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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Gosh Jo! A WE Unthreaded snuck in while I wasn’t looking. I was wasting time reading Daily Telegraph (UK) articles about country- living by Londoners…oh dear!
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Londoners live in lots of other countries.
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True, but if you read those articles they were actually rather trite.
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Doubt you could call it an assassination attempt because POTUS and FLOTUS were in Mia Largo but a man has just shot himself outside the fence of the WH. Prolly protesting for gun control.
Via Drudge.
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Should not go without mentioning. The first man to break the 4 minute mile passed. It was a defining moment in sports history. https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/more-sports/roger-bannister-first-to-run-mile-in-under-4-minutes-dies/ar-BBJQCg9?li=BBmkt5R&ocid=spartanntp
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A great story, 88 years old.
Roger Bannister broke the barrier first, and not too long after Australia had four runners who had done it. John Landy, Merv Lincoln, Alby Thomas and ????? I think this was before the great Herb Elliot, but that might be wrong. Herb may have been the fourth.
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I don’t think Alby Thomas was a sub four minute miler, he ran longer distances such as three miles. You may be thinking of Herb Elliot, he was contemporary with Merv Lincoln, and Lincoln usually ran second to Elliot.
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Hi Ted,
According to Wikipedia Albie ran 3:58.6 for a mile in the same race in which Herb Elliott set the world record. The next day he set the world 2 mile record.
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I can accept that for folk from South Africa, with the Cape Buffalo, and Rhinoceroses! Can your roos actually hop dat fas? 🙂
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Sorry Keith; I forgot your Ostriches with ability to run at maximum speeds of about 70 km/h (45 mph)! I would hate to have such pecking at my ass! 🙂
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Old man EMU!
Tony.
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“Old man EMU! Tony.”
🙂
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I’m not sure that Wikipedia is correct on this one Keith. I used to listen to nearly all of Herb Elliot’s races on the radio as a teenager, and I never recall Alby Thomas in any of them Elliot ran the mile and half mile. I think Wikipedia is confusing Thomas with Lincoln. I recall Lincoln saying, following one race, 3 min 38.?? and still second.
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There’s a good movie of Albie leading the pack in Elliott’s record run and the commentary says all 5 went under 4 minutes, so wicki is ok on this.
Check out YouTube.
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Just imagine how, in the Dublin race, Albie Thomas ran 3:58.6 and only came 5th.
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OK KK I stand corrected.
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Alby Thomas was indeed a longer distance specialist and world record holder, but my memory tells me he ran a sub four minute mile. Was he also a steeplechase specialist?
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The steeplechase guy might have been Tony Manning from out West.
Dave Power used to run around that time too.
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@ TedM:
See http://corporate.olympics.com.au/athlete/albert-thomas
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I watched Albie Thomas run in the 1962 Commonwealth Games in Perth. Thinking again he may have run in the mile there.
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Thanks
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I first heard of Roger Bannister when doing one of those strange colour coded “reading laboratory tests” in Grade 7. I read the story of his great feat (done a couple of months before I was born) and then tried to answer the questions about it. The thing which impressed me the most was the lead up to the feat, where for many years various runners got close but could not break the “barrier”. Then when Bannister did it suddenly it was “easy” for others to do.
I think Ron Clarke may have run the mile under four minutes as preparation for the longer distances for which he was destined to set many world records.
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I now have it from good authority (Trevor Vincent, a Commonwealth Games Gold Medallist in 1962 in the 3000m steeplechase) that Ron Clarke’s best mile time was 4:00.1.
Trevor also gave me the name Don MacMillan as a fast miler at the time, and that may be the name Ted O’Brien was looking for.
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Trevor was no slouch at the mile himself, running 4:01.7 in New Zealand in 1962 and finishing well ahead of Ron Clarke but losing to a Kiwi. He switched to the steeple however which proved to be the correct decision.
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You guys are funny swearing by your your half remembered recollections and here say anecdotes and using them to refute official records taken at the time, some of which are backed up by visual evidence.
Next time empirical data is released claiming warmest or coldest or wettest or dryest, I’ll make sure I check first with the folk on this blog whether they remember differently from when they were kids or what their uncle’s friend told them.
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Word of mouth is still good value if you can’t trust the data.
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Like last night’s 4 corners was full of the sort of thing you think is good value. Was all about the fact that farmer’s are “noticing” changes that are different from how they remember things and what they remember the previous generation told them.
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Good value yeah when they show weather and hype it up to be CAGW and show the results of cloud seeding in tassie gone wrong to be more CAGW garbage , if you never watched it might pay not to comment on it or did you watch it through your tin foil hat ?
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Well I hope el Gordo responds to your critique.
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No I didn’t watch it because its propaganda, the culprit is aunty not the brainwashed masses.
If there was balance then anecdotal evidence is valuable, but opinion outside of CAGW is politically incorrect and will not be aired.
Its a bit like being under the boot of a dictatorship.
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I remember train lines buckling in the middle of summer in the sixties, Gee Aye – haven’t seen it since.
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so YOU havn’t seen it since? So what? Are train lines manufactured and managed better now? Is it something that you were more able to see? What data do you have that it is not happening now and it was happening more in the 1960s.
This is an excellent example of the problem James
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Pure dribble as always GA but at least you’re persistent and have belief in your faith and that’s all that matters right !
When heat alerts are issued for days exceeding 26 Celsius you lot lose any credibility you had left and by your very own admission does that mean the four corners story was utter BS ?
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see above 😉
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and to answer your question. el Gordo is right that anecdote and personal testimony are things to listen to, but they don’t supersede empirical data. So I also agree with you, I prefer properly collected records to the testimony of the farmers (that is, where they were speaking without reference to records – some of them, of course, were just confirming the publicly available industrial and governmental records of agricultural production).
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So if the data says you’re not standing up to your neck in snow and you are you should stop whinging because data never lies ,you haven’t been talking to the other troll have you ?
Problem with you brainwashed warmists is the blinkers you have on so nothing at all will convince you that CAGW is not real .
Climate is changing and always has but on the other hand you would have us believe there is some magical temperature and climate that we should always have .
Get over yourself extinction is the norm and survival the exception but you haven’t come here to learn anything or add anything to the debate have you ? Now what’s the reason you’re here for again ?
“I have had so many requests from my legions of fans to post more blogs. No really, there are a surprising number of people out there that read and re read my pastes… I mean posts … and check in to see if I have added anything new.
So today’s, and possibly this year’s, new post should satisfy those fans. Basically it is this link about scientific theories.
Yep, this is another placeholder in case I need to move someone on from their argument by distraction. You know the one where they write, “it is only a theory”. Amazingly, people still try to slip that one into an argument. They are often the same people who distract with, “it is only a model”, without understanding that their lives would soon come to an end without models.”
Having worked with Marlene Zuk many years ago I was drawn to read her book. This article gives a pretty good indication of the nature of the contents and I share the critique that it is sometimes trying to crack a nut with a sledgehammer. And here is an example of a paleofantasist with a poor grasp of the mechanics of natural selection and the details of human evolution.
When your hear or read something and you are compelled to say, “Gee.
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has never happened. Unless that is there is no data.
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‘…. but they don’t supersede empirical data.’
We cannot trust the data.
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you trust the data you want to trust
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Aunty is the propaganda wing of the pseudo Marxist consortium, a one party state.
“Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing.”
George Orwell 1984
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Agree totally El Gordo and as much as the little wimp would like to see us having words he has nothing absolutely nothing including friends which is why the way he is probably .
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Gee Aye,
I watched the program and hated most of it.
I find myself agreeing with you!
So yes Grape framers , especially the Brown Brothers consortium think that they might make better wine in Tasmania because the climate is cooler there than in North East of Victoria.
What about any actual records? The Brown Bothers spokesman had some old hand written records about grape yields but we never actually saw them, just that they were there.
And empirical data was conspicuously absent from the program.
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agree it was absent but data exists for them to check and see if it matches. Harvest times and yields are recorded as a matter of course in the production process. Harvest time, for instance, will correlate closely to shipping and receipt times. Co-ops keep records, ag departments do reports. And many farmers are meticulous and independant record keepers and their data could be combined to look for patters.
Complications are not knowing about other changes like farming methods – irrigation, fertilizers, pest control, soild treatments, wind breaks etc – and plant cultivars with different characteristics.
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this report contains some primary references
http://data.daff.gov.au/data/warehouse/9aas/2017/FarmPerformanceClimate/FarmPerformanceClimate_v1.0.0.pdf
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G
A
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Stipulation: I have no ide what will happen, & this note is pure speculation.
But the millenial media are full of Trade War fears this editorial Sunday.
They’d cite Smoot-Hawley, but most have to little knowledge of history to put this into context and those that do know their audience does not.
Fact: The US has a hell of a negative trade balance, & it is cause for concern.
Fact: our base metals industries have taken a hit, and in a world of over capacity, there will be some losers.
Fact & Opinion: most nations cite security issues looking backwards at metal drives during WWII as the reason. The blunt instrument of tariff does not address a real security need for modern warfare. With subsidies and stockpiles available, why tariffs?
Pure Speculation: first, an opening negotiating ploy. While the press is bloviating, most nations are sending negotiators to DC.
Second: a special election in Pennsylvania with many thousands of out-of-work steelworkers who are registered democrats but have voted republican in the past. An announcement to move the needle in an important election, and a later “Good Deal” to ‘avoid’ a trade war , might serve the white house well.
The old chess-checkers thing is too sophisticated for this ploy – Trump may be winning at checkers while the press is losing at rock-paper-sissors .
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I do love that bloviating word. It reminds me of moral turpitude on the US immigration forms. As a multi lingual friend once said to me “English is great! there is a word for everything!”
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Ever ben behind cow doing dat? Stinky, slinky, yet bester dan Crude oil mixed wid Camel shat! 🙂
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And if there isn’t a word make one up with parts of others.
Japanese must be restrictive because their manuals scatter English technical words amid their characters. I remember a circuit dia for a Casio calculator [when they used small scale integration] had a BLI and a BLO for “buffer register in” and “buffer register out” [think about it]
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Somewhere this morn I heard a guy who has a steel rio cutting and bending business bemoaning that these tariffs will cost him. Somehow I doubt anyone will shelve building plans because of an increase in price of steel. The percentage of contract price of a structure due to steel rio would be three fifths of five eights of buggerall.
Trump notes that the EU has tariffs on imported cars. That is on the complete item, not just the steel. It seems fair to me as one who has doubts about “free trade.” There are a lot of tariffs levied on Aussie produce. Japan once had [still may have] a “single grain” rice policy ie not a single grain of rice will be imported. The US and Japan have tariffs/quotas on our beef.
Would the world end if you had to hire a repairer to fix your washer rather than buy a new one?
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My attempted repair of our washer is not being helped by Aust Post losing the parcel of parts
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Sorry Hanrahan but you could not be more wrong in your assumption that an increase in the price of steel would have a negligible effect on ‘building plans’.
In all large scale projects of building and industrial construction,the price of the steel is a critical factor.
Think about it; industrial & commercial buildings, all high rise buildings (RC or steel), roads and infrastructure, materials handling industry, ships and vehicles, mining, power stations, (especially wind towers) and much, much more.
Steel is a major component in just about everything we make in the modern world and without it we would be lost. So it’s price is critical.
Regards GeoffW
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The ENEMY is the global BankSTERS, which must be totally destroyed, NO Prisoners taken, Your MSM press the DNC, RNC, Bush, Clinton, crime Cartels are but pawns in this WAR. Both the Russian and Chinese governments are just starting to get a clue! Excellent KGB Major V.Putin will become valuable ally to P45. Ask LtGen M.Flynn, who will say nothing! 🙂
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Interesting.
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Something that the commentariat is not good at understanding is that nothing is permanent in politics.
A bit of assistance for industry development can quickly establish industry which can carry on without further assistance.
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That was meant to refer to Richard at #4.
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You mean like the way wind and solar have been weened off assistance?
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If only!
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And the climate alarmists don’t understand that nothing is permanent in climate or weather. It’s always cycling to try and achieve a balance in a chaotic system where it never can.
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Shades of Scafetta, there is harmony within apparent chaos.
https://debunkhouse.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/wpid-holo_mc_9-1_zps1d318357.png
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Not with that squiggly wavy line.
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The 60 year and 20 year cycles are visible.
https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/scafetta_60-20.png
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Well another Military history post but this one most certainly does have something to do with climate and weather.
The night of March 4th 1776 the Colonials in a frantic effort dug emplacements and placed artillery on Dorchester Heights overlooking the entrance to Boston Harbor. The usual story claims that Howe and British were completely surprised by this but in reality they had good intelligence from loyalist spies in Washington’s camp that Knox had arrived with artillery. The British under General William Howe would be forced to evacuate Boston under a treaty and sailed out of the harbor with what Boston Tories that wanted to leave on March 17th Bound for NYC. Howe had no choice really because to try and assault the heights would have cost the British more casualties than it had suffered taking Breeds and Bunker hills on the other side of the harbor the summer before and probably would not have been successful.
The way climate and weather plays into this history has to do with how the Colonials got the artillery to Boston. Remember we’re talking about a period during the LIA when most years were colder and snowier than average. Benedict Arnold and Ethan Allen captured Fort Ticonderoga and it’s supply of weapons on May 10, 1775. In November, Washington sent Colonel Henry Knox to bring the weapons to Boston. Henry Knox selected 42 or 43 cannon of various sizes plus 16 mortars to take to Boston. Total weight nearly 60 tons. After crossing the first obstacle by sailing across Lake George before the crossing became too treacherous or impossible due to ice. The remainder of the 250+ mile journey would have to made on sleds pulled by oxen or horses and sometimes manpower over hilly terrain and multiple water courses and swamps. There was no way the heavy pieces could be transported on their own carriages along the rough trails and roads that had to be used. And so it was only because of snow and frozen ground and water courses that such a tremendous undertaking could be successful. Henry Knox and his “Noble Train” of artillery departed Ticonderoga, NY on or about December 6th, 1775 and arrived a Cambridge, MA about 25 January, 1776 though some of the artillery arrived several days later it seems. It took Washington and his men time after that to build the carriages and mount the cannon and then plan and execute the various supporting operations required to get the artillery in place on Dorchester heights.
http://morrisswett.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/p15766coll2/id/98
Anyway one cuts it this was a magnificent logistical effort for the time and changed the course of war. Henry Knox the pudgy former bookseller, served as Washington’s chief of Artillery for the rest of war. Then he served his new country that he had done so much to come into being as it’s 2nd secretary of war and was the man who signed the papers contracting for the construction of the super frigates that would be crucial in the war of 1812.
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Consensus warmists and the Left group-think,
And closing ranks these groups will nod and wink.
Alarmists overplayed the sea-rise card,
And may be hoisted on their own petard.
For climate models do not be surprised,
That weather data is homogenized.
Wind and solar plants are easy prey,
To any storm, by chance might blow their way.
For climate-change alarmists group-think thrives,
Submitting mind and will like Stepford Wives.
Too oft these days a snow-storm devastates,
The eastern boundaries of the U.S. states.
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And more snow and storms to come.
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I am in the process of reading the article by Christopher Booker, which explains how groupthink starts and is perpetuated.
Jo posted about it on Feb 22, 2018.
http://joannenova.com.au/2018/02/christopher-booker-gets-serious-about-understanding-groupthink/
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Time did not begin with the big bang …
http://www.news.com.au/technology/science/space/stephen-hawking-argues-time-did-not-begin-with-the-big-bang-it-was-just-going-in-a-different-direction/news-story/0c36b41d82c13eab2e8b92b9b974010b
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Nor does the concept of temperature. Some learning of this “is” need not have ‘beginning’ nor ‘end’ nor even ‘time’ itself! PLEASE START OVER with only that being repeatably demonstrable! We have demonstrable Tomatoes\potatoes growing in the Sunlight! All of the rest is BS political SCAM to steal your tomatoes! 🙂
All the best!-will-
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In 100 years there will be entirely different cosmological theories to those of now. And despite orblital telescopic interferometers, with virtual appertures the width of a solar system, none of the new cosmological theories will be any more ultimately proveable, either.
But they’ll have wicked models of it.
And these will be deemed irrefutable clinchers.
For there is no money in pointing-out that cosmogenesis does not exist outside of a human skull.
I want theories damn it!
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“I want theories damn it!” OK ok! We is but birdies circling round in decreasing radius until all fly up own ass! Is that good enough? 🙂
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more storms, snow, sunshine, surf ,starlight and sand to come http://balance10.blogspot.com/2018/03/where-us-education-went-off-tracks-of.html
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rationalizing, moothing-over, repressing deeply our problems–will that work? or are we meant to help one another, try to understand and pull together? http://balance10.blogspot.com/2018/03/police-firing-blanks-inside-various.html
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hey hey http://balance10.blogspot.com/2018/03/trump-against-active-shooter-drills-i.html
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Just seen the “spoiler” from four corners and as suspected it’s all about weather being the new climate .
From what I saw it’s just alarmist dribble probably with the BOM behind it all and I’ll be disappointed if they don’t interview the Climate councils no1 frordster.
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It’ll probably be some warped a-economic slop, hosted by Steven Long, like the prior cr@p report he did on renewables, where he, an alleged economics and finance reporter, failed to mention their hopeless economics, and life cycle maintainence and replacement cost. Or their high vulnerability to disruption, degradation and damage, or that they still need a duplicate baseload system as safety net for when they fail to supply … several times a day … which is inimical and ruinous to business, civil society, and the maintainence of its national, state and local infrastructure.
“Your ABC” … getting ready to feed you more deeply dishonest mealy-mouthed lying BS.
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Thought this might interest some of you since it specifically mentions a modeled history of tropical storms in the area of Australia:
“Show Pacific Tropical Storm Activity Linked To Solar And Oceanic Cycles
Man’s Small Role…New Scientific Findings Show Pacific Tropical Storm Activity Linked To Solar And Oceanic Cycles
By P Gosselin on 4. March 2018
Tropical storms in the Pacific are strongly influenced by solar activity fluctuations and ocean cycles
By Dr. Sebastian Lüning and Prof. Fritz Vahrenholt
(German text translated/edited by P Gosselin)”
http://notrickszone.com/2018/03/04/mans-small-role-new-scientific-findings-show-pacific-tropical-storm-activity-linked-to-solar-and-oceanic-cycles/#sthash.lRhElPan.dpbs
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What has happened to notrickszone. When I try to bring it up I get “this page can not be displayed”
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Works OK for me just now
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No tricks zone.
http://notrickszone.com/2018/03/04/mans-small-role-new-scientific-findings-show-pacific-tropical-storm-activity-linked-to-solar-and-oceanic-cycles/#comments
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News breakfast Abc 24 is going to have a preview and talk to the Shill that was responsible for blaming weather for being the end of the world , will be on within the next hour on the east coast .
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Currently watching 4corners, and its about climate change…currently resisting the urge to not get cranky, listening to the “we never distort….er….homogenize Rutherglen data” BOM as they BS on about higher temps etc etc.
Braidwood is always damn hot and dry…its not rocket science…
How do they do it with a straight face? I just couldnt…
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And Victoriastan’s struggle to keep the lights on this summer of course was due to climate change these guys have no moral ethics .
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In the fullness of time ‘these guys’ will be history.
https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2018/03/cartoon_snow.jpg
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Well I’d agree with that.
One of the “heros” of the Left, Saul Alynski, dedicated his book to the Father of all Lies – the Devil.
Kind of sums it all up perfectly…..
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So Perth is in Drought and have both desal plants going flat out and are thinking of putting in a third , they are having to pump waste water into the underground aquifers as well .
They also point to Cape Town and the so called drought that dunnit .
Total load of absolute garbage from start to finish but what would you expect from “our” ABC !
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Some spin from the warmist website .
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-03-05/farmers-and-businesses-take-action-on-climate-change/9502320
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Funny about the rising temperature affecting grape growing. I know a local (Adelaide Hills) winemaker quite well and he started out as a believer in Global Warming (one of the reasons he bought land in the Hills). But he started logging temperatures among the grapes (continuous data logger) and over the years he has completely changed his mind about “warming”.
He was getting overnight minimum temperatures up(?) to 5℃ lower than the BoM was reporting for the minimum at Mt. Barker.
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I remember when climate change was going to drive grape growers south to Tassie (where they make a nice drop anyway). I hope they did buy some land, the way Tassie has been going it might have been a good investment.
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And honey growers.
The previous two years were dismal for my bee hive in GIppsland Vic. Talked to a commercial grower and he explained that we need a ‘hot’ summer to get a good honey/nectar flow from flowers. This year was vastly better because we had a few hot days and things turned around.
NZ had a dismal season also last year…The US, UK and so forth..
“Why I’m Not A Commercial Beekeeper Anymore – YouTube”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZYWucqTyWU
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I laugh at all this hype about how we have to accept renewables on a grand scale in order to battle global warming. A far better and more lucrative idea is to spend the money instead on expanding our agriculture so we can become the food bowl of the world. It would generate so much extra income that it might even exceed the amount we receive from our mining exports. When the world wide food shortage arrives we will be in an even better shape. That is real vision. Not the usual nonsense about climate change and how we can alter it. We have as much hope of altering climate change as we can alter the climate on Jupiter.
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Its a nice thought but personally I doubt we can even be the food bowl for ourselves let alone the world. There will be niches where people can prosper, guns and butter style, but a general food bowl for the world? seems unikely.
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That’s only because we don’t have leaders with the will or the vision to do so, and most voters have even less of those to choose leaders that do have them, if any. Otherwise, it would be a no brainer.
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More disappearing island nonsense.
https://www.sbs.com.au/news/we-share-the-same-backyard-the-islands-disappearing-off-australia
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Indeed. However, they can’t blame CAGW on this: Unprecedented’ Native American burial site discovered in Gulf of Mexico off Florida
The sinking of Venice is being blamed by the alarmists on CAGW despite the fact the sinking started a very long time ago. Of course all thinking people know that the sea levels have been rising since the last ice-age, and that some islands are sinking as the sea level is rising causing an even greater risk for any residents. Instead of wasting billions on renewables perhaps they could spend the billions on building new islands close by and re-locating the small populations. China proved it can be done.
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I read once that Norway and Sweden have been slowly rising since the last ice age. There would have been a massive weight of ice covering them and considering that the earth’s crust is plastic to a degree the land has been bobbing back up ever since.
I’m no expert, feel free to correct if wrong.
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It’s call postglacial rebound. Beneath the ice sheets the land was pushed down by about to 500m and beyond the ice sheets the land was pushed up by up to several hundred metres.
http://www.antarcticglaciers.org/glaciers-and-climate/sea-level-rise-2/recovering-from-an-ice-age/
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I like to think of isostatic rebound as pressing down on half a rubber ball, then slowly releasing the pressure and watch the sides come in while the top goes up. I believe this is what’s happening in North America, and explains why some coastlines are shrinking.
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I think of it as a board floating on calm water. After all the land/crust floats on magma/mantle. Push down on one of the of the board and the other raises. Release the pressure and the board comes back to equilibrium. Of course it is a simplistic example since the crust varies in thickness and density and so does the upper mantle and neither are necessarily calm in the geologic time that that the land/crust rises up and then subsides and besides there is always the plate tectonics and erosion at work changing the stresses on the crust and changing it’s mass.
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Pumping out the water underlying the forest of wooden piles on which the city of Venice was built did not help.
Neither did having a mayor who has been accused of embezzling the money allocated for flood barriers – a project started 15 years ago
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-27832890
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SOV to the rescue.
‘The Pacific island nation said it became the first country in the world to recognize a cryptocurrency as its legal tender when it passed a law this past week to create the digital “Sovereign,” or SOV.’
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I wish they’d hurry up and sink already.
I thought titanic was long and needlessly boring.
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https://amp.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/queensland/ratepayers-shell-out-almost-1m-for-solar-panels-but-benefits-remain-far-off-20180228-p4z276.html
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The panels cost $900,000.
“It will save us about $90,000 a year … that’s good because the panels are under warranty for 25 years, so you’ve got 15 years of benefit there,” he said.
So in 10 years time they expect these panels to be just as efficient as they are today! And in 25 years time just as efficient!
We have a bridge in Sydney that we are happy to sell them. Do you have a contact number?
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There will be so many idealised assumptions in those numbers that its unlikely they will see much of a return. That will never get reported though, just swept under the carpet. But the main thing is they did save the planet, they can always say that.
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Sixteens enough to be later Joanne, I tink, tank you! To re-iterate-from UK weather:
With logarithmic angles!! The ‘interval’ of temperature difference, say 2°C depends on angular orientation about the centre. All possible spontaneous thermally conductive or electromagnetic power transfer depends only on angular difference, whether ΔT or (absT1^4-absT2^4)! You have been grossly “lied to” and scammed enough by all corrupt Global BanKSTERS; greedy academics and boughten MSM! WHAT is temperature?
All the best!-will-
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With any small angle; say between 273.15K and 373.15K; easy to divide such interval linearly into 100 parts (Celsius) or 180 parts (Fahrenheit) then fool yourself about What is temperature. We currently have only the foolish academic scammer (from toilet) ‘specific\sensible heat’ of mass! WHAT IS TEMPERATURE?
All the best!-will-
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4 Mar: ArmstrongEconomics: Martin Armstrong: CalPERS on the brink of insolvency
The largest public pension fund in the United States is the California Public Employees Retirement System (CalPERS) for civil servants. California is in a state of very serious insolvency. We strongly advise our clients to get out before it is too late…
CalPERS has been making investments to be politically correct with the environment rather than looking at projects that are economically based. Then, CalPERS has been desperate to cover this and other facts up to deny the public any transparency…
The pension crisis at CalPERS is getting worse by the day. The State looks to be totally bankrupt by 2021-2022…
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/world-news/pension-crisis/calpers-on-the-brink-of-insolvency/
27 Feb: Bloomberg: Eric Roston: New York City, Albany Part Ways on Divesting Fossil-Fuel Stocks
When it comes to climate change, the people who oversee the New York City and State pension investments agree that the threat to people and property is real.
But that’s where the comity ends. New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli prefers to use his leverage as a large shareholder to press fossil-fuel companies for change. New York City’s comptroller, Scott Stringer, is a divestment hawk who is calling for the city’s pensions to be out of fossil fuels within five years…
At stake in this version of the “engage” versus “divest” debate is billions of dollars. The New York State Common Retirement Fund, overseen by DiNapoli, topped $209 billion at the end of the year, and the city’s five pension funds together reached $193 billion, making them the third and fourth largest systems in the country…
Governments have increasingly turned divestment from their state pension funds into a weapon in the fight against climate change, even though its costs and benefits remain unclear.
***In 2015, California lawmakers required the state’s pension funds to divest coal investments by mid-2017, leading to a wave of sales from the largest two U.S. Pension funds, Calpers and Calstrs…READ ALL
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-27/new-york-city-albany-part-ways-on-divesting-fossil-fuel-stocks
1 Mar: Bloomberg: Harvard Blew $1 Billion in Bet on Tomatoes, Sugar, and Eucalyptus
The university’s highly paid money managers thought they could manage risks other schools avoided.
By Michael McDonald and Tatiana Freitas; with Ken Parks
Six years ago, Jane Mendillo, then head of Harvard’s endowment, spent a week in Brazil, flying in a turboprop plane to survey some of the university’s growing holdings of forest and farmland…
There, workers would produce tomato paste, sugar, and ethanol, as well as energy after processing crops. The profits, in theory, could outstrip those of conventional stocks and bonds and keep the world’s richest university a step ahead of its peers…
Harvard bet the farm in Brazil and lost…READ ALL
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-01/harvard-blew-1-billion-in-bet-on-tomatoes-sugar-and-eucalyptus
30
Instead of waiting for CalExit, the other 49 should cut them free. They boast that if they were a nation they have the 5th [?] largest economy in the world. Time to do it on their own. The US could lease San Diego for their fleet.
20
They could excise a little bit like Guantanomo. They would be about as welcome I guess.
10
Yep…and anything that gets over the fence will have likely have a red dot “painted” on it from a distance…..
The gov of cali is basically “throwing” the whole state into a “volcano” as a huge pagan eco-sacrifice…..
00
Well we’ll have to put up a lot more wall if we do that. But the thing is a big chunk of N. California is pretty conservative and there is a movement for it to become a separate state. But Oregon and Washington up north are loony progressive to along their coasts. What is it about living on a coast the makes people loons?
10
That explains Melbourne and Sydney but doesn’t explain the worst of the lot, Canberra.
10
Not to forget Adelaide as they seem to harbour a fair number of greeny loons too.
00
They only work there, most of then are in Batemans Bay on the weekend, at least it feels that way sometimes.
10
It occurs to me that someone high up is likely telling these companies ( via Davos? ) to change their investment methods to prop up the solar and eco industries like Musk as they must be desperate for funds now that people know its a bust.
Its basically forcing fund managers to dump good money after bad into these losing propositions….
If my pension fund starts investing in un-wise things, I will move my money out. They need to hear that.
Think about it – now your pension fund money will be burnt in front of you, so you will be ultimately destitute when the eco loons run their business into the ground….its pure Socialism at work by making everyone equally poor.
A pension fund is also open to litigation if it instructs its fund managers to invest in risky ventures.
10
behind paywall – but some excerpts found:
4 Mar: UK Times: We can’t wait for hell to freeze over before we change energy policy
by Michael Glackin
It’s official. Along with our economy and education system, the weather is also getting worse under this government. All right, even the centralising tentacles of the SNP have not yet taken the Scottish weather in-house. However, the government’s policies towards Scotland’s energy needs have clearly exacerbated the consequences of the recent snowstorms.
The National Grid’s warning that Scotland could run out of gas as the so-called Beast from the East wreaked havoc across the county is a case of SNP chickens coming home to roost.
Europe has also been hit by severe weather, forcing the UK to compete for imports, and prompting the first “gas deficit warning” in almost a decade. The wholesale gas price in the UK more than doubled last week to its highest level in 10 years. Supplies and prices will remain under pressure this week, especially if current winds subside, reducing output from wind turbines, and resulting in the need to burn more gas for electricity. Tom Crotty, director of chemicals group Ineos, which is seeking damages from the Scottish government in a legal challenge against the ban on fracking, said:
“We are on a knife-edge when it comes to gas supply and this shows that the Scottish government has got its energy policy seriously wrong.”
The SNP’s focus on renewable energy has also hindered sustainable alternatives. New, cleaner replacement gas plants are not being built because Scotland’s drive for more intermittent wind farms means energy companies can no longer be sure how much they will be required to generate, and how much profit they will be able to make.
The Scottish government needs to rethink its obsession with renewables and pursue a more balanced energy mix. We can’t wait for hell to freeze over.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/scotland/we-cant-wait-for-hell-to-freeze-over-before-we-change-energy-policy-kx2h0dxn9
50
What’s going to happen when politicians find out that they actually cannot do without coal fired power?
That they can’t just turn them off.
How the hell are they going to explain that?
Tony.
130
Plukkachook in Qld, if she has an ounce of honesty, must be in a quandary. Coal royalties helped with a $2 bill improvement in the state’s bottom line and our near constant exporting power to the mendicant southern states would give her profit on the sale of the power and royalties on the coal burned. But she insists she is going to kill this goose an go with renewables.
121
No price is too high when you are saving the planet (said in a very earnest ABC type voice)
100
i have heard it said recently That……It was foretold in biblical prophesy for those who have eyes to see and ears to hear.
Carbon has 6 neutrons, 6protons, and 6 electrons….isotopes of carbon are kosher.
666.
60
One can say the same thing about voters regardless of whether they believe we have a problem to solve. I’m afraid it will require a severe recession before enough people wake up and realise they have been taken for a ride by both major parties and their cohorts (Nats and Greens).
60
There will be a last minute panic and a huge order placed for very large diesel generators. Then they will have to explain why we ended up producing more instead of less CO2 emissions compared to using new generation coal fired power stations. All this will take a decade or so to sink in the minds of voters before they wake up. However, our economy will be well into the crash and burn scenario by then before everyone wakes up and acts accordingly. Perhaps by then we can start thinking about whatever new mainstream technology is available at the time, such as the next generation nuclear reactors China is currently developing. They can install them too since they possibly will have control of the place. One step at a time.
70
Government will not explain: neither this—yet “more instead of less CO2″—nor this—”cannot do without coal fired power”. The public believes, it seems without question, the CAGW scam. In SA add the cultural cringe of the collectivists, who include much of the Liberal Party and so upwards of two-thirds of the electorate, and baleful consistency continues.
It is not just that nothing suggests otherwise, but that South Australians, especially those who sell cups of coffee in whatever form, do not employ much (and believe it or not) or even any air conditioning. South Australians are the classic deniers of the principle that you cannot have your kayak and heat it too. It will continue for a while . . . .
30
The crawl back explanation on the need for coal fired power may just be closer than you think really.
When you think of States, you think ….. large, and that’s how South Australia can get away with saying they have a big total for renewables, because a percentage sounds big when you (erroneously) think of a State as large.
However do an actual breakdown of power consumption in Australia, and you see that the power being consumed in two States is in fact very small.
NSW consumes (around) 33% of all the power in the Country.
Queensland 28%. (and Qld is now consistently the second highest consumer in the Country due in the main to its vast decentralisation, even with that large concentration in the SE Corner)
Victoria 20%
Western Australia 10%
South Australia 5%
Tasmania 4%
That adds up to the 100% of power consumption across Australia. (and yes, at different times those averages might vary a little, but this is overall across an average year.)
Now I don’t really care about wind and solar all that much because seriously, they only make up around 5% to 7% of the overall power generation, and there’s no way known you can seriously say you can run the Country on that percentage of power, so it will only ever be niche power, and think of South Australia, saying with pride 40% from Wind power ….. so that’s 40% of 5%, so only 2% of the overall, less in fact, because generation is always much higher than consumption due to the large losses associated with the vast distances of Australia.
So, when it comes to the bulk of power generation, well that comes from coal fired power, and across the whole of Australia (WA included) that total generation from coal fired power is now up around 72 to 75%.
The remainder comes from gas fired power, mainly OCGT’s as required and Hydro, which boosts the renewables percentage.
When it comes to coal fired power, well Tasmania and South Australia have none of those, but when things get going in both those States, they rely on coal fired power from Victoria via their respective Interconnectors.
WA is out on its own with its solitary State grid, and is reasonably well covered when it comes to coal fired power, keeping in mind most of their consumption is in that SW Corner.
Queensland is doing well, thanks to forethought from the past before all this CO2 thing became an issue, and they constructed new plants, and with the existing ones, they have enough to cover all their needs now, and into the future. Having said that, there is a need for large scale plant to supply the North of the State, with nothing in the way of coal fired power North of Rockhampton, and that realistically supplies the needs for everything South of Rockhampton, so the North is struggling and will struggle into the future if tourism (as expected to) ramps up.
NSW gets by, and that’s the best I can say, because the excess from Qld keeps them going. However, when Liddell closes, then NSW WILL be strapped, and Qld will probably need what they already have if the State is to go ahead.
Victoria is strapped RIGHT NOW, and they have problems if just one of their remaining 8 Units goes down, even for scheduled maintenance.
So, those three main States will need to find a way to ramp back the anti coal fired power rhetoric, and offer up a real explanation as to why coal fired power is in fact so d@mned important.
When that time comes, State Premiers will have a bewildered look on their faces when they finally get told, as it will be their job to offer up that explanation, and that will not be pretty. Then you really will hear excuses and blame shifting, making that Dorrie Evans “why wasn’t I told” meme come right into play.
And I really do think it’s closer than we think.
Tony.
60
Sadly I think PeterS has summed it up succinctly. That seems to be the way of managing things these days.
I guess it will be SA on steroids, renewables blah blah, wind blah blah, solar blah blah, vitual power station blah blah, demolish the coal plant blah blah…..oh….wait…..SH1T!!!! diesel gas turbine more! more! interconnector more! ahhh, there you go no problem! how green are we!?
40
Thanks but that’s just one possible scenario of several of course. In any case there is one constant as per history. Although there is a very slim chance it could be postponed I very much doubt it – the West will crash and burn. What actually triggers it and how exactly it plays out will only be known after the event. The GFC is just a tiny pot hole on the road compared to the major sink hole straight ahead in the not too distant future.
10
I just hope they figure it out before their actions cause people to die.
10
Weekend unthreaded seems more timed to the US weekend these days 🙂
Was driving to a friends place a couple of hours away and say an amusing conjunction of road signs. Out State (like mant I guess) blames road fatalities on speed a lot, mainly because thats easy to measure and fine people on.
So, driving along the highway on a 100kmh stretch and one of mandatory “SPEED KILLS!” signs go by. 50 metres passed “SPEED KILLS!” the speed limit increases from 100 to 110kph.
Its official. The authorities are out to get me!
90
robert rosicka posted the ABC 4 Corners propaganda piece at comment #14.
it sounds like a rushed program to try to counteract all the freeze/snow stories of recent weeks.
the same is being done by FakeNewsMSM elsewhere, e.g.
4 Mar: Spokesman-Review: Warming trends: Climate change to shorten Mt. Spokane’s season
By Becky Kramer
Mt. Spokane Ski and Snowboard Park’s parking lot was packed with cars on a recent weekday morning…
At the top of the chairlifts, the snowpack was about 8 feet deep – close to the seasonal average for the nonprofit ski hill in Spokane’s backyard.
Future decades won’t be so kind to the resort on Mount Spokane.
New research from Oregon State University indicates that today’s young skiers could see significant changes in snowpack by the time they reach middle age. By the end of the 21st century – when their grandkids or great-grandkids are skiing – temperatures above freezing could cost the ski hill an entire month of snow…
The research is being done by Anne Nolin – a hydro-climatologist, avid skier and professor in OSU’s College of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences…
She and her graduate students developed models that can be used to calculate the increase in “warm winters” at U.S. ski resorts – defined as a winter where average temperatures are at or above 32 degrees for December, January or February.
The research hasn’t been published yet, but Nolin agreed to share results for Mt. Spokane Ski and Snowboard Park in advance of the official release…
While relatively few winters between 1970 and 1999 at Mount Spokane fit the definition of a warm winter, the research shows a marked increase in future decades…
Under an aggressive climate change scenario – “which sadly is what we’re on track for right now in the U.S.” – the effect is severe, Nolin said…
Ninety-seven percent of winters at Mount Spokane during 2070 to 2099 would have at least one month at or above 32 degrees at both the base and the top of the mountain during December, January and February, the modeling indicates. Precipitation would fall as rain instead of snow.
“That wouldn’t work very well for a ski area,” Nolin said. “I think they’d be out of business.”…
Companies representing large U.S. ski resorts criticized President Donald Trump’s decision last year to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement…
***Protect Our Winters, a nonprofit based in California, encourages people in the winter sports industry to work for policy solutions to climate change…
Smaller resorts, particularly those that can’t move their runs to higher elevations, will have more challenges adapting to climate change.
“Those mom and pop areas, they’re nearby, relatively inexpensive and they’re family friendly,” Nolin said. “Sadly, they are the ones that are being affected.”…
Even as the climate warms, variations in weather will continue to deliver good snowpacks during some years, said (Amy Snover, director of the University of Washington’s Climate Impacts Group).
“You’ll still have some good skiing years – years that are better than average now. You’ll also see some really atrocious years,” she said.
But the areas that have dependable snow will change, Snover said. “The places at the fringe will get even worse.”…
http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2018/mar/04/warming-trends-climate-change-to-shorten-mt-spokan/
not mentioned:
ClimateOne: Anne Nolin, Professor, Geosciences and Hydroclimatology, Oregon State University
Nolin is a Board Member of ***Protect Our Winters, a non-profit group raising awareness of global warming impacts on snow, glaciers, and snow sports.
https://climateone.org/people/anne-nolin
60
When on earth are they going to admit that, despite the evidence, their models are absolutely meaningless in a multi chaotic system which is our climate.
132
When hell freezes over I suspect.
40
Another informative post by Tony Brown on CET long record
of temperature oscillations and discussion including Javier
graphs and more.
https://judithcurry.com/2018/03/03/the-rise-and-fall-of-central-england-temperatures-part-ii/
10
There’s that 97% again. What is it about 97% when it comes to Climate and Climate Science.
Here we have “97% off winters between 2070 and 2099 will have one month above 32 degrees”, when 97% of climate scientists agree the climate is warming alarmingly.
Looking forward to 4 Corners embarrassing itself tonight. I bet no correspondence will be entered into.
90
“Three Ways Being “Green” is Deadly”
http://victorygirlsblog.com/three-ways-green-deadly/
Via a comment at WUWT
20
you have to watch the Sunderland video:
2 Mar: Tim Blair BLog: PRIVATISE THE WHOLE DAMN THING
ABC editorial director Alan Sunderland explains the $1,000,000,000 per year leftist project’s noble struggle during “risky and sensitive times”.
What, Sunderland asks, must change at the ABC? And his answer: ABSOLUTELY NOTHING
$1 billion per year and no need to consider market forces or audience interests. Or, for that matter, to meet even the most basic journalistic standards (Sunderland is not identified by name either in text or in his video message to ABC staff).
What a sweet ride that must be.
—
VIDEO:3min06secs: 2 Mar: An Independent ABC
From the Editorial Director
From time to time, the ABC stands accused of being either biased in our attacks on the Government or kowtowing to that same Government.
As a public broadcaster that belongs to the Australian people, it is appropriate that we are regularly called to account for the work we do.
Our aim is to listen carefully to any and all criticism, acknowledge mistakes where we have made them, but also defend our responsibility to deliver impartial, accurate and often challenging coverage on important issues.
Here is a message I sent to all ABC staff this week.
***Alan Sunderland
Editorial Director
http://about.abc.net.au/2018/03/an-independent-abc/
***can’t recall Sunderland’s name even being at the bottom of the text when I first visited the page. it’s still not in the video.
ABC: Who we are: Alan Sunderland is a Walkley Award winning journalist with more than thirty-five years’ experience in public broadcasting, starting as a cadet in the ABC Melbourne newsroom in 1979. After 17 years with SBS Television, serving as Political Editor and Head of News and Current Affairs, Alan re-joined the ABC News management team in 2005. He held a number of senior management roles across News and National Programs before becoming Head of Policy and Staff Development in 2010. In 2013 Alan left the News Division to take up a position in charge of Editorial Policy across the ABC. He is responsible for advising on all significant editorial matters, developing and setting editorial standards and coordinating editorial training across the organisation.
1 Nov 2017: ABC: What’s wrong with being ‘fair & balanced’?
From the Editorial Director (Alan Sunderland)
The ABC has been in the news a bit lately, not least because there is a push underway to make sure our journalism is fair and balanced.
In fact, there is even a proposed law to that effect before our Federal Parliament.
So what could possibly be wrong with such a simple and admirable idea? Surely, all media should aim to be fair and balanced in the way they report the news?
Well, let me try to tell you exactly what’s wrong with it…
When it comes to ‘fair and honest dealing’, we explain that it is essential to maintaining trust with audiences and those who participate in our programs, but we also explain that sometimes deception or the breach of an undertaking might be justified in the public interest.
When it comes to ‘balance’, we explain very carefully that ‘impartiality does not require that every perspective receives equal time’ but that one of the hallmarks of good journalism is balance that ‘follows the weight of evidence’. This last point is crucial in understanding why journalists don’t just switch off their brains and provide equal time for every voice on every issue. A good journalist weighs up the facts, keeping an open mind but also exercising judgement and analysis to sift through conflicting claims and counter claims to properly reflect the state of a debate and illuminate not just the diversity of arguments but also the facts that underpin them.
Without this sensible and disciplined editorial approach, journalism can descend into a kind of ‘he said/she said’ false balance, where audiences are not given the information they need to understand what is happening in their world.
In short, ‘fairness’ and ‘balance’ are not and never have been recognised standards of objective journalism. They can be helpful indicators of impartiality and accuracy, but only if they are put in the right context and used wisely…
That’s why the idea of stripping notions of ‘fairness and balance’ from their proper context and enshrining them as key principles makes no sense. At best, it is redundant. At worst, it will encourage confusion and mischief-making as people demand that the ABC adopt false balance at the expense of good journalism.
Being an Editorial Director, I always fear the worst.
Alan Sunderland
Editorial Director
[1] For those history buffs among you, life was much easier when the ABC was first established in the 1930’s. Back then, the ABC was empowered to “collect in such manner as it thinks fit news and information relating to current events”. Then again, the Postmaster-General was also required to provide the ABC with free microphones “and all other necessary portable apparatus”. It was a simpler time.
http://about.abc.net.au/2017/11/whats-wrong-with-being-fair-balanced/
50
What arrogance! So typical of the elitist ABC.
80
” … A good journalist weighs up the facts, keeping an open mind but also exercising judgement and analysis to sift through conflicting claims and counter claims to properly reflect the state of a debate and illuminate not just the diversity of arguments but also the facts that underpin them.
Without this sensible and disciplined editorial approach, journalism can descend into a kind of ‘he said/she said’ false balance, where audiences are not given the information they need to understand what is happening in their world. … ”
—
Self-serving paternalistic twaddle.
Adults do not need this ‘done’ for them, daily coached and suggested how to percieve, and thus be continually manipulated and lead around, but mislead simplistic dummies do.
Humans don’t need your reality-provision ‘services’, ABC.
But they do need your interferrence eliminated from actual open public debate though.
Your shallow self-serving arguments for why you do what you do, are evidence enough of your meddling and arrogant counter-productive impact on Australian minds, debates and important choices that need to be made by fully-developed independently thinking adults.
90
A good journalist? I’m afraid that has become an oxymoron these days. The fictitious Daily Planet long ago reported more truth than much of the journalists in the MSM these days.
50
Four Corners tonight is typical of the genre, unwavering ignorant bias and anecdotal bilge.
50
No Michael Charlton today—nor likely in the future. Nor “Chamber music for people who don’t like chamber music”. 5CL was a wonderful radio station until about 1974 when slowly but inexorably the good bits disappeared to be replaced either by inanity or academicist humbug—or worse. Radio now is unlistenable, just as television is unwatchable. Hideous. I suppose it helps explain the presence, increasingly ubiquitous, of bibliophobic librarians. Definitely no Michael Charlton today.Fortunately Encounter, to which Carlton was an occasional contributor, is available online.
20
I’ve read their policy on fair and balanced and the policy basically allows them to do whatever they want , no need for counter argument .
50
And that “fair and balanced” will not be evident on 4 corners.
50
Four corners so of course it is balanced /s off
40
From what I could see it may not be experts just observations from farmers etc , I’ve been trying to find a program about XXXXX Brothers wines because I’m sure they have had a few excuses over the years other than climate change for the Tasmanian vineyard purchase .
I’ve seen bushfires excuse used and something about tariffs and a wine glut but I feel the no1 reason for tassie is mainly a marketing thing and a certain grape variety , some companies jumped on the CAGW bandwagon early purely for a green tick with the Chardonnay and latte sippers .
51
“climate change is fundamentally reshaping agriculture”, so much so that “last year it surged by an extraordinary 28 per cent”! unbelievable:
2 Mar: SMH: Meet Barnaby Joyce’s pro-renewables successor David Littleproud
By Eryk Bagshaw
The heir to Barnaby Joyce’s portfolio has declared he has nothing against renewables, believes climate change is fundamentally reshaping agriculture, and called on city dwellers to wake up to the economic heavy lifting being done by Australia’s farmers.
David Littleproud, the banker who came within a couple of votes of snatching the Nationals leadership last week, has no intention of emulating the former deputy prime minister
“I am in favour of renewables, make no mistake,” he said. “It will mean we will have cleaner air to breathe, there is nothing to fear in that.”
The Agriculture Minister, who party leaders hope will appeal to a new generation of voters, said renewables needed to be brought in a way that “doesn’t impact someone being able to put a light on or a farmer being able to put a pump on”.
“The stark reality,” he said, is farmers had been trying to deal with the effects of climate change since they were “putting till in the ground”…
***Part of that job is going to be selling agriculture’s economic story.
Last year it surged by an extraordinary 28 per cent. In contrast, mining limped along at 4.6 per cent, and manufacturing and construction went backwards…
Next week’s national accounts figures are expected to show another strong performance, but few workers in the city, stung by rising house prices and torpid wage growth, are aware the agriculture narrative in some areas has turned from drought-stricken to bumper crop…
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/meet-barnaby-joyce-s-pro-renewables-successor-david-littleproud-20180302-p4z2ga.html
40
4 legs good, 2 legs baaaaaaaddddd……
Another climate drone…..
00
Wat a nog he is and for that matter the whole Party, except for that outsider from Queensland who ran against him in the ballot.
20
I just read an interesting article titled “The moon formed inside a hot cosmic doughnut, scientists say” and one of the comments Dr. Andreas Pack made about the model used as the basis for this new theory of the moon’s formation struck me as also being relevant to the theory of Anthropomorphic Global Warming; he said “It’s a very complicated model, and the more complicated a model is, the easier it is to tune the model so that it explains everything”
60
lol … I wrote this up the page:
http://joannenova.com.au/2018/03/weekend-unthreaded-201/#comment-1987559
as it ever woz
30
Much like Hawking’s recent ramblings on explaining what nothing is before the Big Bang. He’s lost it.
EXCLUSIVE: Stephen Hawking on What Existed Before the Big Bang
51
Is that a joke/skit?
Nothing South of the South pole???
🙂
30
a must-watch:
4 Mar: Youtube: 31mins48secs: Life, Liberty & Levin 03/04/18 10PM (Commercial Free)
(Mark Levin interviews Devin Nunes, chairman of the United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fz5mQx8xIDY
30
That WAS interesting Pat! It will be interesting to see what happens in the weeks ahead.
30
failed, despite Dems controlling both houses:
1 Mar: SanFranciscoChronicle: Washington state’s carbon tax bill dies in Legislature
by Phuong Le, Associated Press
Another ambitious effort to pass a carbon tax in Washington state has faltered as both Gov. Jay Inslee and the bill’s prime sponsor said Thursday that there weren’t enough votes to pass the measure out of the state Senate.
But Inslee told The Associated Press Thursday they were still “one or two votes shy” of passing it out of the Democrat-controlled Senate. The bill also needed to clear the House, also controlled by Democrats, before the short 60-day legislative session ends March 8…
Carbon-pricing bills have been introduced in states, including Massachusetts, Oregon, New York and Rhode Island, but none have advanced as far as in Washington, experts noted…
https://www.sfchronicle.com/news/science/article/Washington-state-s-carbon-tax-bill-dies-in-12721060.php
this NYT piece appears to have been updated after the bill died. Inslee still delusional:
1 Mar: NYT: In a Gamble to Make Climate Change a Political Win, a Governor Pursues a Carbon Tax
By Coral Davenport; Kirk Johnson in Seattle contributed to this report
This week in the statehouse in Olympia, Wash., Gov. Jay Inslee fought but failed to bring a vote on a historic climate change policy that he has pursued for years: instituting the nation’s first tax on planet-warming carbon dioxide pollution.
The fate of the Senate vote, which was canceled on Thursday after it became clear that it could not gain enough support even in the Democratic-majority legislature of this West Coast state, was being watched closely around the country and the world…
Advocates and opponents of climate change action are paying close attention to Mr. Inslee’s next steps. Economists broadly agree that taxing the carbon pollution produced by burning fossil fuels is the most efficient way to fight climate change. But politicians agree that it is also a nearly surefire way to get voted out of office.
After all, a carbon tax is, by design, an energy tax. Among other things it would most likely raise the prices that voters pay for gasoline and electricity, which is why the idea has long been seen as politically toxic.
In the days before the vote, Governor Inslee said he would like to change that perception. “We are not afraid of being a vanguard,” he said in an interview in Washington, D.C…
If he does run for president, Governor Inslee is expected to make climate change central to his platform….
The global interest in Governor Inslee’s carbon tax push comes as several state leaders are signaling to the world that they intend to act on climate change with or without the Trump administration…
Even if Governor Inslee’s tax push makes him a hero in the eyes of environmental advocates around the world, Republicans see it as a political liability, and are preparing to attack him on it.
“I’m a big fan of having votes on carbon taxes,” said Thomas J. Pyle, president of the Institute for Energy Research, a think tank that supports fossil fuels and supplied the Trump administration with its energy policy blueprint, including rolling back climate change regulations and expanding coal and oil exploration. He recounted the history of politicians losing their jobs as a result of backing a price on carbon pollution…
There was Al Gore…
The pattern was repeated in 2009, when President Barack Obama tried to push Congress to pass a so-called cap-and-trade bill…
In 2012, Prime Minister Julia Gillard of Australia successfully pushed to pass a carbon tax. The following year, she was ousted from office in a campaign that was partly seen as a referendum on the tax…
Although Hillary Clinton campaigned in 2016 on a pledge to tackle climate change, she stopped short of endorsing a carbon tax. “Even Obama recognized, even Hillary Clinton recognized, that a carbon tax is politically toxic,” Mr. Pyle said. Governor Inslee, he said, is “going to find out real quickly that it doesn’t play in Peoria.”…
Even some people who have voted for Governor Inslee express concern about how a carbon tax might be used against him in the hardball of a national political campaign. “I would like to see him run,” said Dan Rystrom, 56, a retired investor from a suburb of Seattle who identified himself as a Democrat. “But I think it would be the end of him,” he said, describing the political ads he expected to see across the country, saying: “Who is this man from the West Coast who just raised the prices of gasoline?”…
Still, there are signs that other politicians might be willing to take the carbon tax plunge. In Canada, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is pushing to implement a national carbon tax by the end of the year…
As governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a cap-and-trade law in 2006…
Many environmental economists say that in order for a carbon tax to significantly cut planet-warming pollution, it should be set at a rate of $30 to $50 per ton of pollution. The proposed Washington state tax is $12 a ton, although it would increase at $2 per year until it reaches $30…
In the interview, Governor Inslee said that whoever ultimately runs against Mr. Trump in 2020 on the Democrat side should put climate change front and center in his or her campaign. The politics of global warming are changing, he said, as more Americans experiencing economically damaging weather events that scientists can attribute to the changing climate.
“Climate change used to be an abstraction. It used to be a graph,” he said. “Now we’re seeing biblical events play out on the 6 o’clock evening news.”
“I believe it is a successful and winning issue,” Governor Inslee said…
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/03/01/climate/jay-inslee-carbon-tax.html?referer
20
read all – can’t copy. u know it’s desperate when Brexit is now being blamed:
4 Mar: UK energy grid warns that political risks threaten investment
Brexit, regulation and renationalisation threat drives National Grid’s concerns
by Sylvia Pfeifer and Andrew Ward
“US investors are now warning there are too many ***uncertainties,” John Pettigrew told the Financial Times…
Some of the world’s biggest and most high-profile investors are active in the UK energy sector, including multi-billionaires Warren Buffett and Li Ka-shing…
Canadian pension funds, Arab and Chinese sovereign wealth funds and Macquarie, the Australian bank are among other owners of the pipes and wires which deliver energy to UK homes and businesses…
Tens of billions of pounds of investment is needed in UK energy infrastructure over coming years to replace ageing coal and nuclear power plants and to strengthen the electricity grid to cope with growing supplies of clean ***but volatile renewable energy.
https://www.ft.com/content/d3490bc8-1e16-11e8-956a-43db76e69936
20
All dos free red thumbs from thread “UK weather”. Konrad will be so very pissed! 🙂
51
the previous link posted did not have the full interview. here it is.
listen from 29minutes in to hear the rest:
Youtube: 39mins41secs: Life, Liberty & Levin 3/4/18 | Mark Levin Fox News Sunday March 4, 2018
(Mark Levin interviews Devin Nunes, chairman of the United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQ2TycDSWhE
20
In late November Netweather correctly predicted a freezing European winter and this caught my eye.
‘Another key long-term driver is the stratosphere. The tropical stratosphere is home to the QBO (Quasi-Biennial Oscillation) – a pattern of high altitude winds which alternate between westerly and easterly direction in cycles lasting around 27-29 months. This makes the QBO a regular and predictable tool, though, in early 2016, the QBO cycle had an unprecedented disruption.
‘A band of easterly winds began to form above the westerlies, as expected, at the end of 2015, but it was cut off by a new band of westerly winds that appeared below it, keeping the QBO from completing a normal cycle. Although the QBO occurs in the stratosphere in the tropics, it can affect global teleconnections, by causing waves in the stratosphere that reach higher latitudes. Research shows that the QBO influences the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), a pattern of seesawing atmospheric pressures that dominate European weather.
‘When the QBO winds are in a westerly/positive phase, pressure differences over the North Atlantic tend to be greater, which strengthens the jet stream which increases chances of mild and stormy winter weather. This winter, the QBO is expected to remain in an easterly/negative phase, which increases the likelihood of northern Europe having a good shot at a colder, drier winter.’
60
We always appear to be “on the brink” with the fallout of renewable energy.
Last winter , Germany was said to be one failure away from a major blackout;
This winter most of western Europe is in the same boat;
Australia, or maybe more correctly SA/VIC/NSW had some moments over a relatively mild summer;
I wonder at times if the danger is being oversold or this is just how things will pan out as naive politicians kill the grid with the death of a thousand cuts, and at some stage we crest the brink into god knows what turmoil. Its a pity that things can appear so normal, right up to the instant they collapse not through accident or disaster, but by our own hands.
I guess the next landmark is a coal plant closure in NSW or VIC, or a really severe summer, whatever comes first.
30
3 days ago:
2 Mar: ABC: Bill Shorten says he ‘doesn’t like’ Adani’s mega-mine but ‘can’t ban it because of sovereign risk’
By political reporter Allyson Horn
“I make no secret that I don’t like it very much” he said.
“But … I also respect the principle of Australian politics. That is, one government enters into contracts, then a future Government can’t just rip them up.
“To do so would be sovereign risk.”
Sovereign risk, in this instance, refers to the risk of Adani being detrimentally affected by a change in the Government’s policy or position…
“I don’t think the project is going to materialise, the Adani mining company seems to have missed plenty of deadlines, it doesn’t seem to stack up financially, commercially or indeed environmentally,” he said.
“[But] you can’t simply ban it and create sovereign risk.
“No party, even the Greens political party, can simply say they can simply ban something. You’ve got to adhere to the law.”
It had been reported by Sky News that Mr Shorten wanted to take a public stand on blocking the mine, but was talked down by senior colleagues.
Under questioning by reporters, he denied the conversation.
“No,” he said.
“No prime minister can simply ignore the law. No prime minister worth their salt should simply engage in massive sovereign risk.
“We’re not going to make Australia a nation who has a reputation for changing existing contracts.”
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-03-02/shorten-says-he-cant-ban-adani-mine-because-of-sovereign-risk/9503100
today, behind paywall, but found at PickeringPost, and basically the same old song the MSM has published already:
I don’t support the Adani project: Shorten
The Australian-2 hours ago
by BEN PACKHAM Political reporter, Canberra
Bill Shorten has intensified his opposition to the Adani coal mine ahead of a must-win fight with the Greens in the Batman by-election in just under a fortnight…
Today he went further, expressing his outright opposition to the $16.5 billion project.
“I don’t support the Adani project,” the Opposition leader told reporters today.
“It has been spoken about since 2011. That’s a matter of record. It has had numerous deadlines. If you believe the initial hype and boosterism about Adani, they’d have been shipping coal out of Australia for the last three years.
“So I am a sceptic, and I am not supportive of it. Labor has said it has got to stack up both commercially and environmentally.
“In terms of the commerce, no Australian bank will INVEST in it. No Australian super will invest in it. How many more deadlines can this business fail to meet?”
Mr Shorten failed to address a direct question on whether he gave an assurance to the Australian Conservation Foundation in January that he would use the federal laws to revoke Adani’s licence if it managed to get off the ground.
“In terms of my discussions with the ACF, I am grateful for the briefing they gave us,” he said.
“What I say to the ACF … is that Labor will respect previous contracts by previous administrations.
“We will act in the national interest based on the existing laws that we inherit at the time we form a government.”…
30
Adani has been vilified from day one by professional protesters and Bills own Get up organisation so it’s no wonder Adani struggle to get investment from OZ banks and super but now this I’m doubtful it will go ahead .
42
Get-up,
Rise-uP,
Anti-Fa,
-Soros…
-Links
estab
-lished.
51
Dont start me about super funds and their self righteous stances. I have to make a few changes in the last few years due to this.
21
Bradfield Scheme ( diverting Herbert and Burdekin inland to central QLD ) is very doable – does anyone know of any detailed engineering work done?
30
I’m a mechy/techy type not a ginger beer. That said I see no way around the intermittent availability of water. The commonly held belief in the south that our northern rivers flood every year is as false as the assumption that the wind blows all day every day except we are working on longer time scales. Even when the rivers DO flood they do so for just a few days, after that the locals will resent off take of THEIR water. I doubt any farmer will persevere when every third year he has a wipeout.
The only viable option might be the Hells Gate Dam on the west Atherton Tablelands. Searching on it ain’ t easy ’cause there are Hells Gates all over the world. My memory says it is a big dam that could be gravity fed to the black soil plains west of the divide. Out there the locals say the fence posts would grow if they had water.
I think Bradfield would champion wind power.
30
Hanrahan
“My memory says it is a big dam that could be gravity fed to the black soil plains west of the divide.”
Your memory better update on that and the effect of salt and irrigation. Those mitchell grass soils are the bottom of the last inland sea. And most have a significant salt layer at around 2 – 3 feet. Which is where the rainfall since has leached the salt and where it will stay short of irrigation or some politician delivering on an electoral promise to increase the rainfall.
40
Documentary film Amazing China debuts to enthusiastic crowds, not rent a crowd.
‘After the premiere of the documentary Amazing China on Feb 27, prolonged applause broke out in a Beijing auditorium. A retired civil servant said she had a flight to catch but kept watching the film until the end of the credits.
‘The 90-minute documentary, Amazing China, which is co-produced by China Central Television and China Film Corp, opened in theaters nationwide on Friday.
‘The film focuses on the major achievements the country has made since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in 2012 under Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era.
Speaking about the documentary, Wei Tie, the director, says: “The film arouses Chinese pride from deep inside.”
‘The documentary focuses on key Chinese infrastructure projects in aerospace, high-speed rail, the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge and the world’s largest single-dish telescope FAST.’
China Daily
30
Did it mention the flourishing organ trade, organs kindly supplied by the Falun Gong and political prisoners?
70
I hear they’ve got a few new islands too.
40
They built those islands from scratch and claim ownership, but that is the least of our worries, the B & R has reached the Gold Coast and Turnbull can’t say boo.
‘China’s Ministry of Culture has listed a Chinese developer’s planned Gold Coast theme park as a “key cultural trade and investment project” that is linked to the country’s ambitious Belt and Road investment plan.’ ABC
10
Unbelievable alarmist mistruth and frordulent reporting on a scale that was unprecedented.
Showing a storm from an east coast low as climate change .
Showing the results of cloud seeding gone wrong in Tasmania as flooding caused by climate change .
I think this report from four corners was nothing but an add for players in the climate mitigation industry .
84
5 Mar: ABC Four Corners: Weather Alert
How Australia’s warming climate is changing the way we live and work.
“This is very ‘now’. This isn’t a future problem which is 10 or 20 or 30 years (away).” Climate Risk Expert…
The temperatures are more erratic. We seem to get frosts in the middle of summer, we’ve had frosts nearly on Christmas day. We’re getting hot, dry weather in the middle of winter.” Cattle farmer.
“We were probably sceptics… but when we saw those 10 years of drought and the impact it was having on our business… our board decided that we needed to make some significant changes.” Leading wine maker…
This is a story that leaves the politics behind and shows what the challenges are for many people across Australia in the face of this ‘new normal’…
http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/weather-alert/9511070
4 Mar: ABC: Perth cool summer creates one of the best Swan Valley wine seasons in living memory
By Rebecca Dollery
Winemakers in Perth’s Swan Valley say a cooler than average summer has created one of their best seasons in living memory.
Perth has just had its mildest summer in 18 years, with an average temperature of 30 degrees Celsius and no days over 40C.
President of the Swan Valley and Regional Winemakers Association Yuri Berns said the cooler days and nights led to a later harvest because grapes had ripened at a slower, steadier rate…
“It’s certainly looking like the reds are going to be outstanding and the the whites are going to be even more outstanding because … white grapes have been able to retain natural acids because it’s been so cool,” Mr Berns said.
“With your cooler temperatures, you get better colour development in red wines, so you get more accumulation of colour, you get deeper colour red wines and much softer tannins.”
He said Margaret River and Pemberton were also looking very promising for white wines…
2018 is Perth’s second consecutive cool year…
Mr Berns said while growers were incredibly happy with the season, they could not bank on cooler summers becoming the norm.
“I’m no climate scientist but we know things have been getting warmer, and picking around Australia is on average about a month earlier than it was in the 1970s and 80s,” he said…
“I think we are at a pivotal point for adaptation, where those that believe in climate change will adapt, and those that won’t, won’t,” he said…
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-03-04/perth-cool-summer-creates-the-best-swan-river-wines-in-memory/9494874
20
Erl Happ is a winemaker in WA of some renown. His wines are made with meticulous care; so well in fact that he does not need to add preservatives so are less inclined to cause an adverse reaction. Some people have allergic response to preservatives.
He has a recent post covering his views on climate change:
https://climatechange1.wordpress.com
You will see he has a detailed grasp of atmospheric dynamics.
31
still my biggest concern – see comment #18 re CalPERS & Harvard:
4 Mar: UK Independent: Shehab Khan: Climate change poses a major risk to people’s pensions, MPs warn
Government admits there is “a lack of attention and outright misunderstanding remain widespread”
The Government has admitted that “a lack of attention and outright misunderstanding remain widespread” among fund trustees of their duty to take environmental risks into account
Climate risks posed to investments include increasing numbers of claims made to insurance firms related to extreme weather, fossil fuel companies losing value and energy businesses “being left behind” by the shift to a low carbon world.
The UK’s biggest pension funds are now being asked how they are protecting people’s savings from the risks of climate change.
The chairwoman of the parliamentary Environmental Audit Committee (EAC), ***Mary Creagh, has written to the top 25 pension funds in the UK to ask how they manage the risks that global warming poses to pension savings.
“The climate change risks of tomorrow should be considered by pension funds today. A young person auto-enrolled on a pension today may be 45 years away from retirement,” Ms Creagh said.
“Over that timescale these climate change risks will inevitably grow.
“We are examining whether pension funds are starting to take these risks into account in their financial decision making,” she added.
Asset owners, such as pension funds have a fiduciary duty to act in the best interests of their beneficiaries…
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/climate-change-mps-warn-pensions-at-risk-a8239506.html
5 Mar: Reuters: Lawmakers question biggest UK pensions over climate change risks
By Simon Jessop and Carolyn Cohn
“We want to know what pension funds are doing to safeguard people’s pensions from the financial risks of climate change,” Mary Creagh, Chair of the Environmental Audit Committee, said.
The request follows growing pressure from policy-makers across the world for investors to do more to manage and mitigate the risks of environmental change.
The 25 largest schemes, which collectively manage more than 550 billion pounds ($760 billion) in assets, include those managing retirement savings for the country’s universities as well as staff at BT and HSBC.
Pension fund investments in insurance companies could be at risk as insurers face higher pay-outs and investments in energy companies relying on fossil fuels could lose value as the world seeks to meet commitments to keep global warming, Creagh said in a statement.
Creagh asked in the letter if climate change risk was being considered by pension schemes at board level and what investment strategy changes they schemes were making.
In a separate letter, also published on Monday, the Department for Work and Pensions said there was still“widespread misunderstanding” on the part of pension scheme trustees on their duty in relation to environmental risks.
***Luke Hildyard, policy lead for stewardship and corporate governance at the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association, said the threat to pension fund investments from the economic impact of climate change was “definitely an issue that trustees should be making time to discuss and seeking advice on”.
https://www.reuters.com/article/britain-pensions-climatechange/lawmakers-question-biggest-uk-pensions-over-climate-change-risks-idUSL5N1QN2LQ
***Mary Helen Creagh MP FCIL … is a British Labour politician who has represented Wakefield as its Member of Parliament (MP) since 2005…
Creagh worked in Brussels for four years, first as an intern at the European Parliament and then for the European Youth Forum – Wikipedia
***Luke Hildyard pops up regularly in the CAGW-infested MSM:
June 2017: Financial Times: Pension funds pressed to protect portfolios from climate change
Only one in 20 schemes has taken steps to mitigate threats to investments, says survey
by Chris Flood
“It is ironic that the pace of response to this enormous issue is best described as glacial. The findings highlight the urgent need for the pensions industry to do more,” said Phil Edwards, Mercer’s global director of strategic research…
***Luke Hildyard, policy officer at the PLSA which represents 1,300 UK retirement funds with combined assets of £1tn, said it was wrong to assume that pension trustees who were responsible for investments were blase about the threat of climate change.
“But more needs to be done by regulators to encourage trustees to put effective climate change risk measures in place,” said Mr Hildyard…
“Investments in fossil fuels are not only harmful to the environment but put the sustainable future of our pensions at risk,” said Stephen Smellie, deputy convener of Unison Scotland.
https://www.ft.com/content/8fdb4768-581c-11e7-9fed-c19e2700005f
20
Yes, more of this eco-nonsense from the ABC last night too…..
“Can two walk together, lest they be agreed?”
( Amos 4:4 )
Big business has worked out they can make money and keep the UN sweet.
IMHO the UN will eventually be the ( brief ) occult boss of the world.
Note how the 10 Kings ( I suspect the currently forming 10 super-nations – EU, NAFTA, ASEAN, AU etc ) will all give their power to the Anti Christ – they are of one mind. We see this now – all the pollies of the planet are of one mind, driving forward in the eco-fake crisis, with the idea of creating a world govt to “save us”.
Christians know what is coming :
“10 And there are seven kings: five are fallen, and one is, and the other is not yet come; and when he cometh, he must continue a short space.
11 And the beast that was, and is not, even he is the eighth, and is of the seven, and goeth into perdition.
12 And the ten horns which thou sawest are ten kings, which have received no kingdom as yet; but receive power as kings one hour with the beast.
13 These have one mind, and shall give their power and strength unto the beast.”
( Rev 17:10-13 )
21
I don’t even drive, but I find the following strangely comforting:
3 Mar: NYT: Hiroko Tabuchi: The World Is Embracing S.U.V.s. That’s Bad News for the Climate
It’s the car of the future. It’s taking off in markets all over in the world.
The electric vehicle? Hardly. It’s the S.U.V., the rugged, off-road gas-guzzler that America invented and the world increasingly loves to drive.
Spurred by rising incomes and lower gas prices, drivers in China, Australia and other countries are ditching their smaller sedans for bigger rides at a rapid pace. For the first time, S.U.V.s and their lighter, more carlike cousins known as “crossovers” made up more than one in three cars sold globally last year, almost tripling their share from just a decade ago, according to new figures from the auto research firm JATO Dynamics.
“Everyone is jumping on S.U.V.s,” said Matthew Weiss, JATO Dynamics’ president for North America…
S.U.V.s are also less likely to go electric soon. There are technological hurdles to powering a larger car with batteries, and the perception among many automakers remains that drivers of S.U.V.s value power and performance, and don’t want to be constrained by the range anxiety of battery-powered cars.
For the moment, Tesla’s Model X is the only major fully electric S.U.V. on the market. The company has sold about 40,000 since they went on sale in 2015…
Volkswagen, which made no S.U.V.s to speak of a decade ago, plans to sell almost 20 new S.U.V. models worldwide by 2020, and expects those models to make up 40 percent of its global sales. Currently, Volkswagen sells just four S.U.V. models…
In North America, S.U.V.s and pickup trucks outsell all other car categories combined…
McKinsey, the global consulting firm, predicts that by 2022, one in every two cars sold in China will be an S.U.V…
Even western Europe — where in 2004, Ken Livingstone, who was mayor of London at the time, declared S.U.V. drivers “complete idiots” and threatened to charge them 25 pounds to enter the city — has fallen for the S.U.V. Sales in that region have more than doubled over the past five years, a clip four times as fast as the overall market, according to JATO data…
Automakers have a strong financial incentive to build and try to sell more S.U.V.s, which tend to be higher-end offerings with luxury trimmings that command premiums over the basic vehicles they are based on. A $60,000 truck, for example, can generate tens of thousands of dollars in operating profit.
On the other hand, most automakers still lose money on each electric vehicle they sell. The credit rating firm Moody’s recently warned that electric vehicles will likely generate low returns for automakers through the early 2020s…
One question that worries experts: Will the world embrace the S.U.V.’s even-more-polluting cousin, the all-American pickup truck?
There are signs this is already happening. Last year, Ford sold more than one million F-series pickup trucks — a fifth of them outside the United States — putting it within striking distance of unseating Toyota’s Corolla as the world’s best selling vehicle, according to tallies from JATO and Toyota…
The trucks, which cater to drivers looking for power and hauling might, are unlikely to go electric soon…
***“It seems to be an American male thing to think: ‘I may want to haul things,’” said Lewis Fulton, who co-directs the sustainable transportation program at the University of California, Davis, Institute of Transportation Studies. “If that caught on in other countries, it really wouldn’t help.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/03/climate/suv-sales-global-climate.html
******“It seems to be an American male thing”! great ending, NYT.
40
pat:
I had a drive in the Mitsubishi Outlander plug in hybrid recently. It’s a crossover I guess. Quite impressed with performance but note that it weighs 2.37 tonnes. That is a lot extra weight to move around and it certainly won’t save emissions.
50
While the trend in OZ has been to make smaller diesel motors and lighter Four wheel drives my spies tell me that Nissan are bringing the Titan model in to OZ , this thing is a beast of monumental proportions and features a stonking big 5.0litre Turbo charged V8 diesel .
Capable of towing over 5 tonnes and hopefully like most yanky diesels will have the Prius repelling Coaling function .
21
Sign me up…..
Toyota make the Tundra…beast of a machine…love the V8….mind you, toyota duringthe winter olympics were spruiking hybriods and hydrogen to make sure we “keep winter winter..”aka buying hynbids stops global wamring….
What a weird distorted world weve entered… I suspect the germans thought the same, as Hitler rose to power too…. look how that ended….
30
Too many of the new low cubic capacity diesel engines being offered here now are not likely to provide service beyond 150-200,000 kilometres of engine life, as compared to a comfortable 500,000 kilometres or more for the under-stressed old diesel engines, and the latest from companies such as Isuzu who have chosen to retain 3000 cc diesel engine for Australia and have recently (2017) produced a version of it specifically for Australian conditions, meaning suitable for tough country operation, not “mum’s taxi” suburban duties.
The Dodge Ram is gaining favour here for heavy duty towing like multi-Horse floats.
23
It was heartening to see the whole diesel thing blow up in the smug faces of the punters who shelled out big $$$$ for their presteige sludge burners. Logic says that unless you have huge temperatures, burning heavy sludge cant be as clean as burning petrol.
I put it on par with the clever con job to get punters to pay $1000 for a free linux distro ( aka smart phone).
00
We see an increasing number of these tanks up our way, towing boats back and forward to Lake Eildon. They look like a block of flats coming down the road.
10
They drive really badly along our road. We had one closely tailing us down the Maroonday Hwy yesterday and he had an enormously wide and high trailer and boat….overtook us when we were already doing 100kmh. Another one on the wrong side of double white lines on a bend near us ran our daughter off the road. As the edges of this narrowish, poorly surfaced road are very rough she was lucky to survive the rollover of her vehicle; her vehicle was written off. There are far too many twerps with large powerful vehicles who lack the brains and moral fibre to drive safely.
I’m all for decent-sized tough vehicles where needed but there are a lot of people unfit to drive them.
10
“Sailboat fuel – Wind. One of our infrequent (but wicked funny) contributors, Noah W., offered to sell several 55-gallon drums at a very attractive price.”
http://www.eastovershoe.com/tales/taledic.html
Repackaged as wind turbine fuel and a golden business opportunity in South Australia
50
Jo – I think this needs some serious coverage.
http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/weather-alert/9511070
“Across Australia, farmers, small businesses, government planners and major corporations have stopped waiting for politicians to decide whether climate change is real. They’re acting now.
“That debate can rage around us. If I say to my customers, ‘Don’t worry, in 200 years it will all be okay.’ That’s not going to cut it.” CEO
Mounting evidence suggests our changing climate is having an impact on everything – from what we grow, eat and drink, to house prices and the cost of insurance.
“If you own a home in one of those areas and you try to sell it, you may find that the buyer is saying, ‘Well, I’m not going to be able to insure it.’… Or even, ‘I can’t even get a mortgage on this house because the bank is saying, ‘Well, we don’t want the high-risk properties on our books.'” Climate Risk Expert
Four Corners has travelled from coast to coast to chart how Australians are adapting to the new weather challenges.”
This comment – “”If you own a home in one of those areas and you try to sell it, you may find that the buyer is saying, ‘Well, I’m not going to be able to insure it.’… Or even, ‘I can’t even get a mortgage on this house because the bank is saying, ‘Well, we don’t want the high-risk properties on our books.'”
Sounds ominously like trying to get the banking and insurance industry to become the enforcer bully boys for the climate movement…..
This is kind of hidden, but a real worry.
Its really Agenda 21 / Biosphere Rewilding in action
Case in point – you buy a coastal property. Its deemed “at risk” for sea level rise. Ok, so there is no reall sea level rise, buta ccording to the “holy writ” of climate science, it is at risk.
No insurer will touch you, no bank will lend.
The coastal property is now effectively worthless, so in time it gets bulldozed. This effectively allows the UN to control, via the climate movement, the coastal lands and access to these lands as its considered “at risk” and worthless.
Result – humans driven out, land re-wilded ( no/little human habitation ) , and the occult UN wins.
Of course the banks and the insurers have to basically collude with the UN. They don’t care ( much like the cholesterol nonsense that massively drives up health insurance premiums ) whether its bogus science or not – they will go with whatever makes money and is low hassle for them.
71
KARL BRAGANZA: ‘Were talking about predicting conditions that we’ve never seen before that’s a test of our modelling capability for example.’
Yes… yes but the models are under utilised, perhaps they should feed them with paleo climate history, or is that going too far?
31
The claim by Braganza that temperatures began creeping up in the late 1950s sounds dodgy.
http://jennifermarohasy.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Screen-Shot-2014-01-28-at-3.52.51-PM1.png
23
‘Cosmic rays penetrate commercial airlines, dosing passengers and flight crews so much that pilots are classified by the International Commission on Radiological Protection as occupational radiation workers. Some research shows that cosmic rays can seed clouds and trigger lightning, potentially altering weather and climate. Furthermore, there are studies linking cosmic rays with cardiac arrhythmias in the general population.’
Anthony Watts
41
4 Mar: UK Telegraph: Tony Diver: UK weather: Big freeze death toll could rise above 2,000 as it emerges Met Office warned ministers a month ago
The number of people who have died in cold homes in the UK might reach 100 per day this winter, a charity warned in an analysis of Office for National Statistics figures…
Around 12,000 properties are without water in the London and Thames Valley area after extreme weather hit the region, as Thames Water asked households to limit the amount they were using…
The estimated rise in deaths, compared to a five-year average, comes as thousands face broken down boilers and fuel poverty, preventing them from heating their homes to safe temperatures…
On Sunday, the Met Office’s chief long-range forecaster revealed that he had warned ministers a month ago about incoming cold weather.
Adam Scaife told The Sunday Times how he had stocked up his own home with logs and food after briefing the Cabinet Office on warnings about the big freeze.
The Met Office said Mr Scaife was referring to a three-month outlook and that the extent of the cold weather only became clear around 10 days before it hit…
eter Smith, director of policy for National Energy Action, said that the weather would likely see an average of as many as 100 people per day perishing in cold homes this winter, compared to a five-year average of 80 people per day.
The total number of cold-home deaths due to the “Beast from the East” cold front is therefore estimated to be more than 2,300.
At least ten deaths have so far been attributed to the cold weather, but the true death toll is likely to take longer to emerge due to the increase in strokes and heart attacks linked to cold weather.
Mr Smith’s analysis is based on ONS data from previous years and a comparable period of cold weather in the winter of 2010-11…
British Gas, the UK’s largest home energy supplier, said yesterday that it had received more than 136,000 boiler breakdown reports during the cold weather period, and that many of its engineers had cancelled holiday to work on customers’ heating systems…
While temperatures are forecast to increase this week, the Met Office last night had yellow weather warnings for snow and ice for parts of northern England, Scotland and Northern Ireland until 11am on Monday.
A second warning for snow in the north of Scotland was issued for Tuesday.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/03/04/uk-weather-big-freeze-death-toll-could-rise-2000-emerges-met/
5 Mar: UK Telegraph: Thousands of homes left without water because of burst pipes as Storm Emma gives way to great thaw
By Helena Horton and Mike Wright
Thousands of homes have been without water throughout the weekend, with some in London told not to expect have running water in their houses until midnight on Tuesday. Many have been without working taps since Saturday morning…
Some councillors have resorted to buying water themselves to deliver to vulnerable residents, as they said Thames Water did not deliver it on time…
Thames Water told the Telegraph they were investigating the alleged advice given to the family to boil snow…
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/03/04/please-dont-use-water-anything-not-essential-thawing-temperatures/
00
Re: the alleged warnings from the UK Met Office to ministers about an incoming freeze:
there has been some correspondence on the subject at “Notalotofpeopleknowthat” in which it appears that the met Office changed its story during Jan , having first assured ministers that the winter would be mild :
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2018/02/24/met-office-predicted-the-cold-weather-that-they-did-not-predict/
To quote :
–“Not only did they not predict the SSW event, they even said there was “little likelihood” of one. (It is worth noting that, as long range forecaster, Scaife is responsible for this).
OK, this was at the end of January, and Scaife claims that he knew about it four weeks ago, around 3rd Feb, so maybe there was no signs of the cold weather in the week beforehand.
If we look at the Met Office’s News Release archives, here, we find that the earliest mention of any anything untoward was on 9th Feb. (The previous news release was on 5th Feb, and made no mention at all of anything unusually cold coming).”–
It seems to me that the Met Office are thinking that they might be blamed for the excess mortality (although most reasonable people would concede that weather forecasting is never easy) and are trying to put the blame for lack of preparation on the Govt – a rather pathetic tactic , better to admit the difficulties of forecasting and urge that Govts should always be prepared for the worst .
The problem with that strategy is that it contradicts all that the Met Office has been saying for years about global warming eliminating cold winters and now it is in a mess of its own devising. “oh what a tangled web –etc”.
10
My favorite money making scheme ” carbon farming ” !
http://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2018-03-06/carbon-farming-killing-the-community-or-saving-the-world/9515836
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More drama from climate change central .
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-03-06/perth-records-warmest-night-in-two-years/9517626
Note the amount they claim it was the hottest Evah by .
12
A humidity of 40-50% is not unusual for Perth, especially when the afternoon sea breeze comes in. And 26 is not really a hot night, and in any case it was only one night in a year.
12
Just seen a doco on the ABC re Perth’s imminent disaster cf Climate Change but there was not one person who offered an alternative view. How bad is Perth’s water supply? Are all the trees dying through lack of water? etc etc. People dying because they don’t know how to put a wet cloth around their necks and drink lots of water in a heat wave
Hope you have a counter article ready, Jo, as they quote ‘records’ that go back 30 years!! What happened to any of the earlier ones that recorded really hot spells, severe rain etc?
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Unfortunately, a counter article published here, relative to the ABCs audience will have limited reach and make little impact on members of the audience that watched that 4 Corners story. What we in AUS. need, aside from another Trump to replace Turnbull, is another UK style Channel 4 that televised ‘The Great Global Warming Swindle’ some years ago.
30
I remember another story of dying trees but in Victoriastan and also the missing Bellbirds that used to frequent the forest in question and it turned out the bellbirds were cultivating some sort of sap sucking organism that turned the sap into a sugar like substance .
The result was no leaves and dead trees .
21
Perth seems to have an adequate water supply at the moment, now that we have two desal plants working. We can still pump more water from our aquifers if required. And the reason the BOM are only quoting 30 years is the temp measuring site move to Mt Lawley, a warmer site. This move was the second major move, each time to a warmer site. But they never mention this 30 years when talking about warmer weather – it’s always “the warmest evahhh…”
22
Since Perth normally has a long dry period over summer with little rain, it’s quite normal to lose trees towards the end of summer.
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5 Mar: CarbonBrief: Zeke Hausfather: New scenarios show how the world could limit warming to 1.5C in 2100
Now a paper in Nature Climate Change (LINK) presents the results from a new modelling exercise using six different “integrated assessment models” (IAMs) to limit global temperatures in 2100 to below 1.5C.
The results suggest that 1.5C is achievable if global emissions peak in the next few years and massive amounts of carbon are sucked out of the atmosphere in the second half of the century through a proposed technology known as bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS).
One challenge with the goal of limiting warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels is that it was not clearly defined in the text of the Paris Agreement. For example, scientists disagree on what, exactly, pre-industrial temperatures were and how best to define them, as well as what dataset to use…
In their new paper, a team of 23 energy researchers choose the stricter interpretation of the target, aiming for a 66% chance of avoiding more than 1.5C warming in the year 2100. However, they allow for temperatures to exceed 1.5C over the course of the century as long as they fall back down to below 1.5C by the year 2100. This is known as an “overshoot” scenario…
Note: Accompanying the publication of the study is a newly updated SSP emissions and scenario database (LINK), which includes data for all SSP scenarios.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/new-scenarios-world-limit-warming-one-point-five-celsius-2100
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Read here in comments recently, re Wind Turbines, that the German insurers for the Wind Industry have mandated that the gearboxes must be replaced at 5 year intervals.
Can anyone provide a link to the source for this ?
Also, does anyone know if Wind Farm operators in AUS are also subject to similar maintenance schedule mandates?
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will try to find a link, if one exists. however,
5 Mar: WindPowerMonthly: Germany’s ‘Energiewende architect’ leaves energy ministry
GERMANY: Following talks by coalition partners in Germany’s new government, the country’s energy minister Rainer Baake has left his role.
Green party member Baake — often described as the “architect of Germany’s Energiewende” — decided to leave his post as permanent secretary for energy at the federal economy and energy ministry, casting a dim light on future energy policy now that Germany’s new “grand coalition” government is, at last, poised to take up office…
But Baake described the agreement — widely cited from his request to be released from the office he has held since 2014 — as “a bitter disappointment for the sectors, Energiewende and climate protection”.
The transition from fossil fuels to greater efficiency and renewable energies is “much too hesitant” undermining international credibility of the Energiewende, he added.
https://www.windpowermonthly.com/article/1458667/germanys-energiewende-architect-leaves-energy-ministry
5 Mar: ClimateChangeNews: ‘Mr Energiewende’ quits German government in protest at coalition deal
Germany’s new deal was a “bitter disappointment” for those looking for a modern climate and energy policy, said outgoing energy secretary Rainer Baake
By Clean Energy Wire and Karl Mathiesen
Germany’s energy state secretary Rainer Baake has quit after four years in charge of the country’s flagship Energiewende policy…
Baake, a Green Party politician whose appointment by then economy minister Sigmar Gabriel was a surprise at the time, criticised the new government’s energy and climate plans in a resignation letter seen by Clean Energy Wire.
The plans for the energy transition (Energiewende) in the new coalition agreement were a “bitter disappointment”, Baake wrote to incoming energy and economy minister Peter Altmaier.
The new government was “missing out on the opportunity to thoroughly modernise Germany’s economy”, Baake said, adding that forces who wanted to preserve old and “climate-damaging” structures had apparently been stronger…
Saxony’s state premier Michael Kretschmer called for Baake’s resignation last week, saying that he was responsible for “ideologically charging up energy policy”…
http://www.climatechangenews.com/2018/03/05/mr-energiewende-quits-german-government-protest-coalition-deal/
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5 years is about the average working life (before failure) of the gearbox used in the majority of wind turbines currently in use.
Failure of the gearbox can be catastrophic , destroying the entire turbine…. Fire and colapse etc..so its best avoided. They have preventitive maintenance programmss to inspect and replace defective units.
Some modern wind generators are “direct drive” with no gearbox to avoid these known failure and cost issues.
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Try this..
https://www.windpowerengineering.com/gearboxes/lessons-learned-lead-new-ideas-gearbox-bearings/
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Boy that seems like a very short service life. As a boy growing up and working in my fathers ornamental iron business I used to twist 1/2″ x 1/2″ hot roll steel bars used in railings, ornamental doors, etc. The machine to do this uses the manual transmission out of a 1934 Dodge truck hooked to an electric motor. Load the bar and pull up on a lever and the transmission goes into 1st gear and starts twisting the bar. Once the bar has the proper number of twists slap down on the lever and the transmission goes into neutral. The machine was built by an uncle of mine before I was born and is still in use today. I’m 62 years old. That machine has to have twisted well over a million bars by now.
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The gearbox makers have learned a lot from wind turbine use !
These are a little different to that old Dodge gearbox !…
The ratio is about 90:1 using a comination of planetary and spur gearing , hence there is a big range of very high torque low speed , and high speed low torque , combined with speed changes and shock loads etc, ..all in one box.
Bearing failure is the biggest issue as lubrication is a compromise with such a large speed and load range to deal with., and operate 24/7 , 365 days per year.
400 lts of gearbox oil is changed every 6 months !.
Some systems now have separate high and low, speed gear box sections, to allow different oil formulations and viscosities to be used.
These Gboxes weigh 60 tons or more !
Over $7.0 billion worth of gearboxes per year are predicted to be needed by 2020.
00
didn’t find anything but this is interesting:
9 Feb: Reuters: RPT-FOCUS-Vestas bets on geared turbines to propel it to margin goal
By Christoph Steitz
One of the main reasons Vestas expects to hit that goal, two sources close to the Danish company told Reuters, is its exclusive focus on manufacturing turbines that use a gearbox to amplify the energy transmitted from the rotor to the generator, and its rejection of rival direct-drive technology.
This strategy diverges from its major competitors who either manufacture both or focus solely on direct-drive turbines, where the rotor directly drives the generator. They include Siemens Gamesa, General Electric, Xinjiang Goldwind Science and Technology and Enercon.
Each technology has its advantages; direct-drive turbines are more expensive to produce as they require large amounts of raw materials, including copper, steel, and rare earths, but have lower maintenance costs over their lifetimes.
No turbine maker publicly discloses its prices, but three sources at top industry players told Reuters that selling prices of direct-drive turbines are, in some instances, more than 10 percent higher than those of geared turbines.
Two of the sources said that Vestas’ business model was more resilient in the face of the cost pressures squeezing wind farm developers and their turbine suppliers.
Last year, auction systems to award farm contracts were introduced which involved lower government handouts and favoured the lowest bidders.
Asked about Vestas’s focus on geared turbines, CEO Anders Runevad told Reuters: “I wouldn’t say it’s religion, but we have no reason to change the strategic way that we have taken, which is about gearboxes.”…
However there are also clear risks in Vestas’s strategy of shunning a direct-drive technology that has been steadily growing in popularity.
Direct-drive turbines raised their share in the global market to 27 percent in 2017, up from just a fifth in 2010, according to consultancy MAKE. This is expected to rise to about a third in 2021, according to research firm GlobalData.
The weakness of geared turbines, according to Navigant Research, is that their gearboxes need to be replaced every 7-10 years, incurring costs of $300,000-400,000 each time – around a tenth of the costs of the turbine itself. The lifespan of a wind farm is at least 20 years.
A spokeswoman for Xinjiang Goldwind, which exclusively makes direct-drive turbines, said the technology had a competitive advantage over geared rivals because of factors including reliability and the elimination of over 1,000 components in the transmission systems needed by gearbox turbines.
Of the top five global players, Vestas has a 15.5 percent market share; Spanish-listed Siemens Gamesa 13.9; U.S. firm General Electric 12.7; China’s Xinjiang Goldwind 11.4; and Germany’s Enercon 5.9 pct, according to MAKE. Vestas is the only one to focus exclusively on geared turbines…
https://www.reuters.com/article/vestas-wind-results-gearbox/rpt-focus-vestas-bets-on-geared-turbines-to-propel-it-to-margin-goal-idUSL8N1PY8EW
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tonight SBS Vice channel has the following 7.30-9.30pm (maybe not the first time it is being shown – not sure):
SBS: The Third Industrial Revolution
Synopsis
The global economy is in crisis. Our biosphere’s inability to absorb human activity, combined with the exhaustion of natural resources, declining productivity, slow growth, rising unemployment, and steep inequality, forces us to rethink our economic models. Where do we go from here? In this compelling feature-length documentary, social and economic theorist Jeremy Rifkin lays out a road map to usher in a new era of sustainable development. A Third Industrial Revolution will unfold when three technologies emerge and converge: new communication, new sources of energy, and new modes of mobility. But, in the context of climate change, it needs to happen fast. Change of this magnitude requires political will and a profound ideological shift.
Wikipedia: Jeremy Rifkin
Rifkin has been advising the leadership of the People’s Republic of China in recent years. The Huffington Post reported from Beijing in October 2015 that “Chinese Premier Li Keqiang has not only read Jeremy Rifkin’s book, The Third Industrial Revolution, but taken it to heart”, he and his colleagues having incorporated ideas from this book into the core of the country’s thirteenth Five-Year Plan…
Rifkin has taught at the Wharton School’s Executive Education Program at the University of Pennsylvania since 1995, where he instructs CEOs and senior management on transitioning their business operations into sustainable economies. Rifkin is ranked #123 in the WorldPost / HuffingtonPost 2015 global survey of “The World’s Most Influential Voices.”…
Rifkin is also the President of the TIR Consulting Group, LLC, in connection with a wide range of industries including renewable energy, power transmission, architecture, construction, IT, electronics, transport, and logistics…
In 1993, Rifkin launched the Beyond Beef Campaign, a coalition of six environmental groups including Greenpeace, Rainforest Action Network, and Public Citizen, with the goal of encouraging a 50% reduction in the consumption of beef, arguing that methane emissions from cattle has a warming effect 23 times greater than carbon dioxide…
Rifkin’s book, The Age of Access, published in the year 2000, was the first to introduce the idea that society is beginning to move from ownership of property in markets, to access to services in networks, giving rise to the Sharing Economy…
He currently works out of an office in Bethesda, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, D.C…
Opponents have attacked the lack of scientific rigor in his claims as well as some of the tactics he has used to promote his views. The Harvard scientist Stephen Jay Gould characterized Rifkin’s 1983 book “Algeny” as “a cleverly constructed tract of anti-intellectual propaganda masquerading as scholarship”…
July 2017: BusinessInsider: A key player in China and the EU’s ‘third industrial revolution’ describes the economy of tomorrow
by Elena Holodny
Jeremy Rifkin is an adviser to the EU leadership and that of the People’s Republic of China. He was an adviser to German Chancellor Angela Merkel on the third industrial revolution.
He is a principal architect of the EU’s long-term third industrial revolution economic vision called Smart Europe and is advising the European Commission on the deployment of the plan across the continent…
RIFKIN: On the downside, while I think everybody is interested, especially the millennial generation, moving toward planetary interconnectivity, we’re equally worried about the darknet, especially what’s happened in the last few weeks.
How do we address network neutrality when the whole world is connected? How do we ensure governments don’t purloin this for political purposes? It’s already happening. Look at Russia on the American election…
What’s happening here is capitalism’s given birth to this sharing economy, basically, and it was not expected. It’s very fuzzy at this point, this little fledgling baby. You know, some of it’s capitalism’s trying to absorb into it, like Uber. In other cases, the sharing economy is becoming its own independent entity, like Wikipedia.
But what needs to be understood is that regardless of the confused interaction between the capitalist market and its little fledgling baby is that sharing economy is the first new economic system that’s entered onto the world stage since capitalism and socialism. So it’s a remarkable historical event, and the millennials are already in a hybrid economic system each day…
So here’s this website (Wikipedia), and think about this: In less than 16 years, I think it’s been, a whole generation around the world has constructed the knowledge of the world for free. Contributing their social capital to construct the knowledge. We’ve democratized the knowledge of the world in less than 16 years and the accuracy is good because this is a commons…
Now in Wikipedia it’s really interesting. [If you put something incorrect up on Wikipedia] within minutes there are people crawling all over that sentence saying, “This is wrong” or “I want to change this” or “You’ve got to include an amplification,” et cetera. So there’s this massive checks and balances that actually makes that accuracy work. This is the kind of model that we — and I’m not sure why no one’s discussing this — that we now have to begin to apply to fake news…
So let’s go back to Germany and see how this has worked out. It’s been almost 11 years since that first conversation with the chancellor. I’ve been working Germany for these years. Right now, 33% of our electricity is now powering Germany. Germany, this great economic country, is now zero marginal cost solar and wind, right now. We’ll be at 40% by 2020. What’s interesting there is the fixed cost. What’s happened — and it’s not knowledgeable in this country in the US but it is in Europe and China where we work — is that solar and wind have been on a plunging exponential curve on a fixed cost just like computers…
What’s happened in solar and wind is a similar exponential curve for 20 years and now it’s breaking the entire energy industry into a disruption. A solar watt, one solar watt, fixed cost: $US78 in 1979. In May, 53 cents. And in 18 months, 35 cents. So we’re on an exponential curve in the drop of the fixed costs…
None of this is discussed in America, so here’s what’s actually happening on the ground. There are now, because the fixed costs have plummeted, there are now power and transmission companies, many of them part of our global group, who are buying solar and wind 20-year contracts right now, 4 cents a kilowatt hour. The Berkeley government labs have said they now are producing wind at 2.8 cents and solar at 3.5 cents a kilowatt hour.
To give you an understanding of what this is about, this means it’s already over for coal. It’s gone. It doesn’t make a difference what anyone — the White House — wants to do. Solar and wind are now cheaper in many places than some fossil fuels and within the next two years, three, four, five years at the most. What this exponential curve does isn’t going to go away. It is totally over for fossil fuels and nuclear. Nuclear’s actually gone out…
So what I said to the power and transmission companies in Europe: E.ON was the first company to come to me back about five years ago and they said, “Would you debate our chairman, Mr. Teysson?” — who’s still there. So we had a two-and-half-hour debate and I said to him, “You’re not leaving the second industrial revolution tomorrow morning, but you’d better understand you’re in stranded assets. This is going to be the biggest bubble in history, and you are in stranded assets here. You have to ease out your legacy fossil-fuel business for your power transmission, getting it from fossil fuels, and then you have to ease into your sunrise new business portfolio for a third industrial revolution business model. And they’re different models that require different business arrangements.”
I said, “In the new business model, you make more money in the third industrial revolution by selling less and less and less electricity.” He said, “You’ve lost me.”…
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/jeremy-rifkin-interview-2017-6?r=US&IR=T
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From this quote I deduce that Mr Teysson is a smart and polite person. Most people would dismiss this dill in much harsher terms. There is absolutely no point to a grid connected to wind and solar generation. Transmission grids only make sense where there is concentrated sources of power generation. Wind and solar energy are widely dispersed and anyone with the required capital can collect it and make use of it.
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I was once sitting in a room at Cisco Systems in San Jose listening to their then CEO talking about the impact of his company and the then future of IP Telephony. A dynamic chap as you would expect , strutting around the room telling us how he told the phone company CEO’s that they would go broke as he took away their traffic.
Years later the phone companies are still there , Cisco battles with a sea of competitors and the world veers ownward. Predictions, difficult, future and all that.
10
Couldn’t be bothered giving the links but Australias agriculture output is down meaning farmer are getting less because of climate change but on the same leftist news site reports about how good the weather has been for farmers and how they’re raking in the dollars .
Ahh abc you’ve done it again !
41
Record meat and wool prices for the sheep farmers apparently, according to VIC ABC news tonight. Paying down debt and building farm infrastructure for this and the next few years. Coupled with increasing grain and beef production with good prices, oh woe is me the climate is such a disaster.
40
They found the sunken wreck of the WW II Aircraft Carrier USS Lexington CV-2. Lexington and her sister ship Saratoga CV-3 were laid down as Battle Cruisers originally but converted to aircraft carriers due to the restrictions on the size and number of the ships of the line in the Washington Naval treaty. Battle cruisers were ships designed to carry battleship ordinance on a lighter, less armored hull, than a battleship there by making them faster ships with heavy fire power but more vulnerable than a battleship. The famous HMS Hood was a battle cruiser.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/aircraft-carrier-uss-lexington-sunk-during-wwii-found-in-coral-sea/ar-BBJVlYA?li=AA4Zpp&ocid=spartandhp
Because it was designed to be a fast ship the Lexington had an experimental and expensive Steam turbo electric drive. Oil fired steam turbines drove generators which in turn drove huge electric motors. One on each of the four propeller shafts. So the Lexington could generate over 140,000 Kw of DC electricity. Thus in 1929 when the state of Washington was suffering drought and the reservoirs feeding their hydroelectric dams system were getting dangerously low the then new Lexington tied up to the dock at Tacoma and helped supply power to city. It gave the Navy a chance to run static tests on the power plants and of course helped the city. This lasted less than two months as the rains came and the emergency passed for Tacoma but Seattle was still hurting and requested the Lexington to come there to supply power after it left Tacoma. The Navy, having their data and having made the PR points, declined.
http://seawavesmagazine.blogspot.com/2014/10/uss-lexington-provides-electricity-to.html
Aircraft carriers are really floating bombs. They must store large amounts of flammable aviation fuel the explosive ordinance for the their aircraft and defensive arms in a hull with little or no armor protection. Lexington was sunk in the battle of the Coral Sea when fumes from battle damaged pipelines leaking 100 octane aviation fuel exploded. The Navy learned their lesson from that and developed a system to quickly purge the aviation fuel lines of gasoline and fill them with CO2 when an attack on the carrier was imminent. It was a trick the Japanese never caught on to.
30
Thanks RAH,
Great analysis of aircraft carrier vulnerability.
But also very effective and devastating strike platforms. WW2 provides many examples
20
The British Aircraft carriers that eventually served with the US fleet in WW II had armored decks. It made them much more survivable and that was demonstrated several times when British carriers took Kamikaze hits and quickly restarted flight operations when such a hit would have put a US carrier out of action. But the cost of the armored deck was a slower ship that was relatively top heavy and could carry far fewer aircraft and less fuel and arms for the aircraft. Since the aircraft and their strike capability are the reason for the ships existence the US opted for wooden flight decks allowing them to carry not only considerably more aircraft but also the fuel and arms for those aircraft to make more sorties before they needed replenishment. It was a matter of philosophy in war making and also one that demonstrates national character. The US could construct and float massive numbers of ships, the UK could not. By the end of 1944 90% of the tonnage of all sea going bottoms afloat had been produced by the US. The massive ship building program was truly an industrial miracle and a major key to it was steel and metals production and that is why I agree with President Trump concerning his threat to use tariffs.
