We’re planning to spend $5,000 million on something to smooth out the bumps from unreliable generators. It is entirely unnecessary in a system where coal supplies the baseload and we have not created artificial rules forcing people to use green electrons in preference over stable and predictable ones. Most estimates of costs from wind and solar ignore the hidden costs — the destructive effect on the whole grid.
Wikipedia on Pumped Storage Hydroelectricity:
“the round-trip energy efficiency of PSH varies between 70%–80%,[4][5][6][7] with some sources claiming up to 87%.[8]
h/t Peter Rees, Michael Crawford, Ian Waters.
Even after Snowy Hydro 2.0, power will cost $90/MWh
Joe Kelly, The Australian last week:
Energy project financier David Carland — the executive director of Australian Resources Development Limited — argues that once the Snowy Hydro project is operating it will provide only partial back-up energy at a high cost.
Using Snowy Hydro’s modelling assumptions, Dr Carland’s calculations show the “levelised cost of energy” — or unit-cost of electricity over the lifetime of an asset — will deliver power significantly in excess of $90/MWh, after allowing for the cost of storage, cycle losses and the initial cost of buying energy at off-peak prices.
The effect of “cycle losses” means Snowy 2.0 will have to buy around 30 per cent more power in order to pump water uphill than it can generate when water is released from the upper storage.
“Snowy 2.0 is a pump storage operation that is a net user of energy and therefore cannot resolve the longer-term issues of the lack of baseload supply in the national electricity market,” Dr Carland told The Australian. “Based on Snowy Hydro’s own modelling the scenario in which Snowy 2.0 prospers is a world in which average power prices continue to rise.”
Costs are never coming back down
Kiss goodbye to the old $30/MWh average cost of the NEM wholesale electricity market.
….
Why is the NSW old average $50/MWh? I think that’s artificially high. Retail prices fell from 1955-1980 and then held stable for decades. They ominously started rising faster than inflation from 2005 which was when intermittent generation began to build on the grid. There was also a major drought in 2007.
….
On the National Energy Market (NEM), most states, most years could generate electricity for a wholesale price of $30/Mwh.
UPDATE: As it happens today South Australia is having one of those $14,000/MWh moments. Lucky there is a cap eh, or we might see million dollar electricity. h/t Dave B
NSW (dark purple). QLD (light purple), SA (red), Vic (grey) and Tas (green)
Those days are gone unless we save our old coal plants and stop favouring green electrons.
The government doesn’t need to build coal plants, it needs to abandon the RET and all pagan attempts to change the weather with our generators.
The market will sort the problem out if the government gets out of the way.
“PSH varies between 70%–80%,
Snowy 2.0 with 30km of tunnelling and two previous feasibility studies finding for the negative, will come in at the lower end or worse. Its not for no reason it wasnt built in the 60s, or 70s. It will only work with high prices.
240
Rob,
Doesn’t matter if it’s expensive. It will allow the price of gas to be kept high.
His friends are into gas to.
230
It is entirely unnecessary in a system where coal supplies the baseload and we have not created artificial rules forcing people to use green politicians in preference over stable and predictable ones. Most estimates of costs from wind and solar ignore the hidden costs — the destructive effect on the democratic system.
130
So the LNP is not longer interested in reducing power prices. Why is Turnbull trying his hardest to lose the next election to the ALP+Greens?
320
Talcum is rich and fatuous, a footnote in history, see here a hero of the revolution.
https://www.2gb.com/craig-kelly-backs-abbott-of-paris-agreement/
90
PeterS:
That way MT can guarantee high electricity prices….at least until Shorten is strung up by angry consumers. Even that won’t worry MT who will be on a luxury yacht in the West Indies.
90
Let’s just hope the yacht ventures into the Bermuda Triangle – sooner the better.
120
Once upon a time that now seems long long ago, this site used to have scientific credibility and the comments mirrored that. Now snide comments such as yours that is nothing but an ad hominem, are rampant and science is no longer regarded as relevant. The sole purpose of this site now seems to be catering for the anti-Turnbull Conservatives who have yet to mentally move from the 1950s.
48
Ian,
I don’t know that the terms:
Left, Right,,
Liberal/Labor, Conservative
are all that useful in a scientific discussion.
Science doesn’t have a political bent.
This website used to explore the topic of Man Made Global Warming from a scientific point of view, and it still does.
Having come to what I believe is a very reliable understanding of “the science” it is pertinent to look for the reasons for the distortion of logic that has been dumped on the world, and particularly Australia, in the name of Global Warming.
As scientists, we affirm and acknowledge that there is no scientific basis for the idea that human origin CO2 can cause Global Warming.
We have been exploring the real reasons for the CAGW scam for some time now and very few people interacting with this site would disagree with what I am going to say.
Global Warming Mythology is about,
1. Money.
2. Power.
3. Control.
and it is Not about:
1. Providing cheap and reliable electricity now and in the future.
2. The Environment.
3. Good, honest Government.
4. Reducing CO2 “emissions”.
There are certain exemplars attached to the CAGW meme who demonstrate what this is all about. Both The Algorithm and our President have “interests”, whether visible or hidden, which rely on the CAGW Program.
I’m sure that both of them would like to say a big thank you to all those who dutifully pay their electricity bills.
They Really appreciate it.
KK
121
KK because you are entirely honest and above board and being a Trojan in the scientific sense puts you at odds with the neo Marxists who seem to be invading our intellectual endeavours. Stupid people form packs like wild dogs and overwhelm the discourse. Our weakness is our individuality.. We are individuals and that is our weak point. We don’t invade public discourse with mass outpourings of leftist groupthink. We don’t indulge ourselves with facile public displays of self righteous philosophical masturbation (my interpretation). It wouldn’t be important to me what side of the argument you came from so long as you asked the rights questions and really challenged my worldview. The left are gangsters. They are in the process of destroying our finest learning institutions the free world over. You would think thats is an easy fix but our stupid moronic media are dopes. They would be more used to me making great coffee or vacuuming my carpet. At least those people are honest in what they do.
70
A good description;
” miturbating self indulgent gangsters”.
The purpose of education is to give a starting point on which to begin exploring the world and developing. Most of these SIMs, Self Indulgent Miturbators, will, after their education, just rest there and adopt the current Groupthink.
No real education, No self confidence born of experience and No Integrity.
Little scurrying creatures serving their masters;
TurnFreudShop.
KK
41
You’d subsequent c commenters make much of
“As scientists, we affirm and acknowledge that there is no scientific basis for the idea that human origin CO2 can cause Global Warming.”
“As a scientist” KK I’m a scientist with a PhD from the University of Western Australia based on laboratory experiments using bioohemical , immunological and molecular biological techniques. I’m clearly not not a climate scientist. Are you?
You say there is “no scientific basis for the idea that human origin CO2 can cause global warming” Equally scientist KK there is no evidence they don’t. Can you provide some empirical evidence that humans don’t contribute to global warming? Most scientists, even sceptics like Anthony Watts, consider they do
Are you going to refer to the hiatus scientist KK? If so be aware of a recent paper that clams the hiatus was due to inadequate temperature measurements from the Arctic. When other sources of Arctic temperature measurements were included it showed no hiatus but a steady increase in global temperature (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-017-0009-5).
So scientist KK get off your pompous patronising pedestal and accept that you are not the only scientist who visits this site. I’ve supervised numerous PhD and honours projects and I don’t subscribe to the mantra the science is settled but i also do not accept the sceptics claim that humans have no part in global warming.
05
I do like to prick pomposity but on this occasion I think that your comment speaks for itself.
As to my qualifications, I believe that I am more qualified than 97% of Environmental Commentators who identify as “climate scientists”.
There is absolutely no doubt that my qualifications are pretty much the ideal mix of intensive learning that is needed for a study and assessment of the place of CO2 in the world.
I notice or infer from your boasting that you have No qualifications in Geology.
I also suspect that you have no qualifications in Modelling or industrial scale thermodynamics.
Admirable as your qualifications may be they seem to relate to the inner being rather than the universe at large.
Had you read some of my earlier posts from several years ago, you would have recalled me asking the question, If.
If we just for a moment, suspend belief and pretend that Greenhouse gases can preferentially heat the atmosphere then the proportion of human origin effect is almost immeasurably small compared with the effects of nature.
That’s the quantitative analysis: human origin CO2 is a joke.
Of course that calculation was really just for fun.
The knockdown point is that Greenhouse CO2 is irrelevant/redundant to the process of moving thermal energy out through the atmosphere.
If you knew anything about gases and thermodynamics you would be aware that energy can move from the surface by contact of any gas with the surface. A ghg mechanism is not absolutely necessary. Additionally ghgs do not hold, store or trap heat. It is instantaneously shared with surrounding gases.
Politics has no place in Science.
Thank you for your interest.
KK
30
You don’t actually state what your qualifications are but you don’t need to infer that my qualifications are not in geology or thermodynamics, except of course biochemical thermodynamics, as I previously stated what they are. But that is largely irrelevant. The evidence seems to be building that humans do have an input into global warming and I agree with your earlier comment that it morphed into climate change because global warming appeared to have stalled. However the paper to which I referred explained why the authors considered the hiatus did not exist in reality. The experimental design seems adequate and appropriate and the conclusions seem quite valid. You may also recall the BEST project to evaluate land temperature records about which Anthony Watts said:
“. I’m prepared to accept whatever result they produce, even if it proves my premise wrong. I’m taking this bold step because the method has promise. So let’s not pay attention to the little yippers who want to tear it down before they even see the results”
Well the result did prove Watts’ premise wrong but because he claimed that as the paper had not been peer reviewed the results ere invalid. In actuality the peer review process had been undertaken
There are now too many reports to believe it is all a dreadful conspiracy and scam. Yes there is a lot of money involved and yes I think some scientists are swayed more by that than by their science but not all are. Most sceptics are, like me, not climate scientist, yes I know Judith Curry is and I like her blog and respect her same as I respect Steve McIntyre at Climate Audit and detest Gavin Schmidt at Real Climate. I’m moving from being a sceptic not to a complete warmist but to a position that sits comfortably with my own scientific background. As Keynes is reported to have said (although her probably didn’t) “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”
00
To Ian at 2 2 2 1 1,
Looking through that comment I find No science discussed just a list of names who have influenced you.
I have heard those names mentioned but know nothing of their views on global warming and you seem to be focused on whether one of them is moving towards or away from some point of view.
Can you detail the particular points of science that drives their opinions?
The concept of CAGW sits uncomfortably on the assertion that CO2 is in some way a “heat trapping gas”.
Basic physics refutes that concept.
On a macroscopic level, the space outside Earth’s atmosphere is at an energy level equivalent to about 1.4 C degrees above absolute zero.
At night when the Sun has gone and there is no more that midday Solar “forcing” something strange happens. The Solar energy embedded in Earth’s surface during the day is compelled to seek equilibrium and wants to move towards the lower energy levels “out there”.
Whether by conduction with gases in the local atmosphere or radiative transfer, that equilibrium is progressed and the gas make-up is basically irrelevant. i.e. The presence or absence of CO2 is irrelevant.
On a quantitative level, human origin CO2 is irrelevant as shown in the link provided in the post on Midweek Unthreaded. IF.
Man Made Global Warming is entirely a political construct.
KK
10
“Looking through that comment I find No science discussed just a list of names who have influenced you”
You must have missed the papers to which I referred . One discussing the hiatus and the other the BEST project Suggest you go back and read my comments a bit more diligently and perhaps look at the papers to which I refer That is of course if you wish to criticise further. I suspect however that you wont as you seem a bit of a know it all scientist. whose opinion is sacrosanct. In my first comment I asked you for evidence that humans have not impacted on global temperature. I notice you haven’t done so possibly because you can’t. Lots of irrelevant waffle from you but no answer. Are you sure you’re a scientist? So how about answering the question asked? I awaIt with interest your reply that I I expect not to get. As for CO2 not being a heat trapping gas as basic physics refutes it I think you’ll find basic physics does no such thing. See here https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/if-carbon-dioxide-makes-u/ and here https://phys.org/news/2017-03-science-carbon-dioxide-climate.html nd here http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/imageo/2018/03/12/what-science-says-about-role-of-co2-in-climate-change/#.W0e4-Biw30E
There are many more
00
Quote from our resident PhD.
“Look at my paper”.
I think you have illustrated the point.
You can’t, or won’t, express ideas yourself.
This suggests to me that you don’t know anything.
Go outside and touch the ground.
It is probably somewhere near 15°C.
Look up: not too far overhead, where Elon Musk wants to go, it is Minus 272°C.
The Reality is that Planet Earth is one Sunrise away from freezing.
Get real and pray for tomorrow’s Sunrise.
KK
10
“”Quote from our resident PhD. Look at my paper”
If you are a scientist, as you claim, why are you distorting facts.? I did not say look at my paper that is a total distortion of the truth. Wha I actually wrote was “You must have missed the papers to which I referred . One discussing the hiatus and the other the BEST project” Where in that comment have I claimed authorship? nIf you really were a scientist you a) wouldn’t distort facts and b) would be aware of he BEST Project.
You still have not provided any evidence that humans don’t contribute to global warming. Obviously you can’t.
And as for the rest of your egregious rant, it is typical diversionary tactics from a pseudo scientist unable to present a sustainable argument
00
If the religion is about CO2 causing global warming, just from where does Snowy 2.0 buy its off peak power that is available from 10:30pm to 4:30am?
Snowy 2.0 is about propping up uneconomic wind farms. As the subsidies to renewable sources are lowered they cannot make money unless their is a buyer. Less coal generators, less (forced) buyers.
As the coal generators are turned off the economics of a renewable based grid under the RET implode if no new buyer is available. Expect yet more BIG Government batteries of various types.
This is all an ego trip by certain individuals (UN Sec Gen), parasitic profiteering by others and rent seeking by corporations and sovereign states, nothing to do with CO2 or global warming.
It always easier to clip the ticket using government force than make your own way in life.
130
I can see this project as expected to be powered by excess power DURING the day time, not during the night time. It would appear that there is an expectation that there will be far more wind farms and PVC installations than is current. The idea might well be to use this excess of power that has to be used, to pump water into a reservoir, and it doesn’t matter if there is energy loss. When you have an excessive production, you must use it, thus it is fine that it is inefficient.
The idea might be to allow for some sort of “fill in” capability when the expected primary sources of power – wind and solar – drop below demand. You can look at this from the aspect that it is expensive power, but you can also look at it as “on demand” power. It would appear “the plan” is to unload as much baseload power as possible, and the price isn’t a concern to them. They are expecting that people will be grateful to have power all the time without blackouts, that’s all.
I can see where their mind set appears to be, don’t agree with them, but think that just railing against them without also visualizing their plan doesn’t make sense. You can defeat the plan better when everyone understands it better, and I may very well have missed their TRUE reason for doing this, which may well be setting civilization up for failure, thus creating a great die out of the race.
20
As pointed out on “Outsiders” yesterday this sort of technology makes good sense in a power system with 24/7 generation availability. In a system polluted by “unreliables” it just accentuates the energy illiteracy of our current leadership team.
290
JW. Not illiterate, but deliberate implementation of Agenda 21 and 2030.
300
Agreed Staal. Such high levels of destruction of the electrical grid and following on from that, the economy aren’t accidental or incompetence but require high levels of planning and following of the UN Agenda 2030.
131
Talking about “bumps” in the system.
Last week South Australia would have been gloating that, at times, more than 50% of their electricity was derived from wind. Just now I’ve checked NEM-watch to see that there is virtually no wind today and they have cranked up their diesel generators.
290
SA is also paying $1200 per MWh.
230
G’day,
The $14,000 figure Jo added in her update is from a screenshot I was able to capture from
https://www.aemo.com.au/Electricity/National-Electricity-Market-NEM/Data-dashboard#nem-dispatch-overview
of the situation timed at 12:05 today. (The above link will have been updated many times already.)
I’ve been having a look at the link a couple of times most days since some one ( thank you) posted it a few months back. So it was rather a fluke that I saw it at all, and just caught it with the screenshot. I was able to see some of the updates over the next half hour or so and there were some more over $10,000 and the last, at about 12:30 was just on $1,000.
I don’t know the cause, but the “Wind & Other” number was less than 100 in SA.
A big high pressure system is forecast to sit over Oz till Friday, centred close to Adelaide.
Cheers,
Dave B
142
Any Croweaters crowing last week would not have been crowing in June. CF for June was about 23.8%.
30
I have watched these “green” power scheme go all the way to use food (alcohol from corn used as gasoline additive) when people are hungry to the stored water as a backup power generation (at a net loss of power) and wonder where these wasteful, expensive, and ultimately evil schemes come from. Sad what the left does to us.
340
As I’ve been saying all along the left hate the West and what it always stood for and so it intends to bring it down. The unusual thing is Turnbull and his mob have joined their side to achieve the same goal, be it willingly or not.
232
Turnbull was always on their side…they are all globalists, IMHO.
240
Where does it come from? Simple answer the UN in their outline for world domination Agenda 21 and its later amendments most of which is based on the Club of Rome ‘Limits to Growth’.
230
At the core of it is an Occult ( non-Christian & pagan ) belief system. The people who are driving this seem to be are part of the very hard-core New Age religion, from what I can see. Their approach and beliefs are all laid out in new age books and writers like e.g. Peter Lemesurier talks about the North Korean peninsula, and the role it will play in bring about their New Age “Messiah”.
Old Intelligence maxim – “If something does not make sense, you must seek another sense”, or paraphrasing – the current activities make sense, when viewed through the “right” lens.
People need to start reading to better understand.
80
John Watt – please don’t lecture us about ‘energy illiteracy’. I don’t call the expenditure of several times the cost of a new HELE coal-fired power station, each of which would generate about 1000 MW of new reliable, grid-stabilising synchronous power for 50 years, on a pumped hydro ‘brain fart’ by Turnbull that will waste 20-30% of its ‘nameplate capacity’ power to back up a small amount of unreliable, grid destabilising asynchronous ‘renewables’ for maybe a few hours per day. In a properly designed, reliable coal-fuelled energy grid that is not forced to compete with heavily subsidised intermittent ‘renewables’ there is no need for pumped hydro.
290
As a matter of fact if we had plenty of cheap power due to no reliance on renewables and solely on coal then we could pump the water to agricultural areas where they really need it instead of just pumping it up hill only to let it down again.
270
In between times there is a severe drought underway in various parts of Australia, and several unwanted and very expensive desalination plants sitting idle in maintenance only mode.
Therefore get them operating and line up the water tankers to provide drought relief to the country people.
100
Excellent!!!!
Unemployment goes down, everyone wins.
Except those who don’t want to work.
KK
110
There is no “forcing” to compete now. There is NO competition. Ambients get to sell whatever they can bring to market whenever they can unless the grid is unstable due to oversupply. Coal is controlled entirely by the tune of the wind and sun. If they cannot follow that tune they close up shop as two large coal generators have already done.
One potential positive for the NEG is that proponents of ambients have to guarantee supply, whether it be from their intermittents or from dispatchable generation that they have some control over.
101
‘ Coal is controlled entirely by the tune of the wind and sun. ‘
Actually, that is not the case Rick!
If you have been following TonyFromOz new series, you will see that as wind power increases, gas and hydro decreases, and vice versa. Coal provides 73-75% of our power needs, all day, every day!
Why? Because coal is the cheapest in the market! So as the penetration of wind increases, the most expensive forms of generation are the first to be curtailed!
The problems are going to come, when the coal fleet is ‘retired’, and we can no longer maintain that percentage. The AEMO have already warned that we have diminished reserve capacity. Yes, we can use gas. More expensive than coal. The Monash Forum are definitely on the right track to push for more coal power plants! Pretty much the only course to take, in the medium to long term, to provide stability to our grid! And Snowy 2.0 should be shelved! We don’t need a white elephant like that around our necks!
201
Rob Leviston:
The same thing happening in Germany. When the wind blows all the lower emission but higher cost generation shuts down e.g. gas turbines, pumped storage, even hydro is reduced. Fortunately (for Germany) they have lots of interconnectors which can take away excess wind generation and bring back nuclear and hydro when the wind isn’t blowing. Unfortunately their neighbours are annoyed by the dumping upsetting their grids and have/are installing phase shifting transformers to prevent the German dumping.
110
Eight weeks I have been doing this new Series.
Eight weeks.
The total output from every one of those 22 solar power plants in Australia for those last eight weeks in total was delivered by coal fired power in, umm, ….. five HOURS.
Oh how we desperately need more ….. solar power plants!
Tony.
(trust me on this. It’s perfectly true)
310
The only region with significant penetration of Wind and solar is South Australia. They no longer have coal generation. The intermittency they added to the Victorian network made Hazelwood uneconomic and it closed down.
As the market share of wind increases we will see more coal generators shutting down because they cannot follow the ups and down economically. Gas is the most common fuel source for replacing the coal.
This gives details on how the fuel mix is changing:
https://www.energy.gov.au/sites/g/files/net3411/f/energy-update-report-2017.pdf
Of particular note:
The long term trend in coal generation is down. It has to be because the one thing ambients achieve is a slight reduction in fuel consumption for dispatchable generation.
10
Rick,
I didn’t follow that last paragraph.
10
Rick Will,
Eight weeks now, and the percentage for coal fired power is stuck very firmly at 74% of total supply.
Tony.
80
Not true – a moderate amount of pumped hydro is useful both for some peak shaving for coal/nuclear plants and for black starting. Dinorwig (Wales) and Ludington (Michigan) were designed and built on this premise.
What is futile is attempting to shore up intermittent generators with pumped hydro (sorry Prof Blakers, you’re wrong). See the ongoing saga at Gorona del Viento, El Hierro, for a case study of sheer waste for greenwashing – http://euanmearns.com/tag/el-hierro/
50
Depends on what you mean by moderate. The cost of building, running and maintaining the proposed pumped hydro compared to a coal fired power station is simply not worth it. The initial cost alone of some $5billion is certainly not moderate.
70
PeterS:
$6.2 billion to buy out the States. That money will go down the gurgler esp. with the up-coming Vic election.
Then the $4 billion up-dated cost (before it was even started). Fortunately being a large government scheme it will come in on time and within budget, won’t it? (Like the NBN, NDS, Gonski 1, 2, 3 ec.
Looks like Malcolm’s back of a beer coaster grand scheme.
90
We also have pumped hydro in NSW, at Talbingo on the Tumut River and on the Shoalhaven system near Fitzroy Falls. They have been used for many years taking up the excess power from coal fired generators in off peak times such as overnight. To be economic the coal power stations need to be kept running. They can’t be just switched on an off.
70
Readers of this post might enjoy my article published recently in Quadrant: ‘Why the Future is Not Solar.’
160
As soon as I see the word “renewable” as it relates to ambient generators I have grave doubts about the authors knowledge on the subject. But I did read on and you almost made the case that they are unrenewable.
On the previous thread I posed this simple question: How much dispatchable generation does 1kW of wind or solar generation replace – 20W, 200W, 300W or 500W? Anyone who gives the correct answer understands intermittency of wind and solar generators and has a clue on how their value should be assessed.
50
Great article. Some takeaways:
What Blakers and Stocks also gloss over with their dismissive “small amounts of other materials” is that the manufacture of PV panels requires the use of small—but still significant—amounts of solvents that have Global Warming Potential numbers around 20,000 times that of carbon dioxide. Nitrogen trifluoride was not covered by the first commitment period under the Kyoto Protocol, but is 16,000 times more powerful a greenhouse gas (GHG) than carbon dioxide, and sulphur hexafluoride is 23,900 times more powerful than carbon dioxide. This means that—on a life-cycle basis in Germany—Ferroni (2014) has suggested that PV solar is worse for climate forcing than gas or coal.
The result of Germany’s Energiewende has been essentially no reduction in GHG emissions because thermal plant often runs at reduced and less efficient loads to accommodate the variability of renewables, and prices that sometimes turn negative, with excesses dumped on neighbours in the European market (undermining their own renewables generators) and increased prices overall for consumers. Germany and Denmark, with the highest proportion of renewables, have the highest prices in the developed world—although South Australia eclipses them both on a pre-tax basis. Subsidies are now ending, and the solar industry in Germany in particular is tottering.
The cost of PV and wind power has been declining rapidly for many decades and is now in the range A$55–70 per megawatt-hour in Australia. This is cheaper than electricity from new-build coal and gas units. The $55–70 per MWh estimate appears to come from the head of the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA), Ivor Frischknecht, who gave exactly these figures in answer to questions from Greens Senator Larissa Waters (Vorath, 2017). But these were estimates of the price at which contracts were being struck at that time—so they include the subsidies in the policy settings such as the Renewable Energy Target. They do not reflect the cost of generation, but the price at which PV solar is sold by generators, and so they include a discount for the sale of Renewable Energy Certificates. RECs have often been priced at $60–90/MWh.
If Australia sleepwalks into the future convinced that solar will become economically competitive with wholesale conventional energy if only we keep subsidising it, we are running a huge risk.
110
Robber:
For the benefit of any Green trolls – most of whom are innumerate – that means the $55-70 figure should be $130-155. At least twice what coal fired would cost without the interuptions from variable renewables.
100
Thank you!!!
One of our number, from Newcastle is now in Tasmania.
Stewart Franks, a scholar and a Gentleman.
Well remembered. Truth will eventually out.
KK
31
Very interesting article,Ainsley cheers. Unfortunately it is bit too tech heavy for me to edit ( dumb down) for ease of understanding and the short attention span of the average Facebook user. Unfortunately as I have mentioned in the past, these are the people the honest scientific and engineering community have to reach because they vote and you are outnumbered.
90
Sorry Bodge, but it needed to be technical to be accurate.
Short version: there are people telling us (and government) that renewables are now cheaper than coal. They are not!
The basis for this claim is the price renewables generates (solar in this case) are bidding into the market. But that ‘willingness to pay’ includes $60-90 of REC subsidies.
Moreover, the argument that solar will reduce in cost in the future as it has in the past is an extreme leap of faith.
Economic lives of renewables (including wind) are proving much shorter than assumed in most analyses.
Renewables plus back-up (pumped storage or battery) cannot compete with ultra supercritical black coal at around $80/MWh.
Hope that makes it clearer.
90
That’s a good article Aynsley. If only our decision makers were competent enough to understand it.
Unfortunately most of the current attention is focused on the need to provide sufficient capacity (MW) to meet peak demand periods.
In my view there is a much larger problem lurking in the wings, and that is the future provision of primary energy to the NEM.
In each State we have system load factors generally between 50% and 70% (Load Factor is the relationship between average demand and peak demand).
Coal fired units can produce energy at up to 95% capacity factor if there are no renewables cannibalizing their share of the market.
Wind generally achieves annual average capacity factors around 30%, and solar around 20%.
So the only way that these technologies can produce sufficient energy to meet system needs is to install a lot of it.
This then causes the problem of over supply when the wind blows and the sun is shining. (I am not looking at the problem of managing the periods when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine).
So there would be a need to curtail production during such periods, and this of course would reduce the renewable capacity factors.
If pumped hydro storage is used to absorb the surplus, then the conversion losses will also reduce the renewable capacity factors, to 21% for wind and 14% for solar, assuming a 70% conversion efficiency.
How can such low energy intensity technologies meet the energy needs of a modern electricity system? With great difficulty I would suggest.
So as our ageing coal fired power stations retire, what primary energy resources will be used to replace them, if coal is out, and gas remains constrained?
It’s clear that the retirement of Liddell in 2022 will be the next big test for the NEM.
50
Good points Peter. Beyond Liddell looms a real disaster, as further base load retires.They have to off-load when renewables are producing, so their economics are destroyed by the current policy settings. As I say in my article, the policies make renewables parasitic – destroying the reliable system – rather than symbiotic.
And the reduced lives now being found with wind, etc, means that the real crunch comes as they need replacing as the RET expires in 2030.
10
“We’re planning to spend $5,000 million on something ”
Tony Abbott in his speech last Wednesday and in the editorial of the Spectator magazine said
“$12 Billion”
The difference is enough to build three coal fired power stations. Faster too. They actually create power, not store it. The power is already stored in the ground and coal is free.
Pumping water up hill is not free. How much will that cost us? Is it more billions to support foreign owned wind towers which have no impact whatsoever on CO2 or climate?
250
TdeF,
Anyone contemplating $5billion has not been around underground hard rock mining for at least forty years.
Even the $15billion estimate is way too low.
100
Its interesting – ANU was built as the brains, Snowy Hydro was the power supply, and Marlainga was the test site – for nuclear bomb tech. It was all dressed up as misty-eyed and glowing “nation building”, but at the heart of it all it was weapons research…..
30
With 5 billion I could buy most of a diesel submarine for delivery later this century, save Christopher Pyne’s seat and scatter a few million into the Clinton Global Initiative to cure…um…something they catch in Asia. Now all I get is Malcolm in his fluoro jacket promising to push water uphill.
Can it really be that this vapid, waffling, waster of a plutocrat is still Prime Minister of Australia? What does he have to do for the sack? Eat a raw onion while looking at his watch?
270
Get a nuclear sub instead and plug the drive shaft directly into a generator. Would be far more reliable than getting wind to turn it, and it would last far longer.
220
There’s a heap of unused sub in the Adelaide dry docks. You could buy them cheep I bet.
70
Naa.. Going by the grabbermint bungle surrounding that boondoggle, it’ll be a ripoff. Avoid.
40
“The Australian Federal Police has confirmed it is investigating current and former executives of SMEC Holdings over allegations of foreign bribery and other offences. SMEC was employed last May to undertake the feasibility study for the expansion of the Snowy Hydro project, which the Prime Minister has heralded as key to securing energy supply on Australia’s east coast.” ABC News.
But you’ll be pleased to read in the same ABC report: “The AFP investigation relates to international projects the company has been involved in over the past 15 years.”
Moreover “SMEC said it was cooperating with the police investigation” and “SMEC Australia is not the subject of any allegations or investigations by the AFP”.
So it someplace-else’s SMEC. All good.
One hears similar grumblings about our submarine contractors, DCNS, and especially about its main private shareholder company, Thales. Nothing to worry about. Water off a duck’s back. Or should I say water running up a duck’s back.
We’re not talking measly little wave generators or desal plants here. What Australians need to realise is that if they want gigantic, world-class white elephants to trample their economy those white elephants won’t come cheap. Rome wasn’t wrecked in a day. Get big or go home.
100
Pity they aren’t pumping sewerage up hill using pointed sticks, then it would be spot on….
40
We will have to wait for the next federal election to see if the public have woken up enough and stop voting for either major party. Otherwise, Turnbull or Shorten can get away with almost anything thanks to the apathy of voters. If most people really believe voting either major party to form a majority government is going to lead to a different outcome then voters are just plain fools.
40
Also “unless we save our old coal plants ”
This is the usual prejudicial language of the Greens, oft repeated and so easy to absorb. Even Tony Abbott used the prejudicial adjective. It is wrong.
Like an old tractor or an old E-type Jag or an old BMW. All you need is maintenance and they will be running well into the next century. In a decade though the ‘new’ windmills replacing the ‘old’ coal plants will be ‘useless’. Then South Australia will understand the real meaning of ‘old’.
If ‘old’ means old technology, the very latest technology is only 5% better. You could upgrade the ‘old’ plants too.
No, let’s spend $12Billion on pumping water up hill because Malcolm Turnbull is a genius.
221
Hey, the gummint is happy to plough money into anything that will crash our power grid……dumb ideas included….I mean, CAGW was a huge success and a financial black hole, so….
70
TdeF – ‘coal is free’ – I really like that!
By the way, I saw a chart recently entitled “Australia 2020 Carbon Abatement Cost Curve” (see here: https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/mckinsey/dotcom/client_service/sustainability/cost%20curve%20pdfs/australian_cost_curve_for_ghg_reduction.ashx)
which showed that some ‘carbon abatement’ methods, such as wind and solar PV had a net economic COST of up to A$60/TCO2e (i.e tonne of CO2 abated), whereas other simple options, such as installing improved efficiency electric motors and airconditioning systems, have a net economic BENEFIT of up to A$200/TCO2e. I find it interesting that CAGW proponents appear to strongly favour the former (highest economic cost per tonne of CO2 abated) over the latter (a substantial economic benefit per tonne of CO2 abatement). Readers may remember that PM Tony Abbott’s CO2 abatement scheme was focused on the latter, and was poo-pooed by the Opposition, and I think canned by Turnbull.
120
The Green/Left are only happy when wasting other people’s money. Makes them look busy and successful with a “plan of action”, ignoring negative benefits.
I suggest getting all Green/Left voters to power their poxy wind turbines with pedals. Although an incredibly cheap solution, noise pollution will go up because of all the whining..
101
Correct…but at the heart of the wastage is that if it goes into a black hole, it damages the economy and drags it down… its all about destroying the middle class.
20
The absurdity of ‘abatement’ is the presumption that as a result of carbon dioxide capture, CO2 levels go down. That is of course ridiculous. There is absolutely no evidence of that happening anywhere, any time.
Sure, you can bottle CO2, freeze it, fix it in trees and grasses and bury it deep in the ocean as a liquid, but so what? More comes out of the ocean to replace it.
There is no evidence whatsoever that mankind can change CO2 levels and as a corollary that mankind is responsible for current CO2 levels. You can prove man’s contribution to CO2 is under 2%. 98.7% of that is from overseas. So we must punish ourselves.
So keep stuffing it in bottles. Running windmills. Buying solar panels. Shutting down coal power plants. Pumping water uphill. Absolutely ridiculous made up science. That river of money gets wider, deeper and faster and it is all driven by Goldmann Sachs partner, Malcolm Turnbull. Quelle surprise.
140
Snowy 2.0 doesn’t provide any more irrigation water and uses power.
For the Snowy Scheme catchments the CSIRO found “… serious to severe rainfall deficiencies occurred in a narrow band extending along the coast from southern New South Wales through Gippsland to south-central Victoria …” since 1976 (although according to the BOM trend maps since 1900 there has been increased precipitation).
In 2007 after 10 years of drought the Snowy Scheme almost ran out of water forcing Snowy Hydro “… in a highly energy-intensive process, water is pumped from a lower to a higher catchment overnight using off-peak power. The water is then released during the day to generate hydro electricity”.
With Snowy 2.0 up and running all future Climate Change™ is avoided, that’s why the project must proceed of course.
70
Just get all Green/Leftard voters to carry the buckets of water back up. My modelling assumes a cost of around $0.0001/MWh, and that’s the pollution filters (porta-potties). Sure there’ll be “cycle losses” (some will die), but we can put up with that. Noise pollution will be kept to a minimum because dams are usually located in uninhabited valleys, rather than hilltops where the complaints could be heard for miles.
71
Word for today: Sisyphean.
20
Isn’t that grabbermint’s mandate?
00
It seems that it would be on the face of it. But who is doing the mandating? Us or Them?
I posted Sisyphean because Revelution’s description reminded me of a character in The Divine Comedy.
Sysyphus; The last sentence in wiki describes it thus: “Through the classical influence on modern culture, tasks that are both laborious and futile are therefore described as Sisyphean.”
10
Frydenberg may have trouble getting the NEG through parliament, he is being assailed from the left and right. Always fair and balanced, the Oz has these two stories side by side.
‘ACT Green Shane Rattenbury, who has the power to sink the NEG, says including coal will make it much harder to support.’
‘Abbott’s emissions revision: Tony Abbott gave prime ministerial backing in a crucial cabinet meeting to ramp up Australia’s emissions reduction targets ahead of Paris deal.’
30
“The government doesn’t need to build coal plants, it needs to abandon the RET and all pagan attempts to change the weather with our generators.
The market will sort the problem out if the government gets out of the way.”
Well said.
You could add abandon all attempts to change CO2 levels. We should be amazed anyone believes it.
It’s like the Wizard of Oz. Don’t look behind the curtain.
That is just a fantasy based on a childish idea that the level of anything can be set by man. Even the level of the mighty oceans. What a piece of work is man. Espcially marxist Greens.
That is why they come up with fanciful measures of man made polluting ’emissions’ from coal, gas and oil to cow farts. The science truth is that the biggest polluter is the planet and the planet is in wonderful equilibrium. Nothing we can do about it.
160
As I have written, the half life for CO2 is 14 years. Fact. In 14 years half of the world’s CO2 goes into the oceans. It is replaced by CO2 from the oceans. You can see this with the way C14 vanished so quickly after the atomb bomb tests in 1965. The Bern diagram is useless and wrong. The curve is perfect e-kt. The biosphere is irrelevant.
Secondly we have known for 60 years that the level of industrial CO2 was under 2% even after WW2. Professor Suess, one of the inventors of radio carbon dating found that amazing but he concluded, rightly, that it was just being absorbed by the giant sink in the oceans. He was right. Radio carbon dating by the way measures the age of CO2 and so the age of every living thing made from CO2, trees, people, cows, insects.
Since then the Greens, the IPCC, NOAA and the rest have done their best to let us believe we can increase or decrease CO2 levels. Now that is absolute rubbish.
Long live equilibrium. It should be obvious by now after 30 years that Sydney Harbour bridge is not going to be underwater by 2100 as predicted by the ABC. In fact not a single prediction has proven even slightly right. Why are we punishing ourselves? No, why are our politicians determined to wreck this country?
171
The total amount of CO2 in the air at 0.04% is 1/50th of that in the ocean in rapid exchange. How much would the oceans have to warm to make it 0.05%? Half of a pufteenth of nothing. Would it matter. No.
Half of photosynthesis, the produce of hydrated CO2 (carbohydrate) takes place in the oceans with phytoplankton. Brazil is not the lungs of the world. Nor the mighty arboreal deciduous forests of Siberia. The lungs of the world are the oceans from which we and all animals come.
How much do we affect the ocean temperature? Not at all, but the surface layer has warmed 0.114C since 1955. Now we are shocked that CO2 goes up slightly and blame the industrial revolution. Why? When did vague coincidence become causality? The real explanation is the perfectly natural and obvious one.
140
Look at it this way.
$5 Billion to ….. consume power.
It adds another large consumer TO the grid.
Tony.
150
It also makes our national debt worse whereas building coal fired power stations would stimulate business and employment and thus help to slow down the rising debt if not reduce it. I’m almost convinced now that people like Shorten and Turnbull do not care that the nation will go broke.
120
Why build them? We have one giant plant ready to go and another scheduled to be shut down. If they are really too expensive to replace and take too long to build, why not use the ones we have? Only South Australia has blown them up, so far. That was criminal vandalism by the state.
130
The Greens in Victoria are planning to close the other coal plants at Loy Yang. Unbelievable.
110
When will they start blowing up resevoirs, in concert with our Green politicians who call themselves Progressives. That seems to mean destroying everything built by generations of hard working people.
101
‘Why build them?’
