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Weekend Unthreaded
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8.7 out of 10 based on 20 ratings
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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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The nerds have the numbers on precious metals investments on the ASX
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Tesla announces it’s electric truck.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/tesla-unveils-electric-semi-truck-084903172.html
This week:
1st run was to relay with the driver just south east of Chicago. Round trip was over 500 miles. Tesla wouldn’t have made it.
2nd run:
Departed Anderson, IN team driving in a 2012 Volvo at 20:25 (EST) on Tuesday night. I drove first and bobtailed to the Lear Logistics cross dock in Indianapolis, IN where I hooked to a preloaded trailer and then headed for Laredo, TX. Started with 1/2 fuel on board. Changed drivers and fueled at Arkadelphia, AR. Changed drivers at truck parking area at the 15 mm on I-35 in TX just north of Laredo. Delivered to the Lear Logistics Center in Laredo at 21:15 (EST) Wednesday night. After a couple hours of waiting I hooked to the loaded trailer at the Carter Express terminal in the Port of Laredo and headed back to Anderson, IN. Changed drivers about 40 miles east of Texarkana, TX on I-30. Fueled at Arkadelphia again. Changed drivers at Brazil, IN off I-70. Arrived back at the Anderson, IN terminal where we started at 01:15 (EST) Friday morning. That’s a round trip of 2,690 miles completed in two fuel stops totaling maybe 30 minutes actual fueling. Freight weight going down was 28,700 lb. Freight weight coming back 21,740 lb. THAT is trucking and let’s see that electric truck do that.
Fact is it would have taken a relay of SIX Tesla trucks to do that team run and that is taking their 500 mile range at face value. As for acceleration? It would be wonderful to have more acceleration in a big truck at times but the fact is that it is the load which determines how fast one can take a turn. As for speed? The vast majority of big trucks in the US are governed down to 70 mph or less for safety reasons and a large proportion of them are governed to 65 mph. The one I drive is governed to 68 mph. Trucks in Canada are by law governed to go no faster than 65 mph though the official speed limits in most of Ontario and Quebec are 100 kph which is about 62 mph.
FACT: Even if the Tesla truck does what they claim it does it is not a truck suitable for Over The Road or Long Haul operations. A good OTR driver can put well over 700 miles behind them during an 11 hour driving shift and the truck only has a range of 500 miles.
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A few things that I noticed are lack of a sleeper cab. The battery takes the place of the sleeper.
My understanding is the trailer wheels are electrically driven as well. So conventional trailers cannot be hauled. How easy it to change trailers?
The driving position is in the middle. So will this comply with various rules regarding which side of the vehicle the steering wheel has to be on?
The interior would be very hot in summer with all that glass / perspex windshield. It looks heavily tinted and would not comply with window tint rules in many northern US states (which are primarily about fining southerners). This would add a large air conditioning load. How about the heating load in winter when the batteries do not work as well.
It looks like it was designed by someone who never has had to do anything with trucking!
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Former CEO of General Motors agrees:
Calls Tesla a “losing company that’s going out of business“
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I read about them on Seeking Alpha. I think they are in big trouble. B.S. only sells investment issues for so long. Eventually you need to turn a profit!
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“Elon Musk Is The Master of Yelling “Squirrel” ”
http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2017/11/elon-musk-is-the-master-of-yelling-squirrel.html
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“BS only sells…”
Till the buyers’ bosses wake up!
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If Tesla goes bust before this truck is able to soak up any more subsidies, we’d have to consider that a success.
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Crying over a wandering woman. Don’t expect future success!
How many days left in South Australia?
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I don’t see the position of the steering wheel as a problem because generally it would be a minor manufacturing adjustment to move the wheel on the left side for US or right for UK type conditions.
Have not seen the specs on the weight. Electric motors and batteries are heavy. Max Gross Vehicle Weight for a standard rig in the US 80,000 lb. So I’m wondering if the Tesla rig can carry the freight that a diesel powered rig can.
I notice that the trailer is very tight up against the back of the tractor. Generally the tighter one can have the trailer to the back of the tractor the better mileage one gets. However the space between the tractor and trailer determines how sharply one can turn a rig. I sometimes have had mine at a little over 90 degrees when maneuvering or backing in tight places. There doesn’t seem to be room for turning nearly that sharp with the Tesla rig as they have shown it. There is also the possibility of vertical pinch starting a steep incline as one finds at some RR crossings and even driveways. Most tractors have a limited amount of adjustment for sliding the fifth wheel to adjust the distance between the back of the tractor and the nose of the trailer or to shift some weight between the drive axles and the steering axle.
During the team run down to Laredo this week we used the heater and the mirror heaters when up north. Then later we used the AC down in Texas. How will that effect the range of the Tesla?
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They might be hoping that regulators will give them a pass on that, it would allow them to manufacture efficient for more markets.
Before steering locks were required, the ignition switch was often in the center of the dash to allow for easier manufacture for different markets!
The further north you go, waste heat is often not a bad thing. I sure appreciate that radiator on the firewall of my car. The heat from incandescent bulbs is not a problem for many months of the year as you are heating your house anyway. When I do need the air conditioner there are many hours of daylight, so I am not using lights that much anyway!
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I really don’t see a problem with the center driving position and in fact once one got used to it I could see it being an advantage. The fact is that when sitting to one side the large “west coaster” mirror is about 5′ away on the opposite side from the driver. That distance makes judging the distance between the rear of your trailer and any obstacle more difficult. Our standard trailers in the US are 53′ long. What this means is that the driver in a truck with sleeper cab is sitting about 63 feet from the rear of his rig looking through a mirror trying to judge distance. Also that distance makes your off driver side backing blind. It is called a “blind back” when a driver has to cock their trailer when backing so he rear of the trailer is coming towards the side the driver isn’t on because all you can see in the mirror is the side of the trailer. Having a center driving position will help a lot with that problem. Perspective and distance will be the same for either side mirror. It’s hard to explain. I guess one just has to get in the drivers seat and try to do it to see what I am talking about. But to get an idea just get in your car and without using the center rear view mirror or looking back through any windows behind you try backing hard to the right hand side for you Aussies. Now imagine doing the same with a trailer hooked to your car that is as tall as your car is and 4x longer than it is.
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I do understand about reversing in, and avoiding the problems with the blind side.I can see how the center position would be better.
In Australia they do not like left hand drive vehicles as a rule. I recall some center dive delivery trucks having to be labelled as left hand drive on the rear.
The center drive position might be a problem to busy body regulators! There are plenty of them in Australia.
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Last year while I was driving to Perth Western Australia I met a truck driver who is based in Perth, owner-driver of a Volvo prime mover tractor that at the time was pulling two (B-Double) trailers. He does Perth to Melbourne Victoria return three weeks out of every four: 3,418 Kilometres or 2,124 Miles. One week in every four he pulls three (Road Train) trailers from Perth to Darwin Northern Territory: 4,147 Kilometres or 2,577 Miles return.
How those distances could be covered with electric motors and recharging batteries required to provide enough power to cope with the loads I cannot imagine. And with due consideration for the weight penalty the battery packs would be that reduces the income earning capacity of the vehicle.
In the more remote areas of Australia Road Trains of up to four trailers are a normal part of road transport and the road conditions off the main highways are often poor, no hard surface, and in wet conditions can become impossible to drive on.
I doubt that electric trucks will be handling road freight on Australia’s long haul routes in the foreseeable future. And noting that most of the remote area towns, roadhouses, rural properties and mines depend on diesel fuel for generators and other machinery and vehicles, delivered by four trailer tankers. Cattle are carried to live export ships and to abattoirs on Road Trains.
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As someone who has driven trucks I can tell you the only real advantage with an electric driven truck is the all wheel drive which coincidentally is one of its biggest downfalls , imagine a semi trailer that only has enough space for a shoe box worth of freight by the time all the batteries are installed .
And you’d need that many batteries to do a Darwin -Perth run I reckon .
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Imagine driving into a Roadhouse and asking if you plug the truck batteries into their diesel generator.
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The 2015 Freightliner Cascadia that I drive has interlock (the 2012 Volvo used for the team run I mentioned above was the other guys truck). For normal operation only the rear axle drives. In slick conditions or on uneven ground one can push the interlock button and have both axles driving. Using the interlock cuts down on the ability to turn tightly. Using only the rear axle for drive in normal conditions increases maneuverability and mileage. It also has a button to turn off traction control that actually ends up working as a kind of posi-traction in slick conditions so that one can get all the wheels pulling at the same time.
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“Imagine the fire from this one.”
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/2017/11/imagine-the-fir.html
And comments
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Motor Mouth: The inconvenient truth about Tesla’s truck
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I want to see a Tesla road train hauling 4 trailers across the Tanami.
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It is all a matter of perspective.
When the power grid collapses and the so called renewable sources are the only source of power, the economy will be dead. In which case, nothing can be produced so nothing will need to be transported. Thus the need for long haul trucking will be dead also.
The only use for a Tesla electric truck will be for virtue signaling. It really won’t have to go anywhere. The billions given to Tesla will have long been spent and written off as a bad debt.
When reason, reality, and logic are held as not relevant, failure to thrive is our least problem. Will the last person on earth left alive please turn off the lights?
