Grenfell Tower
It takes a lot of effort to set up a situation so dangerous under the guise of “helping the poor and the polar bears”.
Grenfell — Britain’s fire safety crisis
By Gerard Tubb, Sky News Correspondent and Nick Stylianou, Sky News Producer
The UK Dept of Energy and Climate Change wanted help to get insulation onto buildings to save the world in 2011, so it asked the people who sell insulation. Somehow the plastics industry found the energy to turn up and help the government write rules that would increase their sales.
The Grenfell tower, where 71 people died, ended up being coated in Celotex — a flammable plastic. Celotex staff were on that committee, and bragged on their website how they were “working inside government”. It’s another example of a vested interest leaping onto the Carbonista-bandwagon. No conspiracy needed.
Follow the money:
A few years later Celotex revealed that the rules the plastics industry helps to write are key to company profits. Trade magazine Urethanes Technology International reported in 2015 that Warren had told them regulatory change was the “greatest driver” of plastic insulation sales. Without new regulations he was reported as saying: “You cannot give insulation away and the public are not really interested.”
Add in the “Green” meme:
Niall Rowan from the Passive Fire Protection Association told us: “Due to the green agenda we’ve had a push to insulate buildings and the easiest and cheapest way to insulate was using these combustible materials…”
Not the smartest plan:
Throughout all the changes to the energy-saving Part L of the building regulations -… the Government has relied on fire safety advice from a group which also makes money from the plastics industry.
We can hardly blame the plastics industry for taking a gift opportunity, but some people knew the situation was dangerous, yet this deadly threat lasted for years. Normally Social Justice Warriors would rail against the capitalists putting the poor at risk, but they were asleep at the wheel when sloppy green-regulations came through. But the others, the whistleblowers, competitors and scientists didn’t speak up. They were afraid…
What do we do about legal bullying?
…some went further; claiming that elements of the plastics industry were not only helping to write the rules that require more insulation to be fitted to buildings, but were also trying to silence people who questioned whether plastic insulation was safe.
The plastics industry over-reaction should have been the giveaway that things were wrong:
Time after time we were told the plastic insulation industry was highly litigious, that speaking out about its fire safety was impossible, and that while the story should be told, no-one would go on camera. Eventually we found a former government scientist who agreed to talk, on condition of anonymity, about the pressures he faced. He said threats to sue him had made him unwell.
Competitors were silenced, insurance companies with an interest in preventing fires had youtubes removed, and peer reviewed papers were withdrawn:
Rockwool sent out videos in 2007 showing how their product doesn’t burn and how plastic insulation does. They were sued for trademark violation and malicious falsehood. Despite the falsehood claim being thrown out the legal action tied up Rockwool for years and cost them millions of pounds.
Look how easy this was?
…six European plastic industry lobby groups complained in a letter to the respected publishers of a peer-reviewed paper on the dangers of toxic smoke from burning plastic insulation written by chemistry and fire safety expert Professor Anna Stec at the University of Central Lancashire. “We request that the article is withdrawn,” it said. “The consequences […] are enormous and could well lead to significant consequential losses.”
So who wrote the laws that attack free speech and give jobs to lawyers — bound to be lawyers.
Free speech saves lives. Time to change the complex ambiguous laws that allow for the endless trial-by-deep-wallets.
Read it all at Skynews: Grenfell — Britain’s fire safety crisis
Photo: Natalie Oxford
h/t Thanks to GWPF
Five rules for creating failure on demand:
1. Rely on luck
2. Don’t rock the boat
3. Go along to get along
4. Go for the short term win without respect for consequences.
5. Do something, anything but make it sound good, fast, easy, and cheap
Use any one and you are likely to fail.
Use any three and failure is almost assured.
Do all five and failure is yours without fail.
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Creating an organization with a builtin conflict of interest should be added to your list, Lionell. A UK Dept of Energy and Climate Change is a sure fire recipe for trouble.
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And lets not forget that the”Green Blob”made the manufacturers change the”Refrigerant”in new fridges to one that is EXPLOSIVE.So,WHO is going to be held to account?The”Green Blob?”LOL.
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So… that recent post here (I think) where John Kerry sort of said that fridges were as dangerous as ISIS… he was right!
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Your Five rules: are the mantra for academic meteorology, AKA climate science. 😉
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The rules were written to be generally applicable to any long standing institution either public or private. They almost all start out with the “best of intentions”, don’t deliver as promised, and soon become self regenerating parasites. See any bureaucracy of more than a few months of existence for instructive detail.
Reforming them or getting rid of them is next to impossible. They soon are nothing but mission creep with the original mission forgotten except in the founding documents. See the US Government or any government of your choosing as a case in point.
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This was a green virtue signal that no one wanted to see, especially the eco-enablers that wish everyone would just “move forward” so they can begin the next one.
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‘Progressives’ never look back. They can’t afford to.
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They love a clean slate,
nothing to compare to,
as though new born
and jest as unaware…
https://beththeserf.wordpress.com/2013/09/08/268/
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Eddie.
I gotta pay that.
KK
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The greatest lurk in business comes in three grades.
1. Persuade a government to mandate the use of your product,
2. Persuade a government to prohibit the use of your competitor’s product, and
3. Persuade a government to prohibit the use of your less profitable product, thereby mandating the use of your more profitable product.
All three are visible at work in the AGW scam.
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The extrene greens actively hate humanity, so if a few hundred die in a tower fire….they probably cheer.
The Establishment seem to have swallowed the same kool aid, so i wouldnt logically expect anyone to be held accountable…its perfect storm….human hating Establishment safely firewalled off from the rest of humanity by the plodding ineptness of govt.
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Joanne or mods please move to proper thread or weekend un-brushoggedded yet!
Joannenova September 14, 2017 No more comments allowed:
This http://columbia-phd.org/RealClimatologists/ is not a blog but another propaganda site allowing no discourse or question! I agree with all Dr. Duane and wife Dr. Claudia claim as true, from experience. OTOH JoAnne’s blog is the singular place that us stupid chooks; can scratch without limitation, eat all edible, then s**t on whatever may be left. [/rant] Most here scratch most delicately, deliberately, and deliciously!
All the best! -will-
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Best comment ever.
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Best ever is a big claim, but I’ll agree it’s the best in recent memory mainly for its stunningly accurate projection. 😉
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Yeah… somtrue
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I’ve got to admit that on re-reading Will’s comment it still holds the same message as when I first looked at it yesterday.
It says a lot and summarizes why I find reading and posting here so fulfilling.
If you say something useful it is appreciated.
If you make a mistake it is corrected or improved upon.
Merry Christmas to all , especially the visitors from California (Roy) and Will’s home state (up North? or down South in the bluegrass region?)
KK
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1. Pay a government to mandate the use of your product,
2. Pay a government to prohibit the use of your competitor’s product, and
3. Pay a government to prohibit the use of your less profitable product, thereby mandating the use of your more profitable product.
All three are visible at work in government.
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I would add some sure safety fails – if you hear these phrases worry: here are my translations
We’ve always done it that way = “we switched off our brains and haven’t bothered to look for safety issues”.
The government told us = we decided not to think and let some anonymous person with no skin in the game decide your safety
We’ve risk assessed = “We know there are safety issues so we decided to make up excuses to tell your loved ones in advance of you dying”
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My house has several layers of plastic foam board insulation. (Of course the wood stud walls themselves are also just so much dry kindling…) I even added a layer of foam boards to the inside of my garage door, without any sort of fire resistant covering… uh oh! I use a lot of Rockwool too, of course, where it is suitable, but it isn’t suitable for everything. Those foam boards are super useful in our cold climate! I wish they weren’t so toxic and flammable! Anybody have any suggestions for something better?
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Internal air pollution becomes more of an issue as you make your house more air-tight.
Thus, inexpensive energy helps. You can have a better flow of fresh air into the rooms. Then, warming the interior helps push gases out, and second, removing pollutants with filtration (uses energy) contributes to your health.
I wish to cover the outside of our wood-clad house with fiber-cement siding. See This Old House
The check from Big Oil is eagerly awaited.
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I live in an old timber farmhouse built in the early 1930s by grandfather and in recent years my builder son has made many improvements including air conditioning and a new wood heater. Insulation was installed that has improved living conditions inside markedly;
http://www.build.com.au/natural-wool-insulation
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Rockwool comes in boards of varying swize and thickness.
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Steve,
Your house is probably much safer than Grenfell Tower. There were other factors that probably caused the severity of the fire. First is that the apartments were essentially concrete boxes with only the doorways and windows being openings. Before the insulation and double-glazed windows, they were cold and damp, requiring massive amounts of heating. But in the summer (and it was a hot summer evening for London) the only way to cool was to leave the windows open. There are likely three contributing factors to the fire (to be confirmed by the Enquiry)
1. The open windows allowing the fire to enter each apartment as it spread upwards.
2. Between the panels and the side of the building, there was a gap, creating a chimney effect for the fire to progress upwards.
3. The panels themselves had a thin coating, beneath which they were highly flammable.
For fires to take hold in such an extreme manner there are often a number of contributing elements. It is the combination that makes the fire so extreme.
There is an analogy with the CAGW hypothesis. Sufficient for there to be massive future catastrophic global warming is necessary for a number of factors to be present. Take out one and CAGW will either be much less or not present at all. The difference with the Grenfell Tower is that it potentially possible to isolate the necessary elements of catastrophe, whereas belief in CAGW it is only by believing in a number of factors for which there is no or little evidence.
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It is your house, your family, and you are free to balance the energy cost of using inferior insulation against the toxicity and flammability of superior insulation.
As you care for your family, you will have doubtless installed alarms capable of identifying these hazards, giving them adequate time to safely evacuate the premises.
The residents of the ill fated tower had to rely on their landlord exercising its duty of care in the weighing of reduced ‘carbon’ emissions vs their safety.
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The use of flammable insulation is inexcusable when non combustible materials are known and can be applied. Frankly, I would rather remain uninsulated that risk a fire that would give me only minutes to escape. A highrise building on fire is a death trap.
Putting a burden on the homeowner is nonsense. Installation of flammable insulation should be illegal. They should not have to consider the type of insulation at all. There is already enough flammable material in a single family house or a high rise building to be more than enough fire danger.
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As would I, and any sensible person.
I doubted that Steve Keppel-Jones remarks were to be taken seriously, but answered as if they were – just in case.
Again, I agree, they should not. And one should not have to consider the nature of food additives, pesticides, …, but it is a good idea to do so, where possible.
Can one ever totally trust the executive, judicial and legislative ‘powers’?
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Most enclosed fires give you only minutes to escape. If you can’t immediately quell it, get everybody out!
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If you do have an internal fire, if you can close all the windows and doors of that room it will slow the progress of the fire a lot.
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Ted O’Brien:
Preferably from the outside.
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Ted,
Because of the configuration of my house, if I had a fire start in the living room and had to wait for the smoke alarm to get me out of bed, I might have to dive out through a bedroom window. Any advice?
Well, I’m kidding a bit. The plan is to keep on top of fire hazards and prevent ignition in he first place. I have been fanatical about where extension cords are laid, the condition of plugs, etc. I’m even more fanatical about keeping my furnace closet and the furnace clean and free of anything loose and the filters changed often enough. The furnace has all the latest bells and whistles, even a flame detector that, at least if the controller board is working, will shut off the gas if no fire is detected within 10 seconds after the gas valve is opened. But I still look about weekly for any sign of trouble around the house.
That flame detector is simplicity on steroids, just a rod sticking up into the path of the fire from the last burner to ignite. No conductivity to ground, no fire; near dead short to ground then there’s fire. A gas flame is all ionized gasses. It actually worked one time when a small bit of something got sucked into the first burner and blocked the narrow passage that passed flame to the next burner. Clearing it out was easy and I didn’t need a service call because I had all the manufacturers literature on it and had studied it in advance so I knew what the trouble must be — a good idea with anything the least bit hazardous.
As with sailing, driving or flying, prevention saves a lot of cure.
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One of the problems is the lack of technical knowledge among the bureaucrats and their training that “always doing what the manual says avoids getting blamed”.
There are quite a number of fire tests which will all give a rating of “non flammable” or “fire retardant” etc. Back in the 1980’s a Company in the USA decided to provide test results for only 7 out of the 43 regulations, but they included the most rigorous (and expensive testing) of their products, including the TUNNEL Test which was aimed at evaluating safety in buildings.
The conditions that are used for testing can vary enormously, from a match, a bunsen burner of a radiant gas panel (as in AS1530). In practice the less likely to burn products are the most expensive. Quoting a test and a rating probably reassured the bureaucrats that all was well, and they could then turn to “saving the world” using the cheapest option.
Most foams are flammable or have other objectionable properties such as stability (e.g. Urea formaldehyde foam) or expense. The most expensive I know of, and I am 20 years out of date, was the polyimide foam used in aeroplanes which has a very high rating but is unsuitable for wall cladding even if Keppel-Jones could afford it.
For internal cladding rigid Fire retardant Polyurethane foam is the preferred choice as it offers some protection and ease of installation. It is often comes with a aluminium ‘skin’ which helps. For better Fire ratings rigid polyphenolic foam could be looked at but whether it is readily available I don’t know. So called rock wool would be best in ceilings.
The problem here was the wrong choice of product and I wonder how much emphasis was on the insulation properties rather than its behaviour in any fire. I am sure that all suppliers salesmen all saw the test rating of fire retardant and never asked further, and I strongly suspect that the public servants didn’t ask either.
I remember once we got a phone call from an irate fibreglass panel maker about our FR resin. It was more expensive than the opposition resin but his main annoyance was that when he tried to burn the offcuts in a 205L drum with some newspaper and kindling, those from our product wouldn’t burn. He asked for a FR resin because that was what his customer (a State Govt. Dept.) specified without any specific rating.
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Given London’s Council’s response to the Great Fire in 1666, and the long and continuing response such that every London resident knows the reasons, Grenfell Towers is a culpable failure. Those involved in the writing of those standards should be arraigned, and have to compensate those who have lost not just their belongings, but sldo and especially family.
It’s stupidity on a scale which is hard to believe and not only should never be excused but used to set a strong example so that those who follow don’t make the same mistake again.
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I seem to recall that an aluminum-foil coated version of Polyurethane foam was used on the Grenfell Tower. It was certainly one of the options looked at. It’s been a while, so I’m not 100% sure what was used.
I do know this: “Celotex” is not the material; Celotex is the brand and covers a variety of insulations and other building materials, including non-flammable CalSil insulation panels.
I see this article as an attempt to blame the manufacturer, rather than those who actually wrote the Grenfell Tower material specifications and especially those who caused the tower to be overinsulated in the first place in order to prevent some harmless CO2 emissions.
The latter decision was the ultimate cause of the disaster; if that insane decision had not been made, everything else goes away.
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And yet I live in a house where a living room fire in the middle of the night would put me in that situation. I work at keeping down the fire hazards. Prevention always works better than the cure.
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Asbestos fibre has excellent thermal properties and is inflammable.
Any takers?
20
Not as dangerous as all the hoohaa would suggest, if you were to look into it and see film of the miners that copt the problem you would understand. Very useful and now wasted product.
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Asbestos is now illegal, yet only one form of it is any risk at all. Regulators want front page headlines and the public sees only one word, danger. So the regulators say make it illegal and the public gives a big sigh of relief, saved from one more horrible danger.
I wonder when they will realize that electricity can kill and move to outlaw it. Naw! Roy, they would never be that dumb… …would they?
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TRM, – I don’t think you mean inflammable:
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Reading this starts off with a frightening organization name. They have built in the incentive to stop climate change no matter what. I used to think California’s creation of Cal-Trans to replace the old Department of Highways was the ultimate conflict of interest, an organization responsible not just for highways but for all modes of transportation in the state. The Department of Highways knew what its job was and California had a highway system second to none. Cal-Trans screwed it all up because there’s always a tug of war over what interest gets attention and money. When will we learn?
A Dept of Energy and Climate Change has the same builtin conflict of interest. Guess which interest has won the tug of war for supremacy in that organization.
I brought up the high resolution image of the fire and my first thought was, I’m looking at the World Trade Center towers on fire. Thank God the death toll was smaller than the world Trade Center. I sat in my office that day watching those towers burning and ultimately come down in real time. I remember the numbness I felt that day, completely unable to grasp the magnitude of what I was watching.
The sacrifice of safety over construction material at the World Trade Center was an accident of wrong design choices. But this is blatant disregard for anything but saving a planet that doesn’t need saving… …and dollar signs. It’s corruption in high places.
You Brits should be descending on Parliament and #10 Downing Street armed with picks, shovels, baseball bats, anything to make your point and demand changes to eliminate this climate change monster from your country. Stay there until you get what you want. This is not about making a statement or a protest, it’s about saving yourselves from people not worthy to shine your shoes.
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But…but…but this is what government does best. They fail to do what they are expected to do. In fact it is about the only thing it can do beyond power, control, and the taking of unearned wealth and giving it to those who have not earned it.
Actually, this is not the fault of the government. The fault is the false belief We the People have that government can solve problems and provide safety and security for persons and property. The nature of the beast is such that it simply can’t accomplish the task assigned to it to do. Hence failure is the only outcome.
The nature of government is that it is institutionalized brute force. Such force can only destroy things and kill people. It should be no surprise that this is what happens when government tries to do anything. It is rather like the old saying that “if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” In other words, the tool you have determines what you can do. If you want to do something different, get another tool.
The bottom line is that we need to stop expecting government to do what it inherently cannot do.
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Lionell,
I both agree and disagree. How can that apparently contradictory statement be true?
Well, consider that it’s now long past the point where we could have saved ourselves a lot of trouble by not letting government get their grubby hands on everything, which is where we should have acted. It’s now too late and government has in fact accepted responsibility for saving us from ourselves, so in fact the government is responsible. They admit that every day when they try more measures to save us from the usual list of suspects, us.
I know of no solution short of an uprising such as I described here, right above. And what real hope is there that such an event will happen?
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‘They have built in the incentive to stop climate change no matter what.’
Almost, but not quite. They have a built in incentive to ever-increasingly talk up climate change. They have a built in incentive to perpetually raise the regulatory burden. If climate change were found to be resolved or non-existant they’d lose their authority. The best speaker on these incentives is Thomas Sowell.
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True! But they know climate change can never be fixed because they know it’s a nonexistent problem in the first place. So they implement more and more measures to lower the carbon footprint. Otherwise they’re out of a job. They have no incentive to look back and evaluate what they’ve done so far. If they did I think most of them would at least think about jumping off the top that high rise building.
11
June 14 News — Grenfell Tower images
June 15 News — Donald Trump visits Steve Scalise in hospital after Republican congressman shot at baseball practice Congressman Steve Scalise, the No. 3 Republican in the US House of Representatives, was in critical condition on Wednesday night after he and three others were shot as they practised for a charity baseball game.
To me, these two despicable events are forever linked by their coincidental juxtaposition. At the time, the MSM focused on one event in London to the almost complete exclusion of the other in Washington. The intentional exclusion of a heinous sectarian act by a Left-wing anti-Trump individual, celebrated by the Left wing (Left-wing Twitter users called out for ‘celebrating’ GOP baseball shooting) to the extent that so many were completely unaware of the attempted intentional slaughter of the Republican congressional baseball team at practice, which tragically resulted in the death of four people.
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Those pictures are visceral. I can still see the twin towers blazing away and coming down like it was yesterday. But I look at these anyway, just to remind myself how bad things can get.
20
What about the green fridge that started the fire?
It too had flammable insulation and used butane as a refriver ant. It was the butane that caused the initial explosion.
Thesee fridges are still being sold and the US EPA has just changed rules allowing expanded use of such refrigerants.
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That is the other part of the Grenfell disaster. CFC’s are bad for the ozone hole and HCFC’s, (CFC replacements) are bad for the climate (or was it a by-product of HCFC production that the really strong greenhouse gas which then was majorly gamed by Chinese manufactures to garner ETF certificates and consume 43% of the European carbon offset dollars.) Either way, real risk if being imposed on people to prevent theoretical risks.
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That’s not proven. We are told over and over that CFCs cause the ozone hole just as we told over and over that CO2 causes—choose your favourite weather disaster—and is therefore bad.
The Antarctic Ozone ‘hole’ was supposedly `discovered’ in 1984/1985. It used to be known as the Antarctic Anomaly in the late 1950’s after it was discovered by Gordon Dobson. (1958, I think). The only CFC made back then was carbon-tetra-fluoride and in miniscule quantities.
There is no such thing as an atmospheric greenhouse gas [pdf] which means there is no Greenhouse Effect.
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CFCs have been in use since the 1930s.
The problem being that very little was released into the atmosphere before the late 1960’s and then most (>90%) released in the northern hemisphere. Despite this the ‘ozone hole’ was there from 1957 but only at the South Pole.
40
What flamable insulation please? Methylpropane or Isobutane, is not highly flammable, but the older CFCs and anhydrous ammonia are the only ‘safe’ refrigerants.
Yes the green-blob took over the EPA at the politically directed CFC scare; with the to be expected result. More profitable refrigerants much worse than CFCs. Since wasteful industrial scale release to atmosphere of CFCs is now illegal, with stiff fines, perhaps the latest version (2017) of the EPA can promote ‘reasonably sound’ chemical usage.
All the best! -will-
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You’ll like these two links:
1. Coolstore fire using propane as the refrigerant (CFCs were banned under the Montreal Protocol)
2. Fallout from the coolstore fire.
Rule of Thumb: If it can burn in the presence of oxygen at atmospheric pressure, it’s unsafe.
40
You may find that the CFC scare was designed by a company which owned the patents on the most common and best refrigerents in the 1980s, patents registered in the early 1960s. It’s patents were either coming up for expiry or had just expired, so these refrigerants would be able to be made by anybody, no licences required, ergo their prices would drop dramatically. They had to be not only replaced but forbidden from manufacture. (A monopoly gained through the patent system has to be protected and any method is OK.)
A patent in the US has a life of 27 years. From 1990 to 2017 is 27 years. CHCs were added to the Montreal Protocol in 2017 just before the Paris COP. (1963 + 27 years = 1990).
Can you smell it?
See:
( MADURO, Rogello & SCHAUERHAMMER, Falf, 1992, The Holes in the Ozone Scare, the Scientific Evidence that the Sky isn’t Falling 21st Century Science Associates, ISBN:0-9628134-0-0. 356 pages. Quite a few copies left at http://www.amazon.com).
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DuPont
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2010/02/the_cfc_ban_global_warmings_pi.html
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I still are stockholder in Honeywell the HVAC folk, that was\were forced by the US Government to pay highly, to destroy (incinerate) all remaining stock in F12 ($4,000,000 worth)! This is the new modern ‘first’ of deliberate political SCAM by the self appointed BETTER THAN US chickens!
All the best! -will-
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From the frying pan we jump right into the fire. Ammonia was finally outlawed as a refrigerant because accidental release of it was toxic and had killed people. Freon was substituted because it was not only not toxic but more stable and didn’t react with anything. Regulations were developed regarding how much freon could be in a system based on volume of the space it might be released into so that danger of suffocation would be minimum or non existent. Nothing was wrong. There was no problem from then on.
Now we want to use butane as a refrigerant?
Are we crazy?
10
The tower (completed in ’74) was regarded as an eyesore in an area of London that has been gentrified over the past 50 years.
The external cladding added little to improved the overall insulation of the external walls, that was achieved simply by double-glazing which could have been done within the existing structure.
An added internal layer to the external walls would have been even more effective as well.
IMO the reason for the external cladding was mainly aesthetic and to be seen ‘doing something’ about Climate Change™, although those responsible at the local government level of course would not admit it.
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The cladding construction detail linked above also shows how an internal fire could easily spread to the insulation and how the toxic smoke from an insulation fire could easily enter the apartments above.
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On a much smaller scale, would there not be a parallel in Rudd’s batts scheme?
50
In Australia we have public housing known as ‘Commission Housing’ ran by the “Department of Housing” that in the 1960’s to 1970’s built dwellings using some of the best materials available, hardwood (F8) frames, roofs, floors, terracotta roof tiles, solid bricks, timber windows etc.. one of the things first noticed when working on these houses was the amazing specifications detailed in the plans that was essentially over engineering for a residential dwelling which in turn was actively inspected by designated inspectors specifically in that stage of the build.
My first job being a roof tiler with my father I had to run out a roll of Rockwool down any double brick partition walls of Units/homes using short metal battens that spanned the gap to lay tiles over, this procedure gave little chance of a fire in one place spreading to the next.
We also used bitumen coated saking paper under the battens for insulation which was the only thing available then to offer any insulation directly under the tiles, Bradford Batts were used on the ceiling and the combination offered very good insulation properties that was way better than the average Australian built house.
Unfortunately the bitumen saking paper was highly flammable causing some house fire to be worse than what they should’ve been including bushfire embers that made their way into the roof, what this says to me about government regulations/red tape is the bureaucratic processes become so involved in the details of procedure that the practicalities of the purpose become lost.
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We live next to an east coast beach where the shore hasn’t changed noticeably since photography began.
we have sailed and dived the South Pacific over four decades, and the tropical latitudes, we have shells from the Nullarbor, and have dived on a new reef after a lava flow in Banda Neira where the water temperature is 34c.
We have sailed through miles ofporphyry off Fiji where a new island appeared after an ocean floor volcano erupted.
Nothing really changes nature. It has its own life, an nd activists are kidding theselves for the sake of cash if they keep pushing this coral reef scaremongering.
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Your sacrilegious defilement of Gaia will only evoke a Twitter storm of Millennial proportions!
Oh and yes nature will continue blah blah…….. 🙂
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Another great article Jo.
It has all the essential ingredients of the modern “green” eco-drama:
* Save the Planet, at any cost.
* Ignore real science.
* Attack, punish and ridicule real scientists who speak out about practical issues.
* Ensure that the “action” is painted in the media as “saving the planet” so that the flow of “donations” continues and the green management can continue to live in the
style to which they have become accustomed.
I keep harping on the local example of greens ignoring the science.
During the construction of the fourth coal loader here in an arm of Newcastle harbor on the Hunter river the greens railed against the loader because it would allow more coal to go overseas to places like China and be burnt to produce deadly CO2.
As we know, absolute scientific nonsense that CO2 could be seen as harmful in any way.
The loader was near the old BHP site and near a factory where I once worked.
During work on the loader foundations the river bed was excavated and cyanide embedded in the silt bottom was released causing serious problems in the harbour and local beach (Stockton).
There wasn’t a peep out of any politician or green about this serious pollution; just dead fish floating in the harbour and itchy bathers at the beach.
The cyanide was dumped regularly as part of an ongoing industrial process years earlier but the state government took no steps to screen off the excavation zone.
This saved a lot of money but stuffed the Environment.
I think Laba was in power at the time?
The word Hypocrites come to mind.
KK
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[…] Nova on the background to the disastrous Grenfell tower fire in London. The UK Dept of Energy and Climate Change wanted help to get insulation onto buildings to […]
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Were any measurements ever done to demonstrate the supposed energy savings of the insulation?
Thought not.
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Another example of a Green policy killing people is the banning of DDT in the 60’s based upon false data. Fifty million people died from malaria after it was banned but not a word of complaint from any Green, mainly because it suits their depopulation agenda.
http://www.jpands.org/vol9no3/edwards.pdf
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Very much so!
See #1.2.2 item 3 above.
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David our resident troll the leaf has a shrine about the toxicity of DDT on his unread blog .
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Good article David.
In reading it I noted the fool Ehrlich predicted: “thousands of species will become extinct each year, before they have even been discovered”.
Proof positive that he is not a scientist.
And this:
Norman Myers estimated that we lose “one species a day” and “most haven’t even been identified.” He added: that “The extinction rate will accelerate to one species every hour, by the late 1980s.” Thomas Lovejoy, formerly of the Smithsonian Institution predicted that “15 to 20% of all species, [or] as many as 1,875,000 species, would become extinct” and “at least ten million species, would be extinct by 2000.” In the Global Report 2000 commissioned by President Jimmy Carter, the range of extinctions was stated as 3 to 10 million species.
No wonder greenies are considered by sensible thinking people to be morons.
00
OT , just received a letter from Ausnet it seems to be more a letter about how great they are but does tell you how to manage blackouts and they give reasons for blackouts such as storms and “heatwaves” .
Are they softening us up for the summer ?
61
Yes. The thought police are programming the public to think blackouts are normal and natural.
61
Or, as I read somewhere yesterday …..involuntary loadshedding.
Three days now of large Peak Power, Tuesday 27700MW, Wednesday 29360MW and Thursday 29630MW.
Only four of 49 coal fired Units are offline.
Incidentally, AGL (you know, that mob who are getting out of coal) own the Bayswater and the nearby Liddell coal fired power plants. Just from the sale of electricity from those two plants, they are making $5.5 Million a day over this last week so far. Currently two Units are down, one each at Bayswater and Liddell. Those two units being down is a loss of income of $95,000 an hour from the sale of the electricity they could be generating.
Tony.
110
So, following on from that, AGL made $45.4 Million selling its generated power from those two coal fired plants in the last 7 days.
From its stable of wind and solar plants, from the sale of their generated power, they made $3.3 Million for those same 7 days.
I wonder how happy AGL shareholders would be for AGL to, umm, get out of coal.
Tony.
100
Tony, we still have the problem of market corruption, which nobody even understands, let alone knows.
00
“What do we do about legal bullying?”
We could try burning some lawyers at the stake for a start.
50
First; check just who is selling ‘the stake’ for profit! 🙁 Armenian omelet recipe:
First; go steal some eggs! 🙂
20
Sorry OT but the BOM and government hype over a few storms and rain in Victoriastan is just embarrassing,
Extract from the Oz…..
Rain has also started in Melbourne but is light in most places, with 1mm recorded between 9am and 10.30am this morning.
However senior meteorologist Scott Williams from the extreme weather desk at the Bureau of Meteorology warned Melburnians not to be complacent as they left home this morning.
“They didn’t think the Titanic would sink, but it did two hours later,” he said.
The bloody Titanic seriously!
We’ve had under an inch of rain here and the radio stations are carrying on like its the end of days or some crap, I’m ashamed to be called Australian today.
111
You are, We are Australian. But the BOM and the ABC are not. They are Watermelons!
71
Yonnie it’s still to play out how much rain we will get but you’re right about BOM calling Wolf all the time , eventually people like me just think meh there always wrong anyway .
We might have had 5mm since yesterday until 12.30 today and we are in the worst of the warning area’s .
We sure have a long way to go to beat the record rainfall for a single day in Vic that’s for sure .
41
Actually did anyone else notice they cancelled the warning for the big rain over a fair chunk of the state yesterday only to rescind it 15 minutes later back to biblical .
31
No one should underestimate natures unpredictability for sure, I’m on a bit of annual leave and funny thing today was seeing a few of my postie cohorts out and about doing their thing, I’m not aware of anyone at work that refused to go out because of a warning from the ‘Extreme Weather Desk’, be funny to try it on though.
31
Let’s say that when they look at their forecast data they ascribe probabilties within the ranges predicted and that they issue a warning (a warning not a statement of absolute certainty) when the chance of a warnable event exceeds x. Since x is around 10% the outcome will be less severe than predicted in the warning 9 times in 10.
Why do they do this? Well they don’t care what a bunch of retired engineers and other retired men with opinions about weather, on an obscure blog think that’s for sure. They think of this;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqs1YXfdtGE
26
Mere annoying taxpayers, who do they think they are.
31
You probably aknow this but I’ll say it anyway. The BOM is beholden to acts of parliament which require it to fulfil its duties to various stakeholders. They are the ones who set the parameters for warnings. If they failed to issue a warning about an event that had a certain chance of occurring and they suffered losses as a result BOM would be responsible.
They are not obligated to taxpayers and their services are generally covered by other receipts.
Sorry I know you already know the legislation and the risk management criteria they apply but maybe some others didn’t.
26
Too many they.
They iare the ones is the stakeholder not bom.
They failed is bom.
They suffered losses is the stakeholders
15
Please explain.
40
“The BOM is beholden to acts of parliament ”
So is the ABC..
But they just ignore it.
Acts and rules… need not apply.
32
Pc. I was trying to avoid rewriting. If it is important I’m happy to explain so long as the request is specific
13
According to Wiki the BOM has annual budget of ~$300 M paid by taxpayers.
The BOM warnings for this weather system were of momentous event proportions.
Premier Andrews was warning people to stay at home and off the roads.
Dozens of people fell off ladders preparing for freak storms (The Australian).
Major events were cancelled, flights delayed and diverted.
The highest total at central Melbourne so far is 20mm, the highest daily recorded for December is 100mm in 1954.
Personally I find AccuWeather more reliable.
10
Much like the warnings about multiple days over 25c that they gave in the form of a heatwave alert .
20
They give what they are required to do.
You know it all of course. What importance, in terms of crops and harvest is this rain.
I have no idea what the 25 warning was you are upset about, a reference would help, but using your imagination, can you think of circumstances where alerting certain invested sectors about 25c day’s might be important?
23
Days not day’s and other sins
12
Not sure what you’re on but keep taking it leaf when you come down from whatever you’re on re-read the dribble you just posted .
Nobody said anything about warnings not being valid ,what was the issue was the “unprecedented ” and in the same sentence “among the top rain events” .
You really need to take a “leaf” out of your own book .
I have had so many requests from my legions of fans to post more blogs. No really, there are a surprising number of people out there that read and re read my pastes… I mean posts … and check in to see if I have added anything new.
So today’s, and possibly this year’s, new post should satisfy those fans. Basically it is this link about scientific theories.
Yep, this is another placeholder in case I need to move someone on from their argument by distraction. You know the one where they write, “it is only a theory”. Amazingly, people still try to slip that one into an argument. They are often the same people who distract with, “it is only a model”, without understanding that their lives would soon come to an end without models.”
Having worked with Marlene Zuk many years ago I was drawn to read her book. This article gives a pretty good indication of the nature of the contents and I share the critique that it is sometimes trying to crack a nut with a sledgehammer. And here is an example of a paleofantasist with a poor grasp of the mechanics of natural selection and the details of human evolution.
When your hear or read something and you are compelled to say, “Gee. Aye.”.
00
Firstly the warning I’m looking at said 10 out of a scale of 10 and also the ubiquitous term ” unprecedented ” then I have a forecast with it that says 100% chance of rain !
Second , you bag those of us that have retired or are older only due to your sorely lacking education and single digit IQ , when we went to school way back in primary they taught us how to read the PH scale and we still remember it .
So weed your obviously not smarter than a sixth grader and one heck of a hypocrite and I’m sure your depriving a village somewhere of an idiot .
22
GI, Try to consider the vast modern ‘quantum nonsense’ that poorly attempts to make this ‘statistical SCAM’ have some (any) meaning. The ‘noise spread’ probability function has ‘most probable’, lesser than ‘mean’, lesser than RMS, lesser than the volume function, and way way less than political fourspace BS! More later if any interest here.
All the best! -will-
10
That is so incisive. A comment for the ages
12
It’s an intelligence test GL.
You’ve just failed it. In public, no less.
Not that we didn’t know your results before you sat it.
You’d best turn to the back of the book to get the answers.
if you still can’t understand it, come back and any number of us will waste a bit more of our time explaining it to you.
It’s in our nature to be generous like that.
00
Just looked at my phone and have an SMS alert for flooding and have seen a phone with both flood and fire warnings which would be scary .
20
And now they’ve cancelled the warning advice .
http://www.bom.gov.au/products/IDV21033.shtml
Noticed predictions of rain from the various outlets for the Wangaratta area over the next few days have been reduced dramatically.
10
80 to 100 mms predicted by the BOM around here in west Vic.
Got 25mms very much to the forlorn relief of the farmers who are trying to harvest their grain and whose grain quality and hay quality have already been shot to hell by the previous rains
20
Get-ready-for-biblical stories are now the norm. Instead of heavy rains we now have the sinister “East coast low”, “10 out of 10 storm”, “100 year event” etc.
All relies on dumbing down and ignorance of history, of course. Never has information been so readily available or so readily ignored. In the 1963 NSW midcoast flood (not our biggest but the one with the biggest local falls behind it) we copped half of our generous annual rainfall in two days. Before that NSW experienced the Big Wet of 1950, still unmatched (by far) for the east of the continent, and the 1955 flood which formed an inland sea the size of England and Wales.
But if you talk about quaint old 1963, 1950 and 1955 the New Man at Year Zero just wants to screw up his nose and turn to the hard modern reality of the Drum or Masterchef. And if anything in the past really mattered Kochie or Lisa or Leigh or Emma or Waleed would have told you all about it, right?
71
[Yeah. I don’t think so Will!- Jo]
00
Well, whatever was said about it in advance, you’ve got your rain, and you’ve got your floods. This confirms my observation that the BOM has got a lot smarter than they used to be.
So now we have to sort out the hyperbole. It has got much worse lately. Something must be stirring them. Do they think they are on the brink of achieving their goals? Or do they fear they are failing with the goals in sight?
00
I would like to know how many lives have been lost during the past few decades because of “AGW Ideology” in the UK.
Lawyers sharpen your knives – will there be a class action from the families of lost souls?,when they find out that “AGW Ideology” is in fact a myth. So many lives lost when it was totally avoidable. Who gets sued? Well may I suggest those Govts that chose to believe in the “AGW Doctrine” and therefore de-carbonize on a grand scale and in the process destroy the lives of the vulnerable citizens in society, ie killing innocent folk (mainly the elderly) by invoking “feel good save the planet Greenie Ideology”. The “Grenfell Disaster” is only the thin edge of the wedge of innocent lives lost.
61
How would you feel living twenty floors up
in one of those ‘insulated’ buildings?
50
Potential hot property……but not in a good way.
40
Seem to my reading that even with the flammable cladding it was the poor escape facilities and failure to leave immediately that cost most lives.
Doug
40
Not true. The advice from the Fire Brigade was to stay in the flats as they were supposed to be well-contained “cells”. In a large fire, more people are killed by smoke collecting in stairwells than the fire itself usually.
What is still unknown is why the fire spread as it did, after the Fire Brigade thought it was out.
10
Feeling is great! SAYETH black Kitten Shadow! OTOH ‘being’ need be elsewhere\when! 🙂
20
Another monument to the culpable stupidity of Gaia worshiping leftie councils types?
40
The law of unintended consequences
20
before commenting on Grenfell etc., just want to post the following:
30 Nov: UK Express: Bali volcano REVERSE global warming: NASA say Mount Agung could plunge earth into ice age
BALI’S volcano eruption could plunge the earth into a prolonged cold spell as scientists warn Mount Agung explosion could reverse global climate change for up to five years.
By Vickiie Oliphant
NASA climate scientist Chris Colose said: “To have a notable climate impact, there needs to be an explosive enough eruption (to get material in the stratosphere) and a sulphur-rich eruption (the SO2 converts to sulphate aerosol, which is what radiatively matters).
“If these conditions are met, the eruption cools the surface/troposphere and warms the stratosphere, the opposite of both patterns associated with CO2 increases. But both are very short-lived (~years).”