We need at least three Hele to power the new satellite cities and high speed rail network, in the meantime …
‘Rattenbury told the ABC on Monday it was too soon to be definitive on what position the ACT would take to a meeting of energy ministers in August, but said the new coal push worked against climate science “and it also goes against common sense because we know wind and solar are the two cheapest forms of new energy into the market”.
Guardian
40
We are not talking about the future! We are talking about the present.
We have been warned by the AEMO that the system is currently critically short of steady power.
Companies are being paid to turn off machines.
Alcoa employees are being paid by the government.
There will be fines of $10Million for companies which do not turn off their machines and $100Million for companies which do not reduce their ’emissions’. Everyone gets fined while the government shuts down the power. Hazelwood did not close because they lost interest in selling the cheapest power in Victoria. They were forced out of business selling power at 4c kw/hr. by the RET.
120
Today the good people of South Australia were paying $12.00 a kw/hr instead of 4c while Hazelwood sits there silently. Really the people of South Australia should buy it for a fraction of the cost of an interconnector.
90
Do you know for certain that Hazelwood is merely sitting idle and can be restarted as if it was taken offline for scheduled maintenance? Some here have stated that it is being dismantled.
20
‘We are not talking about the future! We are talking about the present.’
We have to wait for the ginger group to cross the floor, then we will have a future.
30
Wrong, TdF! Upon winning power, the Andrews government dispatched a delegation to France to inform Engie in no uncertain terms the royalties on Engie’s brown coal reserve would be trebled! Engie practically closed Hazelwood overnight. Nothing to do with the RET or NEG just bastard, pigheaded politics.
110
Yes, the Andrews government increased the State Royalties on our coal right at the time when Engie was asking for support to keep going, like Pelican point, like Whyalla, Like Alcoa, like Port Pirie. They were forced to close, not by the 300% increase but by the fact that the government would not give them any relief.
In South Australia Jay Weatherill demanded to know why Pelican Point (also owned by Engie) sat idle during the blackout. Engie replied that they lost $30Million the year before, so why should they?
Now you will note Pelican Point (gas fired) has a certificate to operate despite not being ‘approved’ as it has an exemption. Political bastadry changes overnight when all the lights are out.
Engie is still legally tied under contract to a $1.6Billion cleanup and still has 18 years on their lease. I will guarantee they are watching all this carefully and can move quickly. At 4c kw/hr they can wipe out any wind power. Which is why the government wants them closed or forces the retailers to give $2 to windpower for nothing for every $1 they give Hazelwood for real power.
You are right in that the 300% increase was appalling, unexplained, unjustified and not something you would do if it killed your client.
70
I believe we need to build new ones because some of the existing ones are getting too old. If not true then by all means keep using the old ones until we need more supply and then we can build new ones.
20
Who says? First a fully maintained plant is never old. These plants are relatively new, commissioned in 1964, 1970 and 1971. That’s a lot younger than our PM. And some are younger than Bill Shorten, the youngest generator being 46 when it was turned off. They are a lot more useful than either.
71
Correct, the SECV carried out major plant life extensions to both Hazelwood and Yallourn W in the late 1980’s for an additional 30 year life and these cost some $700 million in late 1980 dollars.
Further major PLE’s were carried out by private owners.
As Labor and Greens both wanted Hazelwood shut long term, expensive preventive maintenance would have been delayed.
Terence M
10
Again this ‘old’ nonsense.
Also Hazelwood was running at 96% of capacity when it was turned off.
What does old matter? How subjective is that? All that matters for a power generators is that it works! It might stop? So what? If it stops, it stops. Turn it off. What’s the risk? There are 8 operational generators at Hazelwood. What exactly is this ‘old’ problem or should anyone over 50 jump off a cliff?
70
I live in an ‘old’ house. 1887 terrace. That’s 121 years. We don’t use the chimneys but the house is perfectly functional. It needed updating and maintenance. Perhaps 90% of the inner city is as old or older. All clearly need to be knocked down. One of our cars is 26 years old. Works perfectly. The suburb sewerage system in Marvellous Smellbourne started the first connections in 1897, so that all needs to be dug up and replaced. The electricity poles are being replaced as termites ate the last ones. They should go underground but then it would be hard to charge for maintaining them.
So I really think this ‘old’ description has been a very successful ploy by the Greens. People accept it and worst of all, they repeat it. Even Tony Abbott called our power stations old. That is not true or relevant. They are just machinery with few moving parts that cannot easily be replaced.
A big rotor from Loy Yang made the trip back to Germany this year for repairs in Germany. Moved in the middle of the night along the Melbourne beachfront which is power cable free and is now back. That’s maintenance.
110
Actually underground power cabling can be upto 10 times or more expensive than overhead and more expensive to maintain than overhead.
30
Underground is more expensive, in the short term. In Victoria we are spending $100Million a year trimming trees from power lines. We are spending more on poles and wires maintenance. We could all erect windmills in our backyard or petrol generators (I have 3). Much cheaper.
The point is that the government, our government paid by us to represent us should be spending our money on our long term benefit. So we give cash to Hamas, cash to Climate Change, donations to the Clinton Foundation and pay for 300 people to go to the Climate Warming conferences and travel in limousines in Paris.
All power should be underground. The WA government, councils and power companies have a 20 year plan to put all power underground. Where is the vision elsewhere? In NSW they have passed a law to put fibre optic cable on electricity poles for the NBN. We must be the only country in the world with fibre on old wooden poles.
Expense over time is the question. Telephone poles (we still call them that) became electricity poles became fibre optic poles. If you want to talk about ‘old’ useless technology, it is wooden ‘telephone poles’.
40
New plants would be more efficient and, long term, more reliable – even with full maintenance, there are components that deteriorate with age. But the older plants should never have been closed before replacement capacity was available.
Liddell is an example of a baseload plant that is NOT fully maintained – being valued by AGL at A$1 since purchase, the maintenance being performed there is the minimum sufficient to keep some operating capacity to the 2022 scheduled closure date. All the talk about Alinta taking it on is just that – talk.
I have a personal source about the run down of Liddell but here is an article that fully substantiates my hearsay with some incredibly candid statements by Liddell and Bayswater power station general manager, Kate Coates.
https://www.theherald.com.au/story/4935035/old-lady-liddell-on-a-sliding-scale-to-oblivion/
20
Analytic,
Kate wasn’t making “candid comments” there, it was all good advertising for the next stage of the business, to game the electricity market by “transitioning” to higher profit margin equipment.
We are doomed.
KK
30
Liddell was sold for nothing. AGL said so. The NSW government dumped it and AGL really does not want it and certainly would be mad to keep the maintenance up. That’s what’s very wrong with their refusal to sell it for $250Million as it is clearly worth much more closed. This needs explanation.
This is all a very different situation to the expensive and maintained Hazelwood plant in Victoria where the owners paid $2.35Billion for a 40 year lease in 1996 and spent another $1.5Billion in upgrades and more in maintenance. To walk away from such a big investment needs explanation, something Malcolm Turnbull refuses to address. He said it is a private company matter. What a ridiculous story for a nationally important power plant!
60
It also guarantees the producers of wind power get paid for their power as well as their certificates, making them even more profitable. Or has no one realised that? We spend $12Bn for something which will guarantee the investors in wind make more hard currency. Who cares about the losses? They get paid retail for the power they could not otherwise sell at 2am.
50
Tony, think of it as a very large synchronous condenser…..at least the power factor in that part of the world should be OK…. 🙂
10
How is coal not “renewable”?
You simply renew it by digging up more.
There are centuries worth left of the stuff, maybe more. It’s just not economically viable to “prove” more reserves than is economically viable for corporate planning.
101
Are warmists flammable? No digging required.
41
The Egyptians used to burn mummies. So yea, dry them out and they’ll burn nice and hot.
20
… and swamps are the start of fresh coal. Given a few million years, there you are. More coal. In fact, they could be helped along by adding dead trees.
Natural recycling:
1. burn coal, return CO2 and water vapour to the atmosphere (it’s recycled)
2. trees use CO2, sunlight and water to grow (more recycling)
3. trees die
4. Bury dead trees in swamps
5. A few million years later, dig up the coal formed.
6. Return to step 1.
Granted, it’s a little slow for the greens to get their heads around …
All PHS is doing, is doing Nature’s work a little faster and far more expensively.
After all, Sunlight is free.
20
The PHS is offering to replace the natural water cycle:
1. Water runs downhill, fills man-made dam
2. Water released from dam turns turbines, which turn generators, making elec-trickery
3. Used water runs downhill into next dam. While more dams, return to step 2
4. Used water runs into sea (after irrigating large areas on the way. Water theft?)
5. Sun evaporates water from sea (free!)
6. Clouds form (cross fingers and pray …)
7. Precipitation (rain or snow) falls from clouds on catchment
(more finger crossing and special pleading here)
8. Return to step 1.
Droughts can be a nuisance. But the sunlight used is free. No pumping required; just propitiating the appropriate divinities with prayers and monetary sacrifices …
(the monetary sacrifices are necessary to keep the human institutions supervising and adding to the involved deity’s propitiation on task).
I can see a potential future market for PMMs (Perpetual Motion Machines), especially those which can generate electricity. Politicians appear to be so gullible, they will make good customers … 🙂
50
In the US pumped storage made sense in the past under the following condtions.
* The price of natural gas was high
* There was excess cheap coal generation available off-peak
* Even more so if there were problems backing coal plants down to their minumums, and
* the pumped storage could be done relatively cheaply.
Today pumped storage can help with all the difficulties caused by intermittent (“renewable”) resources. Is it a reasonable economic choice? For a system that is being built for reasons so far divorced from economics, it’s hard to tell.
70
Add nuclear as well – pumped hydro plants were built in both the UK and the USA to peak shave with off peak nuclear generation (and as black start facilities).
50
At the time Ludington Pumped Storage (Michigan, USA) was under construction, the company had 2 operating nuclear plants with a third under construction (later canceled) and a fourth (later canceled) in planning. Ludington would allow cheap, base-loaded nuclear generation, to replace high-cost daytime peaking power. (Also provide black start capability.) Made perfect economic and operational sense –then.
Now, subsidized wind/solar may regularly produce zero-fuel-cost power during peak periods. I’m under the impression some suppliers have to give the excess power away, or pay others to take it. Pumped storage can’t compete under those conditions.
Ignorant politicians, at the behest of ignorant environmentalists, have completely distorted the power market and industry. They apparently believe that if they pass enough laws scientists and engineers will magically develop ways to generate perfectly clean, cheap, reliable electric power. Physics and economics be damned!
20
Nothing like fascist socialism to create new and better ways to impoverish a nation.
61
It’s rather ironic that the Greens would ask for a royal commission into this disaster. Of course it won’t happen, because the commission would find that the root cause was due to government policy. And of course the Greens were largely responsible for causing this policy. Calling for the commission is their way to deflect from their key role in the saga, in the safe knowledge it won’t happen.
https://www.sbs.com.au/news/pm-dodges-calls-for-power-price-inquiry
With the cost of electricity continuing to rise it won’t be long before people start turning to petrol and diesel generators, which are now a cheaper source of power than the grid during peak periods. The sad part is that so many conservative voices predicted this disasterous outcome right back when we started the shift to RE and continued the warnings until we reached the present “electricity ground zero”. The sader part is that the leftists still remain in total denial to the root cause of the issue and not only blame everything else for the mess, but continue to preach the mantra that RE equals cheaper prices. This is not just crazy, but deadly dangerous.
The only unanswered questions are, how many people will be either impoverished or killed by these lethal left wing policies and is it possible for us to ever recover ?
81
If a royal commission could not find that Gillard and Shorten were as guilty has sin, what hope does a RC have of determining who has their sticky fingers in the energy jar?
80
The Greens are so deluded and convinced they are right they want to use a RC to prove them right. At least that’s how I see it – so obviously. The left in general are truly sick yet for some strange reason the public are willing to vote for them again, be it LNP or ALP+Greens.
30
As you say, the Greens are so convinced by their position that they want a Royal Commission. The new agrarian socialist Barnaby Joyce also agrees that we should have a Royal Commission. What do you make of that?
Hinch and Hanson don’t want it, they have their own agenda. Cory could sway them, but at the moment he is hiding his light under a bushel.
I support the RC if the Terms of Reference include climate change and whether CO2 causes global warming, otherwise the exercise would be futile.
30
They each have their own individual aspirations and world-views. The Greens think they are right and so a RC will justify them. Joyce – well no one really knows what he believes as he’s all over the place. Similarly with Abbott as he’s still supporting Turnbull’s agenda to reduce our emissions albeit in a different way. The only one that makes any real sense is Cory but who cares – no one is listening to him.
10
Cory went on Q & A but ‘unfortunately we didn’t get to tackle many of the issues that need to be discussed – immigration, energy, the tyranny of political correctness, the danger of identity politics or why we need to defend our values and our culture.’
In the run up to the election he shouldn’t go on any show unless they are discussing immigration and energy, his other pet hates should be dropped until after the election. A man in his position shouldn’t be casting a wide net.
