Another day, another blackout — Lightning is too much for Australian grid now

Last Saturday at 1pm both Queensland and South Australia were cut off from the national grid. In Sydney 45,000 homes lost power for a couple of hours. Shops had to close. Trains were stopped. Passengers were stranded. Traffic signals were not working on major roads. Chaos. Industrial users shut down in a mass of 725MW of load shedding.

Apparently this was due to lightning.

Once upon a time, Australian states were self sufficient, now interconnectors allow us to share problems:

Two states “Islanded” simultaneously

Two vital interstate power interconnectors blew without warning at the weekend, causing blackouts and critical industrial incidents and isolating two states from the national electricity grid, in a dramatic reminder to Scott Morrison just days into his prime ministership of the nation’s energy policy paralysis.

Queensland and South Australia were exporting power across the interconnectors when they were simultaneously tripped on Saturday, forcing power to be cut to big industrial users and retail customers in NSW and Victoria.

The nation’s biggest single-site power user, the Tomago aluminium smelter in the NSW Hunter Valley, lost power without warning, halting two pot lines for up to an hour. Alcoa’s Portland smelter in Victoria was also affected, losing power for about 50 minutes.

It would have been worse on a weekday.

Ausgrid working to restore power to thousands after mass Sydney blackout

TRAFFIC is at a standstill, trains are delayed and almost 40,000 homes were left without power thanks to a huge power outage.  — news.com.

“Consistent” with a lightning strike:

A spokesman for NSW transmission line operator TransGrid said the interconnector appeared to have tripped during a storm passing through northern NSW and Queensland. “The way the system alarmed was consistent with a lightning strike,” a spokesman for TransGrid said.

Before the advent of interconnectors, a lightning strike could not have blacked out customers in three states simultaneously.

Predictably renewables fans are calling for more interconnectors. Other people just want each state to have reliable baseload generation like we used to have.

9.7 out of 10 based on 93 ratings

288 comments to Another day, another blackout — Lightning is too much for Australian grid now

  • #
    TdeF

    This all started when Greens in Canberra decided to legislate to stop carbon dioxide, so they needed a National Grid, which overrode State rights. Power came from minerals and they are all state owned. So the RET. Then the windmills. Then the interconnectors and more Federal legislation. Now we have a National problem with a National grid we never needed before in a country the size of North America and the population of Texas. Luckily Western Australia is insulated from this madness.

    Now we have laws which force people to buy power from other states simply by crippling some states like South Australia. All the windmills were built in South Australia because it is windy and sunny, not because people live there. Now the rest of Australia has to wear the transmission losses, build the many lines and the interconnectors, just so we can have National blackouts and the Greens can have National Federal Carbon taxes.

    All planned by the IPCC, the United Nations, the European Union and Goldmann Sachs to bring misery to us in the name of socialism. On behalf of the 75% of UN nations which are bankrupt military dictatorships and want our cash.

    810

    • #
      Mal

      The signing of the Paris climate agreement was an economic suicide note for Australia.
      The people who signed it and the advisors, carpetbaggers rent seekers and zealots who supporters of this madness will one day be recognized as either terrorists or traitors.
      There needs to be consequences for people who deliberately (either through intent or ignorance) set out to ruin our economy.

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      • #
        OriginalSteve

        I had an unpleasant experience in the office today, when a true CAGW believer and I crossed “swords” so to speak. It was a timely reminder of how nasty things can get, when you point out the CAGW mob have no facts to back them, so they pkay the man not the ball. Its certainly not cricket….

        It could have got heated pretty fast, and in the end I had to be the mature one and sensibly walked away from the stoush to stop it escalating. Generally, Im a pretty even sort of bloke, the CAGW nonsense does irk me sometimes with its unbalanced and ignorance laced with leftist drivel, what was a reminder was how tribal and nasty the Left is, and critically, the Left uses the inherent unhinged state as a form of intimidation…..

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        • #
          Yonniestone

          Eventually the Tolerance paradox must be applied unless we wish to be conquered by blind insanity.

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          • #
            OriginalSteve

            Leftists are like mice infected with the parasite that sends mice suicidal so they get eaten….except they don’t seem to care if many people get trashed int he process.

            I am convinced that there is a occultic spiritual dimension to it, its like a collective leftist madness that takes hold, and you cant reason with it….

            The best approach is to just speak the truth, and let them spontaneously combust ( so to speak ) and let them shriek and bang tables etc. People watch and notice stuff, they see the skeptics have asolid argument, the leftists seem to rely on bluff, aggression, and volume to drown out logical argument. It reminds me the movie “Zulu” where the soldiers stared down wave after wave of attacks, but held their ground despite overwhelming odds….no difference in tactics really. We just have to hold our ground and be disciplined but not put up with their nonsense.

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      • #
        cedarhill

        And even the Germans have evidently quietly decided one is very foolish if one tries to follow the Paris accords:
        https://www.politico.eu/article/report-german-parties-agree-to-drop-2020-climate-goal/

        Maybe Aussies can be more like the Germans?

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        • #
          toorightmate

          I’d rather follow the Germans than the mozzies.

          90

        • #
          TdeF

          As Carbon Dioxide levels are set by the planet and ocean surface temperature and not at all by humans, it is all fantasy. You can’t lower carbon dioxide. Or make it go up. Carbon dioxide will go up and down as it always has.

          This is not science. This is modern superstition, a manufactured scare by transnational governments, a chicken little target, socialism masquerading as environmentalism.

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        • #
          theRealUniverse

          Paris (accord) is a scam built on a scam. They (elites) know it of course.
          This graph should tell a thing or two about the northern (non) summer – the odd heatwave.

          20

      • #
        angry

        Josh Frydenberg has a history with the carbon trading “Deutsche Bank’.

        He cannot be trusted!!

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josh_Frydenberg

        “In 2005 he took up a position as a Director of Global Banking with Deutsche Bank in the company’s Melbourne office”

        80

      • #

        I thought I’d put this at the top, as I think it explains what many have thought or wondered:

        Malcolm Turnbull’s son has lashed out at vested interests in the Queensland coal mining industry, who he says are exerting undue influence over the Liberal Party’s energy policy.

        Alex Turnbull, who describes himself as a keen environmentalist, studied economics at Harvard and runs a private hedge fund in Singapore.

        Alex Turnbull slammed the “panic and mania” in energy policy
        He said coal miners were “unduly” influencing Government policy
        He said renewables would bring prices down while also cutting emissions

        http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-08-28/alex-turnbull-says-coal-miners-have-undue-influence-on-liberals/10170908

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        • #
          Ross

          This is why Turnbull junior is shouting out about it and probably why Daddy was pushing his Greenie schemes

          https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2018/08/27/soaring-carbon-prices-turn-europes-energy-landscape-upside/

          (sorry I do not have a sub to get around the paywall but the first paragraph says it all)

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          • #

            One day the truth may come out, or the evidence to be so damning, that we will all understand why Turnbull was so into the Paris Agreement and ruinable energy. These things never hurt the wealthy and the deplorables don’t matter.

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        • #
          Allen Ford

          He said renewables would bring prices down while also cutting emissions

          Good one, Alex, but where can this miraculous phenomenon be observed?

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          • #
            Ross

            Alex sits there in his air conditioned office in Singapore saying this, when 95% of Singapore’s electricity comes from natural gas, mainly from Indonesia.
            Singapore signed the Paris agreement saying they would aim to have 20% renewables by 2050 –translation : we are not going to anything in real terms.

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            • #
              Bobl

              That’s so funny, Singapore. I’ve calculated that to run Singapore on 100% Solar you need to tile an area with solar panels 6 times the area of Singapore.

              It’s literally impossible for Singapore to get more than 18% now or 10% with any significant penetration of electric vehicles.

              40

        • #

          Wolf crying ‘Wolf!’ re vested interests.

          10

    • #
      RickWill

      The national grid was in place in the early 1990s. Power was being exported across State borders a long time before that.

      Destabilising the grid is the result of having a high level of intermittent generation located in South Australia. They have spread the intermittency disease across the national grid.

      When the wind is blowing there is insufficient reserve in each region to tolerate the loss of an interconnector. That leaves other regions vulnerable.

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  • #
    Kinky Keith

    Robber mentioned this earlier.

    http://joannenova.com.au/2018/08/at-40c-victoria-has-a-one-in-three-chance-of-blackouts-in-summer/#comment-2037855

    So, do we have lightning or “lightning”?

    From Jo’s post we seem to have “lightning” firmly in place as the euphemism for “critically balanced generation and distribution system”.

    Wasn’t there a serious meltdown in South Australia some time ago which preceded the big battery and diesel generators being purchased to fill the gap.

    But Sydney and our aluminium producers weren’t put off-line by Renewables, it was simply “lightning”.

    KK

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    • #
      Annie

      “Consistent with lightning”, at least as far as the Qld/NSW interconnector is concerned.How did the other connector manage to be simultaneously broken down? Curious. Perhaps someone who knows more about this could explain it.

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      • #
        Annie

        What I also meant to say is that that quote didn’t actually say that lightning was to blame; it merely said it was “consistent” with the breakdown.

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        • #
          TdeF

          Agreed. Fatuous and unlikely explanation. As Joh Bjelke-Petersen said, he had to feed the chickens, meaning the press. We are being tossed chicken feed, not a real explanation.

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          • #

            Exactly. “Consistent with Lightning”

            But take them at their word and it’s still terrible. Now our grid is so vulnerable one bolt of lightning can affect all five states at once.

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            • #
              TdeF

              Agreed. My point is that we didn’t have a grid. We still don’t need a grid. We have created this monster and it costs a fortune, is fundamentally unstable and doesn’t make any economic sense except to pass power over electricity to the Federal government.

              At least two states, South Australia and Tasmania are now utterly dependent on it. Soon the warnings of the AEMO will control our lives the way unions used to control power before privatisation. We will soon need a lot more Federal laws like the NEG. The tentacles are spreading from Canberra.

              151

              • #
                TdeF

                In other countries, 80% of the population lives in the country.

                In Australia 80% of the population lives in a few big cities

                Consider Melbourne 5, Sydney 6, Brisbane area 4, Adelaide 1, Perth 2, Hobart 0.5, Newcastle 0.5 , Wollongong 0.5, Geelong 0.5, 20 of the 26million.
                Accurately I get 50% from the top three, 64% from the top 5 and 75% from the top 12 cities. Some are in close proximity.

                We need a few coal powered stations. That’s it. The rest is forced on the population by Canberra bureaucrats over twenty years and makes no economic sense. It supports huge numbers of windmills and solar spread across the country occupying massive real estate which would otherwise be open country.

                So the ‘grid’ is actually the problem, not the solution to anything except to make us subject to Federal laws and the Greens in Canberra.

                180

              • #
                TdeF

                Each state should be completely independent, as we were. There should be nothing to go down, let alone take everyone with them. Who made these decisions? Not the people of Australia. Power hungry bureaucrats with our money. Snowy II is just a more egregious example. I hope is it stopped soon.

                170

              • #
                RickWill

                The beginnings of the national grid were in place in the 1980s. Removing the State monopoly on power generation and distribution achieved economic benefits for Australia. It made sense to maximise the output from brown coal stations in Victoria using a fuel that was worthless compared to black coal that had value in the export market.

                The rot set in when intermittents were given priority access to the market.

                90

              • #
                ColA

                You are correct Tdef,

                But there is no one in Canberra to beat common sense into the bamboozled brains of our “desperate and dateless”.
                The bruised & battered LNP are still licking their wounds from far too much self flagellation!
                Nat’s ducked, took cover and are still not sure if it’s safe to come out!
                Cross bench are running out of pop corn!!
                Short-ton thinks he’s might have a chance – still doesn’t realize he is a lame duck and will be the next head on the traitors block.
                De-NUTTER and the watermelons could actually gain seats in the next election if someone does not seriously challenge their leftard Marxist CAGWatology!

                WHO can do that and have a chance of winning??

                50

              • #
                sophocles

                Get enough of those coal-fired stations built to take the urgency out of it and then prepare to go nuclear. Terrestrial Energy’s IMSRs (LFTRs designs) are claimed to be “on shedule.” Their certification in Canada is almost done and the first plant could be built in about three to five years time.

                See https://www.terrestrialenergy.com/technology/. Check the UPDATES pages for better propaganda information.

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              • #
                ColA

                Sophocles,

                YOU said the “N” word – go wash out your mouth out before some misplaced greenie spots it and dies of shock!

                The IMSR should be fueled with Thorium not Uranium, that’s strike 1.

                Safety is a huge selling point with LFTR system with a thermal liquid plug able to FAIL SAFE and dump the fuel out of the reactor, never mentioned!, that’s strike 2.

                Biggest concern/problem is reprocessing the used cells, Never mentioned?? That’s STRIKE 3.

                I think you were right the first time propaganda information

                00

              • #
                Environment Skeptic

                Concerning all nuclear technologies is the undereporting that enriching/refining/extraction/processing is extremely toxic and destructive…Thorium refining is no different. Possibly even more toxic.

                Due to sophisticated propaganda techniques…most are stuck and look at the the nuclear industry from the point of view which is at the very end of the mining/extraction process. After the environmental damage has been done…. during the extraction process.

                11

            • #
              RobK

              I have often mentioned that fault-current discrimination and issues with ground currents will be an increasing problem with distributed supply. This situation may well be an example.

              10

            • #
              theRealUniverse

              Just harness the lighting….Might mean new technology but hey its a Green thing…

              10

      • #
        ivan

        Annie, you are not supposed to ask questions like that because they don’t have the answer.

        It would appear the grid is held together with pixie dust and wishful thinking and a unicorn’s fart will bring it down

        90

        • #
          TdeF

          Or a brain fart like Gillard’s NDIS, Gonski, Rudd’s NBN, Turnbull’s Snowy II, Gonski II, diesel submarines. We cannot afford the methane from these useless mega projects. As Abbott says, the $60Bn of diesel submarines are already worse than what we already have.

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          • #
            theRealUniverse

            Those (useless) subs are being built to keep the NEO NWO Pentagon happy (on request at great expense), face it.

            00

  • #
    Geoff

    http://www.bom.gov.au/vic/forecasts/map7day.shtml

    Tuesday and Wednesday nights are going to get critical. Below zero across the state of Victoria. A power outage is going to have human casualties. Gas does not work without power. Will have to use the BBQ for heat. Time to get in the wood if you can use it.

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    • #
      Annie

      Use the bbq with ventilation of course.

      60

      • #

        🙂

        Heh, back ter the Dark Ages, scarey…Compile a how-to-kit’
        Five-Year-Great-Leap-Backward-Plan, supply of candles, matches
        ‘n flints / check, mouse-proof plastic dustbins, (yikes, plastic,)
        filled with grains fer gruel, /check, salt, chutney, garlic, Keens
        Curry Powder ter make it palatable/ check, a whole lotta’ gallon
        bottles of clean water in the cellar/check, mega bottles of vitamin
        pills and vitamin C, medical kit,/ a few bottles of medicinal
        whisky, (Famous Grouse,) check, bow’n arrