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
I have recently been inundated by YouTube notifications for “science” lectures that turn out to be no more than the opinion of the presenter. No facts need be supplied, no experiments need to be conducted, no replicable measurements need be taken, the conjecture is all that is presented, as if it is fact, “So that it can be debated”.
How on earth can you debate something that in all probability is not, and never has been, related to reality?
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Best to turn off those notifications, if you can work out how to do that.
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Or try this one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuW_o3-2sjw
There are quite a few similar videos. The experiments are quite well performed. They show (using an appropriately tuned Infrared Camera) that CO2 absorbs or scatters infrared radiation).
The experiment that I have not yet seen is one that shows that the emission surface gets hotter when CO2 in introduced into the chamber). If some one can show that I might start to take the Greenhouse Theory a bit more seriously.
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” They show (using an appropriately tuned Infrared Camera) that CO2 absorbs or scatters infrared radiation).”
Good show; but ‘how dey do dat’??
That FLIR IR camera is not one of the 7 seconds per frame bolometer cheapish ones. Try one with Mercury: Cadmium: Telurium (Me:Cd:Te) detectors; cooled to 80K. The detectors are made of a wee bit of the three most toxic metals on Earth, No one ever touches such detector material. That camera sells for greater than US$100,000!
Who is it that pays so much to even rent such an IR camera to create such You-tube propaganda? Why do they pay so much?
For the ‘how dey do dat’? I can explain in as much detail as you wish. There is no ‘slight of hand’ in that video; only a complete lack of truthfully telling ‘what’ we know\guess about what is being presented, and why such behaves as shown. Any questions?
All the best!-will-
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Well the hand does seem to disappear, a bit like magic. Where did that IR heat go?
40
“Well the hand does seem to disappear, a bit like magic. Where did that IR heat go?”
The flux from the higher radiance ‘hand’ to the lower temperature air plus CO2 molecules must be absorbed (converted to sensible heat) by all trying desperately to reach “thermodynamic\radiative” equilibrium. Not some academic thermostatic BS with no flux.
Once that equilibrium (flux in is equal flux out) for no change in sensible heat of gas mass temperature), all that is left is the low pass filtering of such atmospheric mass. Now finger wiggling is attenuated. However the static flux from high radiance (temperature) to low radiance (temperature) space is not affected in any measurable way.
There is no way to measure the origin of static (low frequency) IR flux to space. Most seems to originate from the atmosphere rather than from Earth’s surface.
All the best!-will-
62
The GHG theory is crap. CO2 absorbs at about 2000 nm. Then re-emits a photon at LOWER frequency, energy [E=hv] (not to break the laws of conservation of energy). That cannot reheat the the earth or anything else as it would require a cool object to heat a warmer surface. Impossible in this Universe.
The atmosphere cools by thermal conduction with height till the Tropopause.
10
I believe it’s called politics. Politics and reality had a big divorce 5 or 6 thousand years ago and here we are. There’s no research required, you just imagine how it should work and then do it. Even better, you’re never required to look back to see if what you did has been good or bad for your cause, your party, the other party or for anyone. All you need to do is march forward straight in front of your nose looking neither left nor right — in the directional sense — so you never see the harm you do.
The only other thing you must do is remember to take the money to the bank with a big smile on your face.
YouTube is a hotbed of such stuff. Anyone can put a video on YouTube and become an instant expert.
100
Roy,
that incident that caused the separation of politics and reality about 5 or 6 thousand years ago, was that Noah’s flood.
Are you blaming Noah for our mess.
The modern approach is to ask how many people believe something and if the answer is 97% or greater then obviously it must be true. You can then move forward in a political sense knowing you are doing the right thing.
Who needs real leadership when consensus is the smarter option.
KK
30
“that incident that caused the separation of politics and reality about 5 or 6 thousand years ago, was that Noah’s flood.”
That flood happened at the beginning of day three of the 6 day construction period by (Aerojet General & Generous Dynamics). At the time it lasted a whole 40 milliseconds, after AG punched through Earth’s mantle, letting out all that compressed methane (CH4) into the 80% O2, 20% N2 atmosphere. Guess what?
God canceled contract afore noon and payed lots to the high bidder (Lockheed & JPL) just to get an CPFF estimate on draining the swamp! 🙂
62
A lot of reporting is in the mind of thr reporter. Noah could have been right in his own little world. Say startined in the middle of Lake Eire. In Qld few yesrs ago at a place I know well a man drove to get hid morning paper when he came back maybe 5 to 10 minutes later there was water across the bitumen road at a place normally had no water and there were no depth markers. He drove in the ute eas wahed away and drowned. The water level took two days to get back to normal. What would he have said if he survived? Some might say climate change but thrre is plenty of history about similar situations throughout Australia going back two hundred years.
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KK,
Noah had it easy. All he had to do was build a boat, collect 2 of everything and ride out the storm.
The great divorce happened as soon as 2 or more humans decided to band together for some mutual benefit, probably defense or greater hunting success. From then on there was at least several of the following causing trouble constantly:
1. no 2 had the same opinion about what to do
2. no 2 would follow the same leader
3. leaders wanted to line their own granaries at the expense of others
4. leaders wanted to have absolute control
5. if you disagreed with the approved of leader they put you in jail or worse
6. if there were 2 or more would-be leaders they held a war to settle the matter
7. if they held a war they drafted those who wanted no part of the dispute to do the fighting
8. if someone was successfully farming, manufacturing, building, etc. they taxed it until it wasn’t profitable to do it
..
..
And as I said, here we are.
97% was the average percentage of things gotten wrong in any given year.
30
I can understand why people in the USA see leadership as a major issue at the moment.
Leadership has been marked by a cynicism and self interest that don’t inspire happiness in the average voter who when really at the end of their tether decide to kick back and punish “leaders” by electing Donald Trump.
I don’t watch TV at all now but during the whole process I was happy to see all of the blame being put on Trump and stupid voters rather than where it really sat.
The anointed politicians and media stars were unable to accept that they had been given notice to “get real” and come back down to Earth with the rest of us.
I’m still laughing but unfortunately Australian politicians haven’t been given the message yet.
KK
40
I’m not laughing and unfortunately the message, though it’s plainly there for everyone to see, hasn’t gotten through at all, not even to Donald Trump.
If Trump would cut off his twittering finger it would help. I console myself with the fact that he’s actually trying to do the things he promised he would do, a first in American politics in my lifetime, by the way.
I must leave Australia to you who live there. It’s enough to keep up with what’s happening here and what information I do get about Oz, though it sounds bad for the most part, isn’t sufficient to allow me to comment very much.
If I could get there or you could get here we might sit down and toss down a few beers — or your choice of something else — and commiserate with each other. But after the sun sets each day it’s not possible for one or even a few hundred straight thinkers to have had much impact on that day. Human nature is what it is and the spoils of war always go to the winner. And not many even realize there is a war.
40
I applaud your sentiment that serious comments on the politics in another country are impossible.
Here in Australia there is far too much expressed about situations in the USA by people who have never even been there.
I try to avoid too much controversy regarding the current POTUS, but it is sometimes difficult.
As for DJT’s tweeting, I refer you to a recent article in American Thinker.
Could it be that The Donald understands the enemy better than anyone else? And I’m not necessarily talking about Kim.
40
Yes, I have frequently reminded myself that Trump may (MAY in capital letters) be using Twitter to keep his agenda squarely in front of his base and confound his enemies. And I use the word enemies advisedly, they are enemies in a very real sense.
Given that Alinsky was a revolutionary who mapped out how to change things by subversion I wish the man had never been born. That kind of change brings more trouble than benefit every single time.
As far as comments from Aussies about the U.S. when the commenter doesn’t appear to have the requisite knowledge and sometimes doesn’t even have the right to say anything as in advising how we should vote, I take the high road and unless a comment was really out of line I’ve said nothing.
I do realize that what happens there sometimes depends a whole lot on what happens here, whereas the other way around, not so much.
20
Rereke, I’ve answered your question on the previous thread, I hope this will make more sense for you.
The comparison I was making is that in these modern times we have the Liberal/Conservative divide. One wants the government to look after them and shower them with money, the other wants a smaller government and the right to live their lives in peace.
Back then, it was the attraction of Empire. The once great Roman Empire had collapsed and some sought to reinstate “Empire” via the German Kings. The others just wanted the presumably righteous Pope to govern and protect the country, and to live their lives in peace.
Similar but different. It probably would be a very good fit with the socialist minds today though.
50
RW,
You cannot use logic and common sense to shift someone’s position if they never used logic and common sense to arrive at that position in the first place.
For example, try using archaeology, geology etc to convince the Pope God did not make Earth in 6 days.
Don’t waste your time mate, there’s more to life 🙂
40
Crakar24, an valuable insightful comment. The obvious hidden in plain sight. The AGW / Climatism intensely politicised narrative spouted on a daily basis by the MSM is a polemic that intersects with most peoples’ instinctive concerns for humanity, the planet, pollution, government and the wide range of ‘saving’ clearly ‘required’ by regulation. It is a narrative cultivated to suspend most critical inquisition because it is designed as a mental soufflé of pink mint blancmange, purpose built to feed the compassionate bias present in most intelligent, non-sociopathic human beings.
Acquainting them with the facts can be a jarring experience that tests all friendships, but in the end, is often well worth the effort.
30
You can however pound them howitzer-style with unrelenting logic and facts to expose how stupid they are.
I have zero time for anyone who would through their own stupidity or evil, mislead trusting people, so have no compunction exposing them. Sone one evil and someone well.meaning pedalling the same lie, both need to be exposed. In this dirty war, there will be collateral damage….
Eventually they will turn nasty on you, but i just keep going and never let up….drives them bonkers but old saying says:
” Aword to the wise is sufficient, but a fool needs a rap on the head”.
30
Not tired of all that visual?
Try some radio (gaga?)… or a podcast
Listen to the first 25 minutes of this RadioLab production and consider what kind of effect social pressure can be applied to people when they believe what they do is good for science or maybe the environment …
http://www.radiolab.org/story/180092-the-bad-show/
10
With CAGW there is a lot of issues to debate and dispute. But a clear policy issue that is beyond dispute is that the aim of reducing global emissions to near zero is not going to happen. The reason is simple. There are nearly two hundred countries in the world. Those that account for well over half the world’s population have no intention of sacrificing the interests of their peoples. The policy gap that was evident before the Paris Agreement will not be significantly closed. That means that any Government imposing costly emissions cuts will be doing so to the net detriment of the people. As the UN cannot impose policy, the gap between policy aims and actual policy will always be too great to be anything else.
The Policy Gap in Achieving the Emissions Goals
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On a previous post there was some discussion about the reporting of sea level change by the “scientists”.
I wonder if anybody knows how the figures for that “change” are determined.
Just a few points of interest;
1. Sea level change is reported in the “literature” as being 0.65 mm p.a. (ref AndyG).
2. Local tidal predictions come packaged with an accuracy of centimetres, e.g. High 1.52 metres , low. 0.23 metres.
3. Online weather forecasting by entities such as Willyweather predict tidal variations off into the future: orbital mechanics may be involved in the estimate a.
4. Locally, tidal variations in one tidal sweep from low to high can be as much as 1.5 metres to as little as 0.8 metres.
5. Lionell and el Gordo have mentioned a number of varying factors in addition to the obvious orbital mechanics.
6. Sea level rise during the last big melt that began about 22 kya and ended about 7 kya is reported to be in the order of 125 metres. Maximum rate of sea level rise during a portion of this time was 13 mm p.a.
My question relates to the implied accuracy of sea level change data.
Over 22 ky there may be some reason to suggest values could be reported to some reasonable annual average.
In the shorter term, like say over one year, there may not be a good case for reporting sea level rise to the nearest one hundredth of a millimetre.
To me, this is implying accuracy that is just not there.
My other pet hate is the mixing of sea level data from different methods of collection and blending them seamlessly to send us a message.
I will treat with skepticism any statement such as “sea level change last year was 1.38 mm p.a.”
Perhaps some sort of rolling average of maybe 10 years or 100 years might be more realistic, but then you would have nothing to report and lose that urgent message.
KK
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Keith,
To me, sea level is likely effected not only by ice melt, water on land and thermal expansion but also the relative flatness of the earth’s crust, in particular the crust under the ocean. Unless you can accurately measure the changes in the ocean floor, the whole thing is a bit of a wild guess. Flexing of the crust will change the volume of the bowl that is the oceans.
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Instead of relative flatness, maybe relative smoothness is more appropriate. 🙂
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Wait a minute here, the earth is flat isn’t it, and mankind has been lucky not to sail of the edge for millennium now. Why can’t you just believe like I do so we can progress to controlling the worlds climate, just the same as we have avoided sailing off the edge!
30
**chuckle**
Very dry.
10
A good point Rob, does the crust flex under the influence of gravitational pull in the same way that our tides are created. On the other hand there is a lot of water overhead and this would have a damping effect.
It’s a big problem.
50
Kieth,
I think the flexing is likely on a slower time frame than lunar or diurnal. More likely the realm of volcanism (mantle activity), ice ages (reflex), and continental drift sort of time scale. Sedimentation is another but probably easier to estimate. The earth is creaking an groaning all the time as well as cooling very slowly from within and shrinking ever so slightly. Then there’s also the wobble on the axis and the decadal variation of about 10cm water height slopping around the pacific ocean.
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One might even speculate that changes in the relative smoothness of the crust may have a big impact on climate. The earth is pretty smooth. In rough terms the peaks and troughs are only about +/-10km from mean sea level, in the thousands of kilometres of the earth’s diameter. Much of the surface would be +/-say 3km. Small changes in smoothness would increase or decrease the surface area of the oceans a lot. It would vary the heat transfer with the atmosphere a lot and absorb IR at a different rate. Ocean currents would change.
This may seem far fetched, but much of inland Australia was once under water and the article recently about the continent submerged around New Zealand could indicate that relative smoothness is something to consider.
40
There is isostatic rebound occurring on the edges of upper North America due to that area still recovering from the immense weight of ice from the last glacial. A good way to think about this is if you press down on half a tennis ball, its centre depresses while its edges flex outwards. As you release the pressure, the edges pull inwards. I’ve tried explaining this to the good folks in Canada, but their eyes quickly glaze over…
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Variations of the Earth’s rotation rate and cyclic processes in geodynamics
B.W.Levin et al. Geodesy and Geodynamics; Volume 8, Issue 3, May 2017, Pages 206-212
Depending on the site of measurement it looks as though there is a cyclical change of around 40mm amplitude vertical displacement.
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That’s an amazing piece of info.
I had no idea that the rate of rotation varied during the annual cycle.
This paper would also have relevance to explaining the difference between polar and equatorial diameters.
The next question is: does ocean and land movement occur in synch or is there a small difference that shows up in the sea level records for each year?
Is there a sea level oscillation with a period of one year?
KK
20
I haven’t studied the paper in detail, but I think the author contends there is a theoretical relationship between the induced geodynamics and tectonics (earthquakes).
Elsewhere, I read a theoretical calculation that assumed all the ice melted from the Poles with the ensuing rise in sea level leading to a slight slowing of the Earth’s rotation (about 0.66 sec per day).
In short, it seems the polar vertical axis shortening and equatorial bulging appears more significant.
40
KK , I think twotter and co gave you the red thumbs , the twot seems to think sea level rise is closer to 3 centermetres per year and is accelerating.
Tide gauges made in rock by convicts mid 1800s are still visible in Tasmania and NSW .
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Harry thinks we are all doomed but he won’t give up on science speak, it’s the only thing in his life that gives him a sense of accomplishment.
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Going by the number of doomsday predictions over the centuries (Nostradamus up to last Saturday when planet nibiru caused Armageddon), I’d conclude that it’s part of the human psyche.
30
Convicts you say? The real criminals in this are those who say those marks were measuring high tide, not mean tide.
Ned Kelly’s got nothing on them. That’s why he has a memorial at Glenrowan. Whereas, they’ll be long forgotten in 100 years time.
BTW, I found those Gas Producer drawings. I’ll mail a letter to you on Monday.
30
Thanks Sam , aaahh another clever climate con , make the median tide mark the high tide mark and hey presto sea level rise .
20
KK, The Sydney, Fort Denison data gives a trend of 0.65mm/year over 100+ years.
Because of the length of that record, there is very little error in the trend estimate. +/- 0.1mm/year
It varies somewhat from year to year, but apart from Australia moving northwards (at whatever rate it is), Fort Denison is a highly stable, well maintained tide gauge.
No sign of any acceleration due to mythical CO2 ocean warming 😉
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https://www.john-daly.com/
The seas ain’t rising,
or becoming acidic,
the ocean’s are cooling,
you might find this surprising,
’tis Naychur’s trick, cli-
scientists, not Mann’s.
Now read my lips:
‘Naychur-don’t-do-politicks.
80
I have told many people about the 0.65mm per year at Fort Denison. I live in Sydney bye the way. When they argue that I’m wrong I simply tell them to go down and take a look with this simple question in mind; does it look any different now than when you were growing up or first came to live in Sydney?
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“Perhaps some sort of rolling average of maybe 10 years or 100 years might be more realistic,…..”
You mean something like this?
https://s19.postimg.org/yfpugw3n7/fort_denison.png
https://s19.postimg.org/bsalaqo37/sydney_tides.png
41
Andy:
Your graphs end early, no later than 2010. In the best methods of Climatology you should add some other data to the graph to show a sudden rise in the last few years. Suitable data might be the dollar sales of Justin Bieber records or the rise in SA electricity prices.
As we know the hockey stick was made that way and look at how many gullible people believed that.
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Yes Andy, we are lucky to have the. Fort Denison records and the two graphs attached are very interesting.
On a lighter note the first one certainly shows a rolling average, no doubt there is a reason for that.
The annual max and min and presumably average, I should have checked, give it an impression of reliability that’s often missing in CAGW science.
30
Having watched the AMP and Opera House being built from my school window, the skyline has changed but not the water level.
But then over 1/2 a century it would be impossible to measure across the harbour by sight, especially with the variation of tides.
However I have wondered if all the building and excavation on the south side of the harbour, could not increase the reading of apparent SLR, by causing sinking of the ground level.
If you want a good view go on the Mosman Ferry from Circular Quay, its quite amazing and a lovely trip.
Presumably there is some rebound as the Blue Mountains continue to rise.
Then there is actual SLR, but suddenly the equation has potentially three variables, all of which will have errors in estimation.
So to work out what is happening one would have to add the effects.
The measured outcome is hardly alarming.
The engineers building the Opera House were good at their job.
The did not fear being flooded.
50
Just found this psmsl chart for Hobart since 1988
http://www.psmsl.org/data/obtaining/rlr.monthly.plots/838_high.png
See the huge acceleration in SLR due to global warming 😉
91
Looks pretty straightforward.
🙂
50
Sea level is decelerating, local seaside Councils should be notified that the danger of SLR has passed.
If they fail to accommodate this new reality then they run the risk of a class action and a burden for ratepayers.
90
So, down a bit from 1988 to 1998, up a bit, down a bit, up a bit and down a bit at the end.
Definitely a super-exponential curve on that one. :p
20
KK,
Unless they can say and show with good evidence that the UN’s/Al Gore’s flooding predictions have suddenly come true I’ll ignore anything to do with sea level rising, falling or staying constant.
In a few words, who cares? It’s nonsense. If it does happen, what can we do about it? Run to higher ground is the only thing I can think of.
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Roy:
At 3 mm. per year it will be waist deep in about 250 years. A very slow saunter to the back of the beach where the girls in brief bikinis are would suffice.
60
Exactly why I don’t pay attention. 🙂
20
Actually KK, when I last checked the Fremantle tide gauge over its entire lifetime, the average rate was 1.3mm/year, and I don’t believe the slope has changed dramatically. There has been some comment about possible land sinkage at the site, but I believe the data collected is raw data and not adjusted for any land sinkage.
30
If the oldest mean SLR marker on the planet , the Lempriere/ Ross mark, showed any of the predicted SLR, it would be the poster boy for the UN-IPCC.
QUAESTIONES GEOGRAPHICAE 34(1) • 2015 POLEMIC PAPER
THE ISLE OF THE DEAD BENCHMARK, THE SYDNEY, FORT DENISON TIDE GAUGE AND THE IPCC AR5 CHAPTER 13 SEA LEVELS REVISITED
Albert PArker
School of Engineering and Physical Science, James Cook University, Townsville, Australia
Manuscript received: July 22, 2014 Revised version: February 9, 2015
AbstrAct: The paper revisits the Isle of the Dead benchmark and the Sydney, Fort Denison tide gauge to con rm that long term, high quality tide gauges are acceleration free, consistently to the analysis of key sites suggesting the sea levels are not sharply raising following the carbon dioxide emissions. The paper also discusses the flaws of the IPCC AR5 Chapter13 Sea levels.
http://agro.icm.edu.pl/agro/element/bwmeta1.element.agro-0b25339b-340d-482c-b1c3-71cef1ddce00/c/10.pdf
The 100% silence of the 97% science about the Lempriere-Ross mark shouts loudly of it’s inconvenient truth.
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A Relative sea level is dependent on absolute (eustatic) sea level (glaciers), sediment input (climate, run-off) and subsidence (tectonism). Geology 101, a well known mechanism to geologists.
The fact that we have no acceleration or deceleration suggests that the sea level is stable. This is expected as we are in a sea level highstand before we go into another cycle. In order words, any rapid increase in sea level is very unlikely as we have already flooded most of the shelf areas which will continue to absorb any potential sea level increases. We had perhaps 2-5m sea level highs just recently, this is clearly demonstrated by looking the west Australian coast. Again this would suggest that we have passed through the apex and we are on the way down.
Ask yourself why Venice is not underwater, despite steady subsidence caused mainly by sinking Woden piles? If sea level was increasing we would have had this city under water by now, yet it is still at sea level. The answer: sea level is not increasing.
60
Little correction: absolute sea level depends on tectonism, sediment input and subsidence. A concept presented by Exxon in 1977 from memory as part a new branch of geology called sequence stratigraphy, something that I have been using for 25 years now in my career
30
Just returned from Venice and yes, they are claiming that SLR is impacting the place. But they are ignoring the fact that Venice was sinking because of the excessive water pumping from the aquifers. Only when they stopped this pumping did the sinkage rate decrease.
20
They gotta try.
Who knows, they may have been able to get some sort of hardship grant from Christina Figueres.
10
Sea level also changes in response to variability in the large oceanic currents: this circulation forms large oceanic gyres such as the Sargasso Sea). Sea level in the centre of the gyres can be a metre or more above the margins. The spatial and vertical extent (and hence superelevation) of the gyres is controlled by current variability, which are, in turn, controlled by the relevant global wind patterns. I’m certainly no expert on this though, but it seems to be mentioned rarely.
Basically, sea level is notoriously difficult to explain as a single number: as others have mentioned, there are so many variables involved (isostatic rebound, removal of groundwater causing ground compaction and subsidence, tectonic uplift, general erosion/deposition and so on), which act at different scales.
Then you have to add in the increased population of coastal areas and the impact on local geomorphology (if people live next to a beach, they don’t want it to change; if they live next to a cliff, they don’t want it to fall down).
10
We in the glorious state of Victoriastan have been inflicted once again with the useless imposition of daylight savings for the next 6 months, besides my obvious objection to it I’m interested to get opinions of the good people here in this last island of sanity amidst a sea of confused reactionaries.
60
Having worked on a dairy farm when I was younger I know it’s a pain for farmers but personally I like it but wish they hadn’t extended it as much as they did .
50
Daylight saving – the **ultimate political delusion. Lets them think they do control time
** Or it was till global warming came along
80
Another pointless government intervention.
40
Few governments can resist a temptation to emulate Germany. Hawaii and Arizona (except for Navajo lands) don’t move the clock.
60
Question for Annie – didn’t UK go to “double summer time” in WW2?
Probably shouldn’t give them ideas
20
Yes, and please don’t give them ideas!
10
We can finally get rid of it on the first Sunday in November. But it will be back on the second Sunday in March. It’s the means by which they can say to us, “Hey look, see what we’ve done for you. See what magnificent steps we’ve taken to solve a nonexistent problem.”
And we bought it a long time ago already.
60
Often we change to summer time, and there is still snow on the ground here in northern NY!
20
Often we change to summer time, and there is still snow on the ground here in northern NY!
20
About Daylight Savings Time: I have a router that goes out to the internet at an interval I can select and sets it’s internal wall time clock so timestamps on all of its gazillion log entries are correct. I get to specify the time zone as GMT (actually UTC) plus or minus so many hours so the UTC time it gets back can be adjusted to local time. Now it has a capability to adjust the time plus or minus an hour when standard time and daylight time changes occur. The time server sends the whole year, month, day and time to some accuracy better than I need or remember anymore so it could automatically determine when the change needs to take place. All it would need is a perpetual calendar which is so simple even my thermostat can do it and then have the statutory dates built in, also in the thermostat. But instead I have to manually adjust the dates for the following year after the change back to standard time.
How’s that for automation for you? The darn thing knows the exact full date and time again within seconds of booting up but it can’t do the rest of the job. And if it has to be usable internationally, how hard is it to provide the means to set the change dates once and be done with it so the thing doesn’t require the extra user housekeeping.
After the change to standard time I’ll have to remember to go look up the correct dates for 2018 (not hard) and manually set them as I did for this year before the thing would work correctly.
Go figure.
10
Yonniestone:
It was extended at the request of Tasmania; a case of the tail wagging the dog. All the portions of Australia closest to the Equator ignore the nonsense, so with Australia heading towards the Equator at 3 mm a year the whole thing will be laughed off in about 200,000 years.
Support in SA is mixed. There have been suggestions that the West of the State should not be on daylight saving as they see little benefit in getting up in the dark in summer also.
60
Thanks for the replies, my main gripe with this (for many years) is the idea was pushed by only a handful of people who had a strong opinion on the way others should use their hours in Summertime, unfortunately one of these was Benjamin Franklin who with the founding fathers are people I admire but reminds us that its impossible to agree with everything people think (even like minds) which is a good thing as this creates debate and true progress.
As always its the government of the time that pushes then convinces the people that something impractical can make sense (read CAGW) and so we get stuck with it, interestingly if you ask people if they support DS and why they often give contradicting answers ‘Yes I like the extra evening hour but no I don’t know why its important or who enforces it’ or ‘No I don’t like it but we can’t do anything about it’ as the sun naturally rises increasingly earlier after the winter equinox wouldn’t it be better to let people decide how they want to utilise their personal hours?, when living in Queensland for a while we found the early morning light before work was a good time to walk or get things done around the home due to how our body clocks adjusted.
70
Yonnie:
I have just signed an on-line petition Rainforest Rescue (info@rainforest-rescue.org) to free the Cameroonian forest defender Nasako Besingi who was arrested last week by police. He has campaigned for years against the destruction of the rain forests to make palm oil farms.
This idea of palm oil has always struck me as a prime example of Green “thinking”. Destroy tropical forests (usually by burning hence CO2 emissions) and plant oil palms. Harvest the fruit, process, refine and transport it (hence more CO2 emissions) then burn it (hence more CO2 emissions) and claim that you are reducing CO2 emissions. As my old teacher would have put it, “they haven’t the brains of a raspberry seed”.
90
The palm oil cause has been used by both sides to leverage for funds/sympathy, TBH its become very confusing as I abhor unnecessary cruelty to animals but support well planned enterprises, any reliable links would be appreciated.
40
No daylight saving in WA. Its been tried a few times and always proves problematic in a hot state. It’s interesting to look at the history of daylight saving and why it was initially generated, with I believe none of the original reasons applicable to modern societies.
60
It makes little sense close to the Equator, where the length of day varies less. The name Equator supposedly comes from an equal length of day and night.
60
What really irritates me is the stupid description ‘daylight saving’. Do our all-powerful (?!) politicians think they can actually change the number of hours the sun is up at any given time of the year? 😉
At least just call it ‘summertime’ and standard time.
40
I tend to think of it as ‘daylight stealing’ because it takes away a cooler hour before people have to go to work or school.
20
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queensland_daylight_saving_referendum,_1992
During the initial one-year trial in 1989/90, a Daylight Saving Task Force was appointed to monitor and report community opinions, as well as provide recommendations to the Queensland Government.[1] The task force made five recommendations, of which only two were implemented, these being: the extension of the daylight saving trial for a further two years (1990/91 – 1991/92); and that a statewide referendum be held after the extended daylight saving trial period.[1] The task force had noted that the Brisbane and Moreton regions (south-east Queensland) were “clearly in favour of daylight saving”, which led them to the following further recommendation: “that daylight saving be introduced for that part of the State east of 151°East longitude” i.e. a dual time zone arrangement for Queensland.[1]
Yes 744,686 45.50%
No 892,119 54.50%
20
Well I look forward to summer time every year and hate it when the clocks go back. To me being able to sit outside the pub on a beautiful summers evening without it being dark is worth it’s weight in gold. If Queensland had summer time I might consider moving up there as the climate up there suites me much better.
30
I dream for the day when CAGW is finally declared a ghastly beat up — just like 1st January 2000 when the Y2K beat up came to a sudden end. Will it ever happen? Are there some chinks of light at the end of the tunnel?
80
Michael:
Yes. Trump in the USA. For all the opposition to him he will cause such a change that both major parties will have to dump Greenery or disappear. The UK is headed for Brexit and will then finish dumping the lunacy current. I know it looks unlikely but England is quite decentralised and no green party can win power and maintain EU policy. Even in Germany there are calls for the Energiewende to be wound up from within government circles. And they are building coal fired power plants (as are the Poles, Italians, Greeks, Hungarians
And of course try to find any believers in China, Russia, Sth. Korea, Indonesia, Vietnam, India etc.
120
Michael the best thing that could happen is for Trump to bring into play the red and blue team concept, in public view, so that the debate can begin.
The MSM would be forced to cover the goings on and the red team are certain of victory, we have nature on our side.
Coincidently the climate is changing in our favour, in that conditions are set to cool similar to the 1950s and 60s, which will bring about a scientific paradigm shift.
50
If it’s conducted well it could be the turning point of the whole scam. I’m not that optimistic however.
I believe some (or all) of the promoters of the scare who use corrupt methods or corrupt data purposefully to cause fear in the public, or sway the government through deception, should be hauled before a court and have their shoddy work displayed and punishments appointed. That would demonstrate the utter corruption within the science, and the politicising of the science. Everybody would be scrambling to distance themselves from the guilty.
40
The promoters of the scare are against the idea of a red and blue team, saying that peer review already exists and the science is settled.
They also say that the teams shouldn’t be of equivalent size because 97% of scientists believe in AGW.
Hmmm …. in that case I nominate Judith Curry for the red team.
30
Meanwhile in SA they are borrowing cups of coal fired electricity from the other failed communist state of Victoriastan so they can cook their crumpets for breakfast .
90
The news from Socialist poster country Venezuela is terrible. Only one day of petrol left. Wages of 30c a day, if you have a job. One third of the country starving.
“With the Venezuelan Bolivar losing over 99.9 percent of its worth since 2010 amid skyrocketing inflation, the country’s minimum wage has now fallen to approximately $3.43 a month, equivalent to just over 30 cents a day.”
The EU and the US are considering sanctions. This is one of the richest energy countries in the world! Like Australia.
It shows what socialism as in Victoria and South Australia can do. Keep the coal in the ground. Ban gas exploration. Ban fishing, cattle, dog racing. Use all the very limited natural gas as base load to replace plentiful coal and import diesel engines, solar panels and windmills and diesel itself, now that they have shut down refining. Triple the price of coal to shut Hazelwood, our coal. Now we get nothing. Job done.
Then give a day’s holiday for a football match, on a different day. Victoriastan? This has to stop. Daylight saving is the least of our problems, if it is a problem. Vandalising down statues commemorating 18th century heroes, renaming places, pushing extreme socialist agendas and attacking our British, Christian heritage seems to be the job of our Federal and State government now and every local council. Reeducate our children in extreme socialism. Can we please have our country back? Plus our coal power. And our gas. And our manufacturing, agriculture, mining, timber, even our shipping. Everything is being shut down or locked up. Venezuela, here we come.
Over 3 million coal seam gas wells and not a single case of contamination, but now One Nation wants to ban CSG? When will this madness end? In case no one had noticed, the elected Federal one seat government cannot pass legislation and our socialist Prime Minister, representing only his little band of friends, could not be happier. Is there a sane government or council in the country?
220
You would think anyone with a banner of “Make Australia Great again” would win handsomely, but as in the US they would be up against the media, the bureaucrats, the socialist and communist Greens and a generation of miseducation on Climate Change, whatever that is. Hardly anyone knows what Carbon Dioxide is. I would not be surprised if many people think it is an industrial pollutant from combustion. It is. Like water.
A few advertisements on how much the world needs carbon dioxide, the source of life, the partner to water to make all life in photosynthesis, would change minds. The war on carbon dioxide has to stop. We are carbon life forms. Every tree, every plant, every bit of food is made from two things CO2 and H20. In South Australia they have banned CO2. Now they are importing diesels and batteries. Clearly science is not taught in South Australia.
170
I’m waiting for the announcement that Tesla has a done a deal with the SA Labor Government and all ministerial cars will be Tesla EV.
40
Would there be room for the ministerial briefcase?
A trailer wouldn’t look official enough so probably need a second ev
30
I was going to post “Mrs Minister’s car” but quickly realised that we will all soon be people of no fixed gender.
20
Will the include a tilt tray tow truck in each ministerial entourage for when the batteries run flat, and they power has gone out due to lack of wind and sunshine!
