It was only June when there were expectations of an El Nino coming. But the sea has cooled rapidly since then — much faster than usual — and now NOAA thinks a La Nina is slightly more likely. If so, global temperatures will decline.
Cold water is upwelling across the Eastern Pacific. Sea Surface Temp Anomaly. | Image Sept 6, 2017
I notice that there is also unusually cold water on the surface of the eastern Indian Ocean near West Australia (see below). One spot is 2.5C cooler than normal. I don’t know the significance…
Cooling ocean in the east Indian Ocean too. Sea Surface Temp Anomaly. | Image Sept 6, 2017
It may be a milder wetter summer downunder (our grid managers will be happy about that.) In the US, drying conditions in the south, but more snow or rain in the midwest, Northern California. A cooler snowier winter in Canada. It means more Atlantic Hurricanes.
The best explanation I’ve heard on how El Nino works is from Bill Kininmonth: The deep oceans drive the atmosphere.
If there is a significant cooling in global average temperatures it will be interesting to see which surface temperature set would show the smallest decline.
My ranking from smallest to largest is
1. Gistemp
2. NOAA (influenced by Karl et al 2015)
3. Hadcrut 4
4. RSS
5. UAH
131
Hot water around the Great Barrier Reef though is obviously Global Warming and causes Coral Bleaching. Anywhere else and it is La Nina or El Nino, but certain parts of the ocean are definitely Climate Change. My memory of Global Warming is that it had nothing to do with the ocean, warming or cooling. Barack Obama though said it was all our fault and as a lawyer and progressive politician he should know. Al Gore agrees. We should pay and put in giant batteries, pump water uphill, drive electric cars and close or blow up coal power stations. Warming anywhere is our fault. Cooling is natural variation.
533
I thought the GBR had been destroyed by “derdy coal” from a mine still in its planning stages – along with a hint of ‘frac-ing’.
Before that I thought it was destroyed by silt buildup caused by topsoil erosion (“derdy” farmers)
Before that, it was destroyed by high-nutrient and/or high pesticide run-off (those “derdy” farmers again)
Before that it was destroyed by crown of thorns starfish
Now you say it has been destroyed by hot water? Next week it will be…?
It has 9 lives like a cat?
441
James:
The more grants for research the more threats to the Great Barrier Reef are found.
My theory is that coral bleaching is caused by all those researchers scramblng on top of the reef.
201
Apparently, if more taxpayer funding could be provided to the BoM to employ more scientists, we would be better informed.
71
Better informed on the already ‘settled science’ do you mean?
30
Don’t be silly Graeme, researchers don’t go any where near the reef, going out in the big nasty ocean makes them sea sick.
They play around in fish tanks, ashore in Townsville
111
But I thought the GBR had been saved, James.
I remember Gillard and some peanut from the Greens saying so, some years ago. They also said that Kakadu had been saved to.
91
JW,
First visit to East Alligator region, later named Kakadu, was 1971. Saw through all the national park/world heritage phases, the aborigine problems, the mining at Ranger, the lot, really.
If there are any particulars you’d like to know, just email me at sherro1 at optusnet dot com dot au
The reality is that there are better places east of the park for park and heritage values. Certainly for scenic. The park was positioned to cover uranium exploration and mining areas as another control element.
Nothing was ‘saved’. Lots more visitors, lots more dust and disturbance. It is actually quite a boring place unless you have a narrow specialty interest. Like we had with uranium.
Geoff
81
Hi Geoff.
I was being sarcastic in regards to some stupid comments from politicians.
JW
20
It’s been unbelievably cold in Victoristan for the last week plus. All of our local warming worriers have been very quiet for a change.
292
I honestly believe that warmists thought the millennium drought 1996-2010 was actual CAGW occurring and was going to be the “new normal” until our CO2 was scrubbed from the atmosphere, when people can’t differentiate between an El Niño and a failed hypothesis don’t expect them to notice these two big storms come on the end of a 10 years+ global low storm recordings even with CO2 at such dangerous levels.
123
Sorry was supposed to post on Hurricane thread, I’m still sick and lost track of time/place.
70
You too Yonnie? The dreaded ‘flu? I’m just getting over it somewhat….rarely get it but this was a corker in the first few days.
I hope you’ll be up and buzzin’ round soon.
I did have the ‘flu ‘jab’ too.
40
Crook since last Friday I’ve been diagnosed with Influenza B which has been reported to the Department of Health, early Tuesday morning I passed out in the bathroom splitting my head open on the floor, ended up in ICU where I passed out again falling off the bed biting a piece of tongue badly, a few litres of IV fluids and correct BP saw me home that afternoon, you can’t pay hospital staff enough absolutely amazing people.
90
I think the trick Yonniestone, is no to fall. But glad you are on the mend.
60
Gosh, nasty. I hope you are properly on the road to recovery. Mine didn’t quite justify hospital so remains undiagnosed. The feeling of ‘bring me my coffin’ is sufficient to describe it. Now just weak and woolly and feeling useless to do anything; at least I can read now…couldn’t even do that before.
I’ve been watching the El Niño/La Nina thingy on WUWT for a long time. Interesting about the Indian Ocean Dipole too.
40
I am like that after a bottle of Barossa Valley’s finest
40
Lorne, close to sea level, has experienced snow this week in early spring. It is cold in Victoria. I expect that is hitting gas demand.
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/rail-hail-and-thunderstorms-on-the-way-for-melbourne-gusty-winds-for-victorias-coast/news-story/7125d13ed0efafb3012be7a72b9d8953
This follows record cold conditions in parts of southern Australia:
http://www.news.com.au/technology/environment/record-breaking-cold-weather-hits-australias-south-east/news-story/50906eac539b4fa9303ae95302b7f36b
Temperatures may have actually been lower than recorded but the BoM do not believe it can get to record cold any more so have clamped bottom limits to ensure it does not.
It appears Peter Wadhams has yet again been proven wrong. The Arctic sea ice extent is bottoming for 2017 some 2Mkm^2 greater than 2012. His primitive extrapolation of his Arctic death spiral is unravelling. That is what happens when you put faith in the “trick science” of Peter Mann.