‘Joyce – well no one really knows what he believes as he’s all over the place.’
He is an integral part of the ginger group and if MacCormack fails to stand shoulder to shoulder with us, then surely his days as deputy are numbered. Barnaby is not all over the place, do try and keep up.
30
Hydro storage isn’t a cost issue it is a capacity issue, if you don’t have enough daytime power then using excess night time coal a wind power to pump water is a good idea. The question is, is it more economical than just building more daytime coal power?
I doubt it.
70
Correct, according to my reading of the feasibility study, Snowy 2 at full capacity can produce 2,000 MW for 7.5 days, or 1,000 MW for 15 days, until it runs out of water.
Instead of Snowy 2 at a cost of $10 billion plus, and $2 billion for associated interconnectors, should not Australia build 4,000 MW of HELE power that works 24 hours a day for 50 years.
00
Claim: The World will Want to Buy Australia’s Carbon Credits
Eric Worrall
July 9, 2018
The climate debate in Australia has descended into farce, as desperate green sympathisers try to maintain the impression that the world cares about CO2.
Withdrawing from the Paris agreement makes no economic sense
Peter Castellas
Mon 9 Jul 2018 13.48 AEST
Those who advocate for leaving Paris are economically, environmentally and socially irresponsible
Withdrawing from the Paris agreement is not an option for Australia, unless we want to suffer severe economic consequences as a result.
Australia is highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and it is in our national interest to support effective global action. The Paris agreement sets a common multilateral platform that allows for domestic flexibility to make contributions to emissions reductions acknowledging the scale of the challenge is greater than any one country’s capacity to act.
…
As our domestic policy settings will inevitably tighten, Australia’s large-emitting businesses will want access to international permits and conversely our world class domestic offset market will want to export credits to a world short in supply. Accelerated clean energy and technology transfer and climate finance will also be part of expanded trade-related rules stemming from the Paris rulebook.
Despite the mis-truths espoused regularly by some conservative politicians and parts of the Australian media, rapid developments are taking place in India and China to transform their economies and meet their increasingly ambitious climate change commitments. Our exports sit in the supply chain of global markets, where there is increasingly an explicit price on carbon. We don’t want to be locked out of these markets, or worse, penalised through trade and economic sanctions if Australia is seen to be out of alignment with global developments.
…
The foreign minister, Julie Bishop, … went on to say, “The global low emissions economy is estimated to be worth around $6tn and is growing at some 4-5% per annum. We believe that through the use of technology and research and science and innovation, there will be many opportunities for Australian businesses, Australian jobs in a low emissions economy.”
…
Peter Castellas is CEO of the Carbon Market Institute
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jul/09/withdrawing-from-the-paris-agreement-makes-no-economic-sense
What I don’t get is why “tightening policy settings” seem to be required to develop these alleged international carbon market opportunities. Australia contributes an estimated 1.8% of global CO2 emissions. Couldn’t countries like Australia and the USA sell carbon credits to overseas buyers without enforcing CO2 restrictions at home? Or are Australian and US carbon credits only valuable if they are produced by suppliers who are subject to carbon taxes? Surely the planet doesn’t care whether all those carbon credit trees are grown in states or countries which enforce carbon taxes?
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/07/09/claim-the-world-will-want-to-buy-australias-carbon-credits/
20
“Australia’s large-emitting businesses will want access to international permits and conversely our world class domestic offset market will want to export credits to a world short in supply.”
I was wondering what we planned to export.
“Despite the mis-truths espoused regularly by some conservative politicians and parts of the Australian media, rapid developments are taking place in India and China to transform their economies and meet their increasingly ambitious climate change commitments.”
It’s too good to be true. Australia just had its biggest coal export year in dollar terms, and one of its biggest for quantity, selling a great part of its production to India and China. And now we get the uplifting news that these countries are simply buying our coal but not burning it. Trust a “conservative politician” to put out rumours about India and China incinerating our precious coal when it’s obviously being used for rock gardens and art installations. They totally love that black glossy effect when the sun shines on it after rain or dewfall.
We do not live by coal alone. Our largest export is still iron ore and on this subject it will be wonderful to hear from Peter Castellas (he’s a CEO of an institute with “market” in its name, and we all know how the market fixes stuff automatically just like socialism used to).
It would also be nifty to hear from Ben Ean Julie how our biggest export is being processed o/s without all that naughty smelting that used to go on here. I’ll bet our potential competitors for the billions of a low-emissions economy are doing truly magical things to turn that ore to steel without burning a whole bunch of coal.
Imagine Australians being kept out of global markets and even “penalised through trade and economic sanctions” like common Yemenis! Think of the cholera!
No. If we want to keep selling mountains of coal and iron ore to people who wouldn’t dream of burning or cooking it we need to do likewise. I tell ya, they’ll be busting down the door to get a hold on our super-rare high quality certificates. (I think they should be hand-calligraphed on organic artisan hemp paper. You can get that done in Asia.)
60
The entire concept of hydro storage should be dropped. Why? Because we were told by the Australian Man of the Year that rain would be a thing of the past. “No more rain” thus “No possibility of hydro storage”.
If the government and greem goblins support hydro storage, it is a clear indication that they are not true believers in CAGW.
They are either trying to stay in power by creating an illusion of caring, or they are true believers following Jim Jones into the jungle.
70
its mad . electricity already in short supply. will need an extra coal powered power station just to pump water up hill
40
The US is very much in need of immigrants; industrial skills and mastery of English are huge virtues. Of course our immigrations system is all well run as your power grid, but hey…if you were to take a Mexican vacation….it helps if your bring your kids, and, if the descriptions here are accurate, political asylum is a reasonable claim: fear of crazies.
50
BREXIT IS DEAD -killed by Theresa May and Her Cabal of Remainers.
James Delingpole delivers the Eulogy.
https://www.breitbart.com/london/2018/07/09/how-remainers-killed-brexit/
But, but is there still a tiny ray of Hope?
Boris Johnson has resigned!
He declined to do the walk of shame up the 1 mile long driveway at Chequers, carrying his suitcase. At the time he said he would support cabinet solidarity.
I have read that supporters gave him 48 hours to resign or lose their backing for his tilt at the Prime Ministers job when Theresa is ejected. Will that happen? Maybe.
Back benchers have apparently called for a motion of No Confidence in the Prime Minister. If their system is the same as ours that means it will be debated in the Commons, not the party room. I assume that the Labour Party would support it and given the slim majority of the Conservatives Mrs May would probably loose.
What will happen after that?
60
Yes, but now Boris Johnson has gone to ground, resigned. A challenge is on. May was too dictatorial by half and has shown her true colours as a remainer, against the wishes of the people. Perhaps not her friends in London, but in the rest of England. May, with the diplomatic skills of Chamberlain and the nous of Malcolm Turnbull’s great uncle, George Lansbury.
As for grandstanding Scotland and Ireland, they never wanted to be part of any deal with England. Ever. Take out these and inner London and 80% of Englishmen voted for Brexit, an overwhelming majority. Even the Welsh voted for Brexit, which says something.
Boris would walk into the job. They would be out of Europe by Christmas. The world would not collapse.
Goodbye Paris Accord. Goodbye EU, EC but perhaps not the Common Market. Goodbye unelected foreigners writing 60% of Englands laws and refusing every objection.
It will not be the first time England has stood alone against Franco German domination. Boris would be a far better match for Trump as well and might make Trump’s visit far more productive than grumpy school mistress May. A fitting position for Boris who is amazingly a direct descendant of George II. The meetings with the Queen would be interesting. They are both descendants of George II, nine generations ago. George II had eight children.
70
He might even bring London’s current mayor into line on the appalling crime rate which has resulted from the current mayor’s Sadiq Khan’s search policies and his open dislike and public abuse of Donald Trump. Regardless of their private opinions, no London Mayor should treat a visiting head of state so badly in public.
60
Sadiq Khan’s manners are utterly appalling and bring great shame on the country. His record on crime is disgraceful. What has happened to my native country…it’s become unrecognisable?
I bet he wouldn’t have cartoonish balloons of Putin and other leaders strung up over London. He owes President Trump a massive public apology.
60
As mentioned above, what’s driving all this and the destruction of Western Civilisation in general (except the US under Trump)?
UN Agenda 2030.
https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/post2015/transformingourworld
Who signed Australia up to this civilisation destroying plan? Julie Bishop. (Australian foreign minister that gives vast amounts of borrowed taxpayer money away, mainly to places that hate us such as Indonesia, Pakistan, “Palestine”, Afghanistan etc..
http://dfat.gov.au/aid/topics/development-issues/2030-agenda/Pages/default.aspx
92
South Australians still cooking with gas fired power) because there is not much else to cook with in that renewable state. Perhaps they need to renew some politicians.
30
I am of the view that the sheeple, most politicians and most public serpents don’t understand that Snow Hydro 2 is just a big inefficient battery and they think its new generation.
Also, the idea for this storage scheme is not new and has been rejected for decades as it is not economically viable.
111
Correct. It just go to show that Turnbull is a believer in the renewables mythology and has no interest at all in reducing our debt, just like Shorten. Yet most people will vote for one or the other major party and not even consider placing a protest vote on those two issues, which happen to be the most critical two of all today. The economical survival of the nation is dependent on them.
70
For our international readers, Labor is the looney left in Australia, a major party in Opposition.
https://www.laborsclimatechangeactionplan.org.au/cut_pollution
Calling CO2 a pollutant shows their Green credentials, the sharp edge of the pseudo Marxist consortium infesting parliaments across Australia.
The ACP is a splinter group and the bookies have them at 100/1 that they won’t be forming government after the next election. Still, in a lose coalition with the other splinter groups they have managed to become the balance of power in the Federal sphere.
Peter if Cory understood that CO2 is not a pollutant, he could attack Shorten and Turnbull at the same time. He should read TdeF upthread, then prepare his troops for battle.
70
Cory never said CO2 is a pollutant, the Greens have. I think you are confused. In any case I’m still waiting for Abbott et all to align with all of Cory’s policies on energy. When that happens they might begin to attack Shorten and Turnbull in a meaningful way instead of Abbott sticking to their agenda to keep reducing our emissions. Abbott should grow a spine like Cory already has and announce reducing our emissions is a total waste of time and will result in ZERO impact on the climate.
30
If CO2 was a pollutant, we are all guilty. The air you breathe in is 0.04% CO2. The air you breathe out is 14% CO2. You are a polluter. I confess. So am I. We will be punished by the Greens.
60
That was poorly worded, what I meant to say is that if Cory understood the negligible effect of CO2 on temperatures, then he could go on the attack against the majors.
It won’t be easy, remember how Donald was abused from day one, Cory has to emulate his hero. The Conservatives are up against it.
‘Once upon a time, those who described themselves as “conservative” tended to place their faith in science, economics and the stability that comes with respect for contracts and promises. But in Australia today conservatives pride themselves on their mistrust of science, their determination to ignore economic advice about the efficiency of carbon pricing and now, it seems, they are willing to shred international credibility in pursuit of domestic political advantage.’
Fin Review
30
McCormack has been wooed to the dark side.
‘Mr McCormack challenged dissidents threatening to cross the floor, saying they would be effectively siding with Labor and its policy of a 50 per cent renewable energy target.
‘He said funding was already available through the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility to help a company build a coal-fired power station in north Queensland.’
Fin Review
30
If we banned all non-engineers from the national power debate we might get somewhere. There are too many cotton-wool heads making serious long term cock-ups.
10
little did we know:
6 Jul: Campus Reform: STUDY: Fossil fuels contribute to ‘petro-masculinity’
by Toni Airaksinen, New Jersey Senior Campus Correspondent
•Professor Cara Daggett, who teaches classes on politics and global security at Virginia Tech, is warning that fossil fuels are contributing to a warped sense of “masculine identity” and “authoritarianism” among men.
•Writing in response to the 2016 election, Daggett coins the term “petro-masculinity” to describe what she sees as a convergence of “climate change, a threatened fossil fuel system, and an increasingly fragile Western hypermasculinity.”
Cara Daggett, who teaches classes on politics and global security at Virginia Tech, penned her criticism of petro-masculinity in an essay “Petro-masculinity: Fossil Fuels and Authoritarian Desire” for the most recent issue of Millennium: Journal of International Studies (LINK)…READ ALL
https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=11098
50
ROFL, I am sure there must be some “intersectionality” with race and gender in there somewhere as well
50
Is the world completely and utterly batty?
60
“The 2016 election; Toni describe what she sees as a convergence of “climate change, a threatened fossil fuel system, and an increasingly fragile Western hypermasculinity.”
Hypermasculinity is a psychological term for the exaggeration of male stereotypical behavior, such as an emphasis on physical strength, aggression, and sexuality.
This sentence of hers is disconnected nonsense.
50
“Petro-masculinity, she claims, ultimately aims “to defend the endangered status quo, entrenching the petrocultures that have historically propped up Anglo-European fossil-burning men.”
So that’s not petrol sniffing? At least to an Anglo-European fossil-burning hyper petro-masculine.
20
In The Australian yesterday one-time editor-in-chief Chris Mitchell has an article bemoaning the lack of critical thinking amongst journalists nowadays.
He cites the coverage of so-called renewable energy as an example.
However he goes on to say that wind and solar will one day likely be cheaper than coal and that batteries storage will eventually be able to supply “dispatchable” power.
There is absolutely no evidence to support those statements.
Wind and solar are far too dilute sources of energy to be economically competitive; both return multiples of the energy used during their life including storage in single figures while coal, hydro and nuclear returns are orders of magnitude greater.
Unlike computer power large scale-battery development is slow to advance due to the chemistry.
Because advances in other technologies are rapid doesn’t necessarily mean that all technological problems are equally soluble.
110
manalive – NewsCorp is right behind the CAGW scam, with a few exceptions. a couple of their journos feature in the following. watch if you can bear it:
from 21mins21secs in to 35mins13secs. naturally, no discussion whatsoever of the substantive issues raised by Tony Abbott in the Bob Carter Commemorative Lecture:
8 Jul: ABC TV: Insiders
On the panel are The Saturday Paper’s Karen Middleton, The Australian’s Peter van Onselen and The Courier-Mail’s Dennis Atkins.
http://www.abc.net.au/insiders/sunday-8-july-full-program/9955438
all the usual cliches; Australians, including farmers, business, want to be part of Paris; want reduction of CO2 emissions, etc. NewsCorp’s Van Onselen pushes this line most.
Middleton: “renewables” are becoming more reliable; sees battery storage as the saviour, and at the heart of NEG.
ends with mockery of Abbott’s comment re “If we had known then what we know now”, we wouldn’t have signed up to Paris.
NewsCorp’s Atkins says ten years ago, Abbott didn’t understand climate policy, he’s admitted that.
he’s admitted now that he didn’t know what he was doing when he said we should sign the Paris agreement. (Middleton interjects: yeah, that was incredible”).
Atkins continues: there is no evidence that he understands it any better today than he DIDN’T ten years ago.
what Abbott actually said…don’t know how he could be expected to have known the future! only “climate scientists” claim to be able to do that:
“If we had known then what we know now about America’s withdrawal, about the economic damage that renewable energy in particular would do to our power system and to our industries, we would never have signed up,” (Tony Abbott) told Sky News.
“And now that we do know, we should get out, simple as that.”…
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-07-04/tony-abbott-says-pull-out-of-paris-climate-agreement/9937972
40
This is exactly equivalent in principle to using off-peak energy to pump water back up over the dam so it can be used again the next day. This is not actually done, of course, because of concerns of total dissolved gases impact on fish. The sole purpose for doing this is to move off-peak energy into peak demand pricing.
40
I didnt realise I was so green and leading edge. We pump water uphill into a little decorative dam/pond. It then goes either soaks back down to the water table or evaporates. So we expend power, for little use other than appearances. Our own little Snowy 2!
70
yarpos:
You can’t use the Snowy name unless you are (or intend) spending BILLIONS of dollars.
Besides, your system works.
40
We have a very efficient Snowy…one of our ewes, who is still feeding her Christmas Day lamb (Noel no 4).
50
Hergé would not agree https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowy_(character)
30
I still think it’s a dog!
50
Actually Australia has already gone to the dogs thanks to most voters supporting either LNP or ALP and continuing in a death spiral.
50
yeh Australia is crap now. Not like when I was a kid.
21
Also getting worse after each election unless something new happens next time. Let’s wait and see if enough voters are awake by then. If it’s “business” as usual then it’s one more election closer to the ultimate crash and burn.
00
The climate is better now than back in the ’40s and ’50s when it was about 0.7C colder.
Another extra degree or two would be just nice.
40
Show me the money!!!! I will upgrade
20
You’re supposed to use other people’s money.
Oh, you are asking for it. Ok, but you’ve got to take it by force and use it wastefully, like our government does.
30
It now matters not how much money is spent. Both major parties have given up on reducing debt. Spend more and be happy. Let’s see how soon we can get over the trillion dollar mark.
50
Morrison is reigning in debt, thanks to the renewed mining boom, we should be back in the black within a few years.
21
thought this was a sensible plan:
9 Jul: ABC: High schools to get specialist teachers who studied maths, science at university under Federal Government plan
AM By political reporter Alexandra Beech
Every high school would have to employ science and maths teachers who have studied those subjects at a university level, under a new Federal Government plan to be announced today.
The Government said at the moment, not enough teachers were knowledgeable and passionate about the topics.
For example, it said around one in five year 7 to 10 general science teachers in 2013 had not completed even a year of university study in that area…
It comes after a report by Australia’s Chief Scientist, Alan Finkel, found the number of students choosing to take science had dropped from 55 per cent in 2002 to 51 per cent in 2013.
The number of overall maths students was steady at 72 per cent. But the report said that was because pupils were moving towards easier level maths.
Intermediate and advanced maths declined from 54 per cent in 1992 to 36 per cent in 2012…
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-07-09/every-high-school-to-get-specialist-maths-science-teachers/9956880
but not according to all “experts” (only two quoted!):
9 Jul: EducationHQ Australia: Experts divided on Govt push for specialist STEM educators
By Geordie Little
Simon Birmingham’s new proposal to direct more specialist STEM teachers into Australian high schools has received a mixed reception from experts in the field.
The proposal comes in response to statistics showing that student enrolment in STEM subjects is declining, while many STEM teachers have no specific specialisation in the area…
Dr Jane Hunter of the University of Technology Sydney expressed scepticism about the plan.
“Where are these people who are going to teach the STEM disciplines going to come from?” she said.
“Recruiting teachers to teach the STEM disciplines has been historically difficult in Australia; there is a worldwide shortage of teachers in these disciplines.”
Hunter said that her research shows that generalist teachers, when given sufficient professional development opportunities, are highly capable of teaching STEM classes.
Dr Anne Forbes of Macquarie University, however, welcomed the plan…READ ON
https://au.educationhq.com/news/49649/experts-divided-on-govt-push-for-specialist-stem-educators/#
00
behind paywall:
9 Jul: UK Telegraph: Every new home, office and street light to have charging point for electric cars, Chris Grayling says
By Gordon Rayner
Chris Grayling also wants to ensure that all large fuel retailers have fast charging points in filling stations to help pave the way for what is being billed as the biggest leap forward in road transport since the invention of the motor car in 1885…
9 Jul: BBC: Electric cars: Charge points could be requirement in new build homes
New homes in suburban England would need to be fitted with electric car charging points under a government proposal to cut emissions.
Ministers also want new street lights to come with charge points wherever there’s on-street parking.
Details of a sales ban on new conventional petrol and diesel cars by 2040 are also expected to be set out.
The strategy comes at a time when the government is facing criticism for failing to reduce carbon emissions…
The proposals, announced by Transport Secretary Chris Grayling, aim to make it easier to recharge an electric car rather than refuel petrol or diesel vehicles…
(includes) ◾More money being allocated to fund charging infrastructure…
“The prize is not just a cleaner and healthier environment but a UK economy fit for the future and the chance to win a substantial slice of a market estimated to be worth up to £7.6 trillion by 2050,” (Grayling) said…
Analysis by BBC environment analyst Roger Harrabin
The government’s Road to Zero strategy has been delayed by a dispute over what sort of cars should be allowed to be sold after 2040…
In the first six months of this year, electric vehicles made up only 5.5% of the UK’s new car market, compared with 4.3% over the same period in 2017…
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-44759150
9 Jul: UK Independent: Green vehicle strategy to tackle pollution and climate change branded ‘road to nowhere’ by environmental groups
by Josh Gabbatiss; Additional reporting by PA.
‘Ministers keep saying they want Britain to be a leader in electric cars, yet they’ve set a phase-out date for petrol and diesel that’s a decade behind other countries,’ says Greenpeace…
Gareth Redmond-King, head of climate change at WWF, said: “MPs, NGOs and business leaders are calling out for a faster transition, but not only is the UK government sticking with its laggard target, it is weakening it by excluding hybrids from the petrol/diesel ban.”
Mr Redmond-King called for “bigger and bolder action” ahead of a major zero-emission vehicle summit being held in Birmingham later this year.
These sentiments were echoed by Andy McDonald, Labour’s shadow transport secretary, who said there was a need for a more ambitious target to clean up the roads.
“At a time when the planet is threatened by climate change and air pollution contributes to 40,000 premature deaths each year, it is dangerous for the government to row back on their commitments to clean up road transport,” he said.
“Under the Tories, Britain is being held back from the transition towards electric vehicles which is already happening elsewhere across the globe.”
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/uk-electric-cars-vans-green-transport-road-to-zero-air-pollution-climate-change-chris-grayling-a8437721.html
00
so many links but not to the letter:
9 Jul: UK Independent: Donald Trump UK visit: US president is ‘putting British national security at risk’, say over 100 top climate scientists
UK already feeling effects of extreme weather driven by climate change, and in open letter researchers urge Theresa May to challenge climate-sceptic US president
by Josh Gabbatiss
Mr Trump famously withdrew his country from the historic Paris climate agreement in 2017, claiming it was “very unfair to the US”.
As a result, emissions from the US energy sector are projected to rise rapidly over the next two years…
The UK is already feeling the effects of a changing climate, with increasingly extreme and unpredictable weather hitting the nation’s shores in recent years.
Since 2000, the country has experienced its warmest and wettest years since records began, and scientists think this extreme weather trend will only get worse…
The 135 signees of the open letter point to the UK government’s own “National Security Strategy and Strategic Defence and Security Review” as evidence for the existential threat posed by climate change…
It outlines how rising sea levels and more frequent extreme weather events will cause havoc both in the UK and on a global scale…
While both nations have seen their GDP per capita increase by around the same amount since 1990, the UK’s emissions have been slashed by over 40 per cent while across the Atlantic they increased by 2.4 per cent…
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/donald-trump-uk-visit-climate-change-scientists-national-security-extreme-weather-sea-level-rise-a8437506.html
9 Jul: Newcastle Uni: Researchers urge PM to challenge Trump on ‘policy of inaction’
More than 130 of the United Kingdom’s climate change researchers, including Newcastle University’s Professor Hayley Fowler, have urged the British Prime Minister, Theresa May, to challenge President Trump about climate change during his visit later this week, warning that the UK’s national security is at risk.
In a letter made public today (PDF) ***(LINK)… 135 members of the climate change research community in the UK point out that President Trump’s “policy of inaction” on climate change means that annual energy-related emissions of carbon dioxide from the United States are projected to rise over the next two years…
***Press release adapted with thanks to the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.
https://www.ncl.ac.uk/press/articles/latest/2018/07/climateletter/
signatories include Tim Osborn & Phil Jones, UEA; Bob Ward, etc.
20
AEMO ELECTRICITY MARKET NOTICE
The MTPASA result published on 10 July 2018 identifies no Low Reserve Conditions over the next 2 years. Please note that MTPASA informs the market of potential reliability issues to allow the market to respond in the first instance, potentially avoiding the need for any market intervention or direction from AEMO.
It appears that the forecast is only available to participants: “The MTPASA graphs are available through the Participants Markets Portal area at https://portal.prod.nemnet.net.au/“. It would be interesting to see their forecasts for next summer. Why the secrecy?
30
AUDIO: 10 Jul: ABC: Overnights with Trevor Chappell
http://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/overnights/overnights/9936974
beginning 2hrs01min58secs: Trevor Chappell talking to ABC’s Lucie Charlton in Melbourne.
Chappell comments how she’s English & wearing a coat. Lucie says she has a jacket underneath the coat.
segue into UK heatwave.
Lucie says she had a friend post on FB the other day saying it was ***37C where they were in England.
Chappell: it’s incredible, I saw on TV the other day the roads are melting, like the tar’s melting, things like that.
Lucie: yeah, things like that happen. (JOKES, JOKES)
Chappell: actually, we shouldn’t make fun of this, because there are people who are getting extremely ill and dying in England because of the heat. it’s a really pretty serious thing that’s happening over there.
Lucie: yeah. it is, and it’s been going on for so long…this has been going on for weeks. it’s very, very hot, so we can’t laugh at them too much.
Lucie: they could share a little bit of the heat with us in Melbourne.
—
***haven’t found any report of 37C in England.
6 Jul: UK EveningStandard: A look back at the famous London heatwave of 1976
In 1976, there were 16 consecutive days of temperatures over 30C
by Laura Hampson, Gareth Richman
On June 28, 1976 the temperature in Southampton was recorded as 35.4C – making it the UK’s hottest June day on record.
