and therefore more heat, more steam and more power output.
And lowered to place more moderating material into and between the power rods to soak up the neutron flux and therefore damp down the reaction . So less heat. less steam, less power for the steam turbines but slow reacting times to load variations which makes most of the older reactor designs only suitable for base load power.
Lowering the control rods into the reactor vessel which in a pressurised boiling water reactor is highly purified water which boils, goes through a heat exchanger where the heat is transferred to the water from which the steam is used to drive the steam turbines for power.
The water from the prime reactor preheater loop is returned to the pressurised reactor vessel.
Some of the early reactors used carbon blocks as moderators for the nuclear reactions.
The British Windscale reactor used carbon blocks as a moderating material in the reactor.
Unfortunately carbon after a period as a moderator adopts radio active characteristics, carbon voids, that are highly dangerous and very unstable .
The Carbon moderating blocks in the Windscale reactor caught fire [ 10 Oct 1957 ] and it was only some heroic efforts by the operators who finally managed to extinguish the fire using lashed up fire suppressing equipment, which literally as a subsequent enquiry found out , was within seconds of getting out of total control and covering SE Britain in a deadly blanket of radioactive material.
Almost another Chernobyl which was also carbon moderated but the Chernobyl accident was human error and not due entirely to design faults of which there were plenty.
When a nuclear accident does happen such as Three Mile island which after some 30 or so years has finally been cleaned up .
The containment vessel, mandatory on all western reactors but missing on the Russian designed reactors such as Chernobyl, contained the melt down of the core at the Three Mile island accident with a very low level of radio active gas escapement.
Or Fukashima where bad locations and bad design and placement of the diesel power units at and below the water line prevented the auxilary diesel power to be used to continue cooling the reactors and used rods in the pools after being swamped by the tsunami from the earthquake, one of the strongest recorded in the region for centuries.
At Chernobyl there is a huge lump of extremely radio active material combined with the reactor moderating materials plus large tonnages of the graphite [ carbon ] moderating material plus boron and other nuclear moderating materials dropped into the now open topped reactor, the 800 tonne reactor lid was blown off its mountings, from helicopters in the attempt to control the radio active releases and a potential nuclear explosion. This huge mass of material melted into a huge deadly radioactive mass and melted its way down into the sub surface structures of the reactor building.
It is now deep down inside of the underground sub structures of the reactor building and will be inaccessible for possibly another century or so.
Why didn’t Chernobyl just explode as a nuclear reaction.
Simply, a secondary explosion after the first major explosion broke up and dispersed the highly concentrated radioactive material before it could establish a full chain reaction in the concentrated mass of nuclear material.
The major accident of which the Russians have had more than their fair share due to carelessness or plain incompetence in the past [ Chernobyl ? ] was the huge explosions of radioactive liquid fuel waste at the top secret closed city of Kyshtym in the Russian trans Urals .
The 1957 Kyshtym nuclear accident is rated as the world’s third worst nuclear accident.
It was unknown in the west for many years and the details only became known after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 .
An entire lake became highly radioactive as the liquid from the failed storage tanks flowed into the lake.
Reportedly and never publicised,a number of political prisoners, the Zeks were sent out into the lake and surrounds to clean up after the explosion without ever being told of the deadly radioactivity of the whole area including around the failed tanks and the Mayak nuclear reprocessing plant.
30
Disclaimer;
A lot of the information I have provided above is from my near 79 year old memory banks so the details may not be entirely correct.
Check the URL’s I have provided for details.
10
As of November 28, 2016 in 31 countries 450 nuclear power plant units with an installed electric net capacity of about 392 GW are in operation and 60 plants with an installed capacity of 60 GW are in 16 countries under construction.
Australia has a total installed generation capacity of 48.5 GW’s including 4 GW’s of the “unreliables”.
———-
Just consider the consequences if those old time dedicated nuclear researchers and nuclear engineers had researched and treated nuclear power with similar standards of basic research, data collecting and analysis and modelling of all aspects of nuclear power generation and the public and political promotion as the climate alarmists and climate fear creating scientists and pseudo experts have treated climate research over the last three decades.
Just imagine if the politicians of the past had listened to dead kangaroo experts and etc experts when drawing up legislation for nuclear technology.
The world would be awash with nuclear projects that never would or could work, that would have blown up and exploded destroying huge numbers of lives and destroying economies, would have made promises that could not and never would have been kept, would have impoverished entire nations with the amount of finance wasted [ Umm! the Hinckley nuclear plant in the UK will come rather close in that respect ] and so much more.
The mind truly boggles at the thought of what would have been our future if the nuclear researchers and scientists and engineers had been of the same abysmal standards of scientific integrity and skill as are most of the [ purported to be ] climate scientists of today.
20
One of the last acts of what could be viewed as national sabotage by Obama, was a raft of laws to prevent “arctic” drilling in US waters.
To what end?
Russia will keep on keeping on.
As will Norway.
As long as it is done as safely as possible, what’s the problem, exactly?
51
Only Obama’s unabated rage at a country he did not feel welcome in, even in spite of being born without a doubt in Hawaii as he claims and therefore a citizen entitled to everything any other citizen is entitled to.