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/plots/icecover/osisaf_nh_iceextent_daily_5years_en.png
The Arctic temperature is already cooling rapidly and the melt period was shorter than average:
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/plots/meanTarchive/meanT_2017.png
The increase in Greenland ice mass was in the top quartile of the recent records at 550Gt. The melt reached its end in early August rather than late August of recent years; gaining some 50Gt through to the end of the month.
132
@ Rick Will
I see at least one truth-hater (aka Warmunista) doesn’t like the inconvenient facts you provided !
91
Qld is putting in charging station,from the Gold Coast to Cairns.It will take about 30 mins to recharge your cars battery to about 80%.That’s,provided there is nobody already there.So it will only take you about 8 or 10 Days to get to Cairns.And just how long will the battery last doing a fast charge every one of those days.At 7,500 dollars a pop,these things are going to get very expensive,in a very short time.And where are they going to get the”Electricity”from?Wind Mills,Solar Panels?Do they have a special school where these”Morons”get taught how to be stupid,or are they just born that way??
220
Are they installing a wind turbine and solar system at each charging point?
70
How do these charging stations work? Does the customer pay for the electricity like you have to pay for normal fuel? Or does the taxpayer fund this as well?
100
If it works like the charging stations I see around here, there’s no provision for the user to insert a credit card or so much as one thin dime. So either the store or Edison is paying for the juice. Which means that all their other customers and I pay the bill. This is of course, insufferable to me but I somehow failed to get myself into a position to do anything about it. In fact I was prevented from getting into a position to do anything about it by the State of California which dictates such things, leaving me out of the decision making and the power to change it.
I did enquire and was told that in the future, new charging stations would indeed charge the user along with his battery. I hope they use about 35,000 volts on the user so he gets the full charge to which he’s entitled.
141
Please keep up current with any future developments.
50
Roy, how about getting a couple of Musk’s ‘home’ batteries, take them to the nearest free charging station plug in, charge them up and bingo you’ve got some Free Energy to take home and use.
40
That’s like the people that put an BBQ LPG (45kg) tank in the back of their car/ute, then fill them up at a servo for a fraction of the cost of BBQ LPG (through a fitting on the outside of the vehicle to make it look legit).
20
Roger has discovered free energy !
20
Roger,
It would cost me more to do that than to pay Edison for only what the kWh meter records. Although…
I am suspicious of what they can do with these smart meters because they network together and pass data back and forth both to and from Edison. For example, if they installed the right meter option they could remotely shut me down if there’s a power crunch. I was never given the slightest details about it but I did look up the exact model that’s on the nameplate and it comes with variations including what I just mentioned but I found no way to determine the sub-model, if in fact it is marked on the nameplate.
We have a situation were the meter is on the back of the house and for most of the time I’ve lived here they managed to read the meter correctly — the old analog kind. But then as if turning on a light switch they began to guess at our usage instead of making the effort to read the meter. I blew a fuse and complained, finally requesting the smart meter, since eventually they’ll be put throughout the area. And that ended the guessing.
However, now my bill no longer has the previous and current meter readings on it. When I complained about that because I couldn’t audit my bill — after all they were cheating and I had caught them — I was told they don’t have that information because the meter continuously reports my usage and they just total it up for the month. So it is with technology. They don’t want you to audit your bill or they would report current and last meter readings. I was a programmer for too long to believe they couldn’t do that if they would simply decide to do it. The meter can report not just its cumulative usage record but what the damned kWh display was showing at each billing cutoff date. The software design to do that is not difficult.
So you can’t win them all but at least so far there hasn’t been anything out of line except that the price of electrons is going up, up and away like Superman.
00
And everyone wants a hand reaching right into your systems, no matter what they are. The Internet router I have has an open port on it and for the longest time it was visible to the world. Any connect attempt from anywhere resulted in a request for user name and password, immediately telling anyone who wants to go probing around that I’m right there and vulnerably to attack if they can find a weakness. And they would have a big head start because the request for credentials contains the exact router model. How damned brilliant can you get?
I complained about that and finally they managed to make that port stealth so it looks like nothing is there. But they did it at their server that handles all the traffic to my IP and any others that are on the same subnet. But it took my complaining to get that hole plugged up. But from my computer no matter how I address that port it still asks for credentials.
And they’re not very careful about what they do. They pushed a firmware upgrade on me that changed some of my settings. I noticed that something had changed because I frequently check the router’s logs and suddenly the Frontier logo was showing up on every page it displays where it wasn’t there previously. So I went checking everything and found two changed settings. I suspect it was accidental but I complained anyway.
With that open port they can probably do everything I can do from our computers and more that I can’t do like forcing the port forwarding to the router and their TV set top boxes which I cannot change. The set top boxes were always stealth when I tried them but the router bothers me no end. They could try to get at my computers if they wanted to and to stop that I put in a firewall rule blocking all connections from the 192.168.x.y network. And that works because I have a separate LAN with static IP addresses through which all inter computer and compute to/from printer traffic is handed. There is no better security than physical separation.
They are into your pocket and your life in any way they can.
00
Good question, the City of Goulburn Tesla charging station is located in the visitor’s parking area alongside the Visitors Information Centre.
20
There are 5 stations in Goulburn. I once saw one being used.
20
There are 5 stations in Goulburn. I once saw one being used.
00
Clive when did you last see a man in a primary school?
With all those nice classically educated ladies, do you really expect anyone teacher to be able to explain anything technical. Jo Novas are very slim on the ground.
52
They have to keep the cooling system in the vehicle running in the car at even temperate temperatures so that the battery does not overheat. That, along with the inefficiency of the battery charging process at high current, further reduces the efficiency of the system.
Now for some simple arithmetic on the viability of charging stations:
If a single car takes 30 minutes to recharge (to 80%), then that is about 6 times longer than a 100% refuel on a conventional car. If recharge stations are the only means of refuelling, then 6 times as many “outlets” must be provided at each station.
Further; the driving range of an EV is between a quarter an half of that of a conventional vehicle; at least doubling the necessary number of charging outlets; to 12 times as may.