***While we didn’t beat that record this year, the UK’s month-long heatwave is supposed to go over 30C in the coming weeks, making for a promisingly hot July…
Back in ’76, Heathrow recorded a temperature of over 30C for 16 consecutive days from June 23 to July 8…
—
as for heatwave deaths (of which I can find nothing), note how Daily Mail goes from “heatwave drowning toll” in the headline to “heatwave death toll” in the text:
3 Jul: Daily Mail: First picture of 17-year-old boy who died swimming in a river in Leeds as deaths of two 25-year-olds at weekend bring ***heatwave drowning toll to seven in a week
•Body of 17-year-old Callum Dawson was recovered from the River Aire, Leeds
•Another man, 25, died after being pulled from River Derwent in Derbyshire
•Body of another man, also 25, was recovered from Crown Lakes, Peterborough
By Bridie Pearson-jones and Mark Duell
A teenage boy who died after getting into difficulty in a river has been named by police as the ***heatwave death toll hits seven…
Two 25-year-old men died in water-related incidents over the weekend, taking the total ***heatwave death toll to seven in a week…
In Peterborough, the body of a Lithuanian man who was swimming was taken out of the lakes after a search by police divers that began at 3.30pm on Saturday…
Last week the body of Ryan Evans, 13, was recovered from Westport Lake, Stoke-on-Trent, on Wednesday night…
In another incident, the body of a man was recovered from a lake in Nutfield, Surrey, on Monday.
Also last week, a woman drowned while swimming in the sea off Eastbourne near the resort’s Western Parade…
The scorching weather has seen Britain endure top temperatures of at least 85F (29C) every day since last Monday – the country’s longest heatwave since 1976.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5908641/Swimmer-25-pulled-river-seventh-drown-heatwave.html
sounds more likely people drowned who couldn’t swim well!
40
***naturally, Simon Lewis is one of the signatories of the letter to Theresa May re Trump:
6 Jul: Guardian: This heatwave is just the start. Britain has to adapt to climate change, fast
by ***Simon Lewis
(Simon Lewis is professor of global change science at University College London and the University of Leeds)
Water, housing, farming … almost every aspect of public life needs to change. Why isn’t this top of the political agenda?
Much of the world is in the grip of a heatwave. Britain is so hot and dry that we have Indonesia-style peat fires raging across our moorlands. Montreal posted its highest temperature ever, with the deaths of 33 people in Quebec attributed to the scorching heat. And if you think that’s hot and dangerous, the town of Quriyat in Oman never went below a frightening 42.6C for a full 24 hours in June, almost certainly a global record. While many people love a bit of sun, extreme heat is deadly. But are these sweltering temperatures just a freak event, or part of an ominous trend we need to prepare for?…
The long-term warming trend is driven by the release of greenhouse gases, chiefly carbon dioxide. Many alternative causes have been tested by scientists: the effects of sunspots, volcanic eruptions and other natural events. Only greenhouse gas emissions, dominated by fossil fuel use, explain the warming over the past century…
Stopping the warming requires moving to zero emissions of carbon dioxide…
This coming new reality is not high on the political agenda…
The development of farming and rise of civilisations occurred within a 10,000-year window of unusually stable environmental conditions. Those stable interglacial conditions are over. Human actions are driving Earth to a hot new super-interglacial state. What scientists call the Anthropocene epoch, this unstable time, is a new chapter of history. Today’s heat is a forewarning of far worse to come. To live well in this new world needs political action to catch up with this changing reality. Fast.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jul/06/britain-heatwave-worse-to-come-water-climate-change
this deceptive headline should read: “UK may NOT be sweltering like 1976”. shame on Daily Mail:
10 Jul: Daily Mail: A tale of two heatwaves: UK ***may be sweltering like 1976 — but without crochet bikinis, chilled Black Tower and baths just 5 inches deep
•Year 1976 only one in which temperatures reached 32.2C for 15 days running
•Accompanying drought between May and August was driest period on record
•Here Femail compares 1976’s heatwave and drought with the present day
By Antonia Hoyle
THEN: The year 1976 stands out as the only one in which temperatures reached at least 32.2C for 15 days running, while on five days temperatures soared over 35C…
NOW: This year’s heatwave hasn’t reached the burning highs of 1976 — yet — but statistics suggest it could. The country is enjoying its 16th consecutive day of heat above 28C, making the spell of scorching hot weather the longest since 2013 when the UK enjoyed 19 days in a row above the same mark…
THE REST IS FLUFF
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-5936097/A-tale-two-heatwaves-sweltering-like-1976-oh-life-changed.html
30
If you want to store energy then pumped storage is a whole lot better than Elon Musk’s battery. Granted you will lose 25-30% of the electricity because of the inherent inefficiencies of pumping and generation but you can still make money if you pump when electricity is cheap and generate when electricity is expensive.
No storage is 100% efficient. You never get 100% of the power you use to charge a battery back out again.
If this pumped storage was used to make better use of the sunk cost of already installed wind or solar then it might be on and would allow 24 hr supply up to the limit of the storage. Have to see the costs before ruling it out.
However, if you were going to build a new combined intermittent generator (wind or solar) and pumped storage to give you reliable renewable electricity then you could supply that same electricity a whole lot cheaper with a coal plant.
What price are your green convictions?
00
Enfin ! La taxe sur le carbone s’en est allée – L’Australie se débarrasse d’un prix sur le carbone
jeudi 31 juillet 2014
À compter d’aujourd’hui 17 juillet 2014, l’Australie n’a plus le prix le plus cher «carbone» dans le monde. Les électeurs n’ont pas demandé une taxe en 2010, mais elle a été forcé sur eux en 2011. Ils ont rejeté sans réserve en 2013, mais il n’a toujours pris des mois pour commencer à dérouler cette pièce complètement inutile de symbolisme qui visait à modifier le climat. Le mécanisme de la démocratie peut être lent, mais c’est une victoire pour les électeurs.
11h15 HNE aujourd’hui: Le Sénat australien passe le projet de loi de l’abrogation de la taxe carbone.
“L’Australie est devenue le premier pays au monde à abolir un prix sur le carbone, avec le Sénat en passant abroger les projets de loi du gouvernement Abbott 39 votes à 32. ” SMH
Maintenant, nous devons fermer le robinet à toutes les autres sauces rentiers vert qui ignorent les éléments de preuve.
h / t Matthew (alias Matty merci !)
Autres services d’information commencent à couvrir ce. Tous les traverses conseillers sauf Nick Xenophon (qui était absent) ont voté pour l’abrogation. Travail et les Verts s’y sont opposés. News.com
Bientôt les grandes entreprises vont arrêter de payer une pénalité sur les émissions de carbone, a un peu plus de 25 $ par tonne, en terminant la mise en œuvre de la politique la plus controversée de l’Australie depuis la décision de 2003 de se joindre à l’invasion de l’Irak.
Travail traîné les étapes finales de débat avec des questions sur l’amendement du Royaume-Palmer partie d’assurer des réductions de l’abrogation de la taxe carbone sur les prix sont passés entièrement sur les consommateurs et les entreprises. Les Verts a pris une ligne similaire de questions et a interrogé le ministre des Finances à propos de $ 550 promis par le gouvernement pour sauver les ménages de l’abrogation de la taxe sur le carbone.
Sur la question de 550 $ par ménage et par an – tout comme il était impossible de savoir exactement combien plus tout frais avec une taxe sur le carbone, il sera impossible de savoir exactement combien moins nous aurons à payer, et il faudra des mois pour économies d’être passés à travers les lignes d’alimentation. Et des milliards de dollars gaspillés ne seront jamais récupérés.
http://joannenova.com.au/2014/07/carbon-tax-gone-australia-first-country-to-get-rid-of-a-price-on-carbon/
https://huemaurice5.blogspot.com/2014/07/enfin-la-taxe-sur-le-carbone-sen-est.html
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can’t copy. read all for list of renewable failures:
8 Jul: ScottishDailyRecord: Sunday Mail reveals secret firm behind ‘high risk’ scheme given £500k of public money from Scottish Enterprise
Renewable engery firm Silva Renewables were handed the cash for the scheme branded ‘high risk” and “unsustainable” by a watchdog.
By John Ferguson & Craig McDonald
SE (Scottish govt quango Scottish Enterprise) have written off amost 100 million pounds invested in failed ventures over the last decade – with renewables firms inflicting some of the heaviest losses…READ ALL
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/sunday-mail-reveals-secret-firm-12875737
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behind paywall, so don’t know if it stays positive:
9 Jul: UK Times editorial: A Summer Header
Good weather, good football and good news have lifted the national mood
Football, as the tumultuous scenes across Britain’s parks, beaches and city squares showed on Saturday, lifts not only hopes, expectations and countless foaming glasses of beer: it lifts the national mood. Bitterness over Brexit, anguish over the NHS, anger over potholes or railway cancellations are all dissipated by a well-aimed header in Samara, a brilliant save by Jordan Pickford and the most celebrated waistcoat in football history.
It has been a long, hot and so far glorious summer for Britain. The sun has shone for weeks on end. Wimbledon and its strawberries are as alluring as ever — even if the last British hope for the men’s final has gone and the seats have emptied alarmingly as the kick-off whistle has sounded in distant Russia. Cricket against India and Lewis Hamilton on pole position offered other causes for sporting optimism…
There is early intelligence that the English wine vintage will be one of the biggest and fruitiest ever, with award-winning bubbly to come…
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/comment/a-summer-header-pz6gh60g7
8 Jul: UK Observer Editorial: The Observer view on why we shouldn’t waste a drop of increasingly vital and valuable water
It’s hot. Very hot. And as ever in the UK when the sun comes out for more than a few, fleeting summer afternoons, there is talk of water shortages, rationing and hosepipe bans. It is a pity the millionaire bosses of privatised water companies do not spend more time lining leaking pipes and less time lining their pockets. Yet despite this and other controversies over charges, metering, mismanagement of upland catchment areas and periodic downstream flooding, Britain’s water politics are relatively benign…
Global warming and population growth are further roiling water politics. In drought-hit southern Australia, a row erupted (***LINK) over the alleged “politicising” of the problem by those who argued climate change was to blame. Even when, for the first time, pregnant cows were sent to the abattoir because pastureland had turned to dust, sheer obtuseness trumped common sense Down Under.
Climate change denial cannot be vanquished overnight, no more than we can insist it start raining…
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jul/08/observer-view-on-worldwide-scarcity-means-we-should-conserve-water
the “row” that erupted?
This week, farmer and former Nationals leader John Anderson cautioned (LINK) Turnbull against politicising the drought by attributing it to climate change (***LINK), telling the Financial Review the conditions were the worst he had experienced, but not unprecedented. (Guardian 10 Jun – ‘Australia doesn’t realise’: worsening drought pushes farmers to the brink)
5 Jun: AFR: John Anderson cautions PM over climate change drought claim
by Phillip Coorey
Mr Anderson, who grows crops and runs livestock on his property west of Gunnedah in NSW, said the drought was “horrendous” and the worse he had experienced, but it was not unprecedented…
(FROM CACHED VERSION) The property has been in his family for “well over 100 years” and farm records show there were droughts of equal severity between 1902 and 1904 and again in 1940. Mr Anderson said the current situation was so bad he had just re-energised a well which “we haven’t used since 1940”.
“But it was there in 1940. And it’s being used for the first time in nearly 70 years. I’m not a climate change denier but I would be very wary about using this as a political device,” he told The Australian Financial Review.
“This is terrible but not unprecedented in terms of severity.”
Mr Anderson’s view appears out of step not just with that of the Prime Minister but also Nationals MP and Agriculture Minister David Littleproud, who on Monday said climate change was a factor…
The pair, along with Nationals leader Michael McCormack, are spending three days this week touring the drought-ravaged east coast. Mr McCormack was more in step with Mr Anderson.
“I’m a believer that the climate is always changing and it’s been changing since ***Moses was a boy,” he told Sky News…
https://www.afr.com/news/john-anderson-cautions-pm-over-climate-change-drought-claim-20180605-h10yx3
***er, long before Moses, McCormack.
4 Jun: Guardian: Katharine Murphy: ‘No doubt our climate is getting warmer,’ Malcolm Turnbull says
Despite the PM’s declaration, it is unclear how current climate policy will ensure Australia reaches its Paris commitment
Malcolm Turnbull, on a tour of drought-stricken areas in New South Wales and Queensland, has declared there is “no doubt that our climate is getting warmer”.
Flanked by Nationals on Monday in Trangie, Turnbull acknowledged climate change remained a live political debate but he said: “I don’t know many people in rural New South Wales that I talk to that don’t think the climate is getting drier and rainfall is becoming more volatile.”…
Emma Herd, the chief executive officer of the Investor Group on Climate Change, said investors were “stepping up in unprecedented numbers to act on climate change”.
“Investors could do even more if governments delivered the policies required to effectively manage climate risk and accelerate investment in low-carbon solutions,” Herd said…
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jun/04/no-doubt-our-climate-is-getting-warmer-malcolm-turnbull-says
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***Ben Smearer!
10 Jul: Guardian: LNP’s Longman candidate Trevor Ruthenberg refuses to clarify view on climate change
Exclusive: Ruthenberg told campaigners he has a different ‘understanding of science’ around climate change
by ***Ben Smee
In a video recorded on Saturday and seen by Guardian Australia, Ruthenberg is shown talking to members of the Australian Youth Climate Coalition, who were campaigning in Longman before the 26 July super Saturday byelection.
On the same day, his Queensland-based party’s conference supported motions including removing subsidies for renewables, committing to build a new coal-fired power station in the north and bankrolling a rail link to the Galilee basin.