20
TdeF
A big thank you for both your comments.
We constantly need that sort of reminder that NOW is the moment.
If we let today go without doing something to bring about change then we will certainly end up like Venezuela or something very disappointing for Australians.
We had something great and it is now that We must urgently bring Australia back from the tipping point.
Most people need leadership and Australia needs leadership, but the people have chosen very dubious leaders in the recent past.
How do you inform a mindset that believes that it has the perfect leadership?
KK
70
Don’t even think of Make Venezuela Great Again. Hugo Chavez did it, and you would meet him soon.
20
This would never have happened without Rudd/Gillard/Rudd.
And why did that happen?
In a word:
John Howard.
John Howard gave an undertaking to hand over the leadership of the Parliamentary Liberal Party by 2006; to step down as Prime Minister and hand over to the next leader. But he didn’t. He wouldn’t. He couldn’t. I suspect his missus loved the limelight too much. Was Janet the jinx on the future of Australia?
Yes. And John Howard was as weak as water.
Peter Costello was to move into the top job and lead the Liberals into the 2007 election.
Howard wouldn’t resign. Costello wouldn’t challenge the “great man”.
Great my foot!
John Howard, or his missus, are directly and personally responsible for the appalling position the nation is in.
$500 billion in debt and growing. Thanks John.
$35 billion in annual deficit. Thanks John.
What did you expect? Did you think that Labor would be a responsible economic manager?
You lost your seat. That’s how ignorant you were to what the Australian voters were thinking.
Hubris, thy name is John Howard.
The Liberal Party as currently structured is an incompetent pack of fools. It lacks courage. It lacks principle. It lacks pragmatic policy.
What Australia needs is a political party that sees the world as it is. And adopts policies accordingly.
30
We could flog off SA and Victoriastan to the Chinese for a few magic beans !
20
Forgot to address the one nation no frack issue , they lost me a while ago I’m afraid which leaves Bernardi , I suppose if enough of us send him our votes it might help but one nation have been disappointing and have sold us out .
80
Same here Robert.
First One Nation let us down over the whipper snipper legislation. Now they are against fracking.
60
Most people do not know that as a manager of a coal mine, Malcolm Roberts was a failure.
His father was an outstanding mine manager, mines inspector and mining executive.
Unfortunately, son was not like father!
30
Blue collar Labor in fact. O.N is all over the place. Malcolm was an embarrassment with that press conference with Tony Heller,who wished he could find a place to hide. Sad.
30
“Please explain?”
51
Have a Bo Peep at Gordonstone’s safety and production performance during his reign.
20
Probably all they are worth! No gas drilling in Victoria, no coal mining in SA, not much electricity, poor water infrastructure, poor roads, and the list goes on!
10
Well said Tdef but even if we managed to find our “Trump” that connected with the majority of Australians they would be too frightened to vote for them as we haven’t had our severe financial collapse yet as America did meaning people still have a lot to lose here, the major trap set by the Marxist politic was to get the middle class into a debt cycle so the only big asset ‘the house’ is left to battle for is only worth what the market dictates and that market can be influenced by many political decisions.
Sadly when people have nothing left to fight for except freedom will they then be able to voice their true concerns and finally act upon them.
100
I am convinced that nothing will change until the lights go out. And then politicians, beware the backlash. It will be something to behold.
40
TdeF, no, it seems.
Our local council will support ‘community’ houses run by the local ‘progress’ (regress) group but not do anything to keep down the fire prone scrub along the roadsides or clear the litter our beloved ‘tourists’ from Melbourne think is ok to toss out along the roadsides. This is an area that was badly affected by the 2009 Black Saturday firestorm…do they ever learn?
The difference in the tidiness and fire preparation by Mansfield Shire and Murrindindi Shire is startling, the former being obviously better.
It is sad too because there are some very good people in the shire offices; helpful and efficient staff, but overall the most important thing, fire safety, is not being attended to.
40
Frosts, Orchards and the Greenhouse Effect
The township of Bacchus Marsh, near Melbourne has orchards on locally low lying ground (river flats). Scattered among the fruit trees are propellers on poles about 40ft above the ground.
I have not seen the propellors in action but I believe that they are there to prevent frosts from damaging the fruit.
Frosts are associated with calm clear nights. An atmospheric inversion is formed close to the ground which can be up to 10C over the lowest few hundred feet of the atmosphere. In other words the ground is 10C colder than the air above.
https://bmtc.moodle.com.au/mod/book/view.php?id=3764&chapterid=2232
Cloud cover will generally prevent the radiation inversion from forming. This effect is often used as an analogy for the greenhouse gas effect. However it is inappropriate because a cloud is not gas. A cloud is more like a black body radiator. A cloud really can act as a radiative blanket above the ground. Greenhouse gases do not.
On a clear night however radiation can escape from the surface via the atmospheric window.
https://www.e-education.psu.edu/earth103/sites/www.e-education.psu.edu.earth103/files/module03/fig10out.png
Radiation pours out through the atmospheric window and the ground cools. The layer of air near the surface is cooled by conduction (which is the opposite of what generally occurs).
The analogy that greenhouse gases act like a radiative blanket starts to look very weak. Our radiative space blanket has a very big hole in it! I would not like to rely on a space blanket with a very big hole in it to keep me warm. Would it even work a little bit?
The reason for the propellers is to create a wind and stir up the air. On a frosty morning there is much warmer air only a few hundred feet (or maybe less) above the surface. Stirring the air brings this warmer air into contact with the ground.
62
PeterC:
Balgowie Estate just west of Bendigo has the same propellers on poles in the vineyard. As they also have a PV solar installation they have to explain to visitors that the propellors aren’t wind turbines. Most city dwellers don’t realise how big, and useless, wind turbines are. (And they certainly don’t realise how little electricity one generates (outside of the glossy PR brochures).
110
Here is an advertisement for Australian frost fans showing them in action.
https://youtu.be/Dtndog3Jjug
61
You can also achieve the same effect with helicopters although at hugely greater expense than fans. I believe this is in NZ.
https://youtu.be/4o2JRjarpuc
41
Was used around wineries in the northeast of Victoriastan but not sure if they still use helicopters .
40
Yes, helicopters are used in the Hawkes Bay, and Waiarapa areas of the North Island of New Zealand. In the Otago Region of the South Island, they are not used very much, because the terrain is quite mountainous, and so there are lots of unpredictable cross winds.
Hot air balloons have also been tried on the basis that the radiant heat from the burner will prevent the formation of dew, and they are somewhat quieter than choppers, and can be tethered to the ground. I don’t know how successful that idea was. Had it been really successful, everybody would be doing it. And since they ain’t, it probably wasn’t.
60
I’ll just put this out there for all the experts that visit Jo’s site to discuss.
Electric vehicles at charging stations.
How do we know that the amount of energy we paid for is recovered in distance traveled ?
How to we measure what we paid for ?
I know today, if I buy 50 liters of gasoline, it will cost me $60 and my car will travel pretty close to 714 kilometers. The car is 20 years old now and the fuel consumption is almost exactly the same as it was when new.
When my smart phone was new, a full charge lasted 4 to 5 days. It is getting old now, about 18 months, I let the phone charge all night yet it only runs for about 36 hours now.
I see some more problems on the horizon with EV’s.
100
How do we measure what we paid for ?
Why is it we only see typos after we hit the “Post Comment” button ?
50
It’s what is known as a “feechur” of auto-correct. It pays to reread what you wrote before pissing the convent button.
110
A very common problem.
30
Chris I think they’ll do the same thing as the subsidised move to LPG for cars , then raise the price when enough are using them .
These cars might work for cities or short travel but in a country like ours , next to useless out of the cities .
70
No doubt about it, the fuel tax is over half the price of petrol and diesel, no government would give that away, so there will be a recharge surcharge/levy/tax.
There was a post about EV inefficiency yesterday, I will post it here.
61
Another Ian
September 30, 2017 at 9:13 pm · Reply
And
”
Apple and Google, who are making points with the public and the media by declaring themselves to be 96% and 100% renewables-powered even though Apple still obtains well over half of its electricity from non-renewable sources and Google probably over 80%.
Apple, Google, and how not to go 100% renewable”
Link at
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/2017/09/how-not-to-go-1.html#comments
61
Oops, wrong one above;
Another Ian
September 30, 2017 at 8:52 pm · Reply
As the thread has strayed to things electrical and batteries
“Why Is It So Hard To Get Even Smart People To Think Clearly on Electric Vehicle Efficiency?”
http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2017/09/why-is-it-so-hard-to-get-even-smart-people-to-think-clearly-on-electric-vehicle-efficiency.html
51
Because socialists have dumbed down education so they can feel superior…
Under Socialism, everyone is equal, no one is smarter, so they like it when everyone is equally dumb…
10
You would have to put a meter on the car (odometer) and inspect it periodically to charge a mileage based fee.
I think Oregon is already charging electic cars based on miles travelled.
You could not do it by electic metering, you would bypass the meter, and you cannot dye untaxed electricity pink!
20
Don’t know if this will help, but using the figure of energy derived from petrol as stated on WUWT, I calculated that 8.6 litres of petrol (about 4 large coke bottles) holds the same energy as a Tesla car’s entire battery pack.
40
Here is a calculator to convert between kWh and gasoline equivalent. Unfortunately it uses US gallons and not litres. One US gallon = 3.785 litres.
https://www.convertunits.com/from/kWh/to/gallon+%5BU.S.%5D+of+automotive+gasoline
51
Think I calculated the Tesla battery energy at 80% of maximum, due to some info advising that you can’t retrieve its full capacity without drastically shortening the battery lifetime.
50
So using that analogy, and we are buying energy, do you think you will be able to charge a Tesla battery for $10.32 ?
Taking a ball park figure of $1.20 / liter for gasoline here in Australia. 8.6 liters X $1.20.
I think not.
40
To charge a 86 kW battery, we need to input around 103 kW, at 25c/kW. (WA electrical charges, not those of the rest of Aust.) This works out to around $26 per charge.
So definitely cheaper to run a ICE than an EV.
30
“Here is why electric motor efficiency is almost irrelevant to getting rid of fossil fuels
Very efficient electric motors are necessary to moving to a non-fossil fuel economy, but not because of small increments in efficiency. The reason is that large parts of our energy-using technology, mostly vehicles, run on a liquid fuel directly and this distribution for the fuel is already in place. To replace this liquid fuel distribution system with something else is really expensive. But there does exist one other energy distribution system that has already been built out — for electricity. So having efficient electric motors allows use of non-gasoline energy sources if those sources can be turned into electricity. For example, there are real advantages to running vehicles on CNG, but there is no distribution system for that and so its use has been limited to large fleets (like city busses) where they can build their own fueling station. But electric cars can use electricity from natural gas, as well as solar and wind of course that have no other distribution method other than by electricity.
The problem with all this is that most of the barriers to using electricity in more applications are not related to motor efficiency. For vehicles, the problem is in energy storage density. Many different approaches to powering automobiles were tried in the early days, including electric and steam powered cars. The main reason, I think, that gasoline won out was due to energy storage density. 15 gallons of gasoline weighs 90 pounds and takes up 2 cubic feet. This will carry a 40 mpg car 600 miles. The Tesla Model S 85kwh battery pack weighs 1200 pounds and will carry the car 265 miles (from this article the cells themselves occupy about 4 cubic feet if packed perfectly but in this video the whole pack looks much larger). We can see that even with what Musk claims is twice the energy density of other batteries, the Tesla gets 0.22 miles per pound of fuel/battery while the regular car can get 6.7. More than an order of magnitude, that is simply an enormous difference, and explains the continued existence of internal combustion engines much better than electric motor inefficiencies.
