JoNova
A science presenter, writer, speaker & former TV host; author of The Skeptic's Handbook (over 200,000 copies distributed & available in 15 languages).
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Statistics
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJcrTVrIa8U
71
Refreshing. Gives hope that energy and joy on earth is possible. We just have to live our lives and tell the green blob to get a life too. In the short run the green blob is a bit of a pain but this too will soon pass.
91
On the other hand, it is almost 1:00 pm, the temperature is still below freezing, and the morning’s one inch of snow is still on the ground. Its Fall with Winter officially almost two weeks away. I want my Global Warming the green blob has promised us for decades. After all, I did my bit. I drive an SUV. I earned it!
I guess I will have to wait for Spring or move way down south. Oh well…it is still better than all the wild fires burning in southern California. At least my apartment is safe, warm, and dry.
120
Just checked my thermometer. It is plus 5C here in central, Alberta, Canada. Quite warm for this time of year. Might be global warming. If so, bring it on, a few more degrees would not be unwelcome.
70
Britain shivered on the coldest night of the year so far with -13C (9F) recorded in Shropshire overnight. Colder than Moscow.
Dr David Viner eat your heart out.
00
Lionell Griffith: Meanwhile, here in England it’s around zero centigrade. I had a 40 mile trip home today, and scraped about 2-3 inches of snow off my car this morning. It’s an ancient Mazda MX-5, 21 years old. It started first time, and (driven gingerly) got me home safely. A little gem of a car!
40
We stayed overnight at a hotel at Bath spa UK It has direct access to the roman hot springs.
The hotels brochure claims these hot springs emanate from rain that fell over 10000 yars ago in the local hills.
Is it possible to determine its co2 content when it fell all those years ago or has the way in which it warms up and no doubt cools and warms again during the process completely changed the co2 content?
Tonyb
100
Tonyb:
almost certainly the CO2 content will have changed. There would have been all sorts of reactions with minerals in the rocks as the colour and odour of the water shows.
However as the climate cools over the next 30 years access to lots of hot water might be a real boost to the hotel’s trade.
81
For the hotel brochure claim to be close to true, the rain had to fall 10000 years ago, percolate into the aquifer, and, since that time, no rain could have percolated into the aquifer. Somehow the percolation field had to be made miraculously water tight at just the right time. Yet, at the same time, there was a hot spring issuing from that aquifer. Looks to me to be nothing but romantic marketing blather.
I suggest take the brochure as just a story and enjoy your stay at the hot springs. Look for your ancient CO2 data somewhere else not quite so warmly romantic. Perhaps the Greenland ice fields?
92
Spoilsport! Since 1497 bottled CO2 comes in little cylinders suitable for making seltzer water and powering childhood hand guns. Modern uses include; solid CO2 useful for pressing knives and other metals thereinto thus making them Squeek!
00
It’s approaching mid-December and we still have to have our fire going on and off. Austin Texas had 4″ of snow. Hawaii apparently had snow. Why?
70
Isn’t it obvious? Global Warming!
120
Sadly, CO2 does not cause global warming and global cooling has begun.
http://notrickszone.com/2017/12/08/time-running-out-for-warming-global-hoaxsters-7-new-studies-show-large-parts-of-globe-cooling/#sthash.fxSEF6b5.dpbs
121
Hawaii gets snow because of high (>3,000 m.) elevations and much moisture in the winds.
The northeast, or windward sides, of the slopes is a high rain area at the elevations lower down. Usually there is not much water vapor left at the higher elevations. Thus, usually dry there.
70
Yes, that’s true, but I understand that both the Hawaii and Austin events were a little unusual, which is why they came to notice. Obviously these are just weather events, but why not take advantage like the warming worriers do at every hot weather event?
100
John
You didn’t mention the rain shadow effects, where it gets down to about 10 inches at sea level
40
I’ll not look it up, but recall that rain decreases about 2.5 cm. for each city block in one of the rain shadow places.
20
bemused:
I’ve had my gas fire going for 2 mornings past (for about an hour) here in the Adelaide Hills. I was at bowls yesterday and the cool weather was the subject at afternoon tea as others admitted to warming their houses.
Tasmania has had snow at the start of the month although that is not unusual (despite “our” ABC doing its best to claim it as ‘proof’ of Climate Change© as a few seconds turned up similar cases 2, 3 and 5 years ago). I support the suggestion that the ABC become the AGC (Absolutely Gullible Corporation).
90
Did you know that UAH for Australia, has November 2017 as 29th warmest, out of 39 years.
121
One has to wonder if that has percolated through to Hotwhopper …
70
“Did you know that UAH for Australia, has November 2017 as 29th warmest, out of 39 years”.
And the way December 2018 has started then this may be the coldest Oz December since the Satellite UAH Global Temp readings commenced in 1979.
Most areas in SA, VIC, NSW, southern QLD & Tassie have max temps well below the December average.
Check the “green blob (how ironic)” on the latest Weatherbell Global Temp Map.
81
It’s been warmer today, after a cold start. Time will tell whether or not it necomes pretty hot by midweek. I prefer it cooler! With grass to cut and trees to prune and vegs to sort and Christmas-a-coming…this is a crazy time of the year DownUnder so a bit of coolth doesn’t go amiss for the time being. At least, UpOver has only Christmas (and NY if you are bothered with it) to worry about. Here it is mad!
50
Becomes…rats, didn’t proof read.
In Aus, of course, it is the end of the academic year as well with everything that involves and people move jobs, houses, etc. etc. Truly crackers time and all in the heat…whoopee! 🙁
40
Wishing you a pleasantly warm Xmas with a cool breeze
coming through the kitchen window, Annie, as you cook
all yr delicious Xmas goodies, yr turkey, ham with cloves,
baked vegetables, Xmas cake. shortbreads and yr PUDDING!
00
‘It’s as simple as the ABC’.
70
Hawaii had snow on top of its mountains. It’s not unusual.
40
Some of my friends live in Houston and have wonderful photos on their facebook page. They survived the floods but they were without power for three days after a tree was blown down during the snow storm.
“HOUSTON – Say it ain’t snow. It’s not a dream or nightmare but reality: one of the biggest snowfalls in history just walloped the Texas gulf coast and has brought Houston to a crawl.
Mother Nature brought blockbuster amounts of snow to areas that only see it a few times per century – where even half melted flurries are enough to drive kids out of their minds with excitement. I’m not talking Dallas or Amarillo or Lubbock. As of this entry, it is snowing and snowing heavily in, of all places, Brownsville, marking only the third time since 1895 they have received accumulating snowfall.”
10
Hawaii apparently had snow. Why?
Cause it is a very high volcano, perhaps?
Kilimanjaro, in Africa, can pull the same trick. It can kill a man by fire, and by ice. In fact the name of Kilimanjaro is Pidgin for a mountain that can kill a man.
Presumably that is where George R. R. Martin got the idea for one of the subtitles in Game of Thrones.
01
nice story
10
Interesting.
This site is generally about scientific matters, and so tends to reject unsubstantiated beliefs in Anthropogenic Climate Change. It also tends to be about the political responses or influences related to those beliefs.
And yet, here we are, with the first comment on this thread being a demonstration of an unsubstantiated belief in the existence of an esoteric Being, however benign that Being might appear to be. Or not appear at all, to most mortals, for that matter.
We have always noted that belief in Anthropogenic Climate Change has the trappings of religion, but the degree of similarity, between the two, is really quite striking, when you see them in juxtapose.
171
At least the belief in the first @ #1 is a choice not enforced through laws that directly impacts your standard of living and can remain secular from those laws unlike CAGW or the “one of peace” which have striking similarities where enforcement of belief occurs except CAGW is still catching up on that one.
130
So we need to demand separation of church and state. No more government involvement in the green religion.
150
Hmmm, churches do have tax free status in most countries.
20
and a lot of them gained their present wealth, power and status from historic use of laws and enforcement to conform and to derive profit from a lack of choice.
11
Rereke Whakaaro:
I’ve heard the current Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull called many things, mostly rude ones, but never an esoteric being. Although looking up the definition of esoteric in the Oxford Dictionary in conjunction with knowing he is a firm believer in AGW your comment is illuminating.
esoteric = intended for or understood by only a small number of people who have a specialized knowledge…
That I think does sum up the AGW talk.
120
Graeme I think the idea of AGW began with an esoteric group but has now morphed into a large collective of mindsets within society that became established through persistent and subtle exposure via the MSM and government institutions, the only chance of its success in a rational society was to eliminate rationality through the mechanisms of PC doctrines that imposed a fear of social reprisals for those that dared to question.
Where the idea of public shaming pales to other punishments remember in a relatively polite peaceful society the perception of what is harmful differs greatly to those that live under the cloud of constant war and uncertainty, all it took was to question our good nature.
121
Rereke,
Because the first comment did not contain any information, other than the link, I did not click on it. SOP for me.
Your comment caused me to do so.
I saw 10 seconds and then closed it out.
Alfred A. should have stated what it was and why he posted it. ‘May a pox settle on the house of Alfred’
75
I am sorry if I offended through the lack of information. I agree with you. Alfred Alexander has been a very, very, naughty boy, by coming to a science blog, and not honestly stating what type of subject matter his reference would deliver. I too, just clicked on it,
in good faithum, with good intent.It is a form of spam, in that it presents a concept to you, that is out of context, compared to the purpose of this site. That is what I objected to. Your experience may vary.
But Lionell’s comment is extremely valid. In reality, it expresses the same concept as Mozart’s Requiem, and we should see it in that light.
I have probably spent too many weekends in the American Bible Belt, to be able to see it rationally.
110
Hmmm. I grew up in the American Bible Belt (Rural Southern Indiana, small town, 1100 people, 12 churches within a mile of town center) and understand what you say. It took me a while to get past that upbringing.
Perhaps, since this is an Unthreaded Weekend, his error was his not suggesting the video contained a happy song and to listen to it at your own risk of enjoying it. Alternatively he could have said he is a religious person and intends the video to convert you to his particular religion. To click or not is your choice.
Even then, it would still be a happy song well played.
80
Ten seconds is not enough time to evaluate the nature of the presentation. It was enough time to jump to conclusions with insufficient evidence. Rather faith like if you ask me. If the banner had not been present, what would your reaction have been?
The banner just happened to be on the wall behind the group. It was just a banner and not a commandment to do anything. I suggest you added something to it that you thought justified the pox comment. Why so angry?
I think the song deserves to be enjoyed for what it is: a happy song well played. I think we need more of such things and less of jumping to conclusions.
90
I’m not angry.
I think when posting a link, the person should explain.
Ex: “Here is a happy song, well done.” He could have said that much.
For another example, I like the music “Jessica” – – composed and played by Forrest Richard “Dickey” Betts. Dickey Betts.
Betts also is responsible for the song Ramblin` Man via YouTube, with these lines:
And I was born in the back seat of a Greyhound bus
Rolling down highway forty one
Route 41 runs from Miami, Florida to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan — right through the heart of the Bible Belt.
10
Admittedly there was a religious rally banner on the wall behind the group. I listened to the music and heard no mention of god or religion in it. It was just a happy song with energy and bounce. The banner was a banner and the song happened to be presented in front of it. I took the song for what it was and not as a pretext to convince me to find Jesus and believe in his godhood.
I can also listen to a rendition of Mozart’s requiem and enjoy the music for what it is. It too does not make a demand that I believe in God but it is an expression of exaltation. I can accept it for that.
Not every expression of joy in living is necessarily religious. Personally, I think we need a lot more joy in living rather than the anxious, depressive, doom and gloom the world seems to be experiencing. The end might or might not be near but we are alive now and THAT is something to celebrate!
91
Tent revival ??
Yes, I believe we should all own a tent.
Very useful at times.
Get yourself one. !
60
I had an idea of a popup medical clinic using tents and calling it Physical-in-Tent….
50
Amen!
40
When I was younger, I was keen to try this in-tents passion, that all my friends talked about.
I even bought my own tent, and a ground sheet. But nothing good came of it, especially after the boar decided to used it as a urinal.
00
There is no god and over the past few thousand years a lot of humanity has died in its name, factional fighting and splitting hairs to prove their deity reigns supreme.
The Catlicks have been the worst, but the followers of M are carrying on the tradition successfully.
34
el gordo I think you need to review your history.
80
One often hears that religion is behind wars, but it’s hard to see how any of the greatest slaughters after the Taiping Rebellion have been of a markedly religious nature. The American War of Secession, Crimea, WW1, WW2, Korea, Vietnam, Biafra, Congo, civil wars and repressions in Russia, China…religion would have been one factor in all that, but hardly a big one.
Going back in history, I guess the Mongol conquests would have to be the record holder for murder and slaughter before WW2. Religious? Genghis killed for fun and profit, not for Tengrism.
I don’t get it. We have murderous Shiite-Shia conflicts happening right now, so I know that religion can still be a factor in mass slaughter. But when Dresden was being incinerated the main distinction between humans was whether you were the guy on the ground or the guy in the air. We’re far too modern and mass-production oriented to fuss about race or religion. In fact, we find discrimination quite shocking. The Las Vegas operative who sends out a drone over Somalia on the orders of Bomber Barry or Donald wouldn’t dream of questioning someone’s faith.
120
Point taken.
40
Wrong button pressed …
A sectarian “conflict”?, Or a political one? Or a religious one?
10
One often hears that religion is behind wars, but it’s hard to see how …
Northern Ireland?
A sectarian “conflict”? Or a political one?
10
When the starving Scots were settled in Northern Ireland they became one and the same.
20
No; political Rereke. Republicans vs Royalists.
20
Turns out at Catholics vs Protestants. But there’s a problem!
Christians don’t hate! Christians don’t kill! So, whatever those haters and killers say they are, they are not!
How did things get so mixed up?
10
As I said, there are still wars where religion plays its part, and even the largest part, but the huge slaughters of recent times have not been religious wars, at least not since the huge toll of the Taiping Rebellion.
What’s striking about the 20th century is that a definedly atheist movement, Communism, proved more lethal than any religious movement of the past. Its predecessor, French Jacobinism, was behind a systematic slaughter of peasants in Western France which, to this day, is a very uneasy topic every 14th of July. Only few brave scholars in France are prepared to use the g-word, but the Vendee was pretty close to a g-word even if you take into account the dire situation faced by the new regime.
It’s also worth keeping in mind that the great Wars of Religion were full of contradictions as to their aims. Richelieu killed Catholics at home and supported Protestants abroad against Catholics: his priority was Make France Great Again.
I’m not defending religion and its monstrous role in eg the murderous Spanish conquest of the Aztecs. I’m saying you can have a secular world full of good rationalist/masonic/enlightenment values…and still have a hell of a slaughter in the name of those values. It’s already happened – and how!
40
‘….at least not since the huge toll of the Taiping Rebellion.’
It had millenarian overtones, but most likely it was a typical Chinese revolution.
10
England and Europe had religion mixed into their internecine wars as much as politics and trade. Religion was so much a part of life, it was as much an excuse as anything else to go to war over. War is all about the acquisition and retention of power (politics) and wealth (economics), and any excuse will do.
The Spanish Armada has been portrayed as being as much about Catholicism versus Protestantism as anything. It wasn’t. It was Philip of Spain trying to bring down Elizabeth of England for interfering in his Empire, particularly in the Dutch efforts to achieve self-determination and the English efforts of piracy and brigandage in the New World. Politics and Wealth.
During the English Civil War, the two sides seemed to be as much divided by religion as politics. It wasn’t just Royalists vs Parliamentarians. The English Catholics saw it as an opportunity to promote their fortunes again—Papists vs Puritans because the English Catholics saw themselves as very much disenfranchised by the Church of England. Politics, with a religious perfume.
Charles II turned Catholic on his deathbed. His reign was pretty tempestuous with near rebellions from both sides of the religious divide fostered by his ideas and attitude of tolerance. The English Parliament enacted the `Clarendon Code,’ laws to shore up the position of the re-established Church of England. But there was no war.
The Medieval Crusades were as much political as Religious. On the surface, very much about Christendom versus the Muslim interloper. Rescuing the Holy Land. The destruction of Byzantium, supposedly an ally, and the following Albigensian Crusade showed Rome ruthlessly promoting its ascendancy. That was a slaughter. The government of France aided and abetted the elimination of the Algi and Catharsis heresies. France wanted the territory. Power and Wealth. Pope Gregory II created the Inquisition which was to root out and destroy all heresies. That was the religious hangover.
It was the thirteenth centuries version of AGW. If you didn’t believe exactly as prescribed by Rome you were an heretic, to be tortured to confession and then burnt at the stake. If there were a lot of you, you were Crusaded against. Rome has warred with Eastern Orthodoxy ever since it defeated Byzantium. It’s at a more of less armed truce with the Protestantism its corruption (the sale of indulgences) initially promoted when Martin Luther nailed his ninety-five theses to his church’s door in 1517, starting the Reformation.
Where religion is a way of life, wealth, and power are inextricably involved with it, so it’s a very convenient excuse. The American `heresy’ of divorcing of State (power and politics) from Religion is what the Western nations are more familiar with these days. It was a big step. It took religion from war but it sure didn’t stop the wars. Witness all the 20th Century’s conflicts. Power, politics and Wealth.
20
Or merely a modern version of tribal war?
10
Not religious myself but favour religious freedom
(with some provisos.)Bright and dark in the religious
impulse, some religions or religious sects, the dogmatic
and life-hating, favour dark, some religious groups,the
enlightening, a catalyst in The Arts, and in recognizing
the individual soul and free will, love-thy-neighbour-
tolerance. And even some Christian dogmatists like John
Knox promoted universal education, (with unexpected
consequences.)
Re the individual soul, the big thing was focus on the
rights of man and liberty, Christian evangelists, like
Wilberforce, Livingstone and Lord Shaftsbury working to
abolish the slave trade.
20
Why?
Where?
What’s he got wrong?
00
Inclined to agree with you Elgordo after all if there was a god wouldn’t there be just one supreme being and not a hundreds of them .
Me personally I’m a firm devotee of the church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and believe ours is the one and only true religion.
53
RR:
hasn’t that Church been split by schism according to the type of pasta?
70
Splitters.
30
When it comes to pasta, splitters is better than lumpers.
40
Not sure if you’ve ever read our beliefs but this excerpt is what made me think hey these people are onto something .
“All followers of the FSM hold that pirates are sacred and were the first Pastafarians. Climate change, earthquakes, hurricanes and other natural disasters are directly linked to the declining number of pirates worldwide. Many Pastafarians therefore choose to wear full pirate regalia as a means to help the environment and belay natural disasters. Other Pastafarians just like wearing colanders on their heads.”.
60
Nah! Its’ da Greks trying to do dat! always da Greks! 🙂
11
I thought the schism was over canned sphaghetti?
Something about it not having/losing its purity …
10
I know that spaghetti exists but not that it is a monster that can fly. Spaghetti when cooked properly and covered with marinara sauce and meat balls is good to eat. That’s nice but a good bit short of being a deity.
I really don’t have any faith in faith as a means of knowing. Drawings, words, and multiply transliterated ancient texts just don’t do it for me. That still doesn’t mean I can’t respond to the sense of joy of life and exaltation in music even if it has an otherwise religious intent.
40
Denier !
10
As in threads per inch? 🙂
50
Will Janoschka:
Close but no sauce. Denier is the mass in grams per 9000 meters of the fiber.
30
HAH! spaghetti sauce? Your scienteriffic BS has no clue as to making a decent pillowcase 🙂
31
This discussion reminds me of the old song “On Top Of Spaghetti”…
20
Five years ago Chiefio started the Church of the Scared Carbon.
I was the 5th of 82 comments.
LINK
30
‘….one supreme being and not a hundreds of them .’
Hindus have a few, but the mainstream faiths follow the idea of a singularity, there is but one god and his name is Jehovah.
More recently the hatred of the Buddhists for the followers of M is a stark reminder that religious faith and culture are intertwined with racial prejudice.
30
IIRC, the followers of M tried or succeeded at killing a few police officers, initiating the crack down.
40
Perhaps. what is wrong with bellzabubb fer a name? They tried a duality, and even a trinity. TOO many pilots to work correcty l.
21
Greek gods are fascinating, they have a feel for the zodiac.
10
“Greek gods are fascinating, they have a feel for the zodiac.”
Also like to party lots! OTOH beware grek bearings wid gifs! 🙂
01
More likely it is a reminder that those who invade a sovereign nation need to be repelled. Violently, if necessary.
Of course, the one world government set and its UN comrades hold the view that any invasion by the followers of The Prophet is to be excused. And any defence against that invasion is to be condemned as racist.
[Editorial discretion applied – Fly]
10
Accepted. Thanks for posting.
00
Don’t leave the old light Scottish Presbyterians out –
“The Covenant and No Quarter”
30
Meant to follow el gordo at #4.5
20
Ben Chifley married a Presbyterian and was banned from taking communion at his Catholic church. As a consequence he decided not to attend mass, but instead sit on a park bench over the road.
Naturally, him being PM at the time, he was surrounded by locals who needed advice or help in some way. In my mind he was a living saint, he routed the Communists.
30
I agree! Sometimes even Katlickers can get over the ‘holier than thou’ attitude, and do some fair science.
21
Interesting.This site is generally about scientific matters, and so tends to reject unsubstantiated beliefs in Anthropogenic Climate Change. It also tends to be about the political responses or influences related to those beliefs.
to most mortals,what mortals or what matter for that matter. Have you not heard of Babylon? You try for a complete concept; but seem must stop and take a shit. See what I mean.Science and Religion are never a juxtapose, but instead a finely composed continuum. Your task should you accept; is to carefully identify that discontinuity while never exposing said discontinuity
01
OK ok I broke your RulZ
Interesting.This site is generally about scientific matters, and so tends to reject unsubstantiated beliefs in Anthropogenic Climate Change. It also tends to be about the political responses or influences related to those beliefs.
to most mortals,what mortals or what matter for that matter. Have you not heard of Babylon? You try for a complete concept; but seem must stop and take a sh*t. See what I mean.Science and Religion are never a juxtapose, but instead a finely composed continuum. Your task should you accept; is to carefully identify that discontinuity while never exposing said discontinuity
01
Now we can introduce GOD! God sometimes frowns! but mostly forgives, Pats on head, smiles lotz! OTOH do not futz with God!
01
I was reading yesterday a claim about the oldest known writing found at about 5000 years old , not that the marks in the clay could be deciphered of course so was it just decorative or language.
On the other hand our local indigenous peoples have been using a form of writing for 60k years but get no mention .
31
Which form, the one that can be interpreted like in your first sentence or the one invented by leftists academics in the 60’s and 70’s because of their own guilt of hating their successful lives that democracy gave them and not from one of their beloved Marxist ideals?
102
More important than that the one that says water over that a ways .
21
More important than that the one that says water over that a ways. That tends to be useful! Thank you!
01
The archaeological news website : “stonepages” has a number of items that suggest that the indigenous australians
had surprising abilities in several areas of activity, in some cases being well ahead of achievements elsewhere . One example is this :
Australia holds earliest evidence of ground-edge axe technology
“Earlier this year, a team of Australian researchers published new findings about a fragment of a ground-edge axe discovered in the Kimberly region of Australia. The flake had been excavated in the early 1990s but hadn’t been discovered among the rest of the excavated material until 2014.
Between 44,000 and 49,000 years old, it is the earliest evidence of ground-edge axe technology anywhere in the world, closely coinciding with the first arrival of modern humans on the continent, which archaeological evidence suggests occurred between 60,000 and 50,000 years ago. According to the research, the fragment represents the independent invention of this technology by the first Australians. The process involves grinding and abrading the stone – uncommon outside of the region until around 10,000 years ago, and unique within it.
To understand its significance we need to look at underlying assumptions about where and when human complexity developed and what form it took. ‘Human complexity’ generally refers to the range of behaviors that help define what it is to be “human” – for example the development of increasingly sophisticated tools and social structures.
Historically, archaeological evidence from Australia and most of Southeast Asia has not aligned well with conceptual models of the development of human complexity based almost exclusively on the archaeological records of Europe and Africa.
There is continued unease with the early stone artifact record from Australia, the simplicity of which is often still construed as evidence of a deficiency in early Australian cultures. The ground-edge axe flake discovered in the Kimberley region challenges these assumptions.
The fragment fits into a growing body of evidence including that of rock art in Sulawesi, Indonesia, and highly skilled deep-sea fishing off the coast of East Timor demonstrating that the first colonizers of Australia and Southeast Asia were developing expressions of human flexibility and creativity earlier than previously assumed. The archaeological evidence from this region also shows expressions of complex human behaviors that are unique for the time period.”
http://www.stonepages.com/news/archives/005731.html
41
A form of writing for 60k years! Truly an advanced civilisation.
00
Anyone here have any idea what the warranty is on the Big Battery?
50
The warranty period is very likely to expire 1 day before failure… isn’t this the usual process?
160
In one of the numerous Press Releases issued by Weatherill’s claque there is a claim that it will last 15 years, but by then will be down to 65% capacity. Take it for what it is worth – a press release by an increasingly desperate group seeing a hard to win election coming.
110
I think you get a hundred days. Or is it a hundred years? In any case, they don’t replace or refund but you can get the equivalent value in Mars flights or SF-to-LA Hyperloop trips. (The Mars flights are non-return and the Hyperloop tickets can be voided by quake alerts. No cancellations but all bookings transferable with admin fees applying, discounted .05% for Tesla owners.)
So, you see, you can’t lose.
80
So far it has been discharging 30MW intermittently for an hour or so every day.
30
Would like to know the discharge rate and where this 30MW is going.
20
Yous upside-down folk so bad yous gots training wheels on da reindeer. 🙂
01
Or maybe just Mars bars to energise your legwork using Shanks’s Pony?
30
Like windmills I doubt the battery will be used to its nameplate capacity because a full charge or a full discharge of a lithium battery dramatically shortens its life. As Robber notes it is discharging 30MWh per day not the nameplate of 100MWh so it has about the same capacity factor as windmills. The military only charge their lithium batteries to 3.9V not the full charge voltage of 4.2V in order to increase reliability and longevity at the expense of capacity. Perhaps they are doing the same with the Big Battery. It was never going to achieve its nameplate capacity.
91
That’s why I believe that lithium batteries are the wrong choice for a grid backup battery, as the requirement for sudden high discharge rates surely will drastically shorten the battery lifetime. May be ok for a single house backup and for vehicle use. Interesting to note that King and Flinders Islands are trialling other battery technologies for their backup batteries.
40
Shear brute (massive) power is the only viable technology for any expanding economy. All else is the deliberate intentional political scam to betray the population!! The USTelcos use highly refined Pb for batteries and even more highly refined H2SO4 as electrolite. They have no (zero) failure or outage Such is called mature technology.
30
UK main telephone systems were powered by NiFe batteries during power outages.
London underground locos still use this old and reliable source of back-up power.
40
I have a highly advanced lead battery for telco backup at home. They are virtually bullet proof if you treat them right (and even if you don’t) and highly recyclable and cost much less than lithium batteries. They are what you should use when weight and volume is not an issue. The Big Battery should have used these, in the event it was needed, even though it is useless. But lead would be the choice assuming it was a legitimate engineering decision.
60
BTW, my battery has a 7000 Amp short circuit current….
30
So much for your now very stubby screwdriver! One thing about the Pb-acid batteries; they do not get up and wonder off like the Li-ions are prone to do!
00
The BFB is never going to discharge at any more than 70MW,..and most of its use will be at the 30MW. Rate.
Those rates are limited by the control electronics and ultimately by the inverters which are most likely the “bottleneck” of the system.
If anything is being pushed past its limits, it will be the inverters and support electronics.rather than the battery cells themselves.
20
The problem is that neither the SA govt nor Tesla have released any information on what this battery is supposed to do or any basic specs, so it’s difficult to determine if the battery is achieving its design goals.
20
The BFB battery “basic specs” have been well published repeatedly ..(100MW, 129MWh etc), and in links i have posted previously.,…
its intended purpose has also been stated in various quotes from SA authorities., as well as on this forum. (See ROMs post 4.3 in the FCAS thread )
Obviously there is much detail we will never know ,( voltage range, cycle life, inverter settings, etc etc) ..but that is not unusual.
Of all the dumb decisions that SA .gov has made , the BFB stands out as a oddity as it actually makes some sense, ..at least at an experimental level.
Its not really big enough to make a significant difference, but as a learning exercise, or “proof of concept” it should give some useful learning information.
…Even if it is only to proove how ineffective , or uneconomical , a battery might be. !!
00
Chad,
That, and the usual effect of making a system ever more complex tends to make it increasingly less reliable and increases the maintenance burden.
00
We live in a time when the very definition of things have become ambiguous.
Good is Bad.
Bad is Good.
A slight downward trend becomes an upward trend.
Carbon is a pollutant.
A stable trend becomes an upward trend.
A – sign can be a + sign.
Truth is a lie.
Lies are truth.
Cooler is hotter…than evah.
Normal weather is abnormal weather.
All weather is proof of AGW.
All weather events are unprecedented.
Computer results are data.
Observed data can’t be right.
Historical data can’t be right……………
160
Don’t forget: Your gender is what you say it is–and can change daily.
80
“1984” was meant to be a novel, not an instruction manual.
141
I see you’ve been red thumbed.
Maybe whoever they are thinks ‘1984’ is an instruction manual.
120
Did anyone else see the blurb yesterday about AGL sticking to its coal free future and definitely closing Liddell, they have given the AEMO a proposal of what they are doing to replace the coal fired power with unreliables.
And they’re also going to increase the efficiency of Bayswater without using more fuel .
Given the profit they get from coal fired generation I think it’s time to dump their stock if you have any .
191
2022 closure date is what I read. Perhaps looking for taxpayer subsidy to upgrade it?
80
Yes, and it made the news last night. Here’s a link to the ABC story yesterday.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-12-09/liddell-coal-plant-closes/9243180
Cheers,
Dave B
60
That will work out well the new 50Mw solar farm in Queensland is producing around 20% of nameplate during the day and of course nothing at night even though they are sprouting pumped hydro as a big battery.
We are all aware of the shortcomings of wind so I can see multiple diesel generators in NSW with bills skyrocketing yet again.
110
Richmond NSW forecast BOM for this coming Thursday is Max 41C.
Interesting to see if this is reached, where the thermometer is, its sensitivity and the duration of the heat.
http://www.bom.gov.au/nsw/forecasts/richmond.shtml
80
Talking to a group of pseudo Marxists yesterday, they all agreed that Malcolm Turnbull was right in standing up to Beijing over perceived political influence.
So at the next Federal election I wonder if Labor will take on One Belt One Road as part of their platform?
50
One small step …..
‘The wind farm on Kirkby Moor on the Furness peninsula in Cumbria would be the first large one to be taken down since they began appearing around Britain in 1991.
‘South Lakeland district council refused an application by the wind farm operator to keep the turbines operating for another ten years until 2027.
‘Under the original planning permission, granted in 1992, the turbines have to be removed by August 26 next year.’
The Times
140
el gordo:
I think the sub-plot was that the turbines needed repairs and/or up-grading and a guaranteed 10 years extra to pay for it (and keep the money flowing).
90
Wonder if they also plan to remove the concrete bases, because I believe these consume the equivalent of six house concrete pads. I note that one site remediation costing assumed that the bases would remain.
60
Don’t worry, Graeme#4,
The company will probably go in to receiver-ship
very soon……
AND, nothing will be removed….
00
As the blog host Paul Homewood says: “You could not make it up!”
“It was announced with great fanfare as a new dawn in eco-friendly transport to and from Scotland’s islands. But it has emerged the ‘cleaner’ fuel which will power the passenger ferries will have to be shipped in from a refinery thousands of miles away in Qatar.
Officially launched last week by First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, the first of two vessels powered by liquefied natural gas (LNG) was heralded as a key weapon in achieving ‘Scotland’s world-leading climate change goals’.
Now transport chiefs have admitted the fuel to power the craft must make a journey of 8,141 miles from Qatar to a port in Kent before being driven a further 464 miles to the ferry terminal in Ardrossan, Ayrshire.
The ferries will need up to four tanker-loads of LNG a week, which means lorries will have to drive 3,712 miles a week between the Kent coast and the West coast of Scotland.”
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2017/12/09/eco-ferry-that-needs-fuel-shipped-in-from-middle-east/
170
“‘…Scotland’s world-leading climate change goals’…”
Calls to mind “the world’s tallest dunce cap” or “first prize in the lemming jump” or the “Darwin Award.”
130
Speaking of prizes Turnbull is still running second for the
“Prat of the Year”
https://thepointman.wordpress.com/
70
Nope, Life in the Pratties is changeable: Turnbull is at First Equal, now.
The Cherman Housewife Frau Merkel = 30.48% [32 votes]
Malcolm `turncoat’ Turnbull = 30.48% [32 votes]
70
I think I just put Turmoil into the lead, after I voted he was in front by one.
40
Yup, he’s now in the lead. Apart from the general disdain I sense when it comes to him, I don’t know much about him. He got nominated and and looks as if he just might get over the line. If he wins it, I’m going to have to write something about the prat. Can anyone give me the real skinny on him?
Pointy
10
There’s a very balanced analysis to be found here:
http://pickeringpost.com/story/turnbull-is-either-a-dickhead-or-extremely-clever/7750
The very last sentence has it nicely summarised.
10
I suspect you’ve been over-run by disgruntled heterosexuals who have nowhere else to vent.
10
Lotsa lotsa info about the dangerous idelaogue here.
00
Try this site called Stop Turnbull
http://stopturnbull.com/
00
From the people who brought you the Drax conversion; and chop down 200 year (minimum) old forest, turn it into chips, ship it across the Atlantic (in special ships) to specially built bunkers for storage, then transport it on specially built trains and burn it with an overall increase in CO2 emissions of 32-35% , so they qualify for subsidies to “REDUCING CO2 emissions”. That rather than burning the coal literally underfoot (Drax was built on top of a coal mine.
I note also that Finland, Slovakia and Russia are selling enormous quantities of wood pellets to the EU; one russian firm is exporting 800,000 tonnes p.a. and I have to wonder about all those claims of EU countries reducing their emissions and how those emissions are calculated.
130
Rudyard Kipling, “Certain Maxims of Hafiz”
“If he play, being young and unskillful
For shekels of silver and gold
Take his money by all means, praise Allah.
The kid was ordained to be sold.”
40
I stand corrected. Russian exports to the EU were only 907,225 tonnes in 2016, so one company wouldn’t be shipping 800,000 t.p.a. The largest exporter seems to operating at 500,000 t.p.a. although their production capacity exceeds 800,000.
I might add that the statistics are variable, partly by only larger companies being captured in some countries figures, and partly because the market is split into industrial use (attracting official approval and subsidies) and domestic for heating. Russian exports to europe are +26% in 2 years so no sanctions applying. (I notice that Russia sells 75,000+ to Latvia and Lithuania, both with thriving export business also.)
as an example of statistics another source claims that imports to the EU in 2014 were 825,210 tonnes but adding up the individual countries figures gives 930,300 tonnes. There is little doubt that wood burning is big business.
On the industrial front the UK leads with 2million tons usage (for Drax) but only 51,500 tons imported from Russia, the latter obviously for the domestic market.
According to the report, Russia is currently the third largest exporter of wood pellets to the EU, following the U.S. and Canada. The country accounts for approximately 6 percent of the world’s pellet exports, 3 percent of global production, and ranks eighth globally for total wood pellet production.
Russian wood pellet production is expected to increase by as much as 4 million metric tons by 2020 and 8 million metric tons by 2025.
So the Green slogan has to be “We have to destroy the Forests, to save them”.
70
These lorries will be cluttering up already ridiculously busy motorways…Sturgeon’s very clever plan to cause even more pollution.
20
You know Annie one has to wonder whether it is arrogance or stupidity from these people!!
Regards GeoffW
20
Probably both GW…a pretty fishy business it seems to me.
20
Hell done Extreme this one is just pricelsess!!
Regards GeoffW
00
Now here’s some weather news you’re not likely to find on the ABC .
https://www.9news.com.au/national/2017/12/08/13/36/wheres-summer-cold-weather-and-storms-threatening-fun-in-the-sun
31
‘….It might feel cool now, but summer will kick in ….’
Strongly disagree.
The article is general pap and says nothing about the mechanisms involved, a summer beat up without a warm trend.
A week of average conditions, followed by unseasonal cold weather, is a regional cooling signal. So they will blame La Nina in its infancy and ignore the elephant in the room.
90
Yeah missed the warmista rubbish at the bottom of the article , I should have know there was a catch .
51
Unless Australia gets a Trump-like leader soon, Australia is doomed. It might already be too late.
171
A charismatic leader with Australian characteristics, able to turn collective thought upside down.
The Westminster system rarely produces such individuals.
80
Good video about human migration to the New World during the last Ice Age. The hypothesis is presented that the first people in North America were Europeans based on the spear head technology being the same for spear heads found in France and the US. With primitive boats they hopped along islands in the North Atlantic that were exposed due to low sea levels and the edges of ice packs hunting seals.
https://youtu.be/RrfTp0eUuB4
41
Interesting that they discuss climate change without once mentioning AGW.
30
Dec: Reuters: Russia offers to sell gas to Saudi Arabia from Yamal LNG
by Vladimir Soldatkin, Oksana Kobzeva
SABETTA, Russia – President Vladimir Putin said on Friday that Russia was ready to sell gas to Saudi Arabia after he launched the first loading of liquefied natural gas (LNG) at the Novatek-led Yamal LNG project in the Arctic…
“Buy our gas and you’ll save oil,” Putin told Saudi Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih, who also attended the launch ceremony in Arctic tundra, according to a report by Interfax news agency.
“If we continue to work the way we do, we will turn from rivals into partners. All benefit from joint work,” he said.
Leonid Mikhelson, ranked Russia’s richest businessman and head of Novatek which has a 50.1 percent stake in Yamal LNG, said on Friday he discussed gas projects with Saudi officials but did not give details.
Yamal LNG, which is 20 percent owned by France’s Total, aims to help Russia double its share of the global LNG market from about 4 percent now by 2020. Qatar is the biggest LNG exporter, with a 30 percent market share.
The first phase of the $27 billion project was completed in December. Other phases are due to onstream in 2018 and 2019.
The project will eventually have four processing units, known as trains, with total capacity of 17.5 million tonnes a year. Three trains will have capacity of 5.5 million tonnes each and one will have capacity of 1 million tonnes.
“I am confident the second and the third parts of the project will be commissioned ahead of schedule,” Putin said at the ceremony to load the first shipment on to an ice class tanker…
More than 95 percent of output from Yamal LNG for the next 20 years or so has been sold, mostly to the Asia-Pacific region…
Novatek is planning another project, known as Arctic LNG, on the Gydan peninsula. Mikhelson previously said Russia might produce more than 70 million tonnes of LNG per year from its remote Arctic regions.
Alongside Novatek and Total, other shareholders in Yamal LNG are China’s CNPC with 20 percent and the Chinese Silk Road Fund with 9.9 percent.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-lng-novatek/russia-offers-to-sell-gas-to-saudi-arabia-from-yamal-lng-idUSKBN1E22HR
20
I can’t post a link, but if you want to see something really appalling search CTV news (Canada) for a video of a dying polar bear on Baffin Island. Used of course for climate change. It obviously is a sick old bear. They won’t quit will they. One of the authors who trashed Susan Crockford is in the long clip (Stirling). He states there are 20,000 bears, which is the lowest of the low-end estimates. No mention of the 5-7,000 in 1970 when hunting was regulated.
110
I can’t get the video to work but here’s the link http://www.ctvnews.ca/sci-tech/starving-polar-bear-filmed-in-last-moments-of-life-on-baffin-island-1.3714244
Here’s Susan Crockford’s Polar Bear Science with their take on the footage, https://polarbearscience.com/2017/12/09/one-starving-bear-is-not-evidence-of-climate-change-despite-gruesome-photos/
70
For the last six months there has been much said and done about section 44 (i) of the Constitution.
In the final analysis, more was sid than done.
The naive take on an attitude of “who cares”? Or worse “Change the constitution”.
These folks might not be aware of the extent to which the ROC infiltrated Canada some twenty years ago.
All the way up to the Prime Minister Jean Chretien.
Take note of the role played by CITIC. Ring any bells? Clive?
50
Whats telling is the flagrant disregard for the Australian constitution from all sides of politics, its of little surprise that last Friday the majority of the HOR voted against 4 major amendments to the SSM bill that directly effects freedom of speech in this country and paves the way for further draconian measures by the faceless enemy within.
60
So Yous-all gots dat also!“
So we have the whole illegal FCIA court being Strazoked by Peter and how many others? How can congress form a court independent of the judiciary branch of the government; SCOTUS as per the constitution Article III. It appears that the whole stinky congress of the USA need be recused for the next 50 years! START Today not next November.
31
Be grateful you guys have someone starting to drain the swamp as we’re still filling ours. 🙁
40
Oh! I am so ‘full of grate’! Perhaps we can start something like the Americas CUP, but instead compete your Crocks against our Gators as most stinky! Could give a hole new meaning to ‘Political Races’ 🙂
21
Rod
Still is
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/2017/12/chinada-4.html
10
read all…comments are off. this is the biggest CAGW MSM story right now:
9 Dec: PolarBearScience: Susan Crockford: One starving bear is not evidence of climate change, despite gruesome photos
We finally have this year’s example of the new fad of claiming every polar bear that died of starvation (or on its way to starving to death) — and caught on film — is a victim of climate change: a young bear on Somerset Island near Baffin Island, Nunavut filmed in August during its last angonizing hours by members of an activist conservation organization called SeaLegacy…
This is no different from Ian Stirling’s “bear that died of climate change” back in 2013, or several others since then: here, here, and here (one of these incidents also involved the same photographer as this incident, Paul Nicklen). I’ve called this practice of filming dead or dying bears and splashing the photos across the pages of newspapers and the internet “tragedy porn” — a kind of voyerism that leaves people open to emotional manipulation. The internet laps it up.
UPDATE 9 December 2017: a quote from another source shows photographer Paul Nicklen’s “expertise” in polar bear biology, see below…READ ALL
https://polarbearscience.com/2017/12/09/one-starving-bear-is-not-evidence-of-climate-change-despite-gruesome-photos/
9 Dec: National Post Canada: Viral video of starving polar bear likely the product of climate change: expert
by Salmaan Farooqui, The Canadian Press
The video, shot by National Geographic photojournalist Paul Nicklen, racked up over a million views and depicted a skeletal bear foaming at the mouth and digging through a metal barrel for food on Baffin Island.
Ian Stirling, an adjunct professor at the University of Alberta who has specialized in polar bears for four decades, says the period that bears are able to feed has shortened by about three weeks, and that could be the reason why it was starved.
Polar bears are able to go months without food, but Stirling says that a slightly longer period without food, combined with the fact that there is less time for bears to store fat and eat enough seal, could be what is causing bears to die of starvation…
Stirling says it’s likely that the bear in the video is suffering because of the changing climate in the arctic. While polar bears in other parts of the world are experiencing different difficulties due to various climate conditions, Stirling says it’s likely that they will eventually face the same situation as the bear in the video.
Stirling says he’s already witnessed polar bears who seem to have died of starvation (death by starvation can only be confirmed by autopsy), and has seen many others near death while working in the Norwegian arctic.
Nicklen, who planned to address the video at his New York art gallery on Saturday, says that when he hears scientists say that polar bears will be extinct in the next hundred years, he thinks of thousands of the animals starving to death as they are in the video.
Nicklen says he hoped that the video, which he described as “soul-crushing,” could help break a cycle of apathy towards the polar bears and their starvation.
“We went to the Canadian Arctic to document the effects of climate change,” wrote Nicklen. “We found the good, the bad and the ugly, but mostly just beautiful animals and landscapes we want to protect,” he wrote.
Canada marks one year since eight provinces and the three territories signed the Pan Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change on Saturday. The plan aims to put a price on carbon, eliminate coal-fired electricity and work on energy efficiencies for buildings to help Canada cut emissions…
http://nationalpost.com/pmn/news-pmn/canada-news-pmn/canadian-photographers-video-of-emaciated-polar-bear-on-baffin-island-goes-viral
50
Sorry Pat wile I was faffing about up there I didn’t see you down here. 🙂
20
Yonniestone – same goes for me.
btw is anyone able to find out when the paper was received by bioscience?
20
more background for those who haven’t following this story. the ridiculous paper, the attack on Crockford and the NatGeo dying polar bear story seem somehow connected, as far as I’m concerned. Nicklen’s pic was taken in August. paper was published 29 Nov, but I can’t see when it was received, etc:
7 Dec: WUWT: An interview with Dr. Susan Crockford on the Harvey et al. attack paper over polar bear research
By Anthony Watts
Q. If in fact the Harvey et al. paper has clear inaccuracies, how does such a paper get past “peer-review” which is designed to catch and correct such issues?
CROCKFORD: I think it is highly likely this paper was rushed through review and as a consequence, no one took a really close look at it…
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/12/07/an-interview-with-dr-susan-crockford-on-the-harvey-et-al-attack-paper/
29 Nov: WUWT: More slime from the Lewandowsky-Mann machine, calling for ‘trench warfare’
UPDATE: Dr. Judith Curry weighs in:…
TWEET: 29 Nov: Judith Curry: This is absolutely the stupidest paper I have ever seen published
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/11/29/more-slime-from-the-lewandowsky-mann-machine-calling-for-trench-warfare/
6 Dec: ClimateScepticism: Paul Matthews: Polar-Bear-Gate
https://cliscep.com/2017/12/06/polar-bear-gate/
40
One has to wonder how Polar bears survived the first 7000 – 8000 years of the Holocene…
when sea ice levels were often “ice free” in summer.
42
One wonders “Why is turkey such a traditional Christmas dish?” It’s discrimination, that’s what it is.
There are alternatives.
10
LOL! this is an actual book! 🙂
Might get it to have on the bookshelf just because.
10
My letter to the Cairns Post on Friday.
I hope they print it Monday, but fear they will not.
Leftard MSM don’t like the truth….
President Donald J. Trump will go down as the greatest President in United States History.
He was elected in the greatest upset in US history and in a world first, he is actually adhering to his election promises.
For years, we have become sceptical of politicians, simply because they do not keep their election promises. Trump is so different. He is doing it.
He promised to withdraw the US from the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Paris Climate Agreement, done.
He promised to cut the illegal immigrants crossing into the US/Mexican border, he has cut that by 76%.
He promised to make the US safer by banning undesirables from unvetted countries (7 Muslim countries) and its just been upheld in the Supreme Court.
He promised to bring jobs and companies back into the US by lowering Taxes and Regulations, done.
He promised to build a stronger economy, the Dow Jones Index is up 25% over the last 12 months, a huge $4 Trillion improvement.
He promised to move the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, no more appeasement to the Arab Nations, he just done it.
He promised to open up the US Energy market and bring back coal mining, done.
Why oh’ why, can’t we find a politician like that here in Australia? Instead we have to choose between Turnbull and Shorten, dumb and dumber.
It’s actually quite depressing.
Cheers
Bill Schutz
161
Letters never work. YOU MUST do it. Such cannot ever wait for any other. Do it now, do not wait for another to do.
00
I’ve been writing letters to the editor for 15 years now.
It’s all about knowledge and information.
Most of the public have no idea!
I am ‘doing it!’
60
Excellent!
41
read all:
7 Dec: FinancialPostCanada: Terence Corcoran: Canadian finds polar bears are doing fine — and gets climate-mauled
The most dangerous threat known to man and bear alike is lurking among the icebergs: Junk science
http://business.financialpost.com/opinion/terence-corcoran-canadian-finds-polar-bears-are-doing-fine-and-gets-climate-mauled
as for BioScience:
Wikiipedia: BioScience is a monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal that is published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Institute of Biological Sciences.
AIBS: Oxford University Press to publish BioScience journal from 2014
Oxford Press (OUP) is delighted to announce that beginning in January 2014 it will be publishing the renowned journal BioScience, from the American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS).
Since 1964, BioScience has presented readers with timely and authoritative overviews of current research in biology, accompanied by essays and discussion sections on education, public policy, history, and the conceptual underpinnings of the biological sciences.
A peer-reviewed, heavily cited, monthly publication with content written and edited for accessibility to researchers, educators, and students alike, BioScience is subscribed to online and in print by libraries around the world and provided to all AIBS members as a part of regular AIBS dues…
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford…
20
BioScience emerged as part of the new post-modern ‘science’ called Conservation Biology. The basic premise of this ‘science’ is that everything is threatened – the ‘Mass Extinction’ story. It is “mission oriented.” In the same way IPCC CO2 ‘science’ is “mission oriented.” It is not objective science at all.
This new ‘science’ and its ‘missionaries’ provide the ‘scientific’ basis for modern Environmentalism which in turn ensures that plenty of funding for its practitioners. Their favourite, most effective and most lucrative tool is the various ‘Species At Risk’ acts.
That’s why BioScience prints politicized garbage like their recent attack.
50
Extreme Hiatus –
thanks for that info.
seems odd NatGeo took til now to publish this story, almost as if it were waiting for the attack on Crockford/sceptics took place first.
who would believe someone who worked for the Podesta Group – albeit for a short period – would be writing the story for NatGeo?
the NatGeo writer, Sarah Gibbens:
LinkedIn: Sarah Gibbens, Associate Producer, Digital at National Geographic
Washington, District Of Columbia, Political Organization
Previous: Atlantic Media, ***PODESTA GROUP, The Rivard Report
Education: The University of Texas at San Antonio
Digital Media Fellow, Podesta Group
January 2015 – June 2015 (6 months)…
Regularly produced reports used to target audiences and create strategic messages for advocacy campaigns led by nations, corporations and conglomerates…
Drafted social media content and op-eds for advocacy campaigns seen by millions…
8 Dec: NationalGeographic: Heart-Wrenching Video Shows Starving Polar Bear On Iceless Land
By Sarah Gibbens
THE CLIMATE CHANGE LINK
By telling the story of one polar bear, Nicklen hopes to convey a larger message about how a warming climate has deadly consequences.
Polar bears have long been unwitting mascots for the effects of climate change. As animals that live only in Arctic regions, they’re often the first to feel the impacts of warming temperatures and rising seas…
A study recently published in the journal Biosciences (LINK) looked at how climate science is often falsely discredited. The study found climate deniers are able to downplay the threat of climate change by discrediting the threat facing polar bears.
However, a study published last year by the European Geosciences Union (LINK) and this year by the U.S. Geological Survey (LINK) confirms melting sea ice continues to be an existential threat to polar bears.
http://www.nationalgeographic.com.au/animals/heart-wrenching-video-shows-starving-polar-bear-on-iceless-land.aspx
20
oops should be “to take”
“as if it were waiting for the attack on Crockford/sceptics TO TAKE place first.”
20
a taste of NatGeo’s Sarah Gibbens while at The Atlantic:
Sarah Gibbens articles at The Atlantic
Inside Michelle Obama’s SOTU Guest List
The people who fill, and don’t fill, the exclusive seats reveal some of the biggest issues on the president’s political agenda.
Obama Lights the National Christmas Tree
The star-studded event was held in the president’s backyard and kicked off the holiday season.
President Obama’s Love for Basketball in Photos
Donald Trump’s Most Controversial Quotes
Few seem immune to the billionaire’s insults.
—
you get the picture.
20
Thanks for that follow up Pat.
“who would believe someone who worked for the Podesta Group – albeit for a short period – would be writing the story for NatGeo?”
I would. Quite the network they have going.
“as if it were waiting for the attack on Crockford/sceptics TO TAKE place first.”
Indeed. Remarkable clairvoyance or, more likely, advanced knowledge and coordination.
00
Have these folk ever actually done anything? Anything? Even attempting to learn to ride bicycle? 🙁
11
9 Dec: AFP: Paris climate summit a chance for real progress: World Bank
The Paris climate summit next week offers a chance for concrete advances in the fight against global warming, even without the support of President Donald Trump, World Bank President Jim Yong Kim said…
Tuesday’s One Planet Summit, sponsored by France, the United Nations and the World Bank, brings together some 4,000 participants and 800 organizations to explore ways to finance climate projects…
Among those in attendance will be former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, whose foundation is helping to fund the summit.
Kim said funding for climate projects will be key, as the International Energy Agency has estimated it will take $3.5 trillion a year for the next 30 years to contain the rise of global temperatures…
Without financing “all you have is an agreement… and nothing would change actually on the ground.”…
https://au.news.yahoo.com/a/38226435/paris-climate-summit-a-chance-for-real-progress-world-bank/
9 Dec: Reuters: France’s Macron Hunts for More Money to Slow Climate Change
By Richard Lough and Simon Carraud in Paris and Alister Doyle in Oslo
French President Emmanuel Macron will next week press rich countries to increase climate financing and urge investors worldwide to turn their backs on polluters in a bid to accelerate efforts to combat global warming…
There will be a focus on how public and private financial institutions can mobilize more money and how investors can pressure corporate giants to shift towards more ecologically friendly strategies.
“Money is the key to success in the fight against climate change. And not just public money,” said Matthieu Orphelin, a French lawmaker for Macron’s political party and a close ally of Ecology Minister Nicolas Hulot.
Climate change is causing more frequent and severe flooding, droughts, storms and heatwaves as average global temperatures rise to new records, sea ice melts in the Arctic and sea levels rise. Developing nations, particularly in Africa, are among the lowest polluters but the hardest hit.
An Elysee Palace official said 12 “concrete projects” would be announced at the summit.
***However, there will be no internationally binding commitments…
The summit may in part be judged by how far it can plug a $2 billion funding hole in the Green Climate Fund, which helps developing nations deal with climate change, as a result of the US pullout, which takes effect in 2020.
“These losses will reverberate across the system. It’s not just the loss of public dollars, but also of the foregone private dollars they could have mobilized,” said Leonardo Martinez-Diaz of the World Resources Institute think-tank.
“Fewer emissions will be reduced and fewer people will be protected from the impacts of climate change.”…
The trust and cooperation of developing countries would depend on how much they feel “those financial flows are building up to support their ambitions,” said Nick Nuttall, spokesman for the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
France last month pushed back its own deadline by which it was to reduce nuclear power in its energy mix in favor of renewable energy sources, a blow to Hulot’s environmental vision.
“The least you expect from the country hosting such a summit would be to respect its own energy transition law, and to pave the way for the development of renewable energies,” Sarah Fayolle of Greenpeace told reporters.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-climatechange-summit/frances-macron-hunts-for-more-money-to-slow-climate-change-idUSKBN1E21XW
10
9 Dec: WashingtonExaminer: John Siciliano: World Bank president pushes Obama climate goals
World Bank President Jim Yong Kim, picked by former President Barack Obama to lead the international lender, will mark the two-year anniversary of the Paris climate change agreement next week by pledging to help countries meet the pact’s obligations by continuing the flow of climate-related financing.
Kim will co-host a major climate change meeting in Paris on Dec. 12, called the One Planet Summit, with French President Emmanuel Macron and United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres to “mark the two-year anniversary of the signing of the Paris Agreement,” Kim told reporters on a conference call…
The World Bank Group is one of the world’s largest issuers of green bonds. “We’ve raised over $16 billion in over 200 green bonds since 2008 for climate- and environment-related investments,” Kim said…
The world will require $90 trillion in new infrastructure in 15 years, which “needs to be climate smart,” Kim said. ***”The problem is, we’re only on pace to meet half of that.”…
***To shore up the gap in financing, he said he will be urging governments to encourage lending the trillions of dollars, money he said that is on the sidelines earning low interest and could do better being put to work on projects that would earn higher returns…
“We need to integrate climate into national policy and put in place incentives for change such as carbon pricing and eliminating fossil fuel subsidies,” Kim said. “This is the time and opportunity to pull together — leveraging and combining all the knowledge and finance mechanisms at our disposal — to help move forward on these important climate commitments.”
Trump has not announced if he will send a delegation to the summit. Earlier reports said Macron had not invited Trump, but the French Embassy in Washington downplayed that by saying not all invitations had been sent out.
Myron Ebell, Trump’s former Environmental Protection Agency transition chief, told the Washington Examiner that Kim’s announcement is a prime example of how the Obama administration institutionalized climate change as a federal priority.
The World Bank president just started his second term in office and each term lasts five years, Ebell wrote in an email. “Thus, it looks like the Trump administration is going to be in disagreement with the World Bank on climate financing throughout the president’s first term and well into his second.”