30
Here we go again! The stream of climate excrement from the media never ends. They just repackage and recycle the same stinky stuff over and over again like a dog eating it’s own vomit.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/disturbing-before-and-after-images-show-what-major-us-cities-could-look-like-in-the-year-2100/ss-BBJD7VN?ocid=spartanntp#image=1
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A question for Tony from OZ if I may.
I am a little confused. I am in the middle of an argument on Facebook with a claimed WindPower engineer and trying to do a comparison of WindPower generation between the country of Denmark and the current situation here in AUS. On the latest figures that doctor Google can supply, Denmark has 6100 turbines for a total installed capacity of 5300MW, that supply an average of 44% of Baseload requirements to its population of five and three quarter million people,about the same number as the state of Victoria, living in an area of 43000 square KM,Vic= 227000 sq km, whereas Australia apparently has about one third as many turbines (2016) for an installed capacity of 4327 MW. What’s going on here ? Is Denmark being honest and quoting actual average output, while AUS is being disingenuous and quoting nameplate capacity ?
40
Anero. http://anero.id/energy/wind-energy Lists 4917 MW of wind turbines in australia, that on a good day, occasionally output a combined 3000MW of useable power.
Numbers of actual turbines will not correlate as Denmarks machines are generally older than the ones in Aus, and will likely have a smaller individual capacity (average capacity less tha 1 MW ?)..
..whilst newer turbines can be 2, 3, and more MW per unit
00
6 Mar: CBC: NB Power’s costly electric charging stations generating little revenue
Utility plans to add more charging stations in next year
By Robert Jones
NB Power’s high-profile network of electric car charging stations has not been doing much business, records show, with several locations operating less than one hour per week in December and generating little income for the utility.
NB Power has been questioned closely about its investment in electric vehicle charging stations at its ongoing rate hearing in front of the Energy and Utilities board, which is in recess until March 19…
Not many electric cars in province
Still there are so few electric cars in New Brunswick, the charging stations are doing little business and are budgeted to lose money until 2028…
Last October, the utility unveiled a new “level-2” charging station at the Atlantic Host hotel in Bathurst. N.B., at a ceremony considered significant enough to attract two provincial cabinet ministers.
But records show in December only three vehicles were charged there during the month for a total of 41 minutes. That’s about $1 worth of electricity.
Other centres did even less business in December.
NB Power’s charging station in Perth-Andover served two cars for the month and stations in Richibucto, N.B., and Tracadie, N.B., had one customer each.
There are an estimated 88 electric vehicle chargers available for public use in New Brunswick, almost one for every car…
NB Power owns 26 and the rest belong to various private organizations…
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/nb-power-costly-electric-charging-station-generate-little-revenue-1.4563420
10
Many of the concepts presented in this group discussion presented by Fairewinds energy have already been discussed by many here. Diverse sources are good to look at, so here is another.
fairewindsenergy
Published on Nov 17, 2016
“A Lost Opportunity: $8.2 Trillion on New Nukes cuts CO2 only 9%?”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qWVYM3dmOU
“In this podcast the Fairewinds Crew interviews University of Vermont graduates Sam Ghazey, Jon Liebherr, Greyson Webb, and Brandon Welch, about their internship with Fairewinds Energy Education and the project they completed, entitled Nuclear Energy: An Analysis of Total Carbon Emissions and Total Cost of Ownership versus Renewable Technologies. The concept for this project was developed following a presentation by Fairewinds chief engineer Arnie Gundersen at Northwestern University in April, 2015 that took an economic perspective in the comparison of nuclear energy to the escalation in renewable technological capacity.”
00
5 Mar: BBC: Met Office boss Rob Varley stands down
The chief executive of the Met Office has stood down with immediate effect.
Rob Varley is being replaced on a temporary basis at the national weather service by his deputy, Nick Jobling.
The BBC understands his exit follows an intervention by the top civil servant at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.
This is believed to relate to concerns about “governance and management controls” at the public body, which employs more than 1,000 staff.
In a short statement, the Met Office said its operations and services were wholly unaffected by the decision…
Mr Varley, who began his career as a weather forecaster, had been chief executive since 2014, having first joined the organisation in 2007.
—
behind paywall:
Met Office chief Rob Varley quit in middle of the storm
The Times-12 hours ago
The head of the Met Office secretly quit last week as Storm Emma hit Britain. Rob Varley stepped down from his role as chief executive last Thursday after an investigation identified mismanagement relating to spending controls and governance, according to a Whitehall source
5 Mar: UK Telegraph: Met Office chief executive sacked amid questions over ‘governance and management’
By Robert Mendick
The Met Office has been plunged into crisis after its chief executive was sacked over problems with “governance and management controls” at the £170 million a year public body.
Rob Varley was ordered to resign from his £160,000 post by the most senior civil servant at the Department for Business Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), which oversees the national weather service.
Mr Varley, who had worked at the Met Office for 34 years beginning as a trainee forecaster in 1983, agreed to step aside…
It comes at a pivotal time for the Met Office, which lost the contract to provide forecasting services for the BBC to its rival MeteoGroup. It will stop providing forecasts later this month. The Met Office has provided data for the BBC’s weather forecasts since the corporation’s first radio weather bulletin in November 1922.
An internal report by Sir John Beddington, the Met Office’s chairman and the Government’s former chief scientific adviser, raised concerns over the “governance arrangements and management controls” within the chief executive’s department, said a BEIS spokesman.
The findings of the internal investigation were then passed to Alex Chisholm, the permanent secretary at BEIS, who requested that Mr Varley resign. “He agreed to step down after being told to step down,” said the BEIS spokesman.
The Government refused to say exactly what the problem was but insisted it concerned management around the chief executive’s office and said the problem was “not on a huge scale”.
The Met Office declined to say why its chief executive had been forced to resign. A spokesman said it had come as a surprise and nobody had been informed of the reason…
The Met Office’s annual report raised a “significant governance and control issue” over “a particular product development and a bid which resulted in incorrect pricing and specifications for some key services”.
The report went on: “The specific issues have been addressed but these processes are being analysed to identify the root causes and to develop appropriate remedial actions.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/03/05/met-office-chief-executive-sacked-amid-questions-governance/
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6 Mar: ClimateChangeNews: Video: Michael Bloomberg appointed UN climate envoy
The New York billionaire immediately called on Donald Trump to revise his views on climate change and show he was a “great leader”
By Karl Mathiesen
Former New York mayor and businessman Michael Bloomberg was appointed climate envoy by UN chief António Guterres on Monday…
On Monday, Bloomberg said he hoped Trump would change his mind.
“And if that’s the case, that shows a great leader who when facts change, and they recognise something different, they’re not bound to what they did before, they’re willing to change,” he said.
“And I think it’s fair to say this president does change his views – generally it’s one day to the next, but over a longer period of time.”…
“Very little depends today in relation to climate change, on central government,” secretary general Guterres told reporters on Monday…
“The world has those that follow and those that lead. And those that lead, some lead in the wrong direction and some lead in the right direction,” Guterres said at the news conference, which was reported by the New York Times.
Of Bloomberg, he said: “You are of those that lead and have always led in the right direction and it is an enormous privilege for me to be able to work so closely with you.”
http://www.climatechangenews.com/2018/03/06/video-michael-bloomberg-appointed-un-climate-envoy/
behind paywall:
5 Mar: NYT: Somini Sengupta: U.N. Chief Picks a Very Rich New Yorker (Not Named Trump) for Climate Job
5 Mar: NY Post: Mike Bloomberg to lead UN’s climate change initiative
By Joe Tacopino
Bloomberg was assigned to boost the UN Climate Summit in 2019 and to mobilize more ambitious action to implement the 2015 Paris Climate Accord, according to Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
Speaking at a ceremony officially appointing the billionaire businessman, Guterres said temperatures are rising faster than expected and the Arctic ice cap is “shrinking much more quickly and dramatically than in the past — so climate change is running faster than we are.”…
shilling for “unreliables”, as always:
5 Mar: WRAL: Associated Press: Edith M. Lederer: Bloomberg: Trump will be ‘great’ if he accepts climate deal
Bloomberg has urged world leaders not to follow Trump, and has pledged to save the Paris agreement
Last October, for example, his foundation donated $64 million to a Sierra Club program seeking to phase out coal-fired power plants and reduce planet-warming carbon emissions…
Bloomberg said Monday that his foundation is interested “in spending a lot of money in helping us understand that climate change is real and it’s measurable.” …
As examples, he said that for the first time the North Pole in the middle of the winter had temperatures above melting, oceans over the last 20 or so years have risen, and there are more frequent and powerful storms. In addition, Bloomberg said, there are floods where there used to be droughts — and droughts where there used to be floods.
He said the solution is for people everywhere to get together and change the way they live, “and we have to be a little smarter about how we generate energy.”…
But the U.N. chief said there are two pieces of “very good news,” the secretary-general said: “Today, the cheapest energy is green energy” and the “green economy” is the economy of the future…
Guterres pointed to the work Bloomberg has done in all those areas, saying: “I am very confident that this battle will be won, because the realities of today’s economy are such that the wise decision is the green decision.”
http://www.wral.com/un-chief-appoints-bloomberg-as-envoy-for-climate-action/17394489/?comment_order=forward
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8 Feb: SanDiegoUnionTribune: Solar jobs down 14% in California, 3.8% nationally
By Rob Nikolewski
Solar jobs in California were down 14 percent in 2017, dragging down national numbers for the industry, according to an annual report.
•Nationally, there was a 3.8 percent decline, marking the first year jobs have decreased since the survey was first released in 2010.
•Among the reasons: 2016 was a banner year for the industry, the institution of time-of-use rates and concerns about solar tariffs…
California lost 13,636 jobs in 2017, more than any other state.
“Being the biggest solar state, it’s not surprising that California takes the biggest hit,” said Ed Gilliland senior director for The Solar Foundation, a nonprofit based in Washington D.C. that supports solar energy adoption and releases the census each year.
California is home to about 40 percent of the country’s solar capacity and employs almost eight times more solar workers than any other state…
Massachusetts saw a larger percentage drop in employment (21 percent) but California’s sheer size relative to the solar market dragged the national numbers into negative territory…
One of the biggest reasons for the decline stemmed from the fact that 2016 was a banner year for the industry. Nationally, 51,000 solar jobs were added that year and California accounted for almost half of them.
New installations in the U.S. doubled from 7.5 gigawatts in 2015 to 15 gigawatts in 2016, in many cases from customers who feared Congress would get rid of the federal government’s 30 percent tax credit for solar projects.
That led to a rush to sign up for projects before the end of the year. As it turned out, Congress extended the tax credit in December 2015 but many projects were already under contract for 2016.
Specific to California, last year’s extremely wet winter also led to a reduction in installations…
“That puts a big crimp in the residential market, especially,” Gilliland said, “because who wants to buy solar in the rain?”
Another reason for the turndown?
California utilities instituting what are called “Net Metering 2.0” rules that affect solar customers on the residential as well as the commercial side.
About 70 percent of the state’s electricity is provided by investor-owned utilities such as San Diego Gas & Electric. Utilities are moving customers to time-of-use pricing to encourage consumers to run appliances and devices that consume a lot of energy — such as air conditioners and washer/dryers — when demands on the power grid are not as high.
The peak, or most expensive, rates occur in the evening.
Time-of-use rates affect solar customers because one of the primary reasons to install a solar system is to generate solar energy and sell any excess amounts back to the grid.
“If peak time shifts to the evening, that means when you’re selling it in the afternoon you’re not getting as good a rate,” Gilliland said.
http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/business/energy-green/sd-fi-solar-census-20180208-story.html
Feb 2018: The Solar Foundation: National Solar Jobs Census 2017
A new report on solar employment nationwide and by state
The latest Solar Jobs Census found that 250,271 Americans work in solar as of 2017. This is a 3.8% decline, or about 9,800 fewer jobs, since 2016, marking the first time that jobs have decreased since the first Solar Jobs Census was released in 2010…
California remains the state with the largest number of solar jobs nationwide, but jobs in California decreased 14% in 2017. In Massachusetts, the state with the second largest solar workforce, employment decreased by 21%…
DOWNLOAD FULL REPORT, ETC.
◦Demand-side sectors (installation, sales & distribution, and project development) lost approximately 7,500 jobs in 2017, while the manufacturing sector lost about 1,200 jobs…
The National Solar Jobs Census 2017 was made possible through contributions from foundations and individuals like you. Thanks to all our sponsors:
William and Flora Hewlett Foundation; Tilia Fund; Energy Foundation; Solar Energy Industries Association; Swinerton Renewable Energy; Aurora Solar; EnergeiaWorks; Nautilus Solar Energy; Maryland Energy Administration; MDV-SEIA; 8minutenergy; sPower; Blattner Energy; Cypress Creek Renewables; California Energy Commission; New Mexico Energy, Minerals, and Natural Resources Department; Sol Systems; EcoFasten Solar; DC Department of Energy & Environment; Sunrun; Tradewind Energy; The D.E. Shaw Group; Recurrent Energy; groSolar; Vivint Solar; Borrego Solar Systems; NRG Energy; Quick Mount PV; and the Great Plains Institute.
https://www.thesolarfoundation.org/national/
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“Specific to California, last year’s extremely wet winter also led to a reduction in installations…
“That puts a big crimp in the residential market, especially,” Gilliland said, “because who wants to buy solar in the rain?”
Clutching at straws perhaps? Regardless of what you think of panels, the sort of person that buys them inherently has a future time orientation and understands they are ding something now for an alleged benefit over time. Its hard to accept such people care if its raining today or not if they have decided to move on the idea.
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Well last night I was yelling at the TV. The TV news lady was interviewing a graduate student about how co2 was contributing to air pollution. He said that to clean up their dirty air (The TV station is located at a big city) they needed to drastically reduce co2 emissions. Oh yes that is what he said. He suggested that the problem was rooted with cars. Unbelievable scientific ignorance being presented to the gullible public!
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Have a Google for the Asch experiments.
They illustrate the power of the mind over reality.
People place the need for group acceptance above what is real.
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https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-03-06/australian-diplomat-whose-tip-launched-russia-probe-has-25-million-tie-clintons?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+zerohedge%2Ffeed+%28zero+hedge+-+on+a+long+enough+timeline%2C+the+survival+rate+for+everyone+drops+to+zero%29
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I’m claiming they cherry picked their cherry picking claim !
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-03-07/fact-check-does-corolla-emit-less-than-tesla/9461096
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