51
The real advance in Hybrids is continuously ignored, that every electric motor is also an electric generator. Regenerative braking, even used in Formula 1 now.
Electric motors can absorb energy as fast as they can generate it. By itself, this single advance would change cities forever. At under 60km/hr, it is mainly stop/start driving and most energy is recoverable. Country cruising economy in town driving.
To read the Green articles, the huge advance is totally electric cars like Tesla, as if that lowers CO2. Apart from regenerative braking, it generates more CO2 than a petrol engine, even if that mattered. As for Green diesel, the inner city pollution has been exposed at last. It was all deceit. Cities are banning or taxing diesel.
As for power, the dual power sources make La Ferrari incredible, 950HP. You do not have to worry about being stuck in your Tesla on the side of the road a hundred miles from a power point.
Plus as Dennis points out, the petrol energy density is so much higher, so you are paying to push 1200lb, more than half a tonne of batteries around. This is a waste of energy. Finally, hybrids are self charging. You can charge as you drive. You are never stuck.
So the insanity is that the Greens now promote fully electric cars as reliable as their windmills. The only thing guaranteed is total failure. Then if you get annoyed waiting at the petrol pump, the same energy for a Tesla S takes 9.5 hours. Green madness.
101
That’s on 240 volts at home. Charging time at a public charging station is 75 minutes at 120kw. You had better like drinking a lot of coffee.
61
Surely continual fast charging like this must severely impact the battery lifetime?
60
Spending 75 mins ( instead of refuelling in 2 mins ) to charge a car to solve a problem that doesnt exist, is the epitome of stupid….
30
Fast charging reduces battery life by a half or more, as I understand it?
10
I learned very recently that the Tesla car remains permanently connected to Tesla Inc. computer for “software upgrades.” It seems unlikely that everyone will have a private Tesla or equivalent. The grid burden, the generating burden has already been shown to be an impractical colossus.
The ideological ‘Green’ goal has always been to abolish private car ownership, and to replace this with the sanctioned ‘community pool’.
The almost infinite number of points of record and control are a Leftists ‘regulatory’ wet dream.
50
I can just see how successful a ‘car pool’ would be in the rural areas…not!
30
How about 20 hay bales and drive it across a deep creek….water and electricity dont mix….
30
And the mighty Tesla is lugging 26% of its mass as ‘dead’ weight, while the average family sedan lugs 2% briefly, when the tank is full.
So, this discrepancy could be viewed as a further comparative 13 fold decline in efficient energy utilisation.
1 litre petrol = 1.637 lbs | ‘Average’ family sedan = 4000 lbs
A full tank of 50L = 81.9 lbs
(2% the weight of the vehicle)
Model S Tesla curb weight = 4,647.3 lbs | Battery weight = 1200 lbs
(26% the weight of the vehicle)
40
Will EVs pay more in registration fees to compensate for the additional damage they will do to roads resulting from their relatively large bearing pressures, due to WEIGHT?
30
Renewables need grid lines of their own,
To leave the steady working grid alone.
To set the timers right, it must be fun,
When heating water from the wind and sun.
Coal-powered must step in on cloudy days,
When panels can’t recharge from solar rays.
Cheap H.E.L.E. power meets the grid’s demand,
To keep the S.A. farmers on the land.
100
What Happened When Resolute Stood Tall Against Greenpeace
60
Wouldn’t it be great if trade unionists stood up and protested about the attacks on national prosperity and jobs that the politicians are indulging themselves with?
It wont happen, the union movement executives are now too busy managing union owned businesses and doing union work as MPs in the Union Labor Party, once associates but since the 1990s wholly owned.
51
Trade unions here have manoeuvred themselves into an elite position within a largely blue collar workforce with the rest of the population footing the bill for the privilege of squandering public monies on projects that could be done cheaper and faster by companies that would grow creating a real economic flown on for the public vs selective elitism.
I’ll shamefully admit now that years ago I was (for a very short time) a paid up member of the AWU, despite my aversion to unions I was too quick to anger following an ongoing problem with a long time employer and decided to fight fire with fire as he was (forcibly) associated with the CMFEU and was told they were mortal enemies of sorts.
Not long after joining did I see the self serving ineptness of the local representative who was employed to fearlessly fight for my rights, they were so useless I soon turned to anger once again venting my displeasure at their flaccid stand over performance which was answered with even more useless waffle, at one stage I suggested going to a circus set up nearby and swapping positions with a retarded monkey might better help my lot but even brilliant insults fell on muted ears.
Its all politics (always was) with trade unions and for the contractor or individual that thrives in free enterprise they’re next to useless, shortly after cancelling membership I was emailed a survey of why I left, I replied emails the size of War & Peace were impractical to send so just know my experience with Marxism was enough to vow fighting it until my last breath, lesson learnt.
80
A young relative of mine was responsible for 70 skilled and semi-skilled people working on various construction projects and sites around Sydney, mostly state government projects. The primary contractor was a well known multinational that had been a home grown business. Of course all workers needed union membership to work on every project site.
The employer often failed to pay them the agreed site allowance that was part of the workplace agreement so the foreman went to talk to the union representative who said nothing could be done about it. He was reminded that union members were being short changed but it made no difference, the final rejection was advice that until the next workplace agreement negotiation takes place the union and the employer have agreed to industrial peace.
In other words, as the Trade Union Royal Commission into governance and corruption discovered many times, there is corruption and it is widespread, industrial peace comes at a price and union members are second class.
81
My initial employer gripe wasn’t even about money, all I wanted was a printed pay slip every week like we had for years before as the lapse of this led to further safety issues and others as I predicted, combined with a personality clash and a few underhanded acts it was destined to happen I guess, I’m sure if you talked to the ex-boss they’d have a few examples of myself being a pain etc.. and rightly so but it was never about bitching for me as the job was high risk and wanted everyone to go home in one piece.
30
Dennis
“Conjur up no more spirits than you can conjur down”
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2017/09/30/puerto-rico-teamsters-union-frente-amplio-refuse-to-deliver-supplies-use-hurricane-maria-as-contract-leverage/
But you’re supposed to believe that Trump is to blame
30
Thanks Ian, the story reminded me about the Australian Waterside Workers Union members who have indulged in sabotage on the docks during periods when Australia has been at war.
Stealing equipment, vandalising supplies, etc.
Noting too that migrants from GB were the founders of the Australian union movement, red flag waving haters of the monarchy who remain behind the republican movement here.
40
Mostly Irish and Scottish.
20
resolute greenpeace rico
30
Plug
resolute greenpeace ricointo google and it’s “now for something completely different”.30
Hmm, Interesting. Yet more evidence that you cannot trust anything you read on the web.
Nullus in verba
Take nobody’s word for it.
50
Even when I was in primary school I learned that the climate was always changing. E.g. There were ice ages and cool periods such as the Little Ice Age and warm periods such as the Medieval Climate Optimum (they changed the name to remove any suggestion that “warm” means “optimum”).
Climate changes were understood to be mainly dependent upon Milankovitch Cycles and solar output.
How did we get to the point of belief that climate is static and unchanging?
92
Disregarding the poor energy density of batteries in electric vehicles, they will ultimately be mainly recharged from fossil fuels because “renewables” are not up to the task.
Consider the chain of energy conversion for this to happen.
Burn coal then convert to electricity then transmission losses in power grid then further energy lost (about 20% I think) charging the battery.
With gasoline engines you turn fossil fuel DIRECTLY into motive power.
Fossil fuel cars are a no brainer. EV’s are just virtue signalling social statements and toys for rich people.
101
Don’t forget the $100 million of taxpayer’s (borrowed) monies the actor Prime Minister recently gifted the a vehicle leasing company to promote Tesla EV to fleet operators.
The Energy Crisis?
What energy crisis?
81
Who in their right mind would ever buy an older second-hand Tesla, with the possibility of having to outlay another 8-10k for a replacement battery pack?
90
Or a hybrid, I checked recently and Toyota guarantee the battery pack for 8 years and the vehicle has to be returned to the factory (that is closing soon) for replacement.
81
I went for a long 11 hour drive from the Sunshine Coast to Mackay last weekend. I was thinking on the way; if I owned a Tesla and they had those battery swapping stations along the way, what you would do is when your vehicle gets close to 8 years of age, you would visit the battery swap until you got a new battery. And you’d do it again when that battery was nearing the end of its life. You would never need to pay to replace that expensive battery, but you’d have to guard the one you’ve got with your life.
40
Its a long story and has a lot to do with ignorance and herd mentality.
My forecast for a cool wet spring in south-east Australia is still on track, due to a wayward high pressure belt.
Watching climate change is truly fascinating.
70
All morning SA have been relying on the extension cord from Vic , wind power is producing bugger all so battery or no battery the state relays on the interconnectors.
40
Yes but when Musk’s battery is operating that one hour of salvation will be so worth it as the virtue signal will be seen from space……if its not homogenised that is….
90
ICYMI:
All blue-eyed people have a single ancestor in common.
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/all-people-blue-eyes-have-common-ancestor-2017-9?r=US&IR=T
20
Was the culprit Frank Sinatra?
61
Based on a sample of three blue eyed people, all blue eyed people must have a common ancestor. We even know his name: Adam.
20
So what the researchers are saying, is that no two (or more) people could possibly have had that same mutation by chance, at any time in the whole history of human development?
What research did they use to prove that particular negative?
30
Lead acid batteries are still the cheapest form of battery storage and almost completely recyclable. Of course, they don’t have the energy density of lithium batteries but this doesn’t matter for Big Batteries where space and weight are not an issue.
So why not use lead batteries or even iron nickel batteries for the Big Battery, if one has to have one at all?
51
I read about a very early 1900s New York USA electric taxi cab that had been stored in a garage until recent times when an enthusiast acquired it and took it to his collection storage facility. The lead acid batteries were refilled with distilled water and put on a battery charger and proved to be serviceable.
51
Well, we can’t be having of that.
Where would the repeat business come from, if a battery assemblies didn’t require a full and total replacement at regular intervals?
70
Fill them with “the brown acid” and you can travel anywhere man………
40
Your comment about lead acid batteries prompted me to re-visit the King Island KIREIP project, because I had read that their expensive advanced battery system had failed as was being replaced. Curiously, I couldn’t obtain any info as to what batteries are now being used. Does anybody know?
30
Lead acid, LoL.
http://www.kingislandrenewableenergy.com.au/project-information/energy-storage-system
50
If lead acid batteries were any good, Elon would be building the worlds biggest lead acid battery.
BECAUSE – Elon knows best, just ask Jay Weatherdill.
50
Elon isn’t in this business to create a useful product…
40
I believe that the SA battery will use Samsung SDI cells instead of the Panasonic cells used in the cars and other fixed battery installations.
20
Correct.
https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Companies/Tesla-taps-Samsung-cells-for-huge-Aussie-energy-storage-facility?n_cid=NARAN1507
10
Thanks David. Conventional lead acid or high-cost sub-style batteries?