Fellow scientists remarked that Agung’s recent behaviour matches the build up of that fateful explosion in 1963, suggesting a similar amount of sulphur dioxide could be released into the atmosphere.
The last eruption knocked global temperatures down by 0.2 degrees Celsius for a year, but this latest one could see falling temperatures for around two years – only returning completely to normal by 2023.
Climate researcher Zeke Hausfather said: “This projection, which is based on the historical relationship between volcanic eruptions and temperature, suggests that an Agung eruption would reduce global temperatures between 0.1C to 0.2C in period from 2018 to 2020.”
A report from the Washington Post added the eruption could alter the global temperature for months and maybe even years to come…
https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/885802/Bali-volcano-Mount-Agung-news-update-freeze-climate-change-global-warming-NASA-indonesia
40
Those two words again. If and Could.
So now our case is b******d. Whatever lack of warming we point to, Agung dunnit!
00
If you have a dour demeanour and can talk endless bs about thresholds and tipping points you might get a place on this panel:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=79&v=S7z61UZoppM
20
wonder how much investigating went on?
15 Jun: Property Wire: Deadly London tower block fire highlights potential dangers in other high rises globally
Tens of thousands of residential tower blocks around the world are set to be inspected for fire risks after a high rise in the UK lit up like a matchstick, killing at least 17 people with hundreds still reported missing…
Similar cladding has been used in Dubai, where there have been three fires in tower blocks in recent years, in buildings in China and other parts of the Middle East…
The fire has major implications for tower blocks around the world…
While it was refurbished recently, the work does not seem to have included installing a tower wide sprinkler system. When another block went on fire in London in 2009 in which six died, the coroner said afterwards that all tower blocks should install sprinkler systems and make sure there are adequate fire escape routes…
https://www.propertywire.com/news/uk/deadly-london-tower-block-fire-highlights-potential-dangers-high-rises-globally/
reminder:
15 Jun: ABC: Margaret Paul: London tower fire: Cladding used in Grenfell renovations similar to 2014 Docklands fire
Senator Xenophon is on a Senate committee examining the issue of non-compliant cladding, and said work was needed to ensure a similar tragedy didn’t happen in Australia…
The Senate committee is due to hand down its final report in October, 2017.
7 Sept: Age: Clay Lucas: ‘Buildings wrapped in petrol’: Xenophon pushes for total ban on deadly cladding
Senator Nick Xenophon will push for new laws banning flammable aluminium cladding, following a damning Senate report into the potentially dangerous building product.
The report, released on Wednesday (LINK), came in the wake of London’s deadly Grenfell tower fire in June where more than 80 people died.
It called for a ban on the importation and sale of polyethelene cladding in Australia.
Senator Xenophon will next week introduce a “safer cladding” bill into the Senate, in a bid to prevent the importation of flammable polyethylene-core aluminium cladding…
He also called on federal and state governments to ban the cladding on building sites, and for audits of the cladding’s use to be sped up.
“In Australia, we have thousands of buildings and dwellings which are effectively wrapped in petrol,” Senator Xenophon said.
Highly flammable polyethylene cladding has been used on an estimated 10,000 Australian buildings in the past two decades…
Craig Laundy, the Turnbull government’s assistant minister with responsibility for building regulation, on Thursday said calls for a ban on polyethylene cladding would not work.
He said better regulation and compliance was needed. Mr Laundy compared banning the cladding with banning timber on building sites…
But Phil Dwyer, the national president of industry lobby group the Builders Collective, said Mr Laundy’s response was disappointing…
In a dissenting report, government senators opposed a ban on the cladding while acknowledging there were genuine concerns about its use.
“Banning an individual product will not solve the issue,” they said…ETC
http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/buildings-wrapped-in-petrol-xenophon-pushes-for-total-ban-on-deadly-cladding-20170907-gyculo.html
6 Sept: Parliament of Australia: Interim report: aluminium composite cladding
Non-conforming building products
LINKS TO VARIOUS PDF FILES
https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Economics/Non-conforming45th/Interim_report_cladding
from link to Inquiry home page in right column: The final reporting date is 30 April 2018.
no rush.
10
Anyone else noticed three of the four Qld coal handling terminals are adjacent to this 112 key sites?
10
Scratch last post please…should have been on next thread:-(
10
The moving finger writes,
and having writ moves on,
and all yer piety and wit
can cancel none of it, not
even half a line. 🙁
20
beththeserf December 1, 2017 at 7:54 pm
Beth, perhaps you should try some really good single Malt. Such can cancel you, me, and all else! 🙂
10
When the sun goes down serfs enjoy a glass
of Famous Grouse and tuning in to Jo Nova …
or maybe a Bach concerto or two. )
20
Plastics burn and give off awfull fumes,everyone knows this, I learned this as a boy when I chucked my first plastic bottle on a fire. Then years later we found out about the dangers of modern buildings with plastic fittings and platic household furnishings.
And here we are today with high rise buildings clad in combustible plastic rubbish. Potential death traps.
Disgraceful disregard for human life and someone is responsible. I hope they are brought to justice.
GeoffW
50
Pent House living takes on a whole new meaning.
40
You have to wonder how the UK, home of the highly flammable polystyrene ceiling tiles, then goes onto highly flammable cladding. Still the arent alone, greed and stupidity are widespread apparently.
20
1 Dec: Australian: Samantha Hutchinson: Renewable energy subsidies push up bills, says report
Subsidies for renewable energy are behind most power price increases, adding almost $300 to the average electricity bill, according to a report that calls for a “reboot” of the national energy market.
Federal Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg will today release the Menzies Research Centre report, which calls for subsidies for renewable energy to be phased out and gas-extraction bans to be lifted to prevent prices rising higher.
The report, chaired by former Business Council of Australia head Tony Shepherd, also recommends the federal government revive community discussions on nuclear energy, and scrap state-based renewable energy targets in favour of a national framework.
“Consumers and business owners have a right to feel angry,” he said. “They have been largely kept in the dark about the extent and effect of subsidies to support the introduction of renewable energy. It was never made clear that the cost of those subsidies would be added to their bill.”
Mr Shepherd said consumers had borne the cost of “ill-judged” state and federal renewable energy programs, which had resulted in a less-efficient, less-reliable national electricity supply.
The report saves its most scathing comments for the role state and federal governments played in the lead-up to South Australia’s statewide blackout last year. “Failures in the energy market that led to the first statewide blackout for more than half a century were entirely caused by ill-judged state, territory and federal government policies,” Mr Shepherd said.
He said consumers and businesses were not warned about the technical challenge of trying to integrate large amounts of nonsynchronous energy generation into the grid. “Nor were they told about the high cost of sourcing reliable energy when wind and solar generators are idle,” he added…READ ALL
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/renewable-energy-subsidies-push-up-bills-says-report/news-story/7ac107f97ae27bb0cb52a5d84ddeb3c6
10
There is another facet to this Grenfell Fire which I could’nt see as being commented on in any of the above comments.
Now I have quite a number of thoughts beginning a long way back on the legal relativities of a small business owner in perhaps a situation like the Grenfell Tower fire where he / she installs a foam with a foil outer insulation onto a building and a fire fed by the supposedly fire proof foam subsequently kills a number of residents in that building.
Here in Australia at least , the small business person will in all likelyhood be charged with a criminal offense that is close to being accused of the murder of those residents.
He/She will lose all of their business and personal wealth and possessions and more than likely will finish up being sentenced to a considerable time in jail.
Pleading ignorance of the fire susceptible characteristics of the material will not be accepted by the Court as an excuse.
However and this really does stick in my craw as a gross miscarriage of justice and an example of badly drafted laws that is continuing feature of every one of these types of cases and of other similar in outcome cases.
If as happened with the Grenfell Tower fire, if there is a corporate body or such a body acting under instructions from a government department or entity, the worst that is likely to happen to any executives of that corporation or bureacrat from that departmernt is that they get fired or even more so, just lose a part of their annual bonus .
Even though such executives and bureacrats were fully aware of the descisions being made to use the responsible materials or were actually the people responsible for making the decision to use that fire susceptible material.
Pleading ignorance of the fire susceptible characteristics of the material will probably only get those executives and / or bureacrats another barely felt rap over the knuckles.
In both cases there are people making those identical decisions .
In both cases those who are directly involved in making those decisions be they a small business person or a corporation executive or a bureacrat should, if the Law was at all equal in its handing out of Justice, be treated in an identical fashion.
The executives and / or bureacrats involved in making those decisions should be treated identically to the small business person.
They should like the small business person, personally lose everything and be given an appropiate jail term.
And the corporation they work for should have very heavy fines imposed on them., Most such fines imposed on corporations today in the courts are little more than drinks money for a big corporation.
And including possibly in very serious cases, the prohibiting of that corporate body from engaging in that line of business again for at least a minimum number of years.
Which in a lot of cases would break a smaller corporation as it should if it was to be treated equally witha small business person in a similar situation.
This banning action would likely have a very salutary effect on every other business in that line of work and business.
I simply cannot stomach the near criminal discretion and unequal treatment under the Law that is applied to the small business owner / operator as against the manner in which the Law is applied to corporation executives who might make an identical faulty decision as the small business operatior but unlike the Small business operator, wil pay little or nothing in the way of a personal cost and their community standings for their faulty decision .
40
I would be extremely careful about jumping on this bandwagon. For a start, the Inquiry has only just begun and the real “causes ” are not yet known. More importantly, various interests in the UK (including Sky News) are desperate to blame this on businesses, markets, capitalism, the Tories etc.
Since it became clear that regulation might be a contributing factor, various groups have decided they need to show that regulation was corrupted and that “regulation” in the way the Left imagines it would have saved everybody. And so we hear that insulation manufacturers “ignored” fire safety considerations in order to make money – profit before people, as the old Leftist mantra goes.
It is in no way unusual to ask industry to be involved in regulation – why would you regulate without talking to industry? Indeed on here most castigate governments when they don’t talk to industry. Before leaping to condemn, we need to know what the consultation with industry looked like, what questions were asked, what was said – if anything – about fire safety. And let us not forget that this was almost certainly caused by many factors – inspections if similar buildings afterwards found that fire doors were fatally compromised for example.
10
would someone who can access this paste some excerpts please:
South Australia storms: Power blackouts as Tesla battery is turned on
The Australian-2 hours ago
Wild weather in South Australia has brought down power lines and triggered blackouts in the communities around the state’s Tesla battery on ……Parts of Jamestown, where the Tesla battery is located, and around a dozen surrounding communities including Hornsdale, Caltowie, Canowie … Battery on, power goes out.
40
OK That above is the end of Act 1.
We can now go up another stept to a point even further up in the bureacratic food chain than the close to criminal behaviour of the arrogant couldn’t give a damn, the despicable, stand over , thuggish plastic industry executives whose apparent arrogant elitist attitude was, so what if our fire proof panels burn so long as we executives make a big profit and get a big bonus.
And god help you if you try to stop us making big profits. We will fix you right up.
And that higher and it appears might now be the most responsible buracratic organisation yet for the responsibility for the Grenfell Tower fire is the EU bureacracy itself in Brussels.
Sometimes one has to dig back a little to find information which has subsequently been dissapeared or has vanished from the original scene.
——————-
From the GWPF site;
THE GRENFELL TOWER FIRE WOULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED WITHOUT EU AND CLIMATE REGULATIONS
Christopher Booker;
31
Thank you for posting this ROM. It is important to understand that Building Regulations in the UK are under the control of the EU. All the post fire wailing and suggested solutions are illegal while we remain in the UK. There is no reason why the UK government in 2000 following the report on the fire in Lanarkshire in 1999 could not have requested a change be made to the Building Regulations. The Labour government of the time in the form of John Prescott could, and obviously if they were concerned about safety, have done this. However, at that time Prescott was busy swanning around signing the Kyoto climate change agreement that would ironically help see the cladding used in the future. But he had a deputy of course – step forward John McDonnell, current Shadow Chancellor and the man who branded those responsible for the fire ‘murderers’. I would like to see him questioned on his failure to act.
10
the CAGW gate-keepers at the time:
17 Jun: Guardian: Alice Bell: Don’t blame green targets for Grenfell – insulation saves lives
Rightwing papers have implicated energy-efficiency measures in the tragedy. But cold homes are dangerous and disproportionately affect poorer people’s health
(Alice Bell is a writer, energy campaigner and head of communications at climate change charity, 10:10)
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jun/16/dont-blame-green-targets-grenfell-insulation-saves-lives
20 Jun: RenewEconomy: Leo Hickman (CarbonBrief): Factcheck: Right wing columnists blame Grenfell Tower fire on ‘green targets’
(Editor’s Note: Murdoch columnists Rowan Dean and Miranda Devine have joined UK conservatives in trying to blame the tragic Grenfell Tower on climate action, green targets and even energy efficiency. Carbon Brief has a look at where this ugly nonsense came from).
http://reneweconomy.com.au/factcheck-right-wing-columnists-blame-grenfell-tower-fire-on-green-targets-40553/
19 Jul: BBC: London fire: Six questions for the investigation
(SCROLL WAY DOWN)
Were green targets to blame?
By Roger Harrabin, environment analyst
Cladding can be used to improve thermal insulation and energy efficiency within buildings.
Some commentators are now asking whether green energy targets are to blame for Grenfell Tower fire.
But campaigners for warm homes say the insulation policy is right – it’s the implementation that’s wrong.
That’s because insulation has transformed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in cold damp tower blocks.
Comfort has improved, health is better, bills are slashed. Carbon emissions are down.
In fact insulation needs to be massively extended as the government strives to reduce fuel poverty and curb carbon emissions.
But engineers will need to use insulation that’s safe for tower blocks – and then prove to sceptical tenants that it is safe
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-40279944
00
any time I do a check online, there are usually recent examples:
23 Nov: SunshineCoastDaily: Firies battle house fire as solar panels burst into flames
by Francesca Mcmackin
UPDATE 11.50am: Firefighters have prevented a blaze on the roof of a Sunshine Coast home from spreading further after the property’s solar panels burst into flames.
Fire crews, paramedics and police officers were called to the home on Tristania Dr, Marcus Beach about 9.40am.
They arrived to find the solar panels on the home’s roof on fire.
Several of the solar panels cracked and collapsed as firefighters battled to bring the blaze under control, but the fire was contained by 10am and an electrician had isolated power to the devices.
Nobody was injured in the incident.
28 Nov: JournalTimesWisconsin: Solar panels start fire at Murray Mansion event venue
by GREGORY SHAVER
RACINE — Two rooftop solar panels started a fire Tuesday at The Covenant at Murray Mansion, a wedding and event venue at 2219 Washington Ave…
Photovoltaic panels create electricity and started an electrical fire. The problem in dealing with that type of fire, Madden explained, is that photovoltaic panels are always generating electricity, even on a cloudy day such as Tuesday. “There’s no way to shut them off.”
Firefighters do attack such a fire with water but must stay back a certain distance, Madden continued. In this case they used an aerial truck to spray the blaze, which also got into the trusses…
9 Nov: 13NewsNow: Fire dept. refreshes solar panel training after 13News Now Investigation
A unique challenge for the fire department
by Laura Geller, WVEC-TV
VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (WVEC) — Firefighters have found they need to change their tactics if they battle a fire at a building with solar panels.
The panel technology’s additional weight and the threat it could be pulsing with electricity can put crews’ lives at risk.
In 2013, hundreds of firefighters banded together to put out flames and smoke that poured out of a warehouse in New Jersey. At some moments, they had to let the fire burn, afraid of the danger the 7,000-panel array presented.
Members of the Virginia Beach Fire Department said a 13News Now investigation was the motivation for refreshing firefighters’ training, making sure first responders knew how to handle the challenges and threats solar panels can present…
Captain Ray Chisnell, a firefighter of 34 years, installed the energy-saving technology on his home…
The panels added about 600 lbs.to the roof of Chisnell’s home.
“That’s the weight of about three firefighters,” Chisnell explained. “So if you have three firefighters, plus the extra 600 pounds of solar panels and it could create a situation where you need to be careful.”
Chisnell told us if firefighters need to be so mindful to avoid a roof collapse from the extra weight, they might not be able to get up there to create ventilation.
“You get all that heated gas and stuff,” Chisnell said. “If you don’t get it out of there, it can start to ignite.”
To explain the shock danger in the video, Virginia Beach Fire Department worked with Solar Services Inc., the company that installed Chisnell’s system.
“If the sun is shining, even if it’s cloudy or raining, and you have solar electricity, you’re always going to be generating electricity,” solar consultant Arthur Fichter said.
One conduit brings power from the solar panels on the roof into an inverter. The inverter changes it and brings power into the home through another conduit. There is a switch on the converter, which can shut off power from the inverter to the home. There is no way to do that on the side with the conduit from the solar panels to the inverter, so that line is always live.
“The kind of voltage that we’re talking about with solar power generation is 600 volts, and that’s certainly enough to very, very seriously injure a firefighter or anybody else,” Fichter explained.
That’s exactly what the Virginia Beach Fire Department wants to avoid. Officials are reminding firefighters of the steps they can take to ensure their safety. They want emergency responders to assume the system always is live and to treat it that way.
While most of the danger from solar panels comes during daylight hours, experts warn you still need to be careful at night. Some systems have battery back-ups, which means they also are storing the energy generated. They still can be live even when the sun is down.
http://www.13newsnow.com/news/local/13news-now-investigates/fire-dept-refreshes-solar-panel-training-after-13news-now-investigation/490553068
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Just a little update on a freak weather development which is unlikely to make the pages or airwaves of our more-biblical-than-evah media.
My region has just had its first reverse spring, having almost achieved the feat in 1937. In 2017, for the first time evah, September’s average max was higher than October’s and October’s was higher than November’s.
This is not due to any global cooling. It was inevitable that this would come about eventually, because of the way winds and humidity can change after a dry, westerly-dominated mid-year. Yet while it’s not freakish to have one spring month cooler than the one before, it is truly rare anywhere in the world to have each spring month cooler than the one before.
There’s nothing to see here. Just nature playing one of her tricks. It’s just that if we were sweltering here on the midcoast in some kind of record-evah spring the media would be all over it like a cheap suit. As it is the people who were preaching Warmageddon on the basis of a hot September have no doubt moved on to marriage equality for adult yogurt containers of any flavour…or some such distraction in a world where the news is nothing but distraction for corporate purposes.
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managed to access this now; still can’t find anyone else reporting it:
1 Dec: Australian: Samantha Hutchinson: South Australia storms: Power blackouts as Tesla battery is turned on
Wild weather in South Australia has brought down power lines and triggered blackouts in the communities around the state’s Tesla battery on the day it was switched on.
Data from SA Power Networks has revealed 208 homes in areas around the battery will be without power until as late as 11pm tonight after wild weather and more than 250,000 lightning strikes overnight felled power lines and cut supply.
Parts of Jamestown, where the Tesla battery is located, and around a dozen surrounding communities including Hornsdale, Caltowie, Canowie Belt are without power, with the network operator putting the outages down to storm activity and equipment breakages.
The outages come as the Weatherill government flicked the switch on the world’s largest lithium-ion battery on Friday for the first time…
***A spokesman for the Premier told The Australian that the nature of the storm damage to the transmission lines meant that the battery wouldn’t be able to power homes because equipment needed to be repaired to reconnect the homes to the grid.
Some parts of Jamestown will be back up online by 9pm tonight, and suburbs around the Canowie Belt were expected to be back up and running by 5pm this afternoon. Stone Hut and Laura will have power before midnight.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/south-australia-storms-power-blackouts-as-tesla-battery-is-turned-on/news-story/de20d9518b40191381e9534eca722980
1 Dec: Australian: Tony Shepherd: ‘Panicky’ plan to avoid blackouts illogical
(Tony Shepherd is the chairman of the panel that wrote Power Off Power On: Rebooting the National Energy Market, published by the Menzies Research Centre today)
The panicky piecemeal measures to avoid blackouts across eastern Australia this summer vividly illustrate the illogicality of most energy policies these days, and the exorbitant costs they impose on consumers.
The measures, announced by Australian Energy Market Operator CEO Audrey Zibelman this week, include refiring mothballed gas power stations in South Australia, Queensland and Tasmania, and stocking up on diesel generators.
You might like to read that again: Australia, which has some of the world’s richest reserves of gas, coal and uranium, is stocking up on diesel generators to avoid blackouts…
Worse, this pain is self-inflicted. This is not market failure, but political failure. It is probably the most expensive policy blunder in our life times. Fixing this mess will not be easy…
Our review (Power Off Power On, published today by the Menzies Research Centre) recommends that all subsidies be phased out, as the federal government is doing by abandoning the discredited Renewable Energy Target from 2020.
The gravy train of subsidies may not have stopped, but it is rapidly reaching the end of the line. Investors know it. Investment in renewable generation has slowed considerably, since the government announced its plans to make generators provide power every second of every day…READ ALL
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/panicky-plan-to-avoid-blackouts-illogical/news-story/97b066e7dee4096e540e5da20ab772c8
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Bummer – just when you thought all of the power problems in SA were resolved. If only the design of the transmission equipment made allowance for weather.
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Look at the bright side. [snip] have been prophesying a global warming rotisserie oven since Al Gore lost the Y2k election. In the bad old days the Millerites and Cassandras had nothing but The Great Disappointment to show for their prayers. But Grenfell has finally delivered an odor of roasting flesh the delight of which has rarely been seen since Urbain Grandier and Joan of Arc were served up the sort of punishment the Holy Inquisition reserves for the perversity of Deniers. [snip]
[After taking out what I snipped the rest of your comment is approved. I might let the first one go if it was more relevant but in the end it’s just inflammatory. Sorry.] AZ
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During the early sixties I worked on fire retardants for plastic foam. They were brominated organic compounds that worked very well, and were not too expensive. I think they are still used in furniture etc. They are, of course, getting flak from the Greens (usual stuff), but I’m surprised they are still in use ‘cos of the ozone layer nonsense. But given that they are in use, I’m surprised also that they don’t seem to be being used in thermal insulation cladding – maybe they have been banned there, but not in furniture.
The other curious thing about Grenfell is that the fire service had attended the fridge fire, put it out, and it was only when they were packing up outside and looked up, that they realised the fire had spread to the outside; that sounds a bit odd to me. Surely it must have been obvious when they were in the flat that the fire had spread outside through the window. Be interesting to see what the enquiry makes of that.
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Bishop Hill discussion
Grenfell Tower – Deadly Fires: Mismanagement, or just no managers present
by Robert Christopher
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There is more to the Grenfell tower disaster than meets the eye. Many global warming sceptics (and I am a sceptic) have pointed out that the primary reason given in the planning application for the local council to clad the tower was to help the council reduce its carbon footprint. The Left, in contrast, have said that this was a pretext and the real reason to clad it was to make a 1960s concrete brutalist building less of an eyesore for the affluent people who live in an area nearby.
These are both partial truths. The following points should be added to them in order to get a balanced picture:
* The heating bill for Grenfell tower was largely paid by the council, as most occupants were on benefits. Therefore reducing the heating bill by improving insulation was in the council’s interests.
* I believe that various grants are available to reduce carbon footprints of buildings, so presumably slanting the planning application toward carbon mitigation would win grants to assist the council in its twin purposes of reducing its heating bill and making the tower less ugly.
* Making the tower less ugly is in the interests of everybody, not only the wealthy.
* The real problem was not the material used to clad the building (plastic, rather than the more expensive metal option) but the failure to extend the floors of the building outward to the cladding, creating a vertical flue between the old exterior wall and the cladding. Fire could propagate up this flue, and did so as is clearly visible in shots of the blaze.
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