“It’s a lot of work to drain the swamp, and it’s going to take some time,” Ebell said.
Nevertheless, he wants Trump’s Treasury Department to exert pressure on Kim to move away from funding renewable energy and push coal plants instead.
The U.S. “has the largest number of voting shares” at the World Bank, and the “Treasury should exert pressure to move away from funding renewable energy projects that poor countries can’t afford and back to financing coal-fired power plants,” Ebell said.
“They should argue that affordable energy is a key to alleviating poverty and that affordable electricity comes from coal,” he said. “Foisting expensive and unreliable renewable energy on poor countries obviously conflicts with the World Bank’s ambitious new (or fairly new) motto of ‘Working to end world poverty’ or something like that.”…
The green fund aims to secure at least $120 billion in funds from industrialized nations by 2020. U.N. officials had said a priority has been to find funds to make up for Trump’s withdrawal. The U.S. did transfer $1 billion to the fund under Obama. The Trump administration argued that it had a seat at the table in how those funds are used, “so it was worth a shot,” Ebell said. But it is not clear if that will be possible.
“If they tried that with the Green Climate Fund, they should have made a much more serious effort with the World Bank,” he said.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/world-bank-president-pushes-obama-climate-goals/article/2643022
30
I noticed ‘UpThread’ a comment about AGL, and their closure of Liddell.
Liddell, that even now ancient plant at 45 years, will be 52 years old when it closes, replaced by, well who cares.
Liddell has had two Units down for more than five Months now, and one of them, Unit One recently came back online a couple of weeks back, and has been generating a fairly constant 420MW. It was originally 500MW, and after 45 years at 420MW, that’s only a 15% drop in generation.
AGL, among it’s ‘stable’ of assets also owns the Macarthur wind plant, the biggest wind plant in Australia, opened in 2013 and with a Nameplate of 420MW.
Notice something here?
That Nameplate for Macarthur is the same as the recently serviced and online SINGLE UNIT at Liddell, 420MW.
Even at the normal operation of the wind plant, that one Unit generates and delivers three times the power of the whole 140 turbine wind plant on average.
Over the last 24 hours, Macarthur has averaged only 80MW per hour, and it is only generating 20MW now, which has been the average for the last 15 hours, barely 20MW.
So, ONE UNIT at an ancient coal fired power plant has delivered five times the power of a 4 year old wind plant over the last 24 hours, and 20 times the power over the last 15 hours.
It’s so old it needs to be closed down, but why replace it with unreliable power. People are so d@mned st00pid.
Incidentally, Unit One at Bayswater has also been offline for two weeks and more now, so I guess the Upgrade there has already started, extending the life of this plant, you know, from a mob supposedly ‘getting out of coal’. The rhetoric is never ending. Once upgraded, this one unit will be capable of around 720MW Plus, so whole plant Nameplate of 2880MW.
This weeks data and analysis for the Base Load is at this link.
Australian Base Load Electrical Power – Week Ending 9th December 2017
Tony.
140
And apparently some “efficiency gains” at other sites.?
As they are talking solar renewables, that means approx 320 MW of equivalent supply, so maybe approx 1100MW total to replace the Liddel capacity ?..assuming they do build a big enough Pumped hydro facility, and/or a very large battery !
20
Thanks Tony for your great analysis. Are you able to report gas generation versus coal? I suspect that gas is becoming the new base load eg Pelican Pt in SA.
10
Robber,
when I started this analysis, it was a question I asked myself, what to include and what to leave out. The more I include, the more that the real intent (Base Load) could be lost in amongst so much data, so that’s why I just wanted to concentrate on the actual base Load figures, with just the one line there for each day on the Peak power with the coal fired contribution towards that.
However, under that word ‘Total’ for each day, (the Base Load total) you’ll see the line indicating the Base Load, and at the very start of that line is the wording ‘fossil fuel’.
That’s the total (Base Load) being supplied by ALL fossil fuels, so from that same line, subtract to coal fired component from ‘fossil fuel’ and you’ll get the total for gas fired power.
Each day, that averages from 1000MW to 2000MW, and keep in mind that is just for that Base Load one point in time, at 4AM. The bulk of all that gas fired power is from South Australia, with Victoria next and that would indicate the CCGT gas fired plant used to augment the Base Load in South Australia, that is the Pelican Point plant, and in Victoria, that is the Newport Plant, Natural Gas – Steam. The rest are the minors, (nearly all of them OCGT) needed to add to just the Base Load requirement.
In NSW and in Queensland, Gas fired power (mainly OCGT) adds around 500MW at Peak times, sometimes more.
Victoria and SouthAus are the largest consumers of gas fired power.
And you are in fact correct about Pelican Point in SouthAus, as that is indeed being used as a Base Load supplier, regularly supplying between 300and 450MW full time.
Tony.
80
AGL are gouging the pensioners of this country to gain subsidies – courtesy of foolish government.
30
More detail of the approx $3bn AGL plan to spend to replace Liddell
http://reneweconomy.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/agl-liddell-plan-.jpg
20
good to see Liddell/coal/gas being discussed. thanks TonyfromOz and others.
btw it’s been a VERY bad week for the FakeNewsMSM. this is just a part of it and I can’t recall seeing or hearing about any of it on theirABC:
9 Dec: The Hill: Julia Manchester: Washington Post reporter apologizes for tweet on crowd size at Trump rally
Washington Post reporter Dave Weigel issued an apology to President Trump on Saturday for tweeting a photo of an empty arena before a Trump rally in Florida that had been taken hours before the event started.
Weigel responded minutes after a tweet from Trump, who said he had “put out a phony photo of an empty arena hours before I arrived.”…
Weigel said he took the tweet down after Daily Mail political editor David Martosko told him he had gotten it wrong.
“Sure thing: I apologize. I deleted the photo after @dmartosko told me I’d gotten it wrong. Was confused by the image of you walking in the bottom right corner,” he tweeted…
Trump’s attack and Weigel’s subsequent apology come less than 24 hours after Trump ripped CNN and ABC for putting out incorrect reporting that they later apologized for.
Trump referred to ABC News correspondent Brian Ross as a “fraudster” at the rally, a week after Ross falsely reported that former national security adviser Michael Flynn had directed Trump to contact Russian officials during the campaign.
ABC later corrected the report to say that the president directed Flynn to contact Russia after he was elected.
Trump: “They took this fraudster from ABC, they suspended for a month. They should have fired him for what he wrote. He drove the stock market down 350 points in minutes,” the president said Friday. “I said to everybody, get yourself a lawyer and sue ABC News.”
Trump also took aim at CNN after the network was forced to make a correction on Friday regarding documents Donald Trump Jr. received from WikiLeaks.
“Oh thank you, CNN, thank you so much. You should have been apologizing for the last two years,” Trump said to laughter and cheers in the audience.
http://thehill.com/media/364124-washington-post-reporter-apologizes-for-tweet-on-crowd-size-at-trump-rally
btw Martosko “told him (Weigel)” nothing:
Martosko in response to Weigel’s tweet claiming Martosko “told him”:
TWEET: David Martosko: We haven’t connected in at least a year, BTW.
plenty reply, trying to argue that the fact Weigel got the facts from Martosko’s tweet is the same as Weigel being told by him.
FortyVolts replies re Weigel claiming he tweeted his fake story because he “Was confused by the image of you (Trump) walking in the bottom right corner”:
FortyVolts: @daveweigel still hasn’t acknowledged the person he MISTAKENLY thought was Trump – couldn’t have been – too short; no red tie; no security detail; too early.
10
comment in moderation re: 9 Dec: The Hill: Julia Manchester: Washington Post reporter apologizes for tweet on crowd size at Trump rally
some more FakeNews, but certainly not all:
8 Dec: Daily Caller: 7 Times CNN Botched The News In 2017
by Peter Hasson
http://dailycaller.com/2017/12/08/7-times-cnn-botched-the-news-in-2017/
10
AGL has declared the Liddell Coal Power station with its announcement .
This little coal fired power station is hidden in the Hunter Valley .
Given the rural property values are lets say $1 million dollars an acre and Liddell can only be on 100 or 200 acres , why can`t Jonovian`s and other like bloggers crowd fund a buy out .
The land value is the land value , the infrastructure is apparently toxic dirty and needs to go ,so its just land value and their greenie toxic waste spin ,lets use that against them and do this crowd funding thing , buy the place update it and smash the greenies .
10
AGL have no intention of selling .
30
Which has absolutely nothing to do with AGL owning the largest gas reserves in the country 60km away over Barrington Tops near Glouster.
A conversion to gas at Liddel and they are in the perfect position to exploit the spot price market which will reach critical status with the closure.
Huge amounts of money rolling in, no messy coal to extract, the Greens licking their boots in appreciation. Win,win,win.
And Vales Point to follow shortly after.
20
NSW has locked up its gas reserves and the unconventional pilot in Gloucester failed to reach production phase. Do you know why?
00
Forget the crowd funding, Beijing would pay more than $1 million an acre if they could build a state of the art coal fired power station on site.
50
good points , you just added more leverage , China the international using Australian Coal to either run the plant or close it down what then ? (Status Quo ) and Roberts point , you can`t advertise a closing down sale and not want to sell , the greenie meme of repatriating the land would cost more than closing it down , Conservative`s biggest weapon is economics and we don`t use it .
30
‘…run the plant or close it down what then ? ‘
A brand new coal fired plant would be the preferred option, because of the infrastructure boom in the bush, decentralisation and HSR linking satellite cities require steady energy.
They already own the poles and wires so this would dovetail nicely, but a change of guvmint in Canberra is essential before Beijing can press ahead.
20
Nowhere on this Earth are rural property values near as high a $1,000/acre. To get that high price requires roadways and other infrastructure.
01
Get a load of this.
http://www.theage.com.au/environment/climate-change/emotional-video-of-starving-polar-bear-shows-climate-change-impact-20171209-h01x5b.html
00
Bruce Leitch –
much more about this in the earlier comments.
***note how NatGeo writer, Sarah Gibbens, writes “how WE know”, inserting herself into the unknown aspect of this story:
Twitter: Sarah Gibbens
8 Dec: TWEET: People have been asking how ***we know this wasn’t caused by old age. I’ll try to clarify that here…READ ON FOR SARAH’S CLAIMS
REPLY: Ministry of Tw
10
Must have missed this bit of propaganda in winter because it was raining so much !
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-09-20/winter-getting-drier-in-southern-australia-heres-why/8956754
30
This sentence is accurate, but what makes SAM go negative?
‘SAM went negative in late July and the southern fringe of Australia was hit by a series of rain-bearing fronts.’
00
This is also correct, but carries the assumption that CO2 is intensifying the polar vortex.
‘The Sub Tropical Ridge is a climate driver worth paying attention to because over the past few decades, it has been getting stronger in winter.’
They appear to be unaware that at the end of a decadal cycle a new one begins, SAM is a driver but I have no idea what makes it flip from one mode to another, perhaps it has something to do with the cooling Southern Ocean.
00
So there it is. It’s official. No less an expert than the governor of California says so. Ergo, it’s true. The climate is changing.
I wonder if the new reality he’s talking about with fire threatening lives property and neighborhoods could have anything to do with the fact that we have built homes into forests and up against forests everywhere. Could that conceivably have something to do with putting people at risk? Could vegetation that hasn’t recovered from drought possibly be something to do with it? Could plain old weather be something to do with it? I guess not. Jerry has spoken and that’s that.