Couldn’t find anything about why the VRB batteries failed, though I see VRB batteries are still being heavily promoted as an alternative to Li ion.
20
I’m not sure but I’m certain if they had a choice between spending less money or more they’d choose to spend more on an inferior product.
30
28 Sept: Scientific American: Puerto Ricans Could Be Newest U.S. Climate Refugees
Hurricane Maria will trigger profound demographic changes for Puerto Rico
By Daniel Cusick, Adam Aton, ClimateWire (E&E News)
The displaced islanders, thousands of whom were awaiting flights yesterday from San Juan’s Luis Muñoz Marín airport, might be among the nation’s newest “climate refugees,” a demographic that includes former residents of southernmost Louisiana and the shrinking islands of Alaska’s Bering Strait.
“It could potentially be a very large migration to the continental United States,” said Maria Cristina Garcia, a Cornell University historian, immigration expert, and author on large-scale population shifts, which includes a forthcoming book on climate refugees.
“Whether that migration will be permanent or temporary is still anyone’s guess,” Garcia added. “Much depends on the relief package that Congress negotiates.”…
Of course, Puerto Rico—unlike “climate refugee” communities such as Isle de Jean Charles, La., or Shishmaref, Alaska—is not literally being swallowed by the sea. Nor will it be permanently denuded, since many of its roughly 3.4 million residents will stay and rebuild, regardless of government support…
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/puerto-ricans-could-be-newest-u-s-climate-refugees/
20
I’ve been reading F.A. Hayek’s The Constitution of Liberty (ISBN 978-0-415-40424-2) over the past several weeks … still a bit to go. Although first published in 1960, the book is still as relevant today as it was back when I still needed others to change my pants.
Relevant food for thought is on every page. e.g. On page 33 one can read about the advancement of knowledge:
vis BoM, IPCC, GISS, …
70
Also, sometime referred to as ‘policy-based evidence’.
20
back in May:
Puerto Rico has officially gone bankrupt. In a way, that’s good news
Washington Post Editorial – 7 May 2017
GOOD NEWS! Puerto Rico has officially gone bankrupt. Now, we don’t mean that literally. There is no cause for celebration in the financial disaster that has befallen the Caribbean home of 3.7 million U.S. citizens. Nor, in a legal sense, is the debt-workout process that’s about to unfold the precise equivalent of what a corporation would go through under Chapter 11 of the bankruptcy code, or a municipality under Chapter 9.
Rather, Puerto Rico’s government has ended fruitless debt talks with its bondholders and invoked a bankruptcy equivalent that Congress enacted in a 2016 law crafted for the specific purpose of stemming a financial death spiral on the island. This sets the stage for an impartial federal judge to referee the bewildering mass of conflicting claims by holders of more than $70 billion in debt. That is a positive development: The new rules are working as Congress intended and Puerto Rico may finally get a chance for a fresh start as a result…
what a headline by the Climate Impact Lab pair!
29 Sept: NYT: Don’t Let Puerto Rico Fall Into an Economic Abyss
By SOLOMON HSIANG and TREVOR HOUSER
(Solomon Hsiang, an associate professor for public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and Trevor Houser, a partner at the Rhodium Group, are the directors of the Climate Impact Lab)
Almost nothing on the planet, short of nuclear weaponry, destroys economic value as rapidly as a mega-hurricane. In Puerto Rico, decades of economic progress were undone in 12 hours by Hurricane Maria.
With millions lacking electricity or potable water, avoiding a humanitarian disaster should be President Trump’s top priority…
Hurricane Maria was an absolute monster. By our calculation, the average exposure in Puerto Rico was winds of 123 miles per hour. Normally, only small areas get slammed, and indeed some locations suffered through Category 5 winds of 158 m.p.h. But what stands out about Maria is that if you were anywhere in Puerto Rico on Sept. 20, you would have been experiencing something that felt like passing through a strong Category 3 hurricane. There was nowhere to hide…
Of the more than 13,000 cyclone events around the world since 1950 (an event is one hurricane or typhoon hitting one country), only five topped Maria in their overall average intensity, according to data gathered for a 2014 study one of us did with Amir Jina of the University of Chicago…
Maria’s impact may be much worse. To determine how much worse, we used an econometric model of the costs of cyclones over the past 60 years and applied it to the characteristics of Hurricane Maria and the pre-storm economic conditions in Puerto Rico. We calculated that Maria could lower Puerto Rican incomes by 21 percent over the next 15 years — a cumulative $180 billion in lost economic output. Supposing that Puerto Rico had been on track to sustain its 0.8 percent real per capita annual growth between 2009 and 2015, then we would expect to see Maria undo all those gains and then some. It could now take 26 years for the next generation to get back to where we are today, assuming that per capita growth rate would have continued.
In percentage terms, the loss to the Puerto Rican economy is on par with the most heavily hit states during the Great Recession. For Puerto Rico, Maria could be as economically costly as the 1997 Asian financial crisis was to Indonesia and Thailand and more than twice as damaging as the 1994 Peso Crisis was to Mexico — but this time on American soil.
But this doesn’t need to become Puerto Rico’s destiny. Sufficient, timely, sustained and well-designed disaster relief from Washington can help mitigate Maria’s impact. The island’s electrical grid needs to be rebuilt from scratch, and fast, to deliver lifesaving services now and to enable broader recovery and reinvestment in the months ahead. Thousands of buildings need to be repaired or replaced…
It is in everyone’s interest to try to keep Puerto Rico’s economy from falling into the abyss. And most important, we have a mutual duty to one another as Americans.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/29/opinion/puerto-rico-hurricane-maria.html
Climate Impact Lab
The Climate Impact Lab is a collaboration of more than 20 climate scientists, economists, computational experts, researchers, analysts, and students from several institutions, including the Global Policy Lab at University of California at Berkeley, the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago (EPIC), Rhodium Group and Rutgers University.
To project the future costs of climate change, the Climate Impact Lab looks first to historical, real-world experience. The Lab’s researchers combine historical socioeconomic and climate data, allowing the team to discover how a changing climate has impacted humanity—from the ways in which extended droughts have affected agricultural productivity in California to the ways in which heat waves have impacted mortality in India and labor productivity in China. Understanding these relationships allows the Lab to produce evidence-based insights about the real-world impacts of future climate change using projections of temperature, precipitation, humidity and sea-level changes around the world at a subnational scale—from U.S. counties to Chinese provinces…
The analysis seeks to capture the economic risks of low-probability, high-impact climate events as well as those futures most likely to occur. These impacts will also be monetized and aggregated to produce the world’s first empirically-derived estimate of the social cost of carbon—the cost to society done by each ton of carbon dioxide we emit—which will be designed to be fed directly into energy and climate policies around the world…
Goldman School of Public Policy | UC Berkeley
http://www.globalpolicy.science/climate-impact-lab/
20
“The analysis seeks to capture the economic risks of low-probability, high-impact climate events as well as those futures most likely to occur. These impacts will also be monetized and aggregated to produce the world’s first empirically-derived estimate of the social cost of carbon—the cost to society done by each ton of carbon dioxide we emit—which will be designed to be fed directly into energy and climate policies around the world…
Goldman School of Public Policy | UC Berkeley”
Can anyone translate this drivel to any known written or spoken language?
71
Technobabble?
60
Will Janoschka –
not me.
btw should have also noted:
Wikipedia: Goldman School of Public Policy
Notable faculty:
Daniel Kammen, member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Robert Reich, Professor of Public Policy and former United States Secretary of Labor… served in the administrations of Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter and was Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton from 1993 to 1997… formerly a professor at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and professor of social and economic policy at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management of Brandeis University. He has also been a contributing editor of The New Republic, The American Prospect…Harvard Business Review, The Atlantic, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal.
Reich is a political commentator on programs including Hardball with Chris Matthews, This Week with George Stephanopoulos, CNBC’s Kudlow & Company, and APM’s Marketplace. In 2008, Time magazine named him one of the Ten Best Cabinet Members of the century, and The Wall Street Journal in 2008 placed him sixth on its list of the “Most Influential Business Thinkers”. He was appointed a member of President-elect Barack Obama’s economic transition advisory board – Wikipedia)
WOW! not impressed.
60
“WOW! not impressed.”
Thanks Pat! Try to be ‘aware’. In the US we have critters i.e. meerkats, raccoons, badgers. Just try to sneak up to one of those!
In the Mideast are Kurd peshmega, just try! I love demonstrated competence! 🙂
12
It’s so easy to decipher , they want a carbon tax .
20
Like the Florida keys, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Ilse\s are a US treasure. But in all of these places, the greedy politicians and union leaders need be ‘ with extreme prejudice’ forcibly dispatched to the Tora Bora US correctional facility in Afganistan, for possible much later repatriation to USA society. We don wanta offend nobody! 🙂
72
Come on Will, Tora Bora sounds like an island in Tahiti.
Hardly Afghanistan.
40
“Come on Will, Tora Bora sounds like an island in Tahiti.”
Check it out, in the mountains in Afghanistan. 25 mile radius chain-link topped with concertina. NO Gates. Prisoners delivered via pushed out from C130 with parachute that may or may not work. Some pigs dropped in if residents produce sufficient license plates, this month. A proper correctional facility.
32
You have confused what is not to be confused.
The difference is that in Tora Bora some decent camels cost over 3000 dollars each and in Bora Bora the Camels cost 892 francs a pack.
In both cases, “camels” can kill you with fire.
Hopefully this has been fun and educational for everyone.
70
theirABC has been jumping on every FakeNewsMSM story about Trump’s response to the Puerto Rican crisis:
30 Sept: ABC: AP: Hurricane Maria: Puerto Rican mayor says US ‘killing us with the inefficiency’
US President Donald Trump has pledged to spare no effort to help Puerto Ricans recover from Hurricane Maria’s ruinous aftermath even as San Juan’s mayor, her voice breaking with rage, accused his administration of, “killing us with the inefficiency”.
Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz implored Mr Trump from afar to, “make sure somebody is in charge that is up to the task of saving lives”, while the President asserted US officials and emergency personnel were working all-out against daunting odds, with “incredible” results…
“We are dying, and you are killing us with the inefficiency,” Ms Cruz said in a news conference. “I am begging, begging anyone that can hear us, to save us from dying.”…
30 Sept: Twitchy: ‘The T-shirt Shack has reopened!’ Where did San Juan’s mayor get that custom-printed ‘Help Us’ shirt anyway?
Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz has been all over the media this weekend inspiring some questions of her own. During a press conference Friday, she said she was “mad as hell” about the relief effort, while pictured in front of pallets of drinking water that apparently were being used as a photo backdrop before being distributed…
But the big question came later, as Mayor Cruz was being interviewed by CNN’s Anderson Cooper while wearing a custom-printed T-shirt reading, “Help Us, We Are Dying.” …
TWEET: Brian Stelter CNN: Speaking with @andersoncooper, San Juan mayor is wearing a T-shirt that says “HELP US, WE ARE DYING”
OK, turns out we weren’t the only ones a bit suspicious of the T-shirt’s origin either…READ ON
https://twitchy.com/brettt-3136/2017/09/30/where-did-san-juans-mayor-get-that-custom-printed-help-us-shirt-anyway/
30 Sept: ConservativeTreehouse: sundance: Report: Puerto Rico Teamsters Union, “Frente Amplio”, Refuse to Deliver Supplies – Use Hurricane Maria as Contract Leverage…
Puerto Rican born and raised, Colonel Michael A. Valle (”Torch”), Commander, 101st Air and Space Operations Group, and Director of the Joint Air Component Coordination Element, 1st Air Force, responsible for Hurricane Maria relief efforts, has the following comment:
…They have the generators, water, food, medicine, and fuel on the ground, yet the supplies are not moving across the island as quickly as they’re needed.