In the video, Ruthenberg is challenged by AYCC campaigners who say: “You can’t mine and burn coal responsibly.”
Ruthenberg responds: “There you and I will fundamentally disagree.”
One campaigner says science shows that coal is a major contributor to climate change and is fuelling global warming.
“I’m saying that your understanding of science, and wherever you’re getting science, and my understanding of science, are not the same science,” Ruthenberg says.
He is then asked by another campaigner: “I just want to clarify, do you mean that you do not believe in climate change?”
“No, not at all,” Ruthenberg says.
The campaigner says: “But 99% of scientists agree that climate change is happening.”
“Yeah, OK,” the candidate responds.
Ruthenberg has been contacted and asked to clarify his comments, including whether he believes that climate change is human-made. He was also offered the opportunity to explain the alternative understanding of the science he was referring to.
Briana Collins from the Australian Youth Climate Coalition said the comments were “outrageous” especially given Longman includes Bribie Island, where the local council says 63% of homes are at risk to sea level rises.
“Young people are tired of politicians who refuse to protect our future from dangerous global warming,” she says. “If Trevor Ruthenberg wants to represent the people of Longman, he cannot support climate-wrecking coalmines and giving public money to Adani’s mine.”…
The Moreton Bay region has pockets of strong One Nation support.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/jul/10/lnps-longman-candidate-trevor-ruthenberg-refuses-to-clarify-view-on-climate-change
Linkedn: Briana Collins, Student at The University of Queensland
Current, Australian Youth Climate Coalition, Refugee and Immigration Legal Service
President of AYCC University of Queensland
Australian Youth Climate Coalition
July 2017 – Present
As a whole, we are a non-partisan organisation that is focussed on our individual members, and how we can train, educate and direct each person to reach their potential as leaders in their communities and champions of transforming climate science into real world policy. My job is about connecting with individuals and helping to channel them into the wider environmental movement, while trying to reach the broader UQ community with awareness raising and outreach events…
AYCC.org: Longman by-election DOORKNOCK!
Posted by Millie Anthony on July 03, 2018
It’s by-election time in Caboolture! And we’re making sure that stopping Adani is front and centre.
We’ll be in Caboolture during July and we want to get out on the ground chatting to locals about climate change, moving beyond coal and stopping Adani…
***WHEN: Sunday July 22nd, 10am-2pm including training and lunch…
BRING: Your AYCC or Stop Adani t-shirt, water bottle or sweet treats…
CONTACT Briana Collins…
Showing 2 reactions (ONLY)
http://www.aycc.org.au/longman_by_election_doorknock?recruiter_id=289696
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A totally ideologically driven ‘Captains pick’ by Turnbull, the same bloke that couldn’t wait to sign up to Paris almost as soon as Trump pulled out. Neither Turnbull nor Bishop have ever justified their choices of action on climate change in the face of the world’s major emitters of CO2 taking carte blanche to continue as they will.
Turnbull and most of our governments and politicians seem as avidly ‘green’ as any member of the Greens movement. None have ever answered the challenge to them that, even as our governments destroy our manufacturing economy and starve the poor of adequate power supply, other nations that sign up have never met a climate change limitation that they signed up to, in their lives. Turnbull and Bishop and many others in our Parliaments seems totally insensitive to the costs all these failures of policy, in cost of living and ability to even survive harsh cold conditions terms, that his government is imposing on the poorer sections of the community.
Saying ‘Labor would be worse’ is a very telling retort, a total ignorance of the prime function of government being to look after the welfare and security of all the people – not just the carpetbaggers his government is allowing to game his system. Next is the attack on agriculture and ruminants.
For Bishop to opine ‘ We stick to the agreements we sign up to, in true Australian fashion’ is a mind boggling reflection of the lack of attention or
national interest she has in reality itself. When one signs the same thing as many other people, and those that emit heavily enough that they might change things a little but decide to ignore the agreement they even constructed, just how big a fool is the fool that feels obliged to run the course at great loss to her own nation?
Malcolm’s Hydro2 is just part and parcel of the total blundering nonsense that
is killing us – maybe literally for some – at the hands of our politicians. Tony Abbott is 75% right. Donald Trump is 100% in pulling out of everything that tried to place the USA in chains using climate as the weapon. Tony’s problem is his political ambitions to simply stay in power got the better of his moral convictions that had him believing that all this non scientific, scientific method destroying stuff had to stop. Unfortunately, nobody else is appearing to take up the cudgels in our Parliament either.
I know this entry isn’t science, but its related to the ‘science’ of the day. The greatest threat we have is coming from our own Parliaments and their inability to face up to the world as it is, but using extremes of abuse, the Courts and destruction of livelihoods to force obedience from those that have to elect them. We face the craziest existence there has been for 400years when witches were burned at the stakes and Popes decided the World was flat.
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It’s also worth noting that countries like China and Japan are also parties to the Paris Agreement. Yet despite them having much higher emissions than us, they are building huge numbers of coal fired power stations. In essence then both our major parties have decided to sacrifice our competitiveness and hence our economy while pretty much the rest of the word including many who are party to the Paris Agreement continue to build coal fired power stations in large numbers. They must think we are such fools. Well they must be right given these facts.
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That last sentence is the best appreciation of our situation that I’ve read.
Says it all.
The core issue I believe, is that the world is leaderless.
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Pumped hydro makes sense because the price of energy varies depending on the demand, quality and form of the energy. For example people are buying AAA batteries that are much more expensive per kWh that electricity from the wall. Liquid hydrocarbons are preferred in transportation.
Yearly energy cycle needs huge reservoirs. Imagine that you could reverse the flow of the rivers. Keep the water up. Do not dry the cities and farmland either. Batteries (at home or a factory) may be better in handling daily and shorter energy peaks.
You might be able to build a successful business with hydro if the governments are kept out. Sell energy at the peaks. Buy when energy is cheap. If you own wind and solar do not connect them to the grid, maybe not even generate electricity. Wind is used directly for pumping. You might benefit from the fact that peak solar matches the peak of need of cooling.
More 50 years ago there were no refrigerators. We stored ice in the winter and used that during the summer. Heat pumps are getting more popular nowadays because elevated prices make them affordable.
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OT but worth the interruption The last of the trapped boys and coach are out of the cave.
The down side is the death of the diver who must have simply driven himself beyond his endurance. RIP hero.
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Buying electricity at 3¢/kWhr from a good coal-fired station and pumping water up the Snowy sound reasonable to me. All night Mt Piper, NSW has to be idled to avoid letting it cool down so they might as well run it flat-out and pump-store the Snowy to cater for abrupt demand peaks. Who cares if the electricity then costs 4¢/unit. It’s still way cheaper than wind or solar and can be turned on with 10 mins notice. It’s tricky to work out the real cost of wind and solar with all the convoluted schemes and rebates but it must be >15¢/unit.
The Dinorwig pump storage scheme in Snowdonia paid for itself by storing Wylfa Head’s spare night-time generation. I’d be very happy with a small reactor on Tumut Reservoir.
What we need is a stable predictable, reliable power supply. As a home owner I don’t care if it costs 2, 3 or 5¢ a unit to generate. Industries like smelters have to have economically forecastable electricity supplies.
I don’t see this as too difficult but it would seem that most people are rather out of touch with numbers and reality.
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Good outline. Thanks.
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Hypermasculinity! …labels, tsk! Breaking News! Thai cave rescue of thirteen souls thx to
hyper-masculine rescue squad, the right stuff. Fergit gender stereotypes.This is good news
(for a change.)
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Anthony makes it to Daily Caller:
9 Jul: Daily Caller: Record Temperature Readings Throughout Los Angeles Caused By ‘Faulty Weather Stations,’ Meteorologist Says
by Michael Bastasch
Nearly every record-high temperature reported over the last few days in the Los Angeles area are from weather stations “compromised by heat sources and heat sinks,” according to a veteran meteorologist.
“In my opinion, the data from these stations is worthless,” California-based meteorologist Anthony Watts wrote on his blog Watts Up With That…
Record-high temperatures were also recorded at the Van Nuys Airport, the Burbank Airport and the University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA). Watts took issue with all of these record readings…ETC
8 Jul: WUWT: Anthony Watts: The all time record high temperatures for Los Angeles are the result of a faulty weather stations and should be disqualified
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/07/08/the-all-time-record-high-temperatures-for-los-angeles-are-the-result-of-a-faulty-weather-stations-and-should-be-disqualified/
9 Jul: WUWT: Latest paper predicting global warming “could be far worse than predicted” is so much hot air
By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
On Friday July 6 Doyle Rice, its “weather editor”, published yet another “worser than y’all ever done thunk” piece, this time “reporting” – with his trademark lack of critical faculty – a “new study” suggesting that global warming may prove to be “double what had been predicted”…
Let’s knock Doyle’s rubbish on the head, point by fatuous point…
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/07/09/latest-paper-predicting-global-warming-could-be-far-worse-than-predicted-is-so-much-hot-air/
Global warming could be TWICE as bad as predicted with ‘unstoppable’ sea level rises and a GREEN Sahara desert
The Sun-22 hours ago
Global temperature rises could be double those predicted by climate modelling
The Guardian-5 Jul. 2018
Global warming may be twice what climate models predict
UNSW Newsroom-4 Jul. 2018
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VIDEO: 9 Jul: AmericanThinker: Carly Fiorina educates leftist Katie Couric on ‘climate change’
By John Scotto
In a most enlightening YouTube video (embedded below), former Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina makes leftist “journalist” Katie Couric look like a fool regarding the climate change issue. While engaging Couric, Fiorina emphasizes the reality of American dependence upon oil and coal and how these energy sources are needed for the nation’s basic survival…
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/07/carly_fiorina_educates_leftist_katie_couric_on_climate_change.html
10 Jul: WUWT: Anthony Watts: Trump’s SCOTUS nominee appears to be a climate skeptic
WUWT reader Joel O’Bryan writes:
Trump’s SCOTUS nominee, Judge Brett Cavanaugh from the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, has a long judicial history of dissenting on not just the CO2 endangerment finding by the EPA, but on Obama’s entire environmental regulatory agenda when those cases made it to him as an appellate judge.
For example, the LA Times writes…ETC
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/07/10/trumps-scotus-nominee-appears-to-be-a-climate-skeptic/
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Those 20 to 30 percent of energy are not destroyed. They are simply converted to heat, contributing to the climate change.
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It’s annoying.
All the talk, talk, talk about a new coal station, because the old one is “worn out.”
IF the old one had been maintained, and upgraded as required, it would never wear out.
A HELE station is the boiler part. Not the generator and transmission part.
I suspect all this talk about a new station on a new site is builders jumping on the bandwagon of Government money, and big profits to be made. Also, Politicians want to open a shiny new station which they built using your money. They don’t want to open a mere upgrade.
Here in the Burdekin, there are four Sugar Mills. Have been her for over 70 years. All are still on the same site. All have little resemblance to the original, even 40 years ago. All have been upgraded as required. Several new boilers, connected to existing turbines. Many changes toi electrics, milling train, transport etc. You can still see tram lines disappearing under walls, where new buildings were built over them.
The steel mills in NSW would be similar.
You do not need new power stations!!!!
You just need new boilers.
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Cynic of Ayr,
upgrades achieved very quietly thank you very much! And oddly, most of them to the boilers. Who would have thought, eh!
Just in New South Wales alone. There are 5 plants.
Bayswater, Units two, three and four already upgraded, Unit one currently undergoing upgrade.
Liddell minor upgrades already carried out to three Units, and the fourth currently happening. More work to be done there too, so I have heard, despite what
Pixie Ann Wheatleyany journalist might tell you.Eraring Four Units also undergoing upgrades.
Mt. Piper newest plant in NSW, and upgrades coming, and they want to construct two new Units there, blocked now for years.
Vales Point. Two Units upgraded.
HELE proposed for both Bayswater and Mt Piper. Both blocked since proposed in 2009.
A new HELE IS green field. All new from the coal loader to the transmission and every single part of the process in between.
Boiler advances in recent years yes, and in fact the next stage Advanced USC is already closer than you might think.
Turbines, advancements like you wouldn’t believe.
Generators up to single Units now of 1800 to 2000MW, and soon capable of being hooked up to HELE plants with capable turbines.
Those manufacturing companies which make all this equipment haven’t even paused to listen to the ‘coal is dying’ meme. They just get on with making new ‘stuff’, all of it more advanced than the ones in place now.
With these upgrades either already done or being done, those existing coal fired plants have a long life yet, up to and beyond 50 years, easily, very long thank you very much, lifespans that wind and solar can only dream about.
Nup.
They just quietly go about their business while journalists are busy sniping at those who even mention HELE.
Tony.
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How do you pump the water back up the hill in Snowy 2.0 using cheap off peak electricity at night when they have eliminated most of the coal fires power stations that supplied the off peak electricity. The demand is low at night and the coal fired plants could not be turned down enough to match it, so the electricity was going to waste. Solar doesn’t work at night and wind is randomly variable. Gas is only used for peaking power as it turns on and of reasonably quickly.
Brian
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