30
But there’s a new sheriff in town now…
30
And the Supreme Court is firmly in the hands of conservatives for the immediate and possibly longer term future.
30
I always had an interest in U.S. politics, right from a young age, and whilst in the RAAF, my circle of Air Force friends would always turn to me if they needed to know anything about U.S. politics.
I took an interest in ‘The Supremes’ when I read a novel by Grisham in the early 1990’s, The Pelican Brief, the novel and not the movie, which, oddly, wasn’t too bad.
From that, I always wondered if the Justice system here in Australia was similar to that, eg political in nature.
Here in Oz, that last court is The High Court, and it has six Justices and a Chief Justice, so seven in all.
Of the current seven Justices, two were appointed by Tony Abbott, two by Julia Gillard, and one each by Malcolm Turnbull and Kevin Rudd, with Malcolm appointing the current Chief Justice, from the existing Justices when Justice French retired.
Unlike in the U.S. where they are Supremes for life, here in Oz, we have mandatory retirement at age 70, (introduced in 1977) and the next one due to retire is in 2020, Geoffrey Nettle, appointed by Abbott.
Malcolm’s recent appointment, James Edelman is the fourth youngest ever, and will serve for 27 years.
Sometimes, you wonder. We all know that the U.S. Supremes are pretty much politically oriented, but I wonder if the same applies here.
Tony.
20
Tony,
It’s pretty much like this. Everyone wants the court to not be influenced by politics or so they will say. But what they really mean is that the court should be swayed by politics in their preferred direction.
The criminal courts all have juries to decide guilt or innocence. But even there the lawyers for each side try to dismiss any juror they think might not favor their client. And of course, each side is afraid the other will get the jurors they want who will favor their side. When I was on a jury I watched this play out during jury selection. When I was asked that leading question, could I decide the case on the basis of the evidence I said something to the effect that I did not want to see a guilty man freed or an innocent man convicted. I was left to sit on that jury and that was basically my position all the way through the trial.
But justice, from the lowest to the highest courts is always a contest between opposing viewpoints.
10
Taken at face value, this seems like a relatively reasonable decision by the SA government – spending AU$24million on various gas projects
Of course, Weatherill and Koutsantonis have proven themselves to be very poor at deciding how to spend other peoples money effectively, so I would not be surprised if this falls in a heap somehow.
51
I notice that the scheme was launched in 2004 but this is the first time money is available. Also that they want someone to explore for gas onshore in the SE of the State; good luck with that with the locals, the greenies and the State opposition all opposed.
50
At last it has happened.
Jerry Brown, who was going around trying to say the drought would never end, doom and gloom forever, has had to eat crow publicly and admit on TV that the drought is officially over. I hope he got a little salt to put on it because crow isn’t very good eating without it.
It could not happen to a more deserving governor.
Now if we could only manage to get him to eat crow on a whole list of other things. But this will have to do for the present.
80
Slightly off topic.
I managed to escape from the politically correct madness that is California to the lessor madness in the Midwest. I had long planned the move but it took a pending family tragedy to motivate it. My wife had stage 4 lung cancer and wanted to go home to be with family. We sought continued treatment in the Midwest but, sadly, it was too little too late. I am slowly putting my life back together. Eventually I will find my purpose for and joy of living. My feelings are no longer as raw as they were.
The moral of this story is if you don’t smoke, don’t start. If you do smoke, do whatever you can to stop. Act, as if your life depends upon it, because it does.
Back on topic.
It took repeated state wide floods with multiples of normal snow pack to trigger Brown to admit the patently obvious. Yet, when the snow pack melts, the excess will be allowed to flow into the ocean because of the 80 year green blob blocking of building storage capacity in anticipation of a growing population.
I predict that by July, the cries of impending catastrophic drought will be back in full force. Restrictions on water usage will remain in place. The cornucopia of central California, that feeds a significant fraction of the world, will continue to be laid waste. The small and useless trash fish of the bay area will continue to be given fresh water. Water that could have been used to produce enough food and fiber for more than half the nation.
There are none so blind as those who refuse to see, none so deaf as those who refuse to listen, and none so thoughtless as those who refuse to think. It is such ilk whom we have allowed to take up the reins of unaccountable political and academic power.
Know this. Reality is real. What is, is. We can learn and know what we must know to live and thrive. It is our responsibility as human beings to know this and act accordingly. Do not go quietly into that long cold dark night our opponents have planned for us. Learn to say “NO!” in a way they cannot evade.
40
Lionell,
I am deeply sorry to learn of your wife’s death.
As far as California goes it’s unfortunately still business as usual with a lot of the water use restrictions remaining in place. And the legislature just approve a 12 cent a gallon gas tax to repair roads and highways. But I’ll give you good odds that the money will not be used as it should and the tax on gas will go up in the future.
Tax policy in California has been a nightmare for a long time and it looks like the same old same old will continue. It’s not being taxed that I hate. It’s being taxed for purposes I would never approve of if I was asked for my opinion; being taxed and then not getting what I was supposed to get for the money; having a tax in place for something and then having that tax increased because the legislature raided the bank account and used the money for something else. And seeing taxes added to the list of taxes I pay by people who say, gee it’s just a small tax, you can afford that. And so I could afford it easily enough except that the list of small taxes keeps growing until it’s breaking Californian’s backs.