“It’s a lack of drivers for the transport trucks, the 18 wheelers. Supplies we have. Trucks we have. There are ships full of supplies, backed up in the ports, waiting to have a vehicle to unload into. However, only 20% of the truck drivers show up to work. These are private citizens in Puerto Rico, paid by companies that are contracted by the government”…
28 Sept: CBS Miami: ‘We Can’t Find Them’: Puerto Rico Low On Drivers To Deliver Supplies
Puerto Rico’s Governor Ricardo Rossello says the storm caused a shortage of truck drivers to deliver the essentials.
“The bus drivers that would traditionally take these foods they don’t – they’re not up here,” said Rosello. “We can’t find them or reach them.”…
FakeNewsMSM has been making out the driver simply can’t get to the port where 9,500 containers are waiting to be delivered! WATCHY ALL:
Youtube: 5mins07secs: CNBC: Puerto Rico The Truth 9 28 2017
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4Z01o4tBlI
read all…not written by a typical Trump supporter, that’s for sure. yet Harshaw gives a voice to some of the realities of the situation:
30 Sept: No, Trump Didn’t Botch the Puerto Rico Crisis
A Q&A with former Navy Captain Jerry Hendrix on smart preparations the White House and Pentagon made for the looming storm.
by Tobin Harshaw
(Bloomberg bio: Tobin Harshaw writes editorials on national security, education and food for Bloomberg View. He was an editor with the op-ed page of the New York Times and the paper’s letters editor)
But to look at the larger context of the entire relief operation, I decided to talk to someone whose experience rivals that of General Honore: retired Navy Captain Jerry Hendrix. Now a senior fellow with the Center for a New American Security, Hendrix served for decades both on the high seas and in high-level staff jobs, including with the Chief of Naval Operations’ Executive Panel and the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy’s Irregular Warfare Quadrennial Defense Review. Few people know more about military history than Hendrix, who has degrees from Purdue, Harvard, the Naval Postgraduate School and a PhD from Kings College in London. Little wonder that in 2012 was named the service’s director of naval history.
Here is a lightly edited transcript of our discussion…READ ALL
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-09-30/no-trump-didn-t-botch-the-puerto-rico-crisis
30
30 Sept: NY Post: ‘Inept’ Puerto Rican government ‘riddled with corruption’: CEO
By Jorge Rodriguez
(Jorge Rodriguez, 49, is the Harvard-educated CEO of PACIV, an international engineering firm based in Puerto Rico that works with the medical and pharmaceutical sectors. The Puerto Rican-born engineer says he has dispatched 50 engineers to help FEMA rehabilitate the devastated island — a commonwealth of the United States — after Hurricane Maria. He refuses to work with the local government, which he called inept and riddled with corruption)
For the last 30 years, the Puerto Rican government has been completely inept at handling regular societal needs, so I just don’t see it functioning in a crisis like this one. Even before the hurricane hit, water and power systems were already broken. And our $118 billion debt crisis is a result of government corruption and mismanagement…
The governor Ricardo Rossello has little experience. He’s 36 (38, according to Wikipedia) and never really held a job and never dealt with a budget. His entire administration is totally inexperienced and they have no clue how to handle a crisis of this magnitude.
For instance, shortly after the hurricane hit, the government imposed a curfew from 6 pm to 6 am and then changed it. Now, it’s 7 pm to 5 am, and makes no sense. The curfew has prevented fuel trucks from transporting their loads. These trucks should have been allowed to run for 24 hours to address our needs, but they have been stalled, and so we have massive lines at gas stations and severe shortages of diesel at our hospitals and supermarkets.
I’m really tired of Puerto Rican government officials blaming the federal government for their woes and for not acting fast enough to help people on the island. Last week I had three federal agents in my office and I was so embarrassed; I went out of my way to apologize to them for the attitude of my government and what they have been saying about the US response. When the hurricane hit we had experts from FEMA from all over the US on the ground and I was really proud of their quick response. The first responders and FEMA have all been outstanding in this crisis, and should be supported…
I have a message for the U.S. Congress: Watch out what relief funds you approve and let our local government handle. Don’t let the Puerto Rican government play the victim and fool you. They have no clue what they are doing, and I worry that they will mishandle anything that comes their way…
http://nypost.com/2017/09/30/inept-puerto-rican-government-riddled-with-corruption-ceo/
Wikipeda: Ricardo Rossello
Ricardo Antonio Rosselló Nevares is a Puerto Rican politician and the 12th and current Governor of Puerto Rico. He is also the President of the New Progressive Party…
As a Democrat, Rosselló was a Hillary Clinton delegate to the 2008 nominating convention and an Obama delegate to the 2012 convention. In 2008, he had a key role in Clinton’s get-out-the-vote efforts for the June 1 Puerto Rico presidential primary, appearing in her final TV ad with several Democratic political leaders…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricardo_Rossell%C3%B3
Wikipedia: Although Puerto Rico did not participate in the November 8, 2016, general election because it is a territory and not a state, the five non-incorporated territories that send delegates to the United States House of Representatives participated in the presidential primaries.
20
29 Sept: Bloomberg: Tesla Is ‘Structurally Unprofitable,’ Chanos Says
Tesla Inc., a perennial target of short sellers, is “structurally unprofitable” with a “way too leveraged” capital structure, said famed investor Jim Chanos.
“Three years ago, this company was supposed to be making money now,” Chanos, who’s betting against Tesla shares, said in an interview Thursday on Bloomberg Television. “Now it’s supposed to be making money by 2020. And I’m guessing by 2019, we’ll hear about 2025.”
Chanos, who bet early on energy company Enron Corp.’s failure, said the electric-car maker run by Elon Musk is behind on autonomous driving technology and rushed the Model 3 to market to appease investors. SolarCity Corp., the solar installer Tesla acquired in a controversial deal last year, is about a $1 billion drain to shareholders annually, he said…
https://about.bnef.com/blog/tesla-is-structurally-unprofitable-chanos-says/
50
I am not surprised, I believe the Tesla is an attractive vehicle design and package with excellent performance but the price is around four equivalent size conventional petrol engine vehicles. Then add the inconvenience of recharging time and limited public access points for recharging and only very well paid business executives and other high wealth individuals would consider a Tesla.
I believe that the future for EV is city and suburbs when the infrastructure is in place. And then, maybe, hybrid technology for people in the country and other travellers.
But I cannot see how working diesel and petrol powered vehicles and machinery would be replaced, with some exceptions, there have been electric forklift trucks available for decades.
When will Dreamworld Canberra wake up?
51
I believe that Tesla has now burned through US$ 10.7 billion, with no indications yet when they will ever make a profit.
40
Fairfax has only published this piece on “Farm Online”, it seems:
1 Oct: FarmOnline (Fairfax): Gregor Heard: Dynamic modelling systems to play an important role in long term climate forecasting
AN INCREASED focus on dynamic modelling in our agricultural decision support tools, rather than the traditional statistical analysis will continue to improve Australia’s long-term forecasting systems.
That’s the good news on the forecasting front, according to CSIRO senior climate research scientist Jaci Brown.
The bad news, however, is that the maddening difficulty in getting accurate seasonal forecasting in autumn when growers are making their planting decisions remains some way off.
“We’re getting there, we’re at a stage where we have some idea about what is happening in April, but the climate drivers become a lot clearer through the winter, meaning we have a really good handle on what is going to happen from the end of June onwards,” Dr Brown said…
Dr Brown said at present autumn modelling was a useful, but not infallible guide.
“As well known climate scientist Peter Hayman says, the forecasts at that time of year show you which way to lean, but they don’t show you which way to jump.”
Dynamic modelling has improved in relation to previous statistical methods to an extent where it is now more accurate in some places Dr Brown said.
She said statistics-based models can be limited by data constraints and long-term change to the climate making the data less relevant. “We are now experiencing years with temperatures higher than ever recorded before so we can’t necessarily look to the past to represent how our future may unfold,” she said.
“Adding dynamic climate model based forecasts to our basket of tools means we can be even better informed about the future and so better prepared.”
Dr Brown said the current POAMA-2 system, a dynamic model used by the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) was working well from as early as June.
She said the upgrade to the BOM’s new system, ACCESS-S, which it will roll out soon, would further improve its use to farmers, primarily due to a better resolution.
The POAMA-2 system had low resolution, with grids of 250km, whereas the new ACCESS-S will run on 60km grids.
However, she said there was still further work to do to ensure biases were eliminated from modelling.
For instance, she said modelling systems had worked poorly in central western NSW…
Dr Brown said tools popular in determining seasonal forecasts in the past, such as El Niño / Southern Oscillation (ENSO) data had a role and could be useful in strong El Niño or La Niña events, but said more work was needed on years with weaker ENSO signals.
“In the areas where ENSO is a big factor if there is a strong signal then you probably have a good lead, but there are a lot of other climate drivers that are a factor in how the season plays out.
“We also have to remember that in some parts of Australia, things like the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) are just as big an influence so you certainly don’t want to put too much emphasis on ENSO alone.”
http://www.farmonline.com.au/story/4956312/climate-forecasting-to-get-more-dynamic/?cs=5373
20
time will tell:
30 Sept: BrisbaneTimes: Toby Crockford: Rain expected to dampen long weekend in south-east Qld as temperatures forecast to nosedive
A 12-degree drop in the space of one day is expected to signal the arrival of long-awaited rain in south-east Queensland, which will dampen the spirits of beach-goers but breathe life into lawns.
Brisbane hit 34 degrees on Saturday but was forecast to plummet to a top of just 22 on Sunday as cooler air from down south reached the south-east…
The bureau was hopeful that “very welcome and useful” rain between 10 and 20 millimetres would be seen, with the hope of higher isolated falls as well…
The rain would see cooler temperatures remain throughout next week with maximums between 21 and 25 degrees in Brisbane.
However, north-west and central western parts of the state were expecting temperatures to increase during next week after they experienced 20-degree drops during the past few days.
https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/queensland/rain-expected-to-dampen-long-weekend-in-south-east-qld-as-temps-forecast-to-nose-dive-20170930-p4yw7b.html
1 Oct: SundayMailBrisbane: Bill Hoffman: Brisbane, Queensland weather: Rain threatening cause gridlock on Bruce Highway
The Bureau of Meteorology on Sunday release a severe weather warning for heavy rainfall on Monday, saying that falls of between 130mm-180mm are predicted in several districts, including the Central Highlands and Coalfields, Capricornia, Wide Bay and Burnett, Maranoa and Warrego and Darling Downs and Granite Belt Forecast Districts.
Six-hourly rainfall totals of between 90mm-120mm are predicted between Emerald and Roma, with isolated heavier falls of up to 160mm possible.
While 130mm-180mm is predicted between Bundaberg and Double Island Point in six-hour periods.
Further south, up to 120mm could fall on parts of the Sunshine Coast…
While 130mm-180mm is predicted between Bundaberg and Double Island Point in six-hour periods…
1 Oct: GoldCoastBulletin: Drought-breaker 100mm rain deluge predicted for Gold Coast
by Alexandria Utting
We could get a month’s worth of rain in just two days with 100mm expected to fall tomorrow and Tuesday — surpassing the October average rainfall of 87.4mm…
Senior Weatherzone meteorologist Jacob Cronje said 40-80mm of rain was expected to fall on the Coast in the next 24 hours with “rainfall persisting into Tuesday and thunderstorms expected on Wednesday”…
Up to another 25mm is expected on Tuesday along with the chance of a few thunderstorms…
The heavy rain could pave the way for the wettest October since 2011…
While the Bureau of Meteorology has issued a weather warning today, the Gold Coast isn’t expected to be lashed by heavy rain like other areas including the Central Highlands and the Wide Bay area.
40
I have to ask is it going to be the wettest and the driest and the hottest October on record .
20
Its a regional cooling signal, with ENSO and IOD neutralised it leaves SAM on centre stage, so Qld this October will see little deviation from the norm.
The lows have broken through the high pressure belt, proving conclusively that global warming is over.
20
September (according to John Christy in current post at wuwt) saw world temperature unusually warm and in the absence of El Nino, but with La Nina on the prowl conditions should cool down soon.
Here is more on SAM.
http://www.farmonline.com.au/story/4856841/farmers-hope-climate-plays-it-again-sam/
20
worse than predicted already:
1 Oct: SunshineCoastDaily: Bill Hoffman: 30mm an hour for six hours: Severe weather warning active
TORRENTIAL rain is set to break the Sunshine Coast’s four-month run of drought-like conditions in the ‘worst possible way’ with falls of up to 30mm an hour for six hours possible from mid afternoon Monday…
BOM extreme weather desk forecaster Scott Williams said the Sunshine Coast could begin to see falls of similar intensity delivering up to 180mm from around 2-3pm. However we should expect to see some rain falling before then…
Mr Williams said holiday makers heading to the Bruce Highway and home should consider leaving as early as possible.
He said falls of 70-120mm had already been forecast for the Sunshine Coast for Monday before the severe weather warning was issued.
The peak of the weather event to the north of us could be expected pre-dawn and after passing through the Sunshine Coast may reach Brisbane and the Gold Coast by Tuesday morning…
Sunshine Coast Council Local Disaster Manager Centre co-ordinator Andrew Ryan said that level of rainfall in that period of time would be ‘the worst possible way to break a drought’.
Mr Ryan, who steps down Friday as the council’s Director of Infrastructure Services, said bone-dry ground would see sheet flow run off with debris potentially blocking drains and causing minor flash flooding.
He said the rain would be well received by hinterland residents whose water tanks have run dry with some people saying that had not seen conditions like the past four months for more than 47 years.
A decision to open the Sunshine Coast Local Disaster Management Centre would be made as required after it was stood down this morning as the fire threat eased with cooler temperatures.
https://www.sunshinecoastdaily.com.au/news/30mm-an-hour-for-six-hours-severe-weather-warning-/3229866/
20
I have a question to ask of you all here. Now, I know the answer already, but basically, what I want to gauge here is what the average person thinks and how they understand it.
As I have often mentioned here, there are Load Curves for actual power consumption. Those curves are the same shape no matter where a good reliable source of electricity is, in any Country, State, region, capital city, large city and any city, and they have not changed across the many years that electrical power has been connected.
However, there is a difference between the Load Curves for Winter and Summer. Those two Load Curves are shown at this link, and scroll down to the second set of two images part way down the page. The top one is a Summer Load Curve, and the one under that is a Winter Load Curve, and these are for Australia as a whole.
While these two Curves are indicative only, you can see the obvious difference. The Winter Curve (lower image) has two distinct Peaks, while the Summer Curve has that one large Peak in the middle of the day. Now, looking at that Winter Load Curve see that low dip point between the two Peaks, that can be around 22,000MW. On the Summer Peak, at that same time that single Peak could be as high as 30,000MW, a full 8,000MW higher, and sometimes, it has actually been as high as 32,000MW and even higher.
That 8,000MW is a huge amount of power.
Now the question I ask is this.
Where do you think that huge amount of power is being used?
This week’s installment in the Base Load Series is at the following link, and sorry, the answer is not there.
Australian Base Load Electrical Power – Week Ending 30th September 2017
Tony.
40
The summer curve looks like business air- conditioning, while the winter curve looks like domestic heating.
40
Also cooking breakfast and evening meal.
30
I agree with Graeme #4 but would also add the additional needs for coolers & freezers due to the high ambient temperatures in Summer months.
10
Well I think that you might have said previously that air conditioning in high rise buildings uses quite a lot. That means that the government is a big consumer. Also shops, offices, and supermarkets.
Then there is industry.
Finally domestic homes are likely the smallest component although we pay the highest rate.
50
The business use and summer air-conditioning for large buildings (looking at the time) is enormous but base load all year round at 4am isn’t going to be supplied by a few gentle zephyrs, is it?
40
For those interested in the machines that made the Industrial Revolution you might be interested in the forthcoming Steam Rally put on by the Lake Goldsmith Steam Preservation Society on November the 4th and 5th. It is near Beaufort, about 2 hrs drive north of Melbourne.
http://www.lakegoldsmithsteamrally.org.au/
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30 Sept: UK Telegraph: Steve Bird: Adele’s husband reveals wind farm ‘scars’ in home county
As the founder of an award winning company selling eco-friendly bottled water, Simon Konecki no doubt has impeccable green credentials.
But while the Old Etonian who is married to singer Adele would normally enthusiastically support building Britain’s biggest offshore wind farm, the discovery that it has left a “10-year” blot on a valley in his home county has proven too much for him to bear.
Simon Konecki, an American banker turned businessman, has used YouTube to post a two-and-half minute “mini-documentary” complaining that power cable trenches dug along the South Downs National Park have “scarred” West Sussex (LINK).
The clip made by his company, Life Water, features drone footage showing eight mile long and 40ft wide trenches, much of it through the Adur Valley.
The cables come from the Rampion wind farm where 116 turbines built in the English Channel will provide 347,000 homes with energy from next year.
However, E.ON, which built the £1.3 billion plant, and the South Down National Parks Authority have complained of inaccuracies in the video insisting that the damage is temporary.
And, Caroline Lucas, joint leader of the Green Party and Brighton Pavilion MP, has said Konecki should have highlighted other threats to the South Downs. The criticism will prove particularly embarrassing as the businessman lived in Brighton but now shares a £4 million mansion near East Grinstead, West Sussex, with his singer wife…
Caroline Lucas said: “Like any major project there has been some disturbance, and I definitely believe the scar on the Downs should be re-turfed as soon as possible.
“But let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater here by buying into the idea that offshore wind is anything but a technology that’s working effectively, and set to become the backbone of British energy. The real threats to the South Downs are drilling of oil and gas – and to focus attacks on clean energy really does miss the mark.”…READ ON
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/09/30/adeles-husband-reveals-wind-farm-scars-home-county/
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30 Sept: HuronDailyTribune: Blade failure is ‘isolated’ incident
by Brenda Battel/Trubine Staff Writer
“Based on preliminary information it appears to be an isolated, individual blade failure and there is currently no reason to suspect this is related to the ***prior blade incidents at the project,” said Chante Condit-Pottol, communication specialist with Vestas.
The broken blade was on turbine No. 51 in the Deerfield Wind Energy Project near the intersection of Kinde and Huron City Roads.
“No injuries occurred as a result of this incident and the area surrounding the impacted turbine has been secured,” Pottol added. “Vestas technical experts and engineers are en route to the site to begin a root cause investigation with the customer.”…
Two blades in separate turbines in the wind park broke last October due to lack of adhesive.
http://www.michigansthumb.com/news/article/Blade-failure-is-isolated-incident-12243068.php
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SA has been low on wind power all day so thanks to the interconnectors All is good .
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Quiet here too and little sun most of the day.
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Great article in iceagenow https://www.iceagenow.info/hurricane-irma-sensitive-issue-climate-change/#comment-385720
Scientist (real) Dr. Wolfgang Thüne rubbishes any thoughts that storms are in any way possibly influenced by man. Heres REAL numbers for any warmists reading INCLUDING anybody working for the BOM!
“The earth’s envelope of air is pressed against its surface by the force of gravity. Per square meter that is a pressure equivalent of 10 metric tons per square meter or 10 million tons per square kilometer. For the entire earth surface of 510 million square kilometer, that comes to a total weight of 5.1 trillion (5.1 x 10^12) tons. To get that kind of mass to move requires an enormous amount of energy that only nature — not mankind – can provide. Nature does that via radiation from the sun.
The envelope of air around the earth, approximately 12 km high, is nothing but a thin skin, i.e. 1/1000 of the diameter of planet earth of 12,000 km diameter. Is it conceivable that carbon dioxide (amounting to 0.04% of its composition) could determine its surface temperature via a greenhouse gas effect (warming of the surface) that despite having an “open window” (meaning transparency) to radiation of 7-13 micro-meter energy to the universe? “
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I just happened to see part of an interview with John Hewson in which he illustrates how ignorant one can be about the electricity market.
He argues, as many elitists do, that firms such as AGL should not be both a generator and a retailer.
He fails to understand that this is essential for a generator OR a retailer to manage risk.
Both must respond to the wholesale price of electricity, which must and does fluctuate wildly.
However, the retailer is subject to a price which by legislation must remain constant for periods of considerable length.
By operating in both market sectors, the retailer can manage risk by effectively shifting earnings from one pocket to the other.
This is not a failure of the free market for electricity, but an essential ingredient.
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True. Heard him speaking on radio a few times and he seems to be on another planet.
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For all those who still subscribe to Quantitative Easing and Zero / Negative Interest Rate Policies as having “rescued” the global economy and being the path forward to future prosperity by ensuring 2% inflationary “growth”, here is a great indicator of why it is a pipedream (insight by Charles Goodhart)
https://philebersole.wordpress.com/2013/01/10/goodharts-law-on-not-going-by-the-numbers/
Further to this, he has extrapolated that
https://www.economist.com/blogs/buttonwood/2016/05/monetary-policy
All good commonsense IMO but then Robert Anson Heinlein did once state that commonsense itself is an oxymoron.
More here in an outstanding ZeroHedge article (and a little thought will see how also this applies to “growth” stocks like my favorite, Tesla)
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-10-01/eric-peters-and-tipping-points-it-all-worked-incredibly-well-it-should-until-it-blew
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C’mon mods – what’s so controversial?
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Billionaire says all the billionaires should pay for renewable energy power stations.
http://www.emphasisms.com/2017/09/bill-gates-thinks.html
It’s the gift that keeps on giving, then not giving, then giving again, … 🙂
Is that a gift or a curse?
Meanwhile Bill himself is still pushing nuclear power with his Terrapower company.
They won a $80 mill government grant to develop it further.
Create the problem with your Green hand, build the solution with the other. Smart thinking, Bill.
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‘Germany’s DWD national weather service has the preliminary September 2017 report out. According to the result of the data measured by the country’s 2000 weather stations, last month was cooler than normal.
‘September 2017 in Germany saw a mean temperature of 12.7°C, which was 4.2°C cooler than last year’s record warm September (16.9°C). This means that the month came in 0.8°C colder than the 1981-2010 mean.’
Notrickszone
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