– Homes destroyed so far: 800 plus
– Deaths so far: 1
– Horses burned to death: 14 that I’ve heard of
– Horses burned and under care of a good vet: at least 3 that I’ve heard of
– Wildlife burned to death: probably unknowable but habitat destroyed is all by itself a big threat to wildlife in some of these fire areas.
– Dollar loss so far: make a guess but start at a couple of hundred billion — be sure to count the fire fighting cost.
– Experts and politicians who understand the difference between climate and weather: apparently zero
It’s so easy to blame and so hard to prevent, to be prepared, to stop putting homes in such close proximity to a raging fire or keep the area around them cleared of brush for an adequate distance.
And worst of all, it’s nearly impossible to get anyone to recognize that we live in a desert where it can be hot at almost any time of year when the wind is right and the Santa Ana winds begin to blow and the humidity drops to 10% or lower.
Los Angeles and ll its surrounding cities couldn’t exist here without importing water from hundreds of miles away. It’s wall to wall city from the north boundary roughly at Newhall and Saugus to the Mexican border and from the Pacific ocean on the west to the San Gorgonio pass leading into Coachella Valley and Palm Springs, at least 100 miles north to south and 50 plus miles east to west. And all of it has a fire danger far greater than colder, wetter climate.
Desert, desert, desert; hot, hot, hot, equals fire danger and they’ve been burning up the mountain sides all my life and without a doubt have been burning them for millions of years. I remember watching fire burn up the nearby mountain bordering the east side of the San Fernando Valley as a kid growing up. And now that same mountainside is built up with homes that have a fantastic view of The Valley — and of an oncoming fire.
California’s real problem is not climate change but having the most desirable climate to live in anywhere in the country. It brings more people in and keeps those of us born here staying here. And more people equals more chance of the tiny spark that sets off a bomb. Then there are natural causes, in low humidity a static discharge can be enough or the wind blows down a tree into a power line.
No matter any of that, climate change must be blamed. Jerry says so. But one year of unseasonably hot weather means only that it’s hot this year instead of cold. It proves nothing, Jerry, except that you’re ignorant. You’re worthy only of your old nickname, Moonbeam.
110
There you go again. You bring up verifiable facts that contradict the Governor of the state. You should know that is not the right thing to do in California.
All the Governor would have to do is have a law passed that prohibited any wild fires. Then, according to the State of California, there would be no more wild fires. They would be called Unplanned Incineration Events and the wild fire crises would be over as soon as he signed it into law.
The Government could then find they had an Unplanned Incineration Event crises, call up the National Guard, and have them suppress all the deniers who insist they are still suffering from wild fires. Such vicious rumors cannot be tolerated.
The miscreants would then be sentenced to retraining at an internment center west of Barstow, deep in the Mojave Desert. They will not be allowed to go home until they apologize and accept the fact that the State Government knows best and has the power to make it so.
After all, it is California where just about anything can happen – even and especially the ridiculous, absurd, and insane.
71
Now there you go again Lionell, putting down the value of facts. After all, they’re very good for giving you and me something to write about. What would we do without them? 😉
10
We would have to discuss religion, sports, and other non reality based subjects. Maybe even the latest movies which I won’t see until they are on Netflix and maybe not even then.
20
I might discuss religion with you. At least I would know I could trust you to be honest about what you think on the subject and we could disagree without getting angry and all the nonsense that goes with that. But never within the next 10,000 years would I discuss sports. I have been utterly bored by sports since I was a kid. It simply wasn’t on the list or interests I was issued when I was born. I was always fascinated with finding out how things work. I played games on the playground at lunch hour to have something to do but be interested enough to care if there even is a Super Bowl, not in a dozen lifetimes.
The latest movies are something of a disappointment aren’t they? More bare skin does not a good plot make nor a good character either (neither? ;-)). But every now and then a decent one comes along.
I hope you have been well away from any threat of fire. This has been the worst I can remember and it’s still going, 6 fires as of last night about 9:00 PM.
10
I heard somewhere they don’t burn off to create firebreaks because of regulation and fuel loads become so high catastrophic fires are the norm .
Indians used to burn the bush much like the aboriginals did here .
20
I have not seen a fire break in a long time. However, with the wind so strong, gusts up 80 MPH according to one report I’ve seen, a fire break may not do the job because burning embers can be carried a long ways and then dropped on something just waiting to be ignited. In a high wind some bigger stuff on fire can fly like it had wings.
As for doing a controlled burn — forget it. The sacrifice of all that chaparal isn’t in the cards.
But look on the bright side. None of those areas will burn again any time soon. 🙁
10
Here’s a map of what’s left of the so-called Thomas Fire that started near the City of Ventura and burned numerous homes there before moving on northwest until it now threatens Santa Barbara, a good 25 mile drive away.
Ventura is a little hard to read on the map because the fire data overlays the name but you’ll find it if you look.
As of last night at about 9:00 PM there were still 6 fires going, none of them anywhere near out, except if you call out of control being out.
The Thomas fire now ranks as the 2nd worst fire in state history according to last night’s news. And as you can see from the map, well not so easily maybe but I know all that territory from flying over it and there are thousands of square miles it can eat with ease if the wind comes up again. Last nights nighttime shots of it on the news looked like the gate to hell had been opened so we could get a look inside, just fire from left to right across the screen, most of it in territory it’s hard to get anyone into.
But let’s worry about the carbon footprint of our automobiles. Or maybe we should worry about the carbon footprint of California instead?
00
I used to walk past Houdini’s mansion on the way to school when I lived in the Hollywood Hills. Wonder if it, or the house I lived in, are still standing?
30
Just reading about the Nobel prize going to some crowd who are against nuclear warheads !
I have to say I agree with their other slogan ” ban the Bom “
52
I just saw that on my TV screen. My immediate remark was, “Blankety blank Nobel Peace Joke.”
But I decided to count the number of anti nuclear proliferation groups and ban the bomb movements that have actually succeeded in banning anything nuclear except power stations, the one thing we should want. I just want to make sure.
Let’s see: 0, … … … …, 0. Oh m god! There are none that ever succeeded. Hey Lionell, do you suppose we could get California to pass a law banning them? That should certainly work, given the certainty with which California goes about everything else.
00
It’s a keeping up with the neighbors thing. They bring home a Cadillac, I bring home a Maserati, and on it goes.
They bring home dinamite, I bring home a thermo nuclear tipped missile, complete with nuclear submarine to launch it from. Let them top that.
Sadly. the one organization we created to deal with this kind of problem, the United Nations, is more concerned with climate change than any real danger.
20
And even if the UN did pay attention, I mean real attention, not just resolutions to impose sanctions with no real teeth, it has two strikes against it to start with.
1. It has no policing agency of its own, no army, navy or airforce.
2. It’s not accountable to anyone so maybe it’s better that it not have police power in the first place.
Better still, we should never have created it because it long ago became a monster we can no longer control — if we ever could. In the end it will stand there wringing its hands over the bodies of the dead like we have seen before while more killing goes on in the name of keeping up with the neighbors,
10
“the United Nations, is more concerned with climate change”
Not really. They just use it for other ends.
“The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it.”
― H.L. Mencken, Minority Report
“the whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.”
― H.L. Mencken, In Defense Of Women
“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.”
― H.L. Mencken, A Little Book in C Major
Many more brilliant and relevant Mencken quotes here:
https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/7805.H_L_Mencken
10
I cannot but fail to disagree with H. L. or with you.
I can’t believe I said that. It must be the weather — the smoke maybe?
00
Oops! One thing… …the theory that the common people should be left alone to work out their own problems with government providing only what an individual cannot provide for himself is still the best theory I know. It’s too bad that in capitols around the world from city to county to state to national they don’t know that.
10
Just what the Labor ,Liberal and green coalition (politburo) need right now .
Sam Dastyari the gift that just keeps giving .
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-12-11/dastyari-tried-to-pressure-plibesek-over-chinese-meeting/9244600
51
Melb temperature forecast for Wednesday 36 degrees, and Adelaide 38 degrees.
And surprise, surprise.
AEMO ELECTRICITY MARKET NOTICES.
Forecast LOR2 condition in the Vic region from 1600 hrs to 1800 hrs on Wednesday, 13/12/2017.
The contingency capacity reserve required is 594 MW. The minimum reserve available is 306 MW.
AEMO is seeking a market response. i.e. someone to reduce demand, or switch on a rarely used generator.
AEMO declares a Forecast LOR2 condition for the SA region from 1630 hrs to 1700 hrs on 13/12/2017
The contingency capacity reserve required is 350 MW. The minimum reserve available is 306 MW.
AEMO is seeking a market response.
Maybe Gaia will provide strong winds, else those new diesel generators and the big battery better be ready.
AEMO said that diesel generators were part of a back-up supply plan, called the Reliability and Emergency Reserve Trader (RERT). AEMO has been working to procure approximately 1000 megawatts of strategic reserves through the RERT process, that AEMO can call on in emergencies, for example multi-day heatwave events occurring concurrently across both South Australia and Victoria.
80
Neat headline wording imo
“Fighting truth decay:
Trump Blasts WaPo’s Dave Weigel After Reporter Heckles Him with Fake Photo”
http://www.breitbart.com/big-journalism/2017/12/10/trump-blasts-wapos-dave-weigel-reporter-heckles-fake-photo/
40
More “truth decay”
“Delingpole: ‘Fish Prefer Plastic to Food’ Study Was #Fakenews, Science Misconduct Committee Finds”
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/12/08/delingpole-fish-prefer-plastic-to-food-study-was-fakenews-science-misconduct-committee-finds/
21
In keeping with this, sent from a friend in Jerusalem
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/11523/jerusalem-not-on-fire
10
I have just finished watching the last episode of Blue Planet II which had some marvellous photography and made some good points on how we could reduce the damage we are doing to the oceans and fish stocks.
It included a section on the Great Barrier Reef around Lizard Island. The coral bleaching shown was blamed on an increase in sea temperature and El Nino, and it was implied that it was irreversible. What is actually happening?
The next section showed a scientist pouring dilute acid into a tank of water with some shell in it. The obvious reaction occurred with CO2 being produced and it was implied that CO2 was the culprit. No mention was made of the pH of the final solution, but as I understand it the pH of seawater is well over 7, so it will take a lot of CO2 to reduce the pH of seawater to that of an acid.
The scientist concerned said that the answer was to replace fossil fuel use with wind and solar. Maybe he should follow events in South Australia!
32
Stephen P: I thought that there would be some global warming nonsense in ‘Blue Planet’!
I haven’t watched it for that reason – a potentially interesting programme, but tainted by junk ‘science’ as I suspected it would be.
42
“How To Charge Your Electric Vehicle (And Other Devices) When The Grid Is Down”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/constancedouris/2017/12/04/how-to-charge-your-electric-vehicle-and-other-devices-when-the-grid-is-down/#525ca8ce1559
Via http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/2017/12/blowout-206.html#comments
20
That’s stupid. Why not just wait for the grid to come back up? After all if the grid is down for too long there will be far more important things to be concerned about, including the protection of that car from theft as crazy people roam around the streets looking for food after the shops have run out.
30
That’s stupid. Ferget the auto!: Protect only your own edible body parts! 🙁
01
Ian:
We get recumbant bike riders in town, stopping for coffee or whatever. The last time was interested to see one had a smallish trailer – it was a battery pack to boost speed up hill.
So the answer is for all electric cars to be fitted with pedals and to tow a spare battery pack.