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Lionell:
No need to switch the lights out when the electricity has been stopped.
As for Tesla it can only be a matter of time. Big on “concepts”, poor on delivery. Very good at promising great things in the future if you sacrifice and endure in the present.
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Right answer. If any are still left on, they will soon go out on their own.
A very short science fiction story:
The last person alive on earth was eating his breakfast when he heard a knock at his front door.
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As John Olson once said“You can’t save the world unless you’re prepared to force other people to sacrifice.”
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what does “save the world” even mean?
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For the left that means any impact on the environment of this planet by the human animal is unnatural and must be eliminated. Humans and our civilization are threats to “the world”. We are unnatural aberrations that are a threat to every other living thing on the planet and thus must be somehow be limited or eliminated.
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If the world gets caught in a rip, people go out and save it from being washed out to sea.
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The motto of the Greens.
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The New South Wales NRMA (Motorists Association & road service etc) a few months ago did a road test of a Tesla S EV from Sydney to Goulburn return as a weekend exercise and gave the vehicle lots of praise. Recharged at a Tesla station located at the Visitors Information Centre for the return journey.
In response to that weekend test a letter to the Editor was published in the next issue written by a Tesla S owner from Sydney who was prompted by the NRMA road test report to go on a three day holiday via Goulburn where he recharged his EV and then across to the coast then back over the Great Dividing Range to Canberra. He calculated that after recharging in Goulburn his EV would comfortably get to the Canberra Tesla recharge station.
He had not considered the hill climbing factor from the coast (Bateman’s Bay) to Canberra but fortunately did just make it after taking steps to make what electricity remained in the battery pack go as far as possible. Quite a stressful experience.
I am not opposed to EV as such but I am not patient enough to have to wait for an 80 per cent fast recharge that takes at least half an hour every four hundred kilometres or so. And then only along the east coast highway and in various towns and cities. Maybe more stations will be provided, but where will the electricity come from being additional to the existing grid demand? And as for country Australia, let alone the more remote areas where diesel generators are the main source of electricity supply, only a Green could believe that will be EV transport territory any time soon.
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Lets imagine everyone had an EV and had to do an 80% fast charge at least once a week, the ABS Motor Vehicle Census 2017 indicates,
There were 18.8 million registered motor vehicles in Australia as at 31 January 2017.
The national vehicle fleet grew by 2.1 per cent between 2016 and 2017.
Diesel powered vehicles constitute 22.2 per cent of the national fleet, up from 15.9 per cent in 2012.
Passenger vehicles account for 75.0 per cent of the national fleet, down 0.1 percentage points from 2016.
Campervans reported the largest growth rate of any vehicle type, increasing by 4.5 per cent, followed by Light rigid trucks with 3.4 per cent.
So 14.1 million passenger vehicles with say one million doing a fast charge at the same time will have what effect on the power grid?
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No problem, they will use “green energy” and “off peak electricity” I have read in comments on line.
And don’t forget that very soon we will all have home off grid power after mining is stopped and the electricity grid no longer needed. A couple of EV would not be a problem, and for only 80 per cent fast charge a week.
Better still, there will be darkness outside which will enhance our sleeping conditions at night.
sarc
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Not long ago I read about Mahindra & Mahindra which is a very large public company in India with business interests in many nations including Australia where they produce aircraft in Sale, Victoria and they sell their range of farm tractors and 4WD light trucks here too.
Mahindra recently acquired their only electric vehicle competitor in India. One Mr.Mahindra commented that the company believes there is a future for small EV for use in urban areas to combat pollution problems caused in part by burning fossil fuel for transportation purposes. He also said that the company could not see a future for EV for general transportation purposes.
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I’m trying to find an equation that calculates the drain on the grid but no success yet, busy day and stupid phone arrgghhhh.
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Yonnie:
Instead just work out the cost of a whole new grid based on renewables, because that is what would be needed.
Better still, don’t worry about it, it won’t happen. It is just a day dream for the gullible greenies, dreamt up to get them to persuade politicians to throw our money away (which to be fair they are quite expert at doing).
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You only have to notice in the changes in your toaster or microwave between breakfast peak hours and late at night or even between weekdays and weekends.
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90% of all Teslas made are still on the road, the other 10% made it home.
/sarc
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Dennis @ #2.1.3
Sound comment, but, there is a simple solution to the recharge problem. Design the system so batteries can be readily swapped. That would require extra batteries, but would also enable power to be banked when available. The big question is, what’s the cost? If days of little wind and sun have to be catered for, the cost would be very high.
They have told us so many lies that we can’t take anything they say at face value. I don’t expect their newly “low” prices to be anywhere near competitive with coal, or even maybe nuclear.
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Don’t you mean “if available”?
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Apart from the wasted time waiting for the charge, imagine the amount of money the wife and kids could spend in that half hour. The final bill [assuming a commercial charging station] would be more than it would have been for a tank of petrol that would take you nearly twice as far.
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Well at least the NRMA could offer a tow to Tesla owning members whose batteries go flat.
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Tesla corp is maintained by the same imagination of the countless: Trekkies, Star Warriors, Dr. Whoies, Battlestarars and all other science fiction movie and series makers. They go to the movies to escape reality. The uber far-lefters long ago left reality and Tesla is their dream. Parts may become reality but most will just fade away and die.
Still waiting for my flying cars, food synthesizers, and laser guns. (I did get my cell phone!)
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Can we hope that one day they might learn to count?
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Just wait till they learn to subtract! Oh never-mind! 🙂
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Anyone remember the dot.com investments boom and bust ?
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Greenhouse gases absorb electromagnetic radiation in sub-bands of the IR band. Since my first foray into the global warming issue, I’ve read and been told that solar radiation peaks in the “visible region” of the electromagnetic spectrum; and therefore incoming solar radiation passes through the earth’s atmospheric greenhouse gases, which absorb energy in the IR region of the electromagnetic spectrum, with little or no attenuation. Since radiation from the sun is often treated as radiation from a black body at approximately 5,778 Kelvin, imagine my surprise when looking through an old physics book I came across a graph that showed that as a function of frequency radiation from a black body at 6,000 Kelvin peaks in the near IR Division of the IR band, not in the visible band. Based on this observation, I decided to investigate the apparent discrepancy. What I found out is the following.
As is well known by the readers of this blog, for electromagnetic radiation propagating through a vacuum, associated with the radiation’s frequency, freq, is a corresponding radiation wavelength, lambda, such that the product of freq and lambda is the velocity of light in a vacuum. That is
freq * lambda = c = 299,792,458 meters per second.
It turns out that independent of the temperature of a black body, the product of (a) the frequency at which the radiation peaks and (b) the wavelength at which the radiation peaks does NOT equal c. That is, the frequency at which the radiation peaks does NOT correspond to the wavelength at which the radiation peaks—at least not is the sense that the product of the frequency peak and the wavelength peak is the velocity of light in a vacuum. The most direct way to see this is to examine the two forms of Wien’s Law. Wien’s Law gives the frequency/wavelength at which radiation from a black body at temperature T Kelvin is a maximum. The frequency and wavelength forms of Wien’s Law (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wien%27s_displacement_law) are:
frequency_peak (in Hertz) = 58,789,254,206 * T
where T is the temperature in Kelvin of the black body;
wavelength_peak (in meters) = 0.00289776829 / T
From these equations, the product of frequency_peak and wavelength_peak is 170,357,637 meters per second, not 299,792,458 meters per second—the speed of light in a vacuum.
The resolution to this apparent discrepancy is that “frequency_peak” corresponds to the frequency that maximizes black body spectral radiance per unit frequency; whereas “wavelength_peak” corresponds to the wavelength that maximizes black body spectral radiance per unit wavelength. The two spectral radiance functions are different—see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck%27s_law. For a more detailed discussion of this issue, see https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/wiens-displacement-law-frequency-vs-wavelength.285307/.
So what has this got to do with the AGW discussion? Little in substance, but appreciable in salesmanship. Specifically, when people use the claim that solar radiation peaks in the visible band to argue that incoming solar radiation passes through atmospheric greenhouse gases with little absorption, they are characterizing solar radiation in a way that fits their message. It’s true that the solar radiation wavelength peak is in the visible band, and therefore, what they say is technically correct. However, the solar radiation frequency peak is in the Near IR Division of the IR band. Thus, an equally valid characterization of solar radiation is that solar radiation peaks in the IR band. Such a characterization would, however, do little to convince people that incoming solar radiation passes through earth’s atmospheric greenhouse gases with little absorption.
As part of my investigation of this issue, I created an Excel spreadsheet to quantify some of the issues. One particular output of that spreadsheet is that for a black body at temperature 5,778 Kelvin, 51.4% of the radiant energy falls within the IR band (0.3 terahertz to 430 terahertz), whereas only 38.6% of the radiant energy falls within the visible band (430 terahertz to 790 terahertz). This result is independent of which spectral radiance function (per unit frequency or per unit wavelength) is used. I would be happy to make that spreadsheet available to anyone who is so interested. Leave a comment and I’ll coordinate with Joanne to see that you get a copy.
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Reinvent the wheel?
https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/170843/does-sunlight-contain-940nm-wavelength-light
Yes, the energy appears much outside the visible spectrum.
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Wert, I admit nothing I said in my comment was original. The point that approximately 50% of solar radiation lies in the IR band whereas approximately 39% lies in the visible band is, how you said, reinventing the wheel. However, although I didn’t “reinvent the wheel,” I took a closer look at the wheel. The solid line in your reference plots the “Spectral Irradiance” in units of Watts per square meter per nanometer for a black body at 5,250 Centigrade (5,523 Kelvin). Thus, the “Spectral Radiance” is expressed as Power per unit area of emission per unit wavelength of emission. The plot peaks in the visible range and shows a larger “area” outside the visible region than inside the visible region. To that degree, you are correct–I reinvented the wheel. However, the point I was trying to make was that if you express “Spectral Radiance” in terms of power per unit area of emission per unit frequency of emission, the resulting plot does NOT peak in the visible region–it peaks in the IR band (near IR band to be more precise).
Now the way in which “Spectral Radiance” is expressed is a matter of personal choice. As best I can tell, the community that deals with earth and solar radiation opts for “power per square meter of emission per unit wavelength of emission.” However, outside this community “spectrum” more commonly refers to “power per unit frequency” not “power per unit wavelength.” It’s only because for electromagnetic radiation in a vacuum, wavelength and frequency are related by the formula “frequency*wavelength=velocity of light,” that when discussing a “spectrum,” wavelength can be used in place of frequency. So a reader outside the earth/solar radiation community, would more likely infer “Spectral Radiance” implies power per unit frequency of emission, than power per unit wavelength of emission.
That is why I wrote that as far as the substance of AGW is concerned, my comment has little merit. However, as far as the presentation of AGW is concerned, my comment adds to the discussion. Since for convincing the general public that AGW is not a major issue, “preseentation” trumps “substance,” I believe my comment was worthwhile.
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Reed Coray November 19, 2017 at 7:28 am ·
Perhaps you “got it”, but perhaps ‘upside down’! Coherent monocromatic EMR can deliver power in the direction of lower radiance where the concept of bandwith is not needed\assumed\ignored. When you get to sensible heat powered spontaneous EMR emanation (exit flux), Boltzmann’s kTb ‘noise’ (variance) is physically required for conversion back from relativistic EMR into the physical ‘sensible heat’, ‘latent heat’, photosynthesis, et cetera! All know daily; Theres a Sun over yonder somewhere and God still loves us! Communication power transfer resides completely in the sidebands! With spontaneous thermal EMR there is no ‘carrier’, (DSBSC) everywhere. Duplex communication at zero delta T, is easy, as long as you can demodulate, without a carrier!
All the best!-will-
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Reed Coray November 19, 2017 at 7:28 am
In all of the many radiometric terms, waves per cm, (wavenumber) is used as a frequency; not with reference to time with outrageous seconds but instead convenient length interval, referenced to retivistic (c). Such has the same meaning for the static electromagnetic field strength and for the dynamic transfer known as flux. What is left for the individual to interpret is whether a change in ‘index of refraction’ due to mass, or relitivistic motion, implys a change in length, time, or frequency! I.e. germanium (Ge) has an index of 4 at wavelengt 10 microns, wavenumber 1000, or your frequency 30 THz. Is the speed of light 75 million m/s inside Ge, or what? Best to state which ‘you’ mean!
All the best!-will-
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Reed Coray November 19, 2017 at 7:28 am
Can you please explain why you would think this is at all unusual? Have you even tried to understand the different log-log graphs under the:
ordinary:
abscissa -> W/(m²⋅sr⋅cm) (wavenumber interval) ordinate -> microns (wavelength or 1/cm (wavenumber)
Rare but useful:
abscissa -> W/(m²⋅sr⋅micron) (wavenlenth interval) ordinate -> microns (wavelength or 1/cm (wavenumber)
Most confusing:
abscissa ->W/(sec⋅m²⋅sr) (frequency interval/band) ordinate -> 1/sec (frequency)
The most confusing is that W/sec or impulse\action! Planck’s constant, kinda!
Notice that with any graph the abscissa is always some function of the ordinate or an interval thereof! The obvious from all is that the curves at higher ‘temperature constant’ always have higher abscissa value at each and every ordinate (never cross)! This is what drove Max Planck nutz for many years. Only scammers have simple straightforward and wrong!
All the best!-will-
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Will, if someone told me (a) a function, f(x), of x peaks at a value of say x = 10, and (b) that y = x/10, then I think it’s fairly natural to believe that the function f(y) peaks at the value y = 10/10 = 1. So when someone says (a) the spectral radiance of a black body peaks at say a wavelength of say 2.997925 x 10^-6 meters, and (b) the frequency associated with a wavelength of 2.997925 x 10^-6 meters is “c/wavelength” or 10^14 Hertz, I would say its reasonable to “believe” the spectral radiance of that black body peaks at a frequency of 10^14 Hertz. Do you contend that this is an unreasonable belief?
Confusion exists because the term “spectral radiance” does not provide a complete description of a physical phenomenon. Spectral radiance can be measured per unit wavelength and per unit frequency. The functions that represent these spectral radiances are not the same with the simple substitution of “frequency=c/wavelength.” So there is no unique answer to the question: At what frequency does the spectral radiance of a black body at temperature T peak? You get one answer if you’re talking about Spectral Radiance measured per unit wavelength and a different answer if you’re talking about Spectral Radiance measured per unit wavelength.
I’d say this situation is confusing, and therefore not unusual for someone to “believe” the product of “the frequency” at which the spectral radiance peaks and “the wavelength” at which the spectral radiance peaks should equal the speed of light in a vacuum.
The rest of your comment is so confusing it approaches gibberish.
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Reed Coray November 19, 2017 at 12:43 pm
Such is reasonable for someone, mathematically inclined, that is only educated from books, but has never learned of the physical from experience\skill! To me mathematics is but a tool! like a hammer; used correctly, a fine attachment via nail! Used incorrectly, a very sore thumb! Which are you? Do you understand the mathematical concept of ordinate interval (inverse logarithmic scale)?
You seem to enjoy your lack of understanding of the difficult task\struggle of scientifically converting star ‘brightness’ (now magnitude) into the orthogonal new dimension of ‘radiance’, and subset luminance! Radiance is normalized in four-space and your ‘per unit interval’ is part of that. For thermal ‘spectral radiance’ the details between mass, sensible heat, and absolute temperature are running into serious problems with the Cal Tech folk still adjusting things!
Please detail your confusion, so I may try to re-express in your terms.
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Ooops. The last sentence in the second paragraph of my comment 4.2.1 is:
“You get one answer if you’re talking about Spectral Radiance measured per unit wavelength and a different answer if you’re talking about Spectral Radiance measured per unit wavelength”.
That sentence makes no sense. I sometimes get wrapped around the axle writing about AGW. The last sentence in the second paragraph should have been:
“You get one answer if you’re talking about Spectral Radiance measured per unit wavelength and a different answer if you’re talking about Spectral Radiance measured per unit frequency“.
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That was easy to read around with any attempt to ‘understand another’,rather than merely parse words. Thank you for the correction. Now ‘Please detail your confusion, so I may try to re-express in your terms.’ 🙂
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Can you understand that when the per unit (interval divisor) approaches zero, indicating identity of the numerator, the value of the numerator approaches not a number (NAN). A well known mathematical Law.
Only when the denominator is orthogonal\normal to the numerator, as in pressure (force normal to surface) can the value of the function remain a constant. In the case of radiance the term W/sr forces the W to be normal to the m² so radiance remains constant even if the area shrinks to zero. What happens when the (sr) aligned with the vector flux approaches zero (Star trying to get out of Dodge)? 🙂
All the best!-will-
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I am in a discussion with a person that has cited the Montana Climate Assessment as there source of information about Montana’s future climate. The MCA has a quote I do not understand and would like some help from the generous readers of Jo’s website. The MCA says
“For the work of the Montana Climate Assessment, we employed an ensemble from the fifth iteration of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5), which includes up to 42 GCMs depending on the experiment conducted (CMIP5 undated). The World Climate Research Program describes CMIP as “a standard experimental protocol for studying the output” of GCMs (CMIP undated). It provides a means of validating, comparing, documenting, and accessing diverse climate model results. The CMIP project dates back to 1995, with the fifth iteration (CMIP5) starting in 2008 and providing climate data for the latest IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (Stocker et al. 2013).”
My questions:
1) How does CMIP5 provide validation of GCMs?
2) In what sense does a GCM provide “data”?
My thanks to any who would help me.
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The CMIP is a testing regime for climate models. It is NOT VALIDATING climate models. It is simple a set of standard conditions for comparing climate models.
Fundamentally climate models start with what the user thinks the answer should be and the controls are adjusted to achieve that answer. Bob Tisdale has done an interesting analysis of the the climate models using the CMIP5 testing regime. The linked chart shows the comparison of the models for the TOA heat flux:
https://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/figure-15.png
Note the range is from -3W/sq.m to 3W/sq.m – how can that be.
The full article is here:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/08/26/climate-models-fail-global-ocean-heat-content-based-on-toa-energy-imbalance/
Any output from a computer program is described as data. The term is used loosely as the accepted definition of data has some factual basis. Nothing forecast from climate models bears any relationship to measured data.
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“climate models start with what the user thinks the answer should be and the controls are adjusted to achieve that answer.”
That sums up the whole story!
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It is not quite the whole story. It has also become quite fashionable, usually referred to as world’s best practice homogenisation, to massage measured data by small adjustments here and there to better fit the output trends from the models.
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Hi DMA,
I read the quote from the MCA several times. I am still trying to decipher it.
I suggest you ask your debating partner what it means.
Also put your questions 1. and 2. to him/her. The answers seem self evident to me.
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Peter C November 19, 2017 at 9:27 am
Could you please post your ‘self evedent’ answers? From the MCA executive summary:
So a group of self appointed academics organized to sell something to the unwary public! and:
Completely buying into the other nonsense academic scam called “GREENHOUSE EFFECT”!
All the best!-will-
53
You have hit the nail on the head Will!
33
Was that your ‘self evident”? You never said! Montana needs help to manage fine resources better: pleeeeease keep the Calimexicans out. The academics have books, but not the skill to manage such effectively!!
All the best!-will-
24
An observation on GMOs
”
Kenji replied to comment from Ken Deplorable (Kulak) | November 17, 2017 12:40 PM | Reply
GMO! GMO! GMO! … NO GMO! NO GMO! NO GMO! … bleat the “alternative lifestyle” sheep. Every upper middle class Mom in Marin County will DEMAND flour with a NO GMO label … that is if they aren’t already boycotting flour as part of their GLUTEN-free protocol.
https://www.nongmoproject.org/gmo-facts/
In the absence of credible independent long-term feeding studies, the safety of GMOs is unknown. Increasingly, citizens are taking matters into their own hands and choosing to opt out of the GMO experiment
The same people who embrace the “science” of Global Warming … are actually SO ignorant to REAL science that they cannot even eat an ear of GMO corn, or GMO tomatoes … or WAIT … everything they eat has been GMO’ed. Idiots.”
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/2017/11/extremists-will.html#comments
40
I drive by fields of gmo corn and soy beans every summer. If these people knew how widespread gmo are then they would be less fearful of them. One farmer I know argues that all crops are gmo, just the method of modifying has changed from tuncation selection to dna transformation methods.
I am concerned about Glyphosate resistance. The next generation gmo are designed to be sprayed with dicamba, which is broad leaf hormone based weedicide. This will be a problem where such gmo crops are grown in proximity to grape vine, and other broad leaved crops.
20
Feedback and hopefully feed forward on Elizabeth Nickson’s book “Ecofascists”
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/09/17/delingpole-urgent-memo-to-donald-trump-the-biggest-threat-to-the-environment-are-environmentalists/
40
OT
Red pill [or greatest LARP of all time]
Trump taking out the NWO?
4Chan poster, QAnon, seems to have predicted +++ in Trump tweet
http://dailyrabbithole.com/index.php/2017/11/07/4chan-poster-qanon-seems-to-have-predicted-in-trump-tweet/
“Q Clearance” Patriot – documents
https://twitter.com/A1Carolynne/status/931034834817785857
Lionel Nation: Live Stream: The Firestorm of Citizen and Civilian Revolt: Q Clearance Patriot #4chan #QAnon
https://youtu.be/vGzOoVp8Nog
4Chan Q-ANON- ALARMING In Depth Analysis
https://youtu.be/6EfrFw-NcMs
/POL/- Q Clearance Anon – Is it #happening???
https://youtu.be/f36lpOIaku4
21
Two data sets would best help calibrate,
The real temp. reading and its changing rate.
From Bonn a worldwide map devised by C.A.N.,
Of countries doubting climate-change by man.
To access G.C.F. some nations try,
But first they must spend fortunes to apply.
80
“What Would We Do Without Research?”
“Fat Rights Now”
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/2017/11/what-would-we-d-85.html#comments
Links and comments
20
‘Mr Trump sounded genuinely awestruck back in April after a brief conversation in which Mr Xi gently explained to him the geopolitical situation in the Korean peninsula.’
The Straits Times
30
And what in fact was said after that?
“The Confucian Roots of Xi Jinping’s Policies”.
http://news.nus.edu.sg/sites/default/files/resources/news/2017/2017-11/2017-11-15/CONFUCIAN-st-pA20-15nov.pdf
Not much.
10
Xi sees Confucianism as the basis for universal good government and he is now the supreme commander of this new world order, so I take his views seriously.
10
This is a good coverage of Xi’s background.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/24/opinion/sunday/chinas-communists-embrace-religion.html
The elephant in the room is Daoism, the spiritual heart of the nation.
10
From an article in the Independent on COP23 Bonn.
The French President was attacking President Trump for withdrawing from the Paris Agreement. If consistent he would be threatening tariffs against most countries in the world, as few are proposing significant emissions cuts like the EU.
In terms of a carbon tax, €30 a tonne is insufficient. Professor Richard Tol estimated in 2013 that to meet climate targets would require a global carbon tax of $210 a tonne from 2020, inflated by 4-6% a year forever.
https://manicbeancounter.com/2017/11/18/macron-calls-for-climate-tariffs-against-most-of-the-world/
60
Bennelong to become three cornered contest, which means the guvmint could lose this seat to Labor.
20
“I’m nobody’s gal” Christine Keneally, Labor Candidate for Bennelong and former New South Wales Labor Premier, associate of former NSW Labor Cabinet Ministers Eddie Obeid (now in prison for corruption) and Joe Tripodi (one of the gang too), was the Labor Premier who sold government owned electricity private companies and assets for a loss of $6.1 billion below the lowest valuation of assets.
The sale for $5.9 billion was pushed through quickly and before debate could commence the Premier prorogued Parliament and months later called an election.
One of the issues Labor wanted to avoid debating was the mismanagement of those government owned businesses. They were originally established to replace the NSW Electricity Commission that suffered poor work practises via a unionised work force, the Greiner Coalition Government made the change. They also dealt with other problems such as Railway Workshops dominated by unionism. They were closed and the work put to public tender. After the Carr Labor Government took office the electricity business’ management was changed, jobs for the boys as it is described.
The new management was asked to borrow money to pay the State Government extra dividends to improve budget bottom lines. This went on for around 14 of the 16 years Labor remained in government in NSW.
When the $5.9 billion realised from the sale was used to settle the debts and interest liabilities all that was left was $800 million.
This past week the Daily Telegraph front cover revealed that Eddie Obeid held a party and the guest of honour was not Christina Keneally, the guest of honour was Bill Shorten now Federal Labor Opposition Leader. And I also read that fielding Keneally as Labor Candidate for Bennelong was Bill Shorten’s idea.
I trust that the voters of Bennelong are not fooled, and with due consideration for the low SSM postal survey Yes response I am confident that most are not easily fooled.
91
The demographics of Bennelong is on the move, we could talk about the ideal ACP candidate.
‘….53.8% of people living in Bennelong speak English only. The other top languages spoken are 8.9% Mandarin, 8.3% Cantonese, 4.6% Korean, 3.8% Language spoken at home not stated, 3.3% Other, 2.2% Italian, 1.7% Arabic, 1.2% Hindi, 1.0% Greek.’
QPZM
30
Yes Dennis but in true Labor style and some creative accounting they did get the books back in the black didn’t they ?
I’ve pretty much given up on politics these days , my wife says we should have pushed our kids to become politicians but who wants their children to become career criminals .
100
From memory it was the Korean faction which helped unseat John Howard in Bennelong, it could go towards ACP and stun the nation.
Across the river in Reid we see the impact of a rising middle class, new immigrants making their mark on the politics and architectural environment.
There is a lot of grumbling among the indigenous population, those born and raised in the area, but its already too late to save their heritage homes. Nevertheless they will be paid handsomely to vacate.
From its inception Reid has been Labor, with a gradual intake of Greek and Italian immigrants, but now the Chinese, Indian and Korean middle class have made it their home.
At the next election Reid could potentially be a winner for the ACP, it depends on what happens in Bennelong.
30
The interesting political side of immigration, from countries troubled by political instability, is that the people choose Australia expecting a stable and safe political environment.
And when they discover the decline here and the uncomfortable realities of our new society, intake from undesirable groups, UN climate change related agenda, the migrants panic and start looking for alternatives who they hope will save their new country and provide their children with the better future the families seek.
Migrants who still embrace family values, have a work ethic, are desperate to get their children the best possible education are probably Australia’s best hope for the future.
40
Dennis, all that is as I recall it.
However, what needs to be remembered is that the voters in NSW continued to vote the Labor Party into power. Accordingly, NSW deserves everything that flows from that.
Oh! And the voters of Bennelong? If they and Cory Bernardi are half as smart as they think they are we’ll see an Australian Conservative take the seat.
30
I’m not sure they’re smart enough to vote for Cory but will watch and see if he makes any impact .
30
I am unsure about Bennelong today, when John Howard was elected to represent Bennelong it was a very safe Liberal seat and he was elected when the sitting MP retired after decades of representation (John Maddison?). But over the thirty something years JWH held the seat there were electoral boundary redistributions which reduced his majority to the point that by 2007 it was considered to be a marginal electorate for the Liberals.
The Howard family home was then just outside Bennelong electorate in North Sydney electorate. I understand that JWH decided to stick with his constituents when it was suggested that he move to a safer electorate. And as history reveals he lost the seat at the November 2007 election and Labor’s ABC candidate McWho became the MP. She lost the seat at the 2010 election when Gillard’s Labor Government was reduced to being forced to form alliances and a minority government.
I understand from news reports that JWH has been supporting John Alexander during this by election campaign, and that Alexander remains popular and has been a hard working MP.
But maybe the Australian Conservatives would be useful for preferences and gaining publicity for the ACP?
30
For a minute there I thought the ABC had turned .
http://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2017-11-19/offgrid-may-not-be-as-green-as-it-seems/9154266
20
What about neighbours who hate each other’s guts?
30
Robert you could have said why ABC haven’t turned.
The coal-fired plants don’t slow down just because the sun is out. Basically same CO2 emission but we get less benefit from it. It’s not greening the neighbours from any perspective other than glib rhetoric.
Oddly convenient that he didn’t make the same statement about the manufacture and disposal of photovoltaic panels, which has toxic chemicals and environmental impact involved the whole way, although that’s improving.
My impression of storage is that it has economies of scale, so the Professor is right on this point. Bigger is more efficient, and any chemical disposal is then the responsibility of a smaller number of adequately funded professionals.
20
Andrew M wrote:
Tesla use the same 2170 can in its grid scale batteries that it uses in a car or a home battery bank. All that changes is the number of cans; from hundreds to thousands to millions depending on the battery size. From memory the Tesla 80MWh grid battery in California has about 5 million 2170 cans.
The little can probably has the benefit of truly mass production with tight quality control. It also reduces the potential for explosions by distributing the energy stored into small packages. I am not sure how individual can failures are accommodated. Some the lithium cells have their own miniature circuits inside the cap the protects against over voltage, under voltage and also limit current drain.
There appears to be little or no benefit of scale with batteries. It is the same as wind and and solar generation. None of them make sense to connect to the grid at their current cost. In fact attaching them to the grid ensures the grid’s demise as anyone can use the same components to collect their own energy on their own premises. The grid generation is burdened by the high cost of transmission. In place where grid power is more expensive than making your own people choose to make their own; SA for example.
We were told Victorian power is set to rise 15% in 2018:
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/victorian-households-to-be-slugged-by-energy-price-rises-between-10-and-20-per-cent/news-story/5e00b4bd6cd9ac9c41c1160d8f30817b
30
I have no problem with cars and trucks going electric. In fact I look forward to one day moving off my old and archaic internal combustion engine to a fully electric one. We are not there yet though for a number of reasons, and the only way we would ever get there is if we build nuclear and/or coal fired power stations to support the massive increase in demand for charging the batteries across the nation.
81
I have no problem with people owning EVs. If they want to do it, and they can afford it, that’s their choice. I do mind, however, the taking away of choice by banning, or unduly taxing, ICE powered vehicles, or artificially increasing the costs/reducing the supply of hydrocarbon fuels for ICE. Moreover, I abhor subsidies, tax credits, rebates ..ect to make EVs unfairly more competitive. They must sink or swim on their own. Don’t ask me or other tax payers to pay in part for EVs. There are far better things for public monies.
EVs are not an imperative. Replacing the ICE is not an imperative. Reducing human co2 emissions ( which EVs don’t do anyway) is not an imperative.
120
“CONNED: THE SHOCKING TRUTH ABOUT THE COST OF CLOSING HAZELWOOD”
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/blogs/andrew-bolt/conned-the-shocking-truth-about-the-cost-of-closing-hazelwood/news-story/c0bd5928fce38e30ccf08aa64a468c71
90
Yep no doubt about it the inner city suburbs are rife with numptys , so much so the Libs are considering not contesting any inner city seats .
This country will have to continue on our crash and burn path before the sheeple will wake up to what’s going on .
Only when the power goes off for extended periods , only when they can’t buy a soy latte , only when they can’t fill up their SUV’s or take a train or shop at the supermarket will they be dragged kicking and screaming into reality .
61
Banging on Centrelink doors demanding their taxpayer funded Mountain Bikes.
40
I read recently about a phenomen called Soy Boys. It has been found that the use of Soy milk has resulted in the amount of testosterone decreasing in males. Soy milk contains a large amount of plant oestrogen. Soy drinkers have developed secondary female characteristics. Probably many of the Yes Tickers have been on Soy milk.
60
The Soy Boys with Psoriasis are the one’s you need to watch.
40
The new state of confusion is not knowing if a person is Arthur or Martha.
But worse, when the story is told about the Rainbow Garden and Adam and Yves.
30
18 Nov: Daily Caller: David Krayden: New Study Says Climate Change Programs Cost Billions For Paltry Results
A new study from the Fraser Institute says taxes aimed at curbing climate change and helping green energy projects produce phenomenal costs and little benefit to the environment.
The Vancouver-based group examined climate change initiatives in Canada and around the world, all of which wastes billions of taxpayer dollars.
“Across the country, ineffective climate policies will cost taxpayers billions with little to show for it,” said Fraser Institiute energy and natural resources expert Kenneth Green in a news release Thursday (LINK).
Jason Kenney, the new leader of the United Conservative Party in Alberta, was quick to seize on the report, tweeting on Friday: “New study says the NDP carbon tax will cost the average family $3600 over the next 3 years. It is ‘going to cost a great deal of money, but, most likely, will yield very little return in terms of environmental benefits.’”…
The study looked at green energy programs and carbon taxes in Germany, the U.K. and the state of California, and found two things in common: huge costs and low environmental results…
It also cites the recurring habit of green energy advocates to ignore the massive subsidies required for the production of “clean energy” substitutes like wind and solar power.
http://dailycaller.com/2017/11/18/new-study-says-climate-change-programs-cost-billions-for-paltry-results/
16 Nov: Marketwired: SOURCE: The Fraser Institute: Fraser Institute News Release: Provincial climate plans will cost billions with likely little environmental benefit
CALGARY AB: – A detailed review of provincial climate action plans and the results from countries around the world who have pursued similar policies indicate that the current provincial plans will cost Canadians billions and likely produce very little environmental benefits, finds a new study released today by the Fraser Institute, an independent, non-partisan Canadian public policy think-tank.
“Across the country, ineffective climate policies will cost taxpayers billions with little to show for it,” said Kenneth Green, Fraser Institute’s senior director of energy and natural resource studies and author of Canada’s Climate Action Plans: Are they cost-effective (LINK)?
Alberta’s climate action plan, considered the most expensive in Canada, is projected to cost $5.4 billion over the next three years. That works out to $3,600 per household in Alberta, on average…
http://www.marketwired.com/press-release/fraser-institute-news-release-provincial-climate-plans-will-cost-billions-with-likely-2240936.htm
Wikipedia: The Fraser Institute describes itself as “an independent international research and educational organization”, and envisions “a free and prosperous world where individuals benefit from greater choice, competitive markets, and personal responsibility”.
Forbes has referred to the think tank as libertarian. The New York Times has described the Institute as libertarian and conservative. The Calgary Herald called it conservative, Langley Times classified it as right-of-center libertarian…
30
It must be breezy in Kalgoorlie this morning.
The ABC News web site says winds are in excess of 1,000km/hr.
Good old ABC – the centre for gross exaggeration of weather events.
70
The just in site only says 100 but I’ve told the ABC hundreds of billions of times not to exaggerate!
60
Yep,
They have corrected it to 100.
It was 1,000 (with the comma).
30
the most detailed account, albeit an optimistic one, of the final night at COP23:
18 Nov: Scroll.in: Nitin Sethi: Bonn climate talks end as developing countries fight the odds to keep their hopes alive
After bitter fights, intrigue and convoluted trade-offs, the window of opportunity had been kept open to implement Paris climate change agreement
The Bonn climate change summit concluded on Saturday with bitter fights, intrigue and convoluted trade-offs between developing and developed countries dragging the negotiations well beyond the allotted two-weeks into the weekend. At the end, the best many developing countries could say of the negotiations was that, against odds, the window of opportunity had been kept open to implement Paris climate change agreement effectively from 2020 onwards…
Developing countries and their groupings had to draw deep from their collective reservoir of negotiating skills to fight tenaciously and ensure the summit did not close with worse results.
It could have easily got worse…READ ON
https://scroll.in/article/858341/bonn-climate-talks-end-as-developing-countries-fight-the-odds-to-keep-their-hopes-alive
40
Now upscaling from a tesla car to 80,000 pounds of truck powered for 500 miles would require 1000 kwr of battery weighing in at 22 tons. To give a 1/2 hour charge to 80 % would require a 2mw charger. Makes one go hum.
20
Battlefield S1/E1 – The Battle of France…and more
10
18 Nov: Guardian: Adam Vaughan: Polluting UK coal plants export power to France as cold weather bites
UK’s last eight coal stations are working to exploit falling temperatures and absence of offline reactors in France to export power across the Channel
Tricastin, one of France’s biggest nuclear power stations, was closed by the French regulator in September so that works could be undertaken to address a flood risk…
The operators of Britain’s eight remaining coal power stations appear to have stepped in to exploit higher French prices, exporting power across the channel as temperatures have plunged…
Most of the time, France sends electricity to the UK through 43-mile-long cables between Folkestone and a site near Calais, but in November there have been more hours when power has flowed in the other direction…
GRAPHIC
On Friday, power through the interconnector was almost entirely flowing at maximum capacity towards France…
Analysis by Iain Staffell, lecturer in sustainable energy at Imperial College and author of the Electric Insights report, came to a similar conclusion.
“In short, coal usage has shot up in the last two weeks, both because we are now exporting to France and because demand is growing as it gets colder. We are still using less coal than we did this time last year though,” he said…
Uniper, the German energy company that runs Ratcliffe coal power station in Nottinghamshire, said the higher usage was a response to the situation in France and colder temperatures.
“Over the past few weeks, the French power market has seen relatively higher power prices compared to Britain. One of the impacts of this is that flows on the Britain-France interconnector have seen more of a flow to France than to Britain,” the company said in a statement.
British coal power station owners may also be responding to one of Britain’s biggest nuclear reactors, Sizewell B, being offline for servicing until mid-December…
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/nov/18/french-reactor-repairs-generate-profits-old-uk-coal-power-plants
30
The Joint Polar Satellite System-1 launched this morning, apparently succesfully.
https://www.space.com/38766-jpss1-weather-satellite-launch-success.html
The satellite carries 5 instruments including a Clouds and Earth’s Radient Energy System (CERES) instrument. Will this clarify some of the unknowns about the Earth’s outgoing long wave (OLR) emissions?
40
Yes, it is more accurate than the old CERES.
http://www.jpss.noaa.gov/ceres.html
OLR has been measured for decades already by the previous CERES instrument and other unrelated predecessor satellites.
Attributing any portion of late 20th century temperature rise to a reduction in albedo of the earth’s cloud cover has also been mired in confusion over what exactly is the reflectivity (albedo) and cloud cover of the earth. The shortwave sensor of CERES should help with that too… in about 22 years when enough data has been collected. Don’t expect policy to wait for the facts.
30
Thanks Andrew,
Seems like nothing will be settled any time soon. I was looking for OLR spectra from clouds. I have not seen that published yet.
00
Copied from elsewhere:
When i was young i was scared of the dark. Now when i see my electricity bill I’m scared of the lights.
71
So I have a friend that has a Yamaha RX-V673 amplifier and during Melbourne’s storm yesterday he had a series of blackouts and brownouts and the amp stopped working. It would not power on except for a flashing light. The manual said that since there had been an accumulated three power failures the amp’s internal protection circuitry had activated and disabled the unit for its own protection and the only solution was to return the unit to a dealer for repair. Googling the problem I found the following DIY solution:
Hold INFO + TONE CONTROL for 5 seconds and while still pressed click POWER (do not hold it).
It worked. I wonder how much Yamaha would have charged to perform that procedure?
40
lol.
17 Nov: Guardian: ‘We should be on the offensive’ – James Hansen calls for wave of climate lawsuits
Veteran climate scientist says litigation campaign against government and fossil fuels companies is essential alongside political mobilisation in fighting ‘growing, mortal threat’ of global warming
by Jonathan Watts
“The judiciary is the branch of government in the US and other countries that is relatively free of bribery. And bribery is exactly what is going on,” he told the Guardian on the sidelines of the UN climate talks in Bonn…
But after three decades, he has been largely pushed to the fringes. Organisers have declined his request to speak directly to the delegates about what he sees as a threat that is still massively underestimated.
Instead he spreads his message through press conferences and interviews, where he cuts a distinctive figure as an old testament-style prophet in an Indiana Jones hat…
“Climate change is a human rights issue,” Hansen says. “We are seeing injustice against the young. The present generation has a responsibility to future generations.”
Worldwide, the number of legislative activities related to climate change has increased from 99 to 164 in the past two years, according to a report earlier this year (LINK) by the Grantham Research Institute and the Columbia Law School. Their study found that two-thirds of the litigation resulted in stronger regulations…
According to Hansen, the action cannot come too soon…
“I have come to note that greenhouse gas climate forcings are accelerating, not decelerating, and sea-level rise and ocean acidification are accelerating. We confront a mortal threat, now endangering the very existence of island and low-lying nations in the Pacific and around the planet. Accordingly, ambition must be increased and enforced.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/nov/17/we-should-be-on-the-offensive-james-hansen-calls-for-wave-of-climate-lawsuits
20
a MUST-READ from climate-leading China:
19 Nov: SouthChinaMorningPost: Stephen Chen: China’s plan to use solar power to melt permafrost to turn a Tibetan grassland into an artificial forest on the roof of the world
Scientists question the value and environmental impact of the expensive project, which is of special interest to the Chinese president
The absence of trees ranked along with the area’s lack of oxygen, extreme cold and geographic isolation as top reasons for the mental breakdown of Chinese military personnel in this city 4,500 metres above sea level. Soldiers from Nagqu who would go to Lhasa on leave were known to leap off their buses to hug a tree, in tears, according to the People’s Liberation Army Daily.
Now China is taking the unprecedented – and expensive – step of harnessing solar power to melt permafrost to allow trees to grow in Nagqu…
The project’s aim is to make the landscape more welcoming for Han settlers and soldiers struggling to cope emotionally with the treeless setting…READ ALL
http://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/2120477/chinas-plan-use-solar-power-melt-permafrost-turn-tibetan
30
With the collapse of the high pressure belt we can expect cold air outbreaks at anytime.
http://www.bom.gov.au/fwo/IDY65100.pdf
20
Would appreciate an explanation of this el, or perhaps a link to more info.
10
The collapse of the subtropical ridge happened in early July and I’m the only person in the world aware of it, so no link.
The background is that the intensity of the STR over the past couple of decades was deemed by the Klimatariat at BoM to be a global warming signal, but now that its lost its intensity we hear only crickets.
The upshot is that ‘blocking highs’ have now become the norm and a clear global cooling signal.
20
Before the collapse it was very dry, with a forecast of more to come, but in the blink of an eye global warming came to end.
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/updates/articles/a025.shtml
20
Thanks for the STR article link eg, needed to re-educate myself on its function. I have noticed in the past that when we have had strong La Niña years, the STR is pushed right down below WA, I thought by the increased cyclones off our northern coast. This usually leads to protracted long hot spells in Perth, and we haven’t had these for many years. I tend to look at the water temps off the SW corner of our coast, which recently have become warmer, a lot more warmer than last year. These seem to be linked to our recent return to “normal” spring weather in Perth, whereas last year our spring was a lot colder and wetter.
10
Just had a look and you’re right, its a return to normality.
http://www.weatherzone.com.au/climate/indicator_sst.jsp?lt=wzstate&lc=was&c=sst
00
If you want to know why we had to build the desalination plants, it had something to do with the precautionary principle, this from 2009.
http://www.smh.com.au/national/its-not-drought-its-climate-change-say-scientists-20090829-f3cd.html
The intensification of the STR was a global warming signal and it will never rain again, like in the 50s, 60s and 70s.
00
Actually desal plants in WA have been very successful, giving us a good supply of water and which also means that we don’t have to pump as much underground water into our drinking water, which has markedly improved its taste.
10
A very expensive drink of water, would have been cheaper to harvest icebergs from the southern ocean.
00
But remember we’re not tied to that horrendously expensive electricity grid, so the water is cheaper. There was an idea once to bring it down from up north using a canal, but I think these days the greenies would that idea off immediately.
10
Kill that idea…
10
Bringing it down from the Ord might have worked, its a renewable resource.
00
18 Nov: Bloomberg: Jess Shankleman: Coal Back as Flashpoint in Climate-Change Fight
Germany and Poland come out in support of dirtiest fossil fuel
Next round of talks to be held in Poland’s mining heartland
Coal emerged as the surprise winner from two weeks of international climate talks in Germany, with leaders of the host country and neighboring Poland joining Donald Trump in support of the dirtiest fossil fuel.
“People don’t have total confidence that Poland wants to increase ambition, to put it plainly,” said Alden Meyer, director of strategy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, an advocacy group. “They’re 80 percent dependent on coal, they’ve been pushing back against European Union proposals to increase ambition.”…
(Merkel’s) change of tone at the Bonn talks, which were already clouded by Trump’s vow to take the U.S. out of the landmark Paris accord, fueled concern over the deal’s future as delegates look nervously to Katowice…
“The host of a meeting is a pretty important group,” said Jake Schmidt, a director at the U.S. Natural Resources Defense Council. “We fully expect to see Poland selling us on how awesome their coal is.”…
Poland, hosting the talks in December next year, has said coal will be key to its energy security for decades…
“If we can’t persuade Poland to make the transition, then we’re not going to succeed with Paris” targets, said Bob Ward, policy and communications director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics…
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-18/coal-returns-as-flashpoint-in-global-climate-change-fight
30
very lengthy:
18 Nov: OregonLive: Dirty Deals: How Oregon let its clean energy program enrich rule breakers (Watchdog Report Part 1 of 2)
By TED SICKINGER and HILLARY BORRUD
A Seattle-based energy consultant and the state employee he’s accused of bribing became the public faces of corruption charges at the Department of Energy after their arrests last summer.
But it wasn’t one rogue employee who enabled consultant Martin Shain to reap $12 million in green energy tax credits for solar projects that should have failed to qualify, according to thousands of records reviewed by The Oregonian/OregonLive. Four other Energy Department employees, including the director, helped Shain obtain the credits by circumventing program rules and ignoring deadlines lawmakers insisted on.
None of the four has been accused of wrongdoing. All four employees declined to answer questions about their particular roles in greenlighting the tax credits.
But records illustrate that officials scrambled to ensure success of the politically high-profile project. Documents also show how the culture of the agency contributed to the misuse of millions in taxpayer funds.
The emails, obtained by The Oregonian/OregonLive under a public records request, open a new window on a years-long pattern of cozy regulatory relationships and institutional failure at the department. The agency’s mishandling of the subsidies undermined the state’s credibility in using tax incentives to achieve its green energy goals and tarnished the very industry the agency was supposed to advance…
In the end, taxpayers lost more than $12 million. The state’s nascent renewable energy industry ended up tinged with corruption. And the agency’s mismanagement of the Business Energy Tax Credits fundamentally damaged the state’s credibility in managing any large incentive program.
“The stain of the BETC is so pervasive that it can’t even be considered a possibility to have any kind of tax credit program for renewables in this state,” said David Brown, the president of a solar developer, Obsidian Renewables.
A proposed $1.4 billion new green energy initiative is slated to go before the Legislature in February. A key supporter acknowledges that the tax credit scandals cast a long shadow on that proposal.
“It will have to carry that burden,” said Angus Duncan, who heads Oregon’s Global Warming Commission. The tax credit problems, he said, “put more backpressure on this bill to have a tight, well-managed and focused allocation of those revenues … not just a big slush fund that people can show up with their buckets and start dipping…READ ON
http://www.oregonlive.com/politics/index.ssf/2017/11/watchdog_report_part_1_of_2_di.html
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Diesel generators to provide 100MW of backup power for Victoriastan.
http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2017/11/13/generators-plug-victorias-power-grid
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So much cleaner than dirty coal.
sarc
60
And it’s the most expensive form of proper power generation there is, the only thing more expensive is solar and wind.
50
Australian company New Hope Group (NHC) which mines thermal coal had their annual general meeting last week and the chairman gave an interesting presentation to shareholders
http://www.asx.com.au/asx/statistics/displayAnnouncement.do?display=pdf&idsId=01922231
scroll to page 23 and the following pages.
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Very interesting, thank you
40
Some really good graphs on how effective coal-powered electricity is compared to other sources.
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I have been doing a little more analysis on the CERES global heat balance data. The difference between SSI and OLR has a positive trend. The net heat input as determined by the CERES data for the 21st century is:
2000-2004 0.6w/sq.m
2005-2009 0.55W/sq.m
2010-1014 0.55W/sq.m
It varies over a range of 1W/sq.m from year to year but there is an overall upward trend. The majority of that heat ends up in the top 2000m of the global oceans.
Given the large thermal inertia of the oceans there is a lag between the actual temperature and the equilibrium temperature required to balance the outgoing heat with the incoming heat.
The heat output of the Earth is a function of surface temperature to the 4th power given all the factors are unchanged.
If we make an assumption that the heating is solely a function of rising CO2 and the heat transfer is a logarithmic function of CO2 concentration from some starting point it is possible to deduce the relationship between CO2 and temperature given all the factors stay the same.
Choosing a starting point at 1980 and CO2 at 338ppm, the CO2 concentration has increased almost linearly to 403ppm in 2017. That corresponds to rising rate of 1.8ppm/yr.
Taking the equilibrium ocean temperate at 288K in 1980 the ocean needs too be 0.14 degrees K cooler in 1980 or at 287.86K to achieve a difference of 0.6W/sq.m between 2000-2004 is 0.14K. By 2020 the CO2 has reached 410ppm and the ocean surface temperature has reached 287.95K or risen 0.09 degrees K.
If the CO2 continues to rise at the same rate, by 2170 the concentration reaches double the 1980 value or 676ppm. The temperature is now 288.20K. Corresponding to 0.34 degrees rise over 2 centuries.
My conclusions from this analysis are (a) very small change in temperature results in a large change in OLR due to the 4th power relationship, (b) with CO2 concentration not rising faster than a linear rate, its influence on OLR transmission is ever DECREASING (c) the combination of a and b mean that the actual ocean temperature is gradually approaching the equilibrium temperature while the radiation imbalance is progressively decreasing.
Clearly there are many possibilities for errors in the analysis. Most importantly it depends on the accuracy of the CERES data. Secondly it relies on the measured differential in radiation in the first15 years of the 21st century being solely caused by rising CO2 without any other factor in the 5 year trends.
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Found this on another website discussion.
US military have been sent to Langley Airforce Base, also includes Hillary Clinton corruption allegations;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZjqH4cP-cw
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I think that poor lady has put her tinfoil hat on too tight .
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18 Nov: GWPF: Editorial from Wall St Journal: Germany’s Green Energy Meltdown
American climate-change activists point to Europe, and especially Germany, as the paragon of green energy virtue. But they ought to look closer at Angela Merkel’s political struggles as she tries to form a new government in Berlin amid the economic fallout from the Chancellor’s failing energy revolution…READ ALL
https://www.thegwpf.com/germanys-green-energy-meltdown/
18 Nov: TheLocalGermany: AFP: Crunch time for Merkel to build coalition or face new polls
By Frank Zeller
But their deep policy differences, especially on immigration and the environment, have hobbled the monthlong negotiating marathon, leading party leaders to miss a Thursday deadline and declare they will push on until Sunday evening.
Until and unless the motley crew of four parties, which spans the mainstream political spectrum, strikes a deal, Germany’s government remains in effective limbo with Merkel serving as a caretaker chancellor…
Merkel, no longer deemed invincible after her poor election result, “now faces the most difficult task of her leadership so far,” judged the Sueddeutsche Zeitung daily…
Deep differences also remain on climate policy, where the Greens want to phase out dirty coal and combustion-engine cars, while the conservatives and FDP emphasise the need to protect industry and jobs.
The Greens face a party congress in a week’s time, where rank-and-file members will give the thumbs up or down on the concessions their leaders may have wrested from the other parties…
https://www.thelocal.de/20171118/crunch-time-for-merkel-to-build-coalition-or-face-new-polls
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16 Nov: Press&JournalUK: Stan Arnaud: Jobs growth on ice as windfarm firm held back
by Stan Arnaud
Hopes of a jobs boom at a Highland port have been put on hold after the company behind a £250million floating windfarm off Stonehaven announced it is changing its plans for the project
Construction of concrete bases for the eight-turbine, 50megawatt (MW) Kincardine Offshore Windfarm Limited (KOWL) development had been due to start at Kishorn, in Wester Ross, this summer, but stalled after its Spanish backer said it had “encountered difficulties with an important element of its supply chain”.
Yesterday, Kishorn Port Limited (KPL) director Alasdair Ferguson said any work the yard may win for the project is now unlikely to get under way before the end of 2018 after KOWL announced it will instal one 2MW machine on a semi-submersible platform next year…
KOWL, set up by Scotland’s former deputy first minister Lord Nicol Stephen and now majority owned by Spanish company ACS, is expected to file a variation order for the new plans shortly…
https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/business/north-of-scotland/1359896/jobs-growth-on-ice-as-windfarm-firm-held-back/
very lengthy:
2 Nov: Desert Sun: Controversial consultant abandons contract with Imperial Irrigation District after Desert Sun investigation
by Sammy Roth
A major Southern California energy and water utility will no longer employ a controversial consultant, following a Desert Sun investigation into possible conflicts of interest involving tens of millions of dollars in spending on solar and battery projects.
The consulting firm, ZGlobal Inc., told the Imperial Irrigation District this week it would terminate its three-year, $9-million engineering contract with IID effective Tuesday, a year ahead of schedule. IID’s board of directors voted 5-0 in a closed-door meeting Tuesday to accept ZGlobal’s request to end the contract, utility officials said.
ZGlobal, which is based in Northern California, has received $18 million worth of contracts from IID since 2005, most recently running the public utility’s transmission and planning unit. ZGlobal has also consulted for solar developers doing business with IID, raising concerns that the engineering firm may have been “working both sides of the street” by doing work for the public utility that has benefited its private-sector clients.
As a result of The Desert Sun’s investigation into the consultant’s potential conflicts of interest, IID recently canceled two energy deals with developers linked to ZGlobal: a $75 million solar contract and a $7-million agreement to expand the utility’s battery storage facility…READ ON
http://www.desertsun.com/story/tech/science/energy/2017/11/01/controversial-consultant-ends-contract-imperial-irrigation-district-after-desert-sun-investigation/818033001/
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This week’s data and analysis for the Base Load series is at the link below.
That new Solar Plant in Queensland that the Premier announced in the recent photo op, the Clare Solar
FarmPlant has a Nameplate of 150MW.When you take into account the CF, and I’ll even use the claimed 25%, that comes down to around 40MW, so that goes part of the way towards the 50% Renewables by 2030 her Government is proposing.
Yep, 0.55% of the way towards it.
If the Bayswater plant had all four Units operating at their best then the total daily power generated by this solar plant could be delivered by Bayswater in, umm, 55 seconds.
At normal yearly operation, the total power delivered by this new solar plant would be delivered by Bayswater in, umm, a little under SEVEN DAYS, and the total lifetime power from the solar plant (even if it does make it to 25 years) would be delivered by Bayswater in a little over 20 weeks.
Saved by the renewables, eh.
Australian Base Load Electrical Power – Week Ending 18th November 2017
Tony.
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There was a severe storm in Melbourne, Victoriastan yesterday. My friend had three phase power to his house. He was concerned that after a blackout some lights came on normally and others we’re flickering and dim. I am guessing the flickering lights were all on the same phase and the reason for the flickering was that the voltage must have been too low for the compact fluoro lights.
My question is, is it acceptable for the utility to restore the power when the voltage was obviously too low? Are these the new low standards in an increasingly compromised and unstable “green” grid?
Also, are there any scenarios in which equipment can be damaged by being fed with too few AC volts?
61
Absolutely damage can be caused by insufficient voltage
50
I have a theory that during periods of insufficient power, the administrators of the grid shut down parts of the system by shutting off one of the three phases. Most houses are only connected to one phase. Therefore about 1/3 of houses loose there supply for a period.
00
A Canadian summary video by Friends of Science Challenging CBC and Minister McKenna on Coal and Climate Change.
Right on cue; another of Tony Heller’s video pops up: NASA: Erasing The Past To Create Future Funding
Don’t forget that some major associations now say that CO2 isn’t a pollutant.
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If only they would! Which Major Associations?
00
“If only they would! Which Major Associations?”
US-EPA, US-Nasa-Goddard, US-NOAA, NSF, UCAR\NCAR: or else!
All the best!-will-
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Should have followed the links, Peter C.
You’d have found that it was the ACEA (European Automobile Manufacturers Association) via their WLTP (Worldwide Harmonised Light Vehicle Test Procedure) information site.
20
Praise where praise is due:
A press release was sent out to various parties about the consecration of our new Anglican church building in Marysville. It is on the site of the old much-loved weatherboard church that was lost, with so much else in the 2009 Black Saturday Firestorm. 34 people died in Marysville that day with many more injured and thoroughly traumatised; many escaped with only what they were wearing. The only TV station to respond was Channel 7. They sent a delightful reporter and cameraman and gave a really nice report on the 6pm news on Saturday. Thank you and well done Channel 7.
We didn’t hear a dicky bird from any other station (9, 10 and their ABC) and neither was there any sort of response from The Age or The Heraldsun…not even a ‘sorry but no’. Interesting, eh?
30
It seems that around 50% of people are sceptics and don’t believe in man made climate change – but it would help them and believers to see the light more clearly if they understood that it has never been anything other than a deliberate invention by the UN, and to understand what the UN is seeking to achieve from it.
I’ve posted the quotes before which show this and I’ll repeat them again further on.
I think that the general public need to be thinking about what their lives will be like when and if the UN’s real intention behind it’s invention of
Global WarmingClimate Change is fully realised – namely the De-Industrialisation of advanced civilisations and wealth redistribution from them to developing nations which, with a very few exceptions (China and India),will be denied investment and funds if they try to industrialise.Easy to visualise the changes that an end to oil and gas will bring – no more of the plastics which are integral in just about every part of life; reduced agricultural production from lack of fertilisers etc etc. Easy to envisage the changes that de-industrialisation will bring, massive job losses, fewer goods or products to buy and those which are will be expensive, less food available from de-industrialised agriculture and fishing.
But as China and India industrialise further and faster using the Increased CO2 emissions agreed for them at Paris (respectively a doubling and trebling) that paints a picture of them both becoming ever-more dominant in global manufacturing and replacing the ‘West’s’ industries that have been hamstrung and priced out by the cost of unreliable renewables.
The IPCC was set up by Maurice Strong to use ‘Global Warming’ (his own invention) to achieve the aims he spells out below ….. BTW now renamed Climate Change because there has been no statistically significant warming for the last 20 years – that has now had to be publicly accepted by the IPCC – all the scare stories about ‘projected’ future temperatures are from climate models and every one of those has been completely wrong over the last 25 years – they have all failed to be able to model or predict future temperatures as well as failing hindcast predictive modelling of past temperatures – I could illustrate and explain that another day.
Below are some quotes from Strong and other leading figures in the UN and IPCC which show that we have a ‘Global Warming / Climate Change’ “crisis” solely for political reasons:
Strong’s statements explaining why he set up the IPCC and what it was to achieve
“In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that .. the threat of global warming.. would fit the bill…. the real enemy, then, is humanity itself….we believe humanity requires a common motivation, namely a common adversary in order to realize world government. It does not matter if this common enemy is a real one or…. one invented for the purpose.” (Maurice Strong – speech to Club of Rome – and “invented” referred specifically to ‘Global Warming’)
and Strong again:
“Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsiblity to bring that about?” . and those encapsulate what lies behind and is the reason for ‘Global Warming / Climate Change’ .
Ottmar Edenhofer, who co-chaired the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) working group on Mitigation of Climate Change from 2008 to 2015. “One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with the environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole …… We redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy ……….. the next world climate summit in Cancun is actually an economy summit during which the distribution of the world’s resources will be negotiated. ”
As an aside to Edenhofer’s statement if you research the Copenhagan Climate Conference, which came before Cancun, you will find that it’s proposed Treaty wasn’t ratified following the US refusal to do so – you will find in the Treaty Annex the clauses which would have created a Global Environmental body, a de facto World Government, under the UN with the power to set global policies which would over-ride any national environmental or economic policy …. it was to be unelected and unaccountable (as was the USSR) and it was this attempt at creating an anti-democratic embryo World Government that led the USA and other nations to refuse to sign it.
Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change “This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution ” That must be taken in the context of Strong’s statements quoted above and the intent to de-industrialise which means a return to lifestyles of the 15th and 16th centuries.
Margaret Thatcher enthusiastically embraced the concept of ‘Global Warming’ , but did so as a Political Weapon – following the miners’ strike she saw she could use ‘Global Warming’ as a way to end the domination of coal in the electricity market, switch to nuclear and prevent any future prospect of miners holding the country to ransom. She much later realised the disaster that this ‘fake science’ was causing and going to cause but by then she was in the last months of her political life. Her autobiography explains this.
The Paris Climate Conference was heralded and publicised as a breakthrough agreement which would limit ‘Global Warming’ to 2 deg C – it was widely touted that this meant an end to increasing CO2 emissions. But the public hype is very different to what actually was agreed !
What Paris actually agreed was that CO2 emissions would Increase by 46% between now and 2030 – that included China Doubling and India Trebling their respective emissions !! It was agreed that every nation could set its own future emissions targets through INDCs (Independent Nationally Determined Contributions), and these can be modified at will and so are not even legally binding.
That makes something of a mockery of the manufactured and ill-informed criticism of Trump taking the US out of Paris and praise for China taking a lead in ‘reducing’ emissions (not) – and not least because the USA has reduced its CO2 emissions % far more than Any other nation through the use of natural gas. China alone is building some 600 new coal fired power stations alone out of some 1600 currently planned around the world and plans a massive rise in its CO2 emissions as its INDC shows.
That should raise the question in your mind – why, if CO2 is believed to cause ‘Global Warming’, was the Paris Climate Agreement (COP and IPCC) quite content to see CO2 emissions Increase by 46% in the next 14 years ? The answer can only be that they know it will have no effect on Global Temperatures !!
23
Just saw a national9 news headline. “Melbourne sweats through the hottest week in 155 years “.
I don’t believe it ! It hasn’t felt that hot or uncomfortable.does anyone here have data to disprove that headline ?
10
here is the link
https://www.9news.com.au/national/2017/11/21/10/55/melbourne-sweating-through-one-of-its-hottest-weeks-in-155-years-as-nation-swelters
they say “on track to” be the hottest and it is “one of” the hottest weeks, so your quote is a bit off. They quote weatherzone without pointing to the specific data.
So conveniently for Ch9… no need for data as there is nothing to disprove.
10
Funny according to the link Bodge wasn’t hard enough on them , the nation is not sweltering and sweating through “one ” of the hottest weeks in 155 years , that’s total absolute balderdash .
Can you produce the temperature records for Melbourne for the last 150 years ?
20
According to Bom , adventure bay in tassie won’t get past 23 this week and Pemberton in WA won’t get past 24 .
So let’s talk about honesty in journalism , because that to me suggests the claim of nation sweltering is false unless you call 24 degrees rooooolllly hot .
10
I tried to find the headline again but failed, as it was on an unrelated Facebook link. I am almost certain that it read “Melbourne sweats”, that is present tense, not will sweat or may sweat. That’s what struck me as odd because I don’t do well in heat compared to my younger days, and I don’t have aircon, yet I haven’t felt uncomfortably hot this present week.
00
Did you sweat though? I bet you did. Not sure how a collection of buildings and roads etc sweats. Bad journalism from the writing to the content.
00
From your link above, “Melbourne Sweating”.
Once again, written in the present tense, so my quote was hardly “a bit off”!
10