A small, conventional filling station has at least 6 bowsers/pumps. To serve a ubiquitous fleet of EV, that station will need to provide 72 outlets for “equivalent” service.
Now let’s look at how much electrical power such a station could draw from the grid:
80% recharge of an 80kWh¹ battery is 64kWh; but that happens in half an hour so each power outlet is drawing at least 128kW, before accounting for recharge inefficiencies. So let’s call that 150kW.
So that “little” station will be drawing as much as 72 × 150kW which works out to 10,800kW i.e. nearly 11MW.
Where is that 11MW going to come from? Wind turbines?
A 2MW wind turbine requires around 1 square km of area so that it does not significantly diminish the performance of neighbouring wind turbines. But those 2MW are only a nameplate capacity that is implausible except under ideal wind conditions; conditions that are rare. With capacity factors of between 12 and 30%, one would have to install about 25MW of wind turbines to be be somewhat certain that sufficient electrical power will be available. i.e. 12.5 km² area required for one small EV recharge station.
Even then; around 10% of the time, the turbines will not be turning due to insufficient or too much wind.
Arithmetic is obviously flawed because people believe …
—
¹ 80kWh capacity is equivalent to a turbo-diesel economy car’s primary energy consumption over 600km at a fuel consumption of less than 3 litres/100km. (I worked out the numbers about 7 years ago following this “technology demonstration”. “The trip will be the worldwide breakthrough in electric vehicles,” )
120
Each of these ‘electricity servos’ will have diesel generators that can supply 20MW plus reserve. They’ll just be nicely sheltered and sound proofed so no one will know. Just ask Weatherdill in SA how this will work.
70
Apart from all those considerations, how is the electrical grid going to handle these extra 11MW loads?
73
This will end up like filling your cars LPG gas tank on a really hot day, in the end you give up.
People will end up doing a splash and dash but with electricity and destroy batteries in the process, I should invest in a towing company
20
Not sure the range problem is solved by increasing the number if outlets at each station. I think you have to double the number of stations. You start from a station then can only get halfway to the next one before you need to recharge.
10
Good question Clive. The evidence points to the inferior education provided by State run schools and the poorly prepared, university educated, teachers.
You know the ones; the ones that don’t teach parsing, spelling, spacing and such like. The one who can’t teach maths to a level that enables basic calculations to be understood. As for science, well forget it. It’s all post-modernist science these days where truth is what you believe it to be. And, any disagreement is treated as bullying.
90
Sam,
A brief history of the collapse of education.
Back in the day the really smart ones went to uni to learn engineering and physics etc, the not so smart , eg the ones that were “good with their hands” were given apprenticeships and the dumb ones collected the garbage, production line stuff, everyone had their place.
Then the production line jobs dried up, we now only have one garbo per truck and the “he is good with his hands” jobs are going also.
The uni’s are always on the look out to make some coin so decided to invent brand new degrees with fancy names so all the dumb ones had somewhere to go and get degrees that have no function.
And so to answer the question [the severely ungifted] are born [ungifted] but society had a way on suppressing the potential damage they could do, unfortunately society has changed and now the suppression has been removed, we educate [the severely ungifted] in the refinement of their skill set and then let them loose on the world.
[SNIP]
[*Edited just to make things a bit less inflammatory – J]
10
That’d be the normal curve your referring too cracker.
By definition 50% of the population has and IQ below the mean, median and mode.
What to do with the first quartile?
Make them into unthinking green/left activists through a program of indoctrination in cultural Marxism.
00
Proof reading also helps! For Clive.
00
We’re Doomed! More grants please (even though The Science is settled).
40
From the article:
The significance is: We are all going to die … everybody panic!
180
The Leeuwin Current appears to have stalled, a regional cooling signal.
71
This is from landscheidt.org:
It shows that the Niño 3.4 region is already on the cusp of the -0,5°C threshold to begin a La Niña. And this is referencing NOAA.gov data! So if the “official” data map for the month is tracking the La Niña threshold, why wouldn’t they announce that the possibility of a real La Niña is very much real?
Something seems a little fishy about all this, and I’ve grown weary of the deceit to simply sit back and let mother nature do what mother nature is going to do. If it includes eliminating a couple billion of us from the equation, so be it; it a couple more billion get added, so be it. We’re pretty much powerless to control things.
141
I believe that there is a running average that’s computed which is used as the basis for any declaration so we aren’t bouncing back and forth if the index wiggles around the threshold.
30
If you look at the ENSO widget at WUWT I believe that algorithm is built in. It shows we’re trending to La Niña but not there quite yet.
50
This is off topic. Sorry Jo.
It’s an interesting weather map if you live in the states. Give it a try and let me know.
Presumably a little experimentation with editing the URL can produce a map for other locations.
40
I experimented a little and it didn’t’ work but if you have time to kill, let me know if you can work it out.
10
Roy,
Maybe you should refer to it on the Hurricane Irma thread?
http://joannenova.com.au/2017/09/hurricane-irma-thread-should-be-cat-6-headed-for-florida/
Shows that wind speeds are picking up to the East of Puerto Rico. Highest wind speeds are 65mph on the more Northerly of the US Virgin Islands.
30
Good Idea.
Consider it done.
30
This has a lot more capability than I had time to explore when I posted the link. You can get major cities and a zoom map for some of them. But it’s apparently limited to U.S. and what parts of Mexico and Canada you can see from the main map.
I haven’t looked at the weather in South Florida which should be showing some significant wind by now. I care but I can’t help anyone and I don’t need to wallow around in disaster. I’ve seen too much already.
00
There are some terms I have never taken to heart.
La Nina and El Nino for example.
These seem to be related to weather and the oceans and the equator.
Entropy and enthalpy are related to the energy in a system.
Having said that I feel very much at home with terminology like Energy, Potential Energy, Work, Power, EMR, Pressure and even Virtue and Thermodynamics in general.
If only Klimate Scientists had some familiarity with the latter we would all be living in a better saner world.
We may even have our feet on the ground; just imagine the pressure on the Earth’s surface from 9 billion people all standing up at the same time!
A truly frightening proposition if everyone stood up at the same time.