20
my comment 30.1 replying to Bruce Leitch re NatGeo polar bear story got mangled somehow. should have been:
***note how NatGeo writer, Sarah Gibbens, writes “how WE know”, inserting herself into the unknown aspect of this story:
Twitter: Sarah Gibbens
8 Dec: TWEET: People have been asking how ***WE know this wasn’t caused by old age. I’ll try to clarify that here…READ ON FOR SARAH’S CLAIMS
REPLY: Ministry of Tw*tter Goodthinker. @Melvin_Udall_ : “Likely due to muscle atrophy” Confirmation bias. “Trichinella larvae encyst in various parts of the polar bear’s body, usually *muscle* tissue. If enough larvae encyst in one area, such as the heart, the tissue becomes severely damaged.” (LINK TO SEAWORLD, SEE BELOW)
https://twitter.com/Sarah_Gibbens/status/939261625860870145
not saying this is the reason, but worth noting nonetheless.
Seaworld: Polar Bears
Longevity & Causes of Death
Disease and Parasitism
1.As in any animal population, a variety of diseases and parasites can be responsible for polar bear illnesses. Polar bears are especially susceptible to the parasitic roundworm Trichinella, which they contract by feeding on infected seals. Trichinella larvae encyst in various parts of the polar bear’s body, usually muscle tissue. If enough larvae encyst in one area, such as the heart, the tissue becomes severely damaged. Death may result.
https://seaworld.org/en/animal-info/animal-infobooks/polar-bears/longevity-and-causes-of-death
00
more re Paul Nicklen, NatGeo photographer/videographer of the dying polar bear.
Facebook: Paul Nicklen Photo
2hrs ago: Paul Nicklen: For those interested about climate change and polar bears, this is required reading, and provides a foundational resource for any discussion, regardless of which side you sit on.
LINK: Internet Blogs, Polar Bears, and Climate-Change
Denial by Proxy/BioScience/Oxford Academic ETC
(ALSO MULTIPLE LINKS TO VIDEO CLIPS OF AL GORE’S “24 HOURS OF REALITY”
https://www.facebook.com/paulnicklenphoto/
still finding it odd the polar bear was filmed/photographed in August, and was prominent on NBC Today Show in September. then, for some reason, NatGeo holds off until the Mann/Lewandowsky rubbish is published, and it becomes the biggest MSM news story worldwide. Nicklen’s Instagram message of 15 August, which carried a pic of the dying bear, includes the anti-Trump #hedoesnotspeakforme :
15 Sept: NBC Today Show: How to raise curious kids? Wildlife photographer’s tips are easy (and free)
by ***Eun Kyung Kim
Paul Nicklen knows how incredibly fortunate he is to have grown up in nature.
Raised on Baffin Island in the northern Canadian territory of Nunavut, spending “all my time dancing and playing under the aurora borealis,” the wildlife photographer grew up without television, radio or even a telephone…
(SCROLL DOWN)
Instagram: 15 August 2017: PIC: Paul Nicklen: We did not want to get too close to him. I did not want him using his last ounce of energy in trying to avoid us. It took him a long time and a lot of effort to be able to stand up only to collapse again. We let him be. It was one of the hardest decisions I have faced in a long time. I want the images to be able to tell his story. I want to be able to tell the story of his species. He was once a huge male polar bear and now he is a bag of bones, reduced to skin hanging loosely off of his once massive frame. He will be dead soon and I want him to go in peace after living a life as a great polar nomad. We cannot prove that he is in this condition because of a lack of sea ice but is it a glimpse into the future as ice reaches its lowest extent in recorded history? I hear a lot of suggestions from people like “let’s take polar bears to Antarctica so they can eat penguins” or “let’s put out styrofoam platforms so they can be on the ocean”. These suggestions are irrational but it does mean that people do care. The only way polar bears can be saved is by reducing our global carbon footprint and finding renewable energy. It breaks my heart to see this but our team at @sea_legacy is shifting into high gear to continue connecting the world to our ailing marine ecosystems. #MPA #keepoilexplorationoutofthearctic #climatechangeisreal #bethechange #riseup #hedoesnotspeakforme #love #beauty #hungry
https://www.today.com/money/paul-nicklen-raising-curious-kids-who-love-outdoors-t115286
***About me: Eun Kyung Kim
Writer and journalist in Washington, DC
Writer/reporter for TODAY.com.
Freelance work can be found: Washington Post, American Heart Association News, Bloomberg Government and others.
Former staff reporter: The Associated Press, Gannett, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Ft. Worth Star-Telegram.
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NBC Today program also had Paul Nicklen on to promote his new book, Polar Obsessions, just before the Copenhagen Climate conference ended. Media Research Center doesn’t state the year, but I found a link for 17 Dec 2009:
MediaResearchCenter: Polar Photographer Declares ‘Debate’s Over’ on Climate Change on Today (Show, NBC)
by Geoffrey Dickens, senior news analyst at the Media Research Center
Just a day after Today featured a wildlife expert exploiting the cuteness of an Arctic fox to scare viewers about the threat of global warming, NBC’s Ann Curry, on Thursday’s Today, invited on a polar photographer to show off his pictures of cuddly creatures, he believes are threatened by climate change.
In the 9:30 am half hour Curry prompted photographer Paul Nicklen, “What have you seen about what’s happening in these parts of the world where we don’t get to go, that, that relates to this issue of climate change?” to which Nicklen pronounced the “Debate’s over.”
The following is the relevant exchange as it was aired on the ***December 17 Today show…READ ON
https://www.mrc.org/biasalerts/polar-photographer-declares-debates-over-climate-change-today
***17 Dec 2009: NBC Today: intro re leaders are attending Copenhagen Climate Conference (7-18 December), leading into interview with Paul Nicklen on his new book “Polar Obsessions” TRANSCRIPT (DIFFICULT TO NAVIGATE)
https://archive.org/details/WRC_20091217_120000_Today
a different time and place:
Sept 2015: UK Metro: Nicholas Reilly: This photo of a starving polar bear might not be all it seems
The picture was posted by Kerstin Langenberger who spotted the bear on the Norwegian archipelago Svalbard…
Professor Iain Stirling of the University of Alberta told Mashable ‘You have to be a little bit careful about drawing conclusions immediately. [The bear] may be starving but it may just be old…
(PHOTO MISSING)
Indeed, National Geographic photographer Paul Nicklen took this photo of a polar bear in the same region – a place he had visited numerous times before – and noted in his description that it he believed it was evidence of the harsh reality of climate change. He wrote that the lack of sea ice and the multiple polar bear corpses were something he had never previously witnessed. ‘In all my years of growing up in the Arctic and later, working as a biologist, I have never found a dead polar bear,’ he said. He suggests that this particular polar bear died as a result of an absence of sea ice, leaving it unable to hunt seals.
http://metro.co.uk/2015/09/14/this-photo-of-a-starving-polar-bear-isnt-all-it-seems-5390231/
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comment in moderation re: NBC Today program also had Paul Nicklen on to promote his new book, Polar Obsessions, just before the Copenhagen Climate conference ended
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Yeah! Right! Coal mining is dying.
Really!!!!!
Just here in Central Queensland, a new Report was highlighted in the local News, but you’d be hard pressed to find this reported on at the ABC.
It says that 2018 will be the year for mining.
Three major coal mines have now started, and that’s just here in Central Queensland, and just in construction alone, they are spending $330 Million, expected to rise a further $950 Million the following year.
NONE of this includes Adani’s Carmichael Project.
It is expected that the mining of coal will show a steady increase of around 3 to 4% per annum for the next few years.
Link to article: REVEALED: Why 2018 will be the year for mining
There is one HUGE advantage about none of this making it to the ABC Media.
Because it’s NOT reported there, the Greenies actually think that coal is in fact dying.
See, the ABC is not too bad after all.
(Cue Curly)
Tony.
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With their usual brilliant timing our local progress (regress) group are having a meeting to discuss installing a solar-powered micro-grid in our village this coming Saturday. I expect they are hoping that people will be too busy to attend. We are tired and very busy at present but feel we need to attend if possible. I need time to assemble all the necessary facts, if given the chance to state them ever crops up. This is a place that has long spells of dull weather in the winter, indeed, foggy until midday and beyond quite often.
All this nonsense is doing my head in. It is a multi-multi-tentacled, slimey monster we are fighting. It’s the rearing of its nastiness time after time taking on different forms….it’s worse than nonsense, it’s evil…squeezing the life out of ordinary decent people who work hard and try to do the right thing by others.
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Annie
Likely won’t happen for you by Saturday but find yourself a copy of
Elizabeth Nickson “Ecofascists: how radical onservationists are destroying our natural heritage”
In it you will find a layout of the modus operandi and some ways of countering the Green B.L.O.B. intrusion
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Thanks Another Ian.
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Tony
Shh! they might hear you
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An interesting report from AEMO on their planning for Summer 2017-18.
AEMO’s summer readiness action plan has focused on:
Maximising the resources in the system, including reserves for emergencies:
o The amount of generation operating in the market, and its availability throughout summer.
o A reserve of off-market generation to be operated in emergencies if needed.
o The availability of fuel for generators (coal, gas, water, and diesel).
o The availability and capacity of the transmission network to carry power to where consumers need it.
o Demand side participation, so more consumers have the opportunity to reduce their usage in a planned way at peak times, helping the system balance in return for incentives.
Learning from the experiences of last summer.
Strengthening operational systems and training.
Contingency planning, so everyone involved in the power system is prepared to respond to unforeseen events.
Achieving these goals through extensive collaboration and communication.
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Queensland’s new solar farm only producing 8Mw out of a nameplate of 50Mw obviously coal is dead and renewables are the way to go.
/sarc
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Let’s look at AGL and how well they did out of their range of power plants in just the last ….. HOUR. (lotsa Maths involved here, a fun exercise really)
Every Wind and solar plant income – $16,465
All fossil fuels plant income – $551,000 (Coal fired component of that was $479,000)
Quick, let’s get out of coal.
Tony.
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It’s beyond nutty…have most people’s brains been completely fried by ‘reality tv’?
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On a happier note, my planned cooking afternoon making Christmas cake and braised red cabbage has been completely disrupted by the job of sorting out the Christmas lights! We have too many sets collected over the years from different countries and I haven’t had the energy to sort out the good from the no good. It finally had to happen today. Anyway, a surprising number of sets work very well and the others will be binned. I had already had to throw out my beloved set of Christmas candle lights from Germany as I couldn’t get the replacement bulbs (many years old and incandescents…much nicer sparkly light than the supposed warm white LED type). Time to prepare to light up!
I have some of those solar light sets….they don’t last long 🙁
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Fer ’bouts USD$11.00 you can get a 12 volt quite brite 20″ computer controlled multi colored flashing strip, 49 lamps that will display absolutely nothing worth displaying but endlessly. Only da GOOKs could come up wid dis! Yust guess who bought one! 🙂
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LED all the way !
$15 for a30mtr long, 300 led, multi program, low voltage, all weather, set in a nice plastic bucket for storage.
Best thing is, you never have to waste hours searching for that bulb that has a dry contact and stops the whole string from working.
Anybody want several strings of assorted bulb lights ?
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OT but thank you Joanne, for the parking spot downunder
December 12, 2017 by sundance
Has sundance now been compromised or merely taken for a fool? Just what has any USFCC application for amateur radio license by any US citizen have to do with some ability to communicate outside the normal risk of communication intercepts. The next ten paragraphs of the article, as written by someone, Is but absolute childish nonsense! The rest of this article may be relevant; but what is the need to bulk it up with this trivia?
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