50
Lionell, I would add my thoughts to what Roy said.
Perhaps going home, completing the circle, being with family, that’s life.
KK
30
Kevin Trenberth, April 6, 2017:
Yes, we can do ‘sound’ climate science even though it’s projecting the future
https://theconversation.com/yes-we-can-do-sound-climate-science-even-though-its-projecting-the-future-75763
“The reason we can make such predictions is that the laws of physics 500 years from now are the same as today.”
Wait. What?
Dr Andrew Watkins the manager of climate prediction services at the Bureau of Meteorology:
“basic physics” governed that climate change would increase the intensity of cyclones in the future.
It does not, however, explain this season’s anomaly.
“Being perfectly honest, climate change is a factor in most of our climate science these days but in terms of tropical cyclones you couldn’t put this season down to climate change,” he said.
http://www.news.com.au/technology/environment/climate-change/cyclone-blanche-is-latest-to-cross-land-in-second-consecutive-quiet-season-in-australian-history/news-story/220bd07cbd24d1db32cfd2175d3ec2ac
. . .
Well that’s settled.
50
very interesting geopolitical observations (Syria/Trump) from Steve McIntyre. clearly he doesn’t take the words & pictures from the FakeNewsMSM at face value:
Twitter: Stephen McIntyre, Climate Audit
https://twitter.com/ClimateAudit
on the other hand, our gullible Laura:
9 Apr: AFR: Laura Tingle: US military taking climate change into account in food and energy security
Increasing tensions between the United States and Russia over Syria in recent days may have many implications but they also have many causes, including the impact of climate change on food and energy security around the world.
Sherri Goodman, a former deputy under secretary of defence for environmental security in the US, says the US military now regards climate change as one of the biggest long-term security threats and is building it into strategic considerations and logistics planning.
As the biggest user of oil and gas in the US, the aggressive shift of the US military to more renewable forms of energy is playing a huge role in the reorientation of the US economy to using less fossil fuel, she says…
Ms Goodman says that, as in Australia, the climate change debate in the US is still “overly politicised, despite the science being abundantly clear”.
However, she says climate deniers have shifted from denying climate change to arguing about how fast it is happening, thus introducing uncertainty into what to do about it…
http://www.afr.com/news/policy/climate/us-military-taking-climate-change-into-account-in-food-and-energy-security-20170409-gvh8o8
‘Disaster alley’: Australia could be set to receive new wave of climate refugees
The Guardian-4 Apr. 2017
(Sherri) Goodman, founder of the CNA Military Advisory Board, is speaking this week in Sydney at the Lowy Institute, Canberra at the ANU, and Melbourne at the Breakthrough Institute at screenings of The Age of Consequences documentary, about the security threat posed by climate change.
‘Disaster alley’: Cyclone Debbie shows how climate change will test Australia’s military
The Sydney Morning Herald-8 Apr. 2017
Australia lies in the midst of what Sherri Goodman…
ABC Four Corners: 20 March: The Age of Consequences directed by Jared P. Scott – Four Corners from PBS
“We realised that climate change would be a threat multiplier for instability as people become desperate, because they have extreme weather and the seas are rising, and there are floods in one area and droughts in another, fragile states become more unpredictable.” Sherri Goodman, Fmr. Dept Undersecretary of Defense
20
The national security case for funding the EPA
The Hill (blog)-11 Mar. 2017
Sherri Goodman is a former deputy undersecretary of Defense, 1993-2001, and a senior fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center.
Climate change is a clear and present danger to US security
The Hill (blog)-10 Feb. 2017
Sherri Goodman…
read all:
Nov 2015: Buzzfeed: Dan Vergano: Meet The Woman Whose Two-Word Catchphrase Made the Military Care About Climate
Droughts, floods, expanding ocean lanes — global warming poses a huge threat to U.S. national security. The military began to care about it a decade ago, largely thanks to Sherri Goodman and her wonky catchphrase.
Under the auspices of her employer, the CNA Corp., a nonprofit that consults on U.S. military operations, Goodman assembled a new Military Advisory Board. It was about a dozen men — decorated generals and admirals she had known from her own days working at the Pentagon — charged with figuring out what global warming would mean to the military in the 21st century.
Over the course of a year, the new board held dozens of meetings with scientists and soldiers, spies and skeptics. At first, Goodman told BuzzFeed News, there was a lot of doubt among the board members…
Climate change, she (Goodman) said, whether rising seas inundating deltas in Bangladesh or stronger hurricanes damaging ships at sea, was a “threat multiplier”…
“I just put out there one day, ‘How about we talk about it this way,’ and it stuck,” Goodman told BuzzFeed News from her office in Washington, D.C…
Today, Goodman’s term is as popular as ever, thrown around frequently by President Barack Obama, the CIA, the Department of Defense, the State Department, and international organizations such as the G7. Just last month, Vice President Joe Biden used it to explain why the U.S. needs to take a leading role in climate negotiations that start Monday in Paris. Last year, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel called climate change a threat multiplier for terrorism — exacerbating poverty, disease, migration, and conflict — leading to the Pentagon adding extreme weather to its war games from now on.
“There’s nothing wrong with hugging trees, but climate is still political in this town,” Goodman said. “Reframing the debate made a much broader swath of America comfortable with looking for solutions to climate change.”…
“She was the one who brought the generals and admirals around to seeing that environmental security was connected to national security,” political scientist Marc Levy of The Earth Institute at Columbia University told BuzzFeed News. “It took the wind out of the sails of a lot of climate denialists.”…
https://www.buzzfeed.com/danvergano/the-threat-multiplier?utm_term=.ktg6WPO47d#.scbe5ak70j
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***read the memorandum.
Sept 2016: Scientific American: Obama Demands That Security Agencies Consider Climate Change
Effects must now be part of national security policies, plans and doctrines
By Erika Bolstad, ClimateWire
The executive order, issued yesterday, comes in the form of a presidential ***memorandum (LINK) requiring 20 federal agencies to collaborate to make sure decisionmakers have the best available information on climate change impacts and their potential threats to national security (E&ENews PM, Sept. 21). The agencies are as varied as NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which gather scientific observations on climate, and the CIA, the National Security Agency and the Department of Defense, which analyze intelligence and develop national security policy…
The facts dictate it, (John) Holdren said. The warmest year on Earth in the modern record, 2015, occurred during Obama’s presidency, and the past 10 years have been the warmest on record…
Last week, a bipartisan group of defense experts and former military leaders released a consensus statement spearheaded by the Center for Climate and Security, warning that climate change presents a risk to national and international security and saying the United States should advance a comprehensive policy for addressing the risk.
The center also offered a briefing book that urges the next president to assign a Cabinet-level official to lead on domestic climate change and national security issues.
Sherri Goodman, a former deputy undersecretary of Defense who signed the consensus statement, said it will require leadership by the next administration. Obama’s memo begins the work of institutionalizing climate change as a national security threat, said Goodman, who has long argued that climate change is a threat multiplier…
***Obama’s memo could be undone by the next administration, but national security and intelligence experts urged the next president to take seriously the threats of climate change…
Dabelko said the scope of the memo normalizes the national security risks of climate change as something federal agencies must now not only understand but analyze…
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/obama-demands-that-security-agencies-consider-climate-change/
30 Mar: Union of Concerned Scientists Blog: President Trump’s New Anti-Climate Executive Order Threatens Our National Security
Shana Udvardy, Climate Preparedness Specialist
***The Executive order revokes the 2016 memorandum on Climate Change and National Security which established an agency-wide working group to set priorities and recommendations on addressing climate change impacts to our national security…
http://blog.ucsusa.org/shana-udvardy/president-trumps-new-anti-climate-executive-order-threatens-our-national-security
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gas, gas, gas. read all:
Dec 2015: news.com.au: Charis Chang: Is the fight over a gas pipeline fuelling the world’s bloodiest conflict?
As Harvard Professor Mitchell A Orenstein and George Romer wrote last month inForeign Affairs, Russia currently supplies Europe with a quarter of the gas it uses for heating, cooking, fuel and other activities.
In fact 80 per cent of the gas that Russian state-controlled company Gazprom produces is sold to Europe, so maintaining this crucial market is very important.
But Europe doesn’t like being so reliant on Russia for fuel and has been trying to reduce its dependence. It’s a move that is supported by the United States as it would weaken Russian influence over Europe…
Last year US President Barack Obama spoke openly about the need for Europe to reduce its reliance on Russian gas following the conflict in Ukraine.
***The US also wants to use its own natural gas supply, recently developed through fracking, to undercut Russian supply. But it will be years before the US will be in a position to ship this overseas…
Qatar’s plans were first put forward in 2009 and involved building a pipeline from the Persian Gulf via Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and Turkey…
In the meantime Iran, which owns the other smaller, share of the Persian Gulf gas field, decided to lodge its own rival plan for a $10 billion pipeline to Europe via Iraq and Syria and then under the Mediterranean Sea…
Many countries supporting or opposing the war against Assad have links to these pipeline plans…
But despite fears that the world is facing a new Cold War, Prof Orenstein believes it’s more of a “free for all”, with the fight over natural gas acting as just another fuel…READ ALL
http://www.news.com.au/world/middle-east/is-the-fight-over-a-gas-pipeline-fuelling-the-worlds-bloodiest-conflict/news-story/74efcba9554c10bd35e280b63a9afb74
add this one to the mix:
October 2016: BBC: Selin Girit: Gas pipeline hope heals rupture in Israel-Turkey ties
Last week, Yuval Steinitz became the first Israeli minister to visit Turkey since 2010, for talks with his Turkish counterpart, Energy Minister Berat Albayrak.
The visit signalled a significant turning-point in relations as they agreed to deepen co-operation and discussed the possibility of building a natural gas pipeline from Israel to Turkey.
Hours later, Turkish presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said the two nations would be exchanging ambassadors within 10 days…
Ever since Israeli made significant finds of natural gas in 2009, there have been dreams of transferring it from offshore fields such as Leviathan and Tamar.
Energy Minister Steinitz said Israel had so far discovered around 900bn cubic metres of natural gas, with a potential further 2,200bn to be explored.
“This is a lot of gas, much more than we can consume. Exporting gas to our neighbours in the region or to Europe through different pipelines is of course very important,” he said…
Experts say there are two possible routes that a pipeline could take from Israel to Turkey: one through Lebanese and Syrian waters, and the other through Cyprus’s waters…
“Israel needs to supply international markets and monetise the gas as soon as possible. It is very important that the pipeline is constructed quickly,” says Dr Han…
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-37692753
back to the present and a possible simpler pipeline!
9 Apr: Reuters: Denmark seeks to change law on pipelines amid Nord Stream 2 divisions
The small Nordic country has been caught in a geopolitical conflict as Russian state gas exporter Gazprom and its partners behind the Nord Stream 2 pipeline seek permission to pump more gas to Europe via the Baltic Sea to Germany.
“We want to have the possibility to say yes or no from a perspective of security and foreign policy,” the minister of energy and climate, Lars Christian Lilleholt, told Reuters, adding that it was currently only possible to veto such projects on the grounds of environmental concerns.
The EU is divided between eastern European and Baltic Sea countries that see a new pipeline carrying Russian gas across the Baltic making the EU a hostage to Moscow – and those in northern Europe, most especially the main beneficiary Germany, for whom the economic benefits take priority…
EU sources have said the Commission, sensing that there may ultimately be no legal basis to block approval of Nord Stream 2, is delaying it as long as possible…
The Nord Stream 2 project has previously said it does not see it as a task for the European Commission “to make a political judgment on whether investments are needed by the market or not”…
Nov 2016: EurActiv: The (German) politics behind Nord Stream 2
by Judy Dempsey, Carnegie Europe
An unlikely coalition is emerging in Germany between Angela Merkel’s CDU and the Greens. More and more, both parties want to stop the construction of a second pipeline that will transport gas directly from Russia to Germany under the Baltic Sea…
The party that continues to support the venture is the Social Democratic Party, Merkel’s coalition partner. And the person ensuring that the Social Democrats do not waver in their support is former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder.
Schröder was recently appointed chairman of the board of Nord Stream 2. Like the original Nord Stream, the new pipeline is being built by Gazprom, the Russian state-owned energy giant, along with a consortium of Western European energy companies.
The group consists of Austria’s OMV, France’s Engie, Germany’s Uniper and Wintershall, and the Anglo-Dutch firm Shell. Once operational – scheduled for 2019 – the pipeline will carry 55 billion cubic meters (1.9 trillion cubic feet) of gas a year to Germany…
30
Where have you been all this time?
Anyone who has ever looked at the so-called alternative news is fully aware that ISIS and al-Qaeda and FSA and all the rest of that trash are proxies for the Americans, Turks, Saudi, British, Franch, Israelis and Qataris.
Heavens, the Syrians have taken prisoners from all of those countries plus around 60 other countries. As is usual in these situations – with the West controlling its media – they are obliged to swap the valuable prisoners for other favours.
American and Israeli officers captured by Syrian army in East Aleppo bunker
10
I have a small model steam engine, a Wilesco D10. It comes with a generator which drives a lamp but some people use the steam engine to drive a non-standard larger generator as shown in this video.
https://youtu.be/n6VeJD4NGus
My steam engine will save me during power outages 🙂
30
David just make sure you heat the boiler with an electric element , powered by lithium batteries and charged by solar. We don’t want to hear that you’ve been burning those evil hydrocarbons.
30
Demolition works continue at the Port Augusta power station.
https://twitter.com/7NewsAdelaide/status/851285800557740032
10
I can’t bear to look at such an act of vandalism.
21
Financial Review today (Monday) ….
US Military taking climate change seriously
Laura Tingle – Political Editor
To cut the story short …. “Ms Goodman says that, as in Australia, the climate change debate in the US is still “overly politicised”, despite the science being abundantly clear.
However, she says climate deniers have shifted from denying climate change to argue about how fast it is happening, thus introducing uncertainty into what to do about it.
But, she says, from a military perspective, there is no opportunity to wait, likening it to being prepared for a threat of terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, or North Korea’s nuclear capacity.
“You don’t wait until you have 100 per cent certaintly you are going to be attacked” she said.
10
Yep,
The science is abundantly clear.
Atmospheric levels of CO2 have little or NOTHING to do with climate.
20
Nothing, not little.
30
The alpine region of southern New South Wales has received a big blast of snow — months ahead of the official start to the ski season.
Visitors and staff at ski resorts in the Snowy Mountains fell asleep last night in Autumn and woke up in what looked like the dead of winter.
Thredbo Resort said about 10 to 15 centimetres of snow fell on mountain tops overnight, while Perisher resort recorded about five centimetres.
“It actually did look like a winter wonderland when we woke up this morning with big fat snowflakes floating all the way to the village,” spokeswoman Susie Diver said.
ABC News
40
All this is suggestive of a cooling earth as many have predicted as the sun enters a period of dormancy.
Good luck keeping warm with windmill power!
42
Last year the Alpine snow came early in mid May and that surprised them, now we have it in mid April, its a regional cooling signal but the MSM fail to recognise the significance.
41
And back in 2012 they were delighted when it came a few weeks early and joining the dots we have a trend.
‘Early winter snow on the Australian Alps has led the Perisher resort in NSW to announce that it will open its 2012 on Saturday 2nd June. ‘
21
I love fossil fuels. Now the weather is cooling in the Southern Hemisphere (and the earth is cooling more generally) when I go out I take a shellite / lighter fluid / white gas / naptha powered hand warmer. I use a Japanese one called the Peacock brand, the design of which dates from 1920. Zippo also make one. The fuel is basically a highly refined form of gasoline. I guess you could use that as well but it might smell.
It’s amazing how much heat you get for many hours on 25mls or so of fuel.
They oxidise the fuel with a platinum catalyst. Don’t buy an el-cheapo knock off because they won’t use platinum but something cheaper like iron.
22
Several following posts are on a similar “non scientific” topic.
I suggest sir/madam that YOU are a major part of the problem in this country.
10
Who are you replying too?
20
David/Popeye,
I was replying to the moderator.
10
I’m confused about who/what you’re referring to – but that’s not uncommon 🙂
Cheers,
00
To.
10
LOL:
9 Apr: Time: Michael E. Mann: The Single Shining Hope to Stop Climate Change
Science is under attack at the very moment when we need it most. President Donald Trump’s March 28 executive order went much further than simply throwing a lifeline to fossil fuels, as industry-funded congressional climate change–deniers have done in the past. It intentionally blinded the federal government to the impacts of climate change by abolishing an interagency group that measured the cost of carbon to public health and the environment. Now, the government won’t have a coordinated way to account for damages from climate change when assessing the costs and benefits of a particular policy…
With that in mind, Trump should read the landmark “2020” report now published by Mission 2020, a group of experts convened by the former Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The report (LINK) establishes a timeline for how we can ensure a safe and stable climate. We don’t have much time — 2020 is a clear turning point…
Even in the United States, where public concern about climate is high but doubt of the scientific consensus on climate change has also spiked in recent years (I should know, having recently testified to the climate change–denying chair of the House Science Committee), and where the new Administration wants to stop funding climate science, many politicians are redoubling their commitment to climate action. From mayors of major cities to Congressional Republicans to the Defense Secretary, serious policy responses are being debated…
http://time.com/4731632/climate-change-2020-trump/
LINK in above:
PDF: 29 pages: Mission 2020: The Climate Turning Point
Analysis by: CARBON TRACKER, CLIMATE ACTION TRACKER, POTSDAM, YALE, ECOFYS, CLIMATE ANALYTICS, SYSTEM IQ, NEW CLIMATE ECONOMY, WE MEAN BUSINESS ETC
ALSO MENTIONED IN ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: IRENA, WRI
Acknowledgements: Preface authors
Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research: Stefan Rahmstorf and Anders Levermann
P29 Disclaimer
This publication and the material featured is provided “as is” for informational purposes only.
All reasonable precautions have been taken by the report authors and collaborators to verify the reliability of the material featured in the publication. Neither the report authors and collaborators’ officials, agents, data or other third-party content providers or licensors provide any warranty, including as to the accuracy, completeness or fairness for a particular purpose or use of such material, or regarding the non-infringement of third party rights, and they accept no responsibility or liability with regard to the use of this publication and the material featured therein…ETC
10
10 Apr: ABC: Senate inquiry sparks ideological fight over Australia’s energy supply and climate change
By political reporter Angelique Donnellan
The Select Committee into the Resilience of Australia’s Electricity Infrastructure in a Warming World heard from 60 witnesses in Adelaide, Canberra and Melbourne, including major energy generators, retailers and industry regulators.
But in the committee’s draft report released today, Federal Greens senator and chairwoman Sarah Hanson-Young took aim at the Coalition and its policies.
“The introduction of a market-based carbon trading scheme would effectively end the decades-long subsidy that coal has received in the electricity generation market,” she said.
“Yet like the proverbial ostrich, the Coalition Government has buried its collective head in the coalmine and refuses to address in any meaningful way the crisis facing the nation.”…
All dissented to Senator Hanson-Young’s draft report, with Coalition senators calling it biased, false, misleading and dismissive of coal as a generator for electricity…
They argued coal-fired power stations still had a place in the market and supplied 78 per cent of electricity generated…
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-04-10/coalition-senators-take-aim-at-senates-draft-electricity-report/8431790
10
Just who in their right mind would make SHY the chair of a Senate Committee inquiring into Australia’s electricity supply?
Absolute madness.
Hey, let’s do what she wants and just turn them all off. It’d only take a day, and she’d be the biggest laughing stock in Australia.
Tony.
100
Would she be a laughing stock Tony?
I suspect a majority of voters are now the result of the last 40-50 yrs of the deliberate dumbing down of the “education” system.
I.e. A vast majority of voters are basically ill-educated, uncritical morons. All thanks to the doctrine of Cultural Marxism. https://youtu.be/G8pPbrbJJQs
Most people today don’t even know the years, causes or consequnces of WW1 and WW2 and don’t even know that humans didn’t walk the earth at the same time as dinosaurs.
There is little hope.
10
(Reposted with removal of word causing moderation.)
Would she be a laughing stock Tony?
I suspect a majority of voters are now the result of the last 40-50 yrs of the deliberate dumbing down of the “education” system.
I.e. A vast majority of voters are basically ill-educated, uncritical m0r0ns. All thanks to the doctrine of Cultural Marxism. https://youtu.be/G8pPbrbJJQs
Most people today don’t even know the years, causes or consequnces of WW1 and WW2 and don’t even know that humans didn’t walk the earth at the same time as dinosaurs.
There is little hope.
30
Tony/David,
I can’t recall seeing anything relating to power generation or distribution on Sea Patrol. So she will not be as qualified as normal to lead the inquiry.
30
10 Apr: The Conversation: Why China is serious about becoming the global leader on climate change
by David Tyfield, Reader in Environmental Innovation & Sociology, Lancaster University
Disclosure: David Tyfield’s ‘Liberalism 2.0 and the Rise of China: Global Crisis, Innovation and Urban Mobility’ will be published by Routledge in August 2017. He is Principal Investigator on the ESRC project “Low Carbon Innovation in China: Prospects, Politics and Practice” (2013-17).
Restoring Chinese greatness
There are even broader factors at play too…This is: how will China once again be the unquestioned centre of the world?…
The idea here is to draw on and renew distinctively Chinese ideas of Confucian harmony between humans and nature. This, it is hoped, could present a China to the world whose culture uniquely qualifies it to be the global environmental saviour…
http://theconversation.com/why-china-is-serious-about-becoming-the-global-leader-on-climate-change-75762
7 Apr: WhiteHouse: Briefing by Secretary Tillerson, Secretary Mnuchin, and Secretary (of Commerce Wilbur) Ross on President Trump’s Meetings with President Xi of China
Q Did you discuss the environment and environmental commitments? And what was your response if China asked for more commitments from the United States on that issue?
***SECRETARY ROSS: That was not a major part of the discussion, nor do I recall the Chinese specifically raising it…
https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/04/07/briefing-secretary-tillerson-secretary-mnuchin-and-secretary-ross
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10 Apr: Age: Melbourne weather: Cold commute home as cold snap, severe weather continues
by Allison Worrall, Liam Mannix with AAP
Commuters face a chilly ride home on Monday, while more people are still waiting for power to be reconnected to their homes after a weekend of wild weather.
Rain is set to ease by the evening, but Melbourne is shivering through the coldest day of the year so far, with the mercury forecast to sit around 15 degrees…
“Western parts of the Central District have seen twice their average April rainfall in just a few days,” said senior meteorologist Steven McGibbony…
Some parts of Victoria, like Durdidwarrah, near Melton, had two months of rainfall in 24 hours, Bureau of Meteorology meteorologist Kevin Parkyn said…
The wild weather system also delivered a dusting of snow on the alps, with Falls Creek recording up to 20 centimetres on Sunday, while 15 centimetres fell at Mount Hotham.
Falls Creek ski photographer Chris Hocking said it was unusual to see heavy snow fall two months out from the official opening of the ski season.
“Usually we get a dusting or so but to have a snow dump of 20 centimetres at this time of year is quite rare,” he said…
http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/melbourne-weather-cold-snap-and-severe-weather-to-continue-20170409-gvhe6d.html
9 Apr: Age: Josh Gordon: Melbourne’s electricity and gas facing greater Chinese control
Three out of five of Victoria’s electricity distributors and two out of three of its gas distributors would be controlled by a single Hong Kong-based infrastructure business under a $7.4 billion takeover proposal being considered by the Turnbull government.
Federal Treasurer Scott Morrison is expected to make a decision within the next two weeks on whether to allow Cheung Kong Infrastructure (CKI) to acquire DUET Group…
CKI, owned by Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing, already has an enormous stake in Australian infrastructure, including CitiPower in Melbourne, Powercor in western Melbourne, and Envestra, which distributes gas through much of Victoria, as well as Queensland and South Australia…
Along with Singapore Power, the State Grid of China also effectively owns Victoria’s network of poles and wires, as well as electricity distribution in eastern Victoria, and gas distribution in western Melbourne and regional Victoria…
The matter is currently being considered by the Foreign Investment Review Board…READ ALL
http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/melbournes-electricity-and-gas-facing-greater-chinese-control-20170409-gvh84k.html
10
comment in moderation re Melbourne weather etc.
lengthy, read all:
9 Apr: WND Exclusive: Senator slams book burners protecting global warming ‘hoax’
House Democrats demand publication challenging climate change be destroyed
Three Democrats on Capitol Hill seem to be following that rule when it comes to “global warming.”
Congressmen Bobby Scott, Raúl Grijalva and Eddie Bernie Johnson have demanded public school teachers around the country reject the 2015 book “Why Climate Scientists Disagree About Global Warming.”
And not just reject it – destroy it.
“Public school classrooms are no place for anti-science propaganda, and I encourage every teacher to toss these materials in the recycling bin,” said Scott in the statement.
He smeared the scientists who wrote the book as “climate deniers” pushing a “false agenda.”
However, one Capitol Hill expert on climate change objects to this attempt at censorship. Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., author of “The Greatest Hoax: How The Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future,” ripped the congressmen for trying to prevent debate on the issue.
“The reason why people want you to destroy books is because they’re threatened by the truth they contain,” Inhofe told WND. “This is why my book, ‘The Greatest Hoax’ should be required reading. It explains how the environmental extremists have co-opted global warming to accomplish all their liberal dreams. It is extremely disappointing that some of my colleagues in the House have asked teachers to destroy a book solely because they don’t like what it says.”
Brian Sussman, a talk show host and former meteorologist who wrote “Eco-Tyranny: How The Left’s Green Agenda Will Dismantle America,” blasted the fraud he claims underlies the global-warming myth.
“These political con artists claim they’re banning a book questioning human-induced global warming in the name of science, hoping the American people are unfamiliar with the scientific method,” he said.
“Real science addresses a hypothesis – for example, carbon dioxide created by human activity increases the average global temperature – by attempting to prove it wrong. If even a single dent is inflicted the theory must be discarded. The global warming proposition has so many severe dents it looks an old Ford Pinto that’s been compressed in a car crusher.”
Sussman warned that the attempt to censor this one book is only the beginning, and Democrats will eventually move to make “climate denial” illegal.
“They’ve already tried making global-warming denial criminal in my state of California,” he said…READ ALL
http://www.wnd.com/2017/04/senator-slams-book-burners-protecting-global-warming-hoax/
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Updated 10 Apr: Bloomberg: Lynn Doan: Singer’s Activist Crusade at NRG Hits a Snag Over Climate Change
The activist crusade at NRG Energy Inc. led by billionaire investor Paul Singer has run right into the politics of climate change.
After taking an activist stake in the U.S. power generator, Singer’s Elliott Management Corp. and an energy investment firm led by turnaround titan C. John Wilder struck a deal with NRG in February in which Wilder and former Texas regulator Barry Smitherman joined its board. New York City’s now fighting Smitherman’s appointment, saying his stance on climate change disqualifies him and calling the agreement a “hasty settlement.”
New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer said in a letter to NRG shareholders dated April 6 that Smitherman had described climate change as a hoax, a position that renders him unfit “to serve as a director of a company that, in its 2016 Form 10-K, cites climate change as a material risk.” New York City funds “are substantial long-term NRG shareowners,” with more than 1.27 million shares, he said.
The fight among shareholders is just the latest challenge for NRG Energy, which fired its longtime chief executive officer, David Crane, in late 2015 after investors grew impatient with a money-losing home solar business. Its shares slid almost 60 percent that year. Wilder is now leading a five-person committee to reshape the business that may include selling assets, cutting costs and changing operations…
Before being joining NRG’s board, Smitherman was rumored by media outlets including the Houston Chronicle as a potential pick by President Donald Trump to lead the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission…
https://www.bloombergquint.com/business/2017/04/07/singer-s-activist-crusade-at-nrg-hits-a-snag-over-climate-change
7 Apr: NYT: NRG, a Power Company Leaning Green, Faces Activist Challenge
By DIANE CARDWELL and ALEXANDRA STEVENSON
Over the years, NRG, a leading independent power producer whose fleet once depended heavily on coal, has made big bets on low-carbon energy technologies and publicized its embrace of sustainability as essential to its future.
It pursued developing renewable energy for customers large and small and set aggressive goals to reduce its emissions of carbon dioxide — 50 percent by 2030, and 90 percent by 2050…
Activist hedge-fund investors, intent on extracting value from NRG assets, have installed two directors on the board who, in one potential approach, would push to sell off some of the company’s renewable-power projects, raising questions about how it would meet its clean-energy goals…
Raising further questions, one of the directors installed by the activists, Barry T. Smitherman, a lawyer and former energy industry regulator from Texas, has publicly questioned accepted climate science and called global warming a hoax. “Don’t be fooled — not everyone believes in global warming,” he said on Twitter from a presentation called “The Myth of Carbon Pollution” at a conference of regulators in 2013.
And that has drawn the attention of New York City’s comptroller, Scott M. Stringer, who oversees the city’s ***pension funds that are shareholders in NRG. On Friday, he filed a letter with the Securities and Exchange Commission urging shareholders to oust Mr. Smitherman at their annual meeting on April 27…
“In light of Mr. Smitherman’s stated views on climate change, which are incompatible with NRG’s disclosed business strategy and risks, we question his ability to act in the best interests of NRG and its shareholders,” Mr. Stringer wrote in the letter…
Most of the company’s power plants run on fossil fuels like coal and natural gas, but it has extensive wind and solar farms, including several unfinished projects it bought last year from SunEdison, which had gone bankrupt. Earlier this year, the company reported a loss of $891 million for 2016, largely because of low natural gas prices, down from a $6.4 billion loss the year before…READ ALL
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/07/business/dealbook/nrg-elliott-management-climate.html?_r=0
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The other day I saw a story on the difficulty of young Sydneysiders unable to buy a house, the author referred to them as ‘indigenous’. Bewdiful.
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Hard to understand, the SA government issued images of the Port Augusta power station being demolished with explosives.
Was that supposed to be something voters would enjoy?
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Heavy rain for many parts of New Zealand.
http://www.metservice.com/warnings/severe-weather-warnings
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