KK
63
KK,
In Spanish those two terms you have trouble with mean little girl and little boy respectively. And I suspect neither the little girls nor the little boys of this world have any part in determining the weather. Maybe the equator complicates things, after all, storms down there all turn the other direction to what we get here. But so what?
That being the case, perhaps we should petition the appropriate authorities to drop the misuse of those terms and simply use dry year and wet year or something similar. An honestly descriptive term really should be used, don’t you think?
Now if I could just figure out who the appropriate authorities are…
20
I think El Niño was so-called because it happens around Christmas and that is the Spanish name for the Christ Child. Presumably its opposite number just had to be La Nina.
30
Roy, Now you’ve done it – the gender-neutral pc brigade in the UK won’t allow that nomenclature …… heads will be exploding with outrage !! (hopefully)
21
Let ’em rage. I’m looking forward to watching it with a smile on my face. 🙂
00
O.K.
So it was a joke about the pressure change when everybody stands up; but three red thumbs?
30
I’m guessing but it looks to me as though someone is being paid to bomb Jo’s blog with red thumbs. I don’t know if there’s some algorithm by which they determine where to put them but I frequently see long stretches of comments with a red thumb. So someone just sat there clicking red down the page.
It get’s my goat too. But we can ignore them. It’s not easy sometimes. But it can be done.
🙂 and 😉 at them knowing you were the bigger man.
11
Roy, I hope I don’t get any bigger.
At my age 11 stones and 7 pounds is more than enough.
10
Me too, unfortunately.
🙂
00
Remember a few years ago Antarctica had a huge expanse of sea ice and more recently nothing, found this at Judith Curry.
‘Through analysis of remotely-sensed sea surface temperature (SST) and sea ice concentration data we investigate the impact of winds related to the Southern Annular Mode (SAM) on sea ice extent around Antarctica. We show that positive SAM anomalies in the austral summer are associated with anomalously cold SSTs that persist and lead to anomalous ice growth in the following autumn, while negative SAM anomalies precede warm SSTs and a reduction in sea ice extent during autumn.
‘The largest effect occurs in April, when a unit change in the detrended summertime SAM is followed by a 1.8±0.6 ×105 km2 change in detrended sea ice extent. We find no evidence that sea ice extent anomalies related to the summertime SAM affect the wintertime sea ice extent maximum. Our analysis shows that the wind anomalies related to the negative SAM during the 2016/17 austral summer contributed to the record minimum Antarctic sea ice extent observed in March 2017.’
Doddridge and Marshall 2017
40
This graphic shows a cooling trend and I’m hoping Ian Wilson drops in to explain his lunar solar model of ENSO, plus a projection.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/enso_update/sstaanim.gif
20
This is not the only unusual news today. I just heard Shorten say he is concerned about our capacity to supply sufficient power this coming summer and is willing to work with he government to solve the problem. He is also thinking about supporting the government’s imitative to extend the life of the major coal fired power station AGL is planning to close down in a few years. This is proof that both leaders have been hugely delinquent in their duties to tell us the truth over the last few years. They should both resign immediately as they have brought us to this power crisis, one that probably will destroy our nation economically if nothing changes very soon.
190
I like it.
00
Funnily enough, while the “whole world” is cooling, La Nina increases the chances of a hot summer over New Zealand. This can be probably expected after the ‘non-summer’ we experienced earlier in the year, and for that reason hopefully anticipated. Personally I wouldn’t mind seeing a drought around here (La Nina’s are good for that in some areas). The webbing between my toes might disappear with a bit of luck!
40
The Indian Ocean Dipole is neutral, so will have little influence on rainfall. If the cooler SSTs in the east Indian Ocean are maintained and warmer in the west, this will mean a positive IOD and less rain and higher maxima in spring and summer for SE Australia. If it swings to negative, SE Oz will get more rain/ cooler temps.
Cooler SSTs off WA should mean cooler spring and summer for WA.
30
BoM is saying in the absence of major drivers the SST around Australia will become the driver.
00
The formation of the extended cold band of water off the WA coast is very similar to last year when Perth didn’t have a spring, just an extension of a cold and wet winter right through into summer, which was also cool and more humid. It will be interesting to see if this year is a repeat of last year in Perth.
10
The Great Blizzard of Oz 3.0 has arrived in NZ (while I notice Blizzard 4.0 is lining up Tassie & Victoria today). The North Island ski fields have been closed the past 2 days due to ‘inclement weather’, ie. blowing a gale and bucketing down with snow, while in the South Island, some are on-hold due to similar conditions.
“We do have a road snow warning out at the moment and we are expecting more snow today… SH73, Arthurs Pass, was open despite also being blanketed with snow and the NZTA said chains were essential… The amount [of snow] will increase slightly throughout the day… The snow comes after a small tornado hit the West Coast on Wednesday”. Huh? So the tornado caused the snow? THAT’S a new one 😉
Massive sunspots going off; CMEs flying out in all directions; auroras dancing in the skies; a full moon; La Niña starting to do her thaang… yet 97 eggspurts claim all this wild weather is a result of our 0.0016% human contribution to the 0.04% atmospheric CO₂. Old surfers/snowboarders like myself simply call it Winter. Enjoy!
https://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/96580798/snow-closes-sh7-lewis-pass-adding-hours-to-travel-between-christchurch-and-picton
110
Who to believe ???
Bom uses SOI Data based on means and standard deviations calculated over the period 1933 to 1992 inclusive.
The Queensland Government uses SOI data calculated using the 1887–1989 base period and then uses a statistical technique (cluster analysis) to group all sequential two-month pairs of the SOI (from 1882 to 1991) into five clusters.
The BoM overview for September to November can be found here……http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/outlooks/#/rainfall/median/seasonal/0
The Queensland Government overview can be found here…..
https://www.longpaddock.qld.gov.au/seasonalclimateoutlook/rainfallprobability/index.php
and here…….
https://www.longpaddock.qld.gov.au/seasonalclimateoutlook/rainfallprobability/consistentlypositive/sep-nov/Australia.gif
10
Hello Joanne
Interesting article, complex subject.
We could do with a little rain.
The Fed Gov just recently received a report
telling them the the removal of Coal fired stations
and the installation of windmills will cost everybody more
and cause big problems with reliable supply.
Can I presume that you are preparing an anaysis
of that?
Looking forward to that.
By the way, the link “h/t GWPF” doesn’t work.
It points at:- https://www.thegwpf.com/
“https” doesn’t work, “http” does.
Just thought you’d like to know.
Thanks
RRT
—
[Thanks. and yes, the current electricity debacle is the project that never ends …. – J]
50
O/T A question has bee posted on Facebook asking if existing power stations could be upgraded to HELE unit by unit. Tony from Oz?
10
Short answer – No.
It’s a complete rebuild from the coal loader, the Pulveriser, the feeder, the furnace/boiler, the pressuriser, the steam turbine, the generator, the control systems etc, to name just a few of the major parts that make up a coal fired plant.
Bayswater and Mount Piper both had plans to Upgrade to USC in ….. 2009, eight years ago. Dithering etc etc, saw all of that crash and burn and then they both sold off, and the new owners of Bayswater are (dare I even say it) AGL, and we all know they are getting out of coal, eh.
If they really were getting out of coal, then just shut down Bayswater along with Liddell, eh, but no, Bayswater will still be operational in 2035, so at least another 18 to 20 years, so AGL can suck as much blood out of that stone as they can.
Just to show you the complexity, this link is to an image of a USC Unit, and this is one at Neurath in Germany, and it uses brown coal, so it could be used in Victoria, and perhaps even South Australia, if they can hide the dynamite. This brown coal plant used new technology to dry out the (normally wetter) brown coal after pulverising, and before feeding it into the furnace/boiler, so they would be getting similar results to black coal.
For Black coal, it would be (sort of) similar to this schematic.
Bayswater and Mt. Piper planned to do it alongside the existing plants, so at a brown field site in both cases, but a complete build from scratch, while the existing Units stayed in operation, almost doubling the output from Bayswater.
Even so, you’d be looking at seven years from thought bubble to power delivery stage, and if all the ducks lined up in a row, maybe five years best case scenario.
Tony.
140
So what Tony is saying here is we are completely ducked when it comes to future power generation
60
Hmm, pretty much.
20
Thanks Tony. Another interesting read.
00
WELL, WELL, WELL…THIS FABULOUS STORY EXPLAINS A LOT, PERHAPS EVEN SHORTEN PRETENDING TO SOUND REASONABLE ABOUT COAL AT LONG LAST!
7 Sept: Australian: Brad Norington: Skye’s limit for AGL to GetUp!, get out of coal
PHOTO CAPTION: Skye Laris and Labor frontbencher Tony Burke in 2015
A senior manager in charge of promoting the energy policy of Australia’s largest electricity producer previously worked for activist group GetUp!, which is committed to shutting down the coal-fired power industry.
Self-described political strategist Skye Laris is an executive member of AGL Energy managing director Andy Vesey’s team as he sticks with the company’s plan to shut down the Liddell power station in the NSW Hunter Valley, despite protests the planned closure threatens energy supplies.
Ms Laris, who joined AGL in February as senior manager, digital engagement, is now a senior manager, public advocacy for the company. She is a former campaign director for GetUp! and has worked in a series of senior ALP jobs, including leading the party’s digital campaign for the 2013 federal election campaign and during Bill Shorten’s first few years in the Labor leadership.
Immediately before joining GetUp! in March 2011, she was chief of staff and policy adviser to Labor frontbencher Tony Burke, who is also her partner.
This week Ms Laris has re-tweeted messages from Mr Vesey’s Twitter feed that have declared “we’re getting out of coal” and “keeping old coal plants open won’t deliver the reliable, affordable energy our customers need”. She has also tweeted high praise for an AGL TV ad in which the narrator says: “Let’s be honest, things need to change. So at AGL we are getting out of coal. Starting 2022, ending 2050.”
The ad says the company has started a fund that will put $3 billion into creating more renewable energy…
The Opposition Leader (Bill Shorten) has a connection to GetUp! as a founding director and donor after he gave about $100,000, and possibly more, of union funds to the activist group as start-up capital when he led the Australian Workers Union…
After four years as an ***ABC journalist in Adelaide, she (SKYE LARIS) was appointed chief of staff and policy adviser in 2002 to Jay Weatherill, now SA Premier. She joined the Climate Institute in 2006, working as communications director for two years before joining Mr Burke’s staff. After GetUp!, Ms Laris was chief of staff to Labor minister Kate Ellis…
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/mining-energy/skyes-the-limit-for-agl-to-getup-and-get-out-of-coal/news-story/d3bd44b3921765c0919590378f457ff3
90
Shorten blames privatization. If coal was left in the hands of his union comrades, we would only have the regular outages due to strikes. Since the 1990s privatization, shutting down coal generators has been a real passion for Labor governments. Now Shorten is blaming private companies for the mess created wholly and solely by politicians. The solution is simple. Repeal the Renewable Energy(Electricity) Act 2000 and the insanity would stop. Everything which is happening now was planned and predicted by every player. None of it is due to privatization and besides, all the mad windmills, solar farms and solar panels are privately owned, paid for by the RET.
131
In 2000, just after the UN IPCC Kyoto Agreement on climate change was signed, the Howard Government introduced a direct action plan to reduce “greenhouse gas emissions” and one initiative was Renewable Energy. To that end a trial 2 per cent RET was established. Recently former Prime Minister John Howard said that the RET should never have been raised, and that he is very concerned about the energy crisis.
At this point we need to reconsider the sixteen years of Labor Government in New South Wales. Earlier the Greiner Coalition Government decided to end public service union abuse of taxpayer’s monies: e.g. Chullora Railway Workshops had a daily absenteeism rate of 60 per cent (as I was advised by a manufacturing manager who had attended a district business gathering in the 1980s, where Chullora Railway Workshops management regularly attended for the regular discussions on operational matters of mutual interest). Six out of every ten employees on sick leave or other excuse not to attend their workplace. Only one government workplace with poor work practises. The Chullora Workshops were closed down and the work put out to tender to the private sector.
The Greiner Government also changed the Electricity Commission by splitting it into government owned private companies to be managed to produce dividends as private companies produce profits. When the Carr Labor Government took over early 1990s they replaced government owned private company management with their own people, partisan political appointments. And they were apparently left to manage as they saw fit, lots of overseas travel, expensive company vehicles, well paid, etc. But they were also required to borrow money to pay extra in dividends to improve the government’s budget bottom lines. Borrowed by government owned private companies so the debt hidden off government budgets.
Not long before Labor lost government in NSW they sold half of the electricity businesses, valuation estimates lowest price $12 billion, sold for $5.9 billion – and after the debts and interest were settled all that was left was $800 million.
There can be no doubt about it, taxpayers are being taken for a ride.
70
Its all good for the self appointed elites to piously espouse green virtues but us plebs are the ones that suffer, finally got that delayed gas bill $936.63 for 5 months Oh joy! but the real eye opener is the change in the charge/rate of per MJ from 01/06/2017,(my bolding)
* Basic – Home Peak Consumption – Block 1 ( 100.00000 MJ/day)^ 5,400.000 MJ $0.016171 per MJ $87.32
* Basic – Home Peak Consumption – Block 2 ( 100.00000 MJ/day)^ 5,400.000 MJ $0.015347 per MJ $82.87
* Basic – Home Peak Consumption – Block 3 ( 15.17920 MJ/day)^ 819.677 MJ $0.014214 per MJ $11.65
* Basic – Home Supply Charge 54 days $0.86108 per day $46.50
01/06/2017 – 07/06/2017 – 7 Days
* Basic – Home Peak Consumption – Block 1 ( 100.00000 MJ/day)^ 700.000 MJ $0.022351 per MJ $15.65
* Basic – Home Peak Consumption – Block 2 ( 100.00000 MJ/day)^ 700.000 MJ $0.021321 per MJ $14.92
* Basic – Home Peak Consumption – Block 3 ( 15.17914 MJ/day)^ 106.254 MJ $0.01545 per MJ $1.64
* Basic – Home Supply Charge 7 days $0.86108 per day $6.03
Yeah closing down coal fired power stations won’t have any effect on consumers because magic renewables, /sarc.
Jackasses.
40
AGL is going to need some substance behind its feel good advertising. You cannot tell people you are wonderful without delivering when it comes to energy supply:
https://www.productreview.com.au/p/agl.html
Average rating of 1.3 from 825 reviews. You cannot give zero stars so the rating is essentially 0.4 out of 4 equivalent to 1 out of 10.
AGL has increased revenue 4-fold in the past decade and could easily better than in the next decade as they swap coal for unrenewable wind and solar. It means electricity consumers are required to pay a lot more for the energy they use.
Anyone with the facility to get off the grid should do it. Power from the grid will only get much more expensive.
30
An. Amazing. Story.
I have a vision of a nation walking on top of a pile of eggshells.
At any moment one of those shells will give and we will all be in freefall.
KK
00
The Australian recently reported that the union movement has over $1.5 billion in assets and a substantial income that is enabling unions to campaign politically to seek more power via their now controlled ALP, etc. Journalist Max Walsh wrote in the no longer published The Bulletin magazine during 2006 that the union movement had effectively taken control of the ALP they previously were only associated with. And that union trained executives were being parachuted into safe Labor held electorate seats – e.g. Bill Shorten.
I just read the following which was posted on another website;
senior manager in charge of promoting the energy policy of Australia’s largest electricity producer previously worked for activist group GetUp!, which is committed to shutting down the coal-fired power industry.
Self-described political strategist Skye Laris is an executive member of AGL Energy managing director Andy Vesey’s team as he sticks with the company’s plan to shut down the Liddell power station in the NSW Hunter Valley, despite protests the planned closure threatens energy supplies.
Ms Laris, who joined AGL in February as senior manager, digital engagement, is now a senior manager, public advocacy for the company. She is a former campaign director for GetUp! and has worked in a series of senior ALP jobs, including leading the party’s digital campaign for the 2013 federal election campaign and during Bill Shorten’s first few years in the Labor leadership.
Immediately before joining GetUp! in March 2011, she was chief of staff and policy adviser to Labor frontbencher Tony Burke, who is also her partner.
60
GetUp was established by AWU union boss Bill Shorten before he became a candidate for election to Parliament in 2006, he used union membership monies. The union movement continues to provide funding for GetUp and other donors include foreign billionaire socialist George Soros.
60
I recall that the Unions and their super funds heavily invested in the water desal plants and have been enjoying their guaranteed taxpayer funded dividends paid to them for creating nothing. They have ever dwindling membership but more and more money – sounds fishy to me!
70
Another point to consider: The employer paid on behalf of all employees Superannuation Guarantee Levy was introduced by the Keating Labor Government in the late 1980s or early 1990s (that government left office in 1996).
At the time many astute observers worried that the real motive was not to secure or partly secure retirement benefits additional to age pension entitlement but to establish “industry superannuation funds” owned by the unions to control billions of dollars of funds invested (and with private sector funds competing) for fees for profit and to gain influence in public company boardrooms based on shareholding by union super funds.
As we are now aware, a majority of low to medium wage earners have lost all or most of the SGL paid on their behalf by employers to fees, and because their benefit is too often paid into many different funds depending on how often they changed place of employment. And I am sure most people realise that superannuation funds have been a licence to print money for fund managers and financial advisors (rules now changing to address this serious issue).
No wonder the unions have been reported to be holding over $1.5 billion in assets, and with only 10 per cent of the workforce now union members.
I remain disillusioned that the Coalition Government did not make provision for the Trade Union Royal Commission into governance and corruption to be granted an extension in funding and inquiry time.
50
on jo’s “62% of Australians…” thread last nite I began researching a February 21 2017 GUARDIAN Essential Report,
which made extraordinary claims about Australians re CAGW-related matters, e.g.
65% of us approve Labor committing to a target of 50% renewable energy by 2030
64% of us agree renewable energy is the solution to our future energy needs
70% of us either totally oppose or oppose building new coal fired power stations in Australia
I also posted a 5 Sept GUARDIAN Essential Report which claims re rising power prices that:
only 9% of us blame environmentalists pushing for action on climate change and only 5% of us blame renewable energy costs (MUST HAVE POLLED ABC STAFF TO GET THOSE LOW FIGURES?)
further research brings up an interesting character, Rebecca Huntley:
LinkedIn: Rebecca Huntley, Director of Research, Essential Media / UMR / Arc Public Australia
Previous: Ipsos, ***ABC Radio
Summary:
I was a director at Ipsos Australia for nearly 9 years where I ran The Mind and Mood Report and The Ipsos Food-Health Report. I have degrees in law, film and a PhD in Gender Studies. I am the author of numerous books and have been a columnist for BRW, a feature writer for Vogue and a presenter on ***(ABC) Radio National. I appear regularly on radio and TV talking about social trends.
as yet can’t find exact date Huntley joined Essential, but she was there IN TIME for the 21st February report!
14 Feb: Mumbrella: Media release: The Guardian partners with Essential to create new report
The Guardian Australia has announced its partnership with Essential to create a Guardian Essential Report, covering the country’s voting intention…
The partnership will include Australia’s first weekly poll, The Guardian Essential Report, starting today and released 48 weeks each year, to gauge the Australian public’s sentiment towards the two major political parties.
The poll is based on Essential’s weekly report based on data provided by Your Source and published in the Guardian’s Australia news section…
The Guardian and Essential will also develop ***topical questions and recurring thematic questions to help measure Australian attitudes over time.
Dr. Rebecca Huntley, director of research, Essential, said: “The Guardian Essential Report will be the most regular poll available in the country, produced using Essential’s proven research methodology. We’re excited to work collaboratively with Guardian Australia to measure how Australians feel about a range of key topics.”
Lenore Taylor, editor, Guardian Australia, said: “We have over 1.3m unique browsers* for our Australian politics content each month and the Guardian Essential Report will inform our coverage. We are pleased to be working with Essential.”
https://mumbrella.com.au/guardian-partners-essential-create-new-report-426316
what a tangled web we weave…
3 Feb: SMH: Taking the pulse of the nation
Social researcher Rebecca Huntley has spent the past decade finding out what Australians really think and despite the current divisiveness of public debate, she is optimistic. This is an edited extract from her new book ‘Still Lucky’.
by Rebecca Huntley
(This is an edited extract from Still Lucky by Rebecca Huntley, Viking, rrp $35)
Over the years, there have been certain areas of policy where this lack of long-term vision and future planning has been particularly evident to the community. In 2007 it was managing our water resources. “It’s the government’s fault we’ve got no water. They should have thought about it before.” “The fact that no government has done anything about it, yet we live on the driest continent in the world – it’s criminal.”
In 2010 and 2011, which saw some sharp and well-publicised increases in electricity prices, Australians complained about the lack of investment in renewable energy. “Why aren’t we doing more about solar energy and building more wind farms?” (Interestingly, concern about water and energy resources has continued on and off, regardless of the public interest and engagement with the broader issue of climate change.)…
http://www.smh.com.au/national/still-lucky-by-rebecca-huntley-20170130-gu1gdt.html
Wikipedia: Rebecca Huntley: She has also appeared as a guest on many television shows including Q&A, Gruen Planet, Media Circus, The Drum, Meet the Press, The Observer Effect, Paul Murray Live, ABC’s News 24 and One Plus One.
Huntley hosted the Drive show on Radio National in 2014. In 2015 she co-hosted a weekly podcast called Just Between Us with journalist (NOW ABC NIGHTLIFE PRESENTER) Sarah Macdonald…
Huntley cohosts a storytelling event at The Giant Dwarf in Sydney called The Full Catastrophe with (ABC) broadcaster Sarah Macdonald
Since 2017 Huntley has been the head of research at Essential Media.
Apr 2012: ABC Q&A: Climate Debate
TRANSCRIPT:
TONY JONES: Thank you. So that was I Can Change Your Mind About Climate Change and joining our panel for this special edition of Q&A tonight, the director of the Ipsos Mackay Report, public opinion researcher, Rebecca Huntley…
REBECCA HUNTLEY: …and I think the thing that interests me is that we’ll be sitting in a group of climate change deniers, people who don’t think it’s happening or think that we can’t really do anything to control it, who will say, but we need to drive smaller cars and we need to have solar panels and we need to have fuel efficient everything in our lives so instead of a debate endlessly about the science, I think there already exists a consensus amongst Australians that something needs to be done and whether we do it for short term economic reasons or long-term environmental reasons kind of doesn’t matter so, you know, there’s a lot of support out there publicly (indistinct)…ETC
http://www.abc.net.au/tv/qanda/txt/s3487316.htm
30
That is pukeworthy. Rivals the AGL ads. My wife has the ability to tune ads out but the bearded man is beyond pukeworthy for me with his condescending, know it all commentary.
41
Just completed the changeover of electricity providers from Diamond to Origin, initially told they would match price upon sighting their offer but now told it’s unfair to other customers if they price match .
And also they were a totally green energy company and Origin wasn’t , I replied by saying that was the main reason I was changing .
Not only will I be paying less with Origin they only have two rates being peak or off peak and I no longer get penalised if I use more than 340 kw .
40
Lot of spooky stuff there.
00
7 Sept: Australian: Eli Greenblat/Damon Kitney: Consumer pain in $9bn power hit for firms
Additional reporting: Emily Ritchie
Australia’s largest energy users have warned that an estimated $9 billion in additional electricity and gas costs will feed through to the broader economy, threatening jobs and investment, as business drives pressure on Canberra to ease predicted power shortages.
Major packaging and brick makers, supermarkets, soft-drink bottlers and poultry producers said yesterday the bill shock would chip away further at profit margins and could push up consumer prices as a political firefight continued over Malcolm Turnbull’s push to extend the life of the 1900 megawatt Liddell power station beyond 2022, a call rejected by its owner AGL.
Economists, including National Australia Bank chief economist Alan Oster, warned the power bill shock was expected to show up in national inflation figures as early as next month.
He predicted headline inflation would increase 0.6 per cent for the July-to-September quarter, purely from energy price rises.
“And that is significant, because what it means is that if you are running the rest of your price increases by about 0.6 or 0.5 per cent, which is where they are at, you suddenly have a 1.2 per cent (inflation figure),” Mr Oster said…
Rio Tinto chief executive Jean-Sebastien Jacques last night warned Australia had gained a reputation for being one of the most expensive jurisdictions to do business and predicted the future of many operations — “mining, manufacturing, agriculture and businesses large and small — are at risk’’.
Mr Jacques told a Minerals Council function that, in a decade, Australia had gone from having some of the most competitively priced energy in the developed world “to having nearly the most expensive’’…
Glencore’s head of coal assets, Peter Freyberg, said AGL had stood to benefit from the closure of the Hazelwood power plant in Victoria’s Latrobe Valley this year that contributed to electricity supply concerns.
“When Hazelwood shut down we saw electricity prices go up, so that’s hurt all the consumers, it’s hurting all the businesses that rely on electricity, and certainly all the other generators would have benefited from those increases, so just extrapolate that,” Mr Freyberg told the MCA conference.
Former Labor government resources minister Martin Ferguson agreed with Mr Freyberg and accused AGL of running a campaign with non-profit groups to “create an expectation in the community” that coal-fired power stations like Hazelwood should close for environmental reasons…
He accused his old party of prioritising “inner-city political aspirations” over affordability and reliability, arguing that a willingness in parliament to create a level playing field for all forms of energy including coal was essential…
The Victorian government yesterday ruled out relying on diesel generators to bridge the gap in energy supply over summer, instead choosing to lean on large energy users to power down or to power up private generators during peak demand.
One hundred kilometres southeast of the Liddell plant, the Tomago aluminium smelter, which uses 12 per cent of NSW power to run its three potlines, warned the facility relied on constant baseload power.
Chief executive Matt Howell said instability in the electricity grid, which could be exacerbated by the close of the Liddell power plant, was Tomago’s primary concern. “If we have a potline freeze because of inadequate policy settings that allow unchecked penetration of renewables and reckless closures of thermal, and that’s what it is, then we’re putting a facility like this at risk,” Mr Howell said.
He said the potlines could tolerate three hours of blackout before freezing over, which would render the factory unusable…
Senior executives said yesterday they were facing millions in extra costs…
BlueScope Steel chief executive Paul O’Malley warned the nation was facing an “energy catastrophe”. “If it hits the point where people can’t make money then the industry will start to shut down,” he said.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/mining-energy/consumer-pain-in-9bn-power-hit-for-firms/news-story/0bc89f8845e36b3d7a94212de3fa28df
60
Aluminium smelters will find it difficult to get insurance with the increasing risk of power curtailment. It can take weeks to stabilise the pots after a 2 hour outage. Another 2 hour outage in that period just compounds the situation. A 4 hour outage is close to terminal for line freeze. Recovering from that can takes years for a plant the size of Tomago.
At least there is some reality here. The sensible thing for heavy industry would be to just invest offshore and close all Australian operations. It would be a better use of their resources than trying to argue that non-dispatchable generation from unrenewable renewables does hot have a place connected to the grid.
70
The situation we now see with AGL is the early stage of the transfer of all economic resources to the businesses in the electric power supply chain. They will grow exponentially while there is a sustained effort to increase the proportion of wind and solar energy delivered to to the grid. The wholesale cost will rise to $500/MWh on the basis that China continues to provide low cost components produced using coal and nuclear generation. Beyond that the wholesale price will continue to rise until society collapses. The ratio of Energy Out of a despatchable solar or wind system to the Energy In is 2.1. That is way below what is needed to sustain modern society.
If the solar, wind and storage components were made from solar and wind energy their cost would be astronomical. That is not sustainable. At present there is the illusion of sustainability because the components can be manufactured using coal and nuclear fuelled generators.
70
In between time the companies and their shareholders, including union movement and union superannuation funds investing fund member’s monies and foreign investors such as Al Gore and George Soros, and Goldman & Sachs, will bleed Australians dry to profit from the energy crisis developing until they have written off their investments and moved on.
30
And our elected representatives will, apparently, continue to assist them.
30
Hey, if this Nina brat kicks in by October and we get a good drenching…bamboo autumn (spring but it looks like the opposite) and fat new moso shoots! Whoo-hoo!
Believe it when I see it. NOAA and the BoM are gun experts close to the date. More than a week out, not so much.
51
So how does this affect the pH of the Oceans?
20
And it’s still all caused by Man Made
Global WarmingClimate Change.And we’re still doomed.
21
The 2017/18 One Year Solar-induced Orbital ‘X Factor’ Wet/Normal Cycle, that started circa 110 degrees East of Prime longitude (Beijing} in mid-February 2017, is now affecting America, and will reach Australia by early January 2018.
Note the ‘X Factor’ Cycles move from East to West, with the Earth’s Solar Orbit. Prevailing weather moves from West to East and towards the Poles,(Axial Spin.)
The next One Year Orbital Dry Cycle will start circa 110 degrees East in mid February 2018.
Nothing to do with ENSO.
20
It will be a weak La Nina, I have had one forecast since the start of the year, despite what models are showing.
However, its effect will be weak I believe, and I don’t think it will drop the temperatures substantially, as the Atlantic is still quite warm.
Instead, I think we are going to repeat something similar to the 2007-2012 period as a response to the big warming we have seen in the oceans over the past 5 years.
But given we are about to enter a sustained low solar period, La Nina may be about to become more common and more often, but time will tell.
The Atlantic is also going to flip next decade, thats when the real fun begins.
10
Northern Hemisphere undergoing some unexplained events also – this might interest you
“Overall, however, reduced melting and heavy early springtime snowfall may result in a net increase in Greenland’s ice mass this year for the first time this century.”
– You would think NSIDC would be shouting this from the rooftops – O wait silly me – that doesn’t fit their agenda.
http://nsidc.org/greenland-today/
00
The Coral bleaching is mainly from LOW SEA LEVEL – wait, SLR should have prevented this – so claims it is man made climate change are utter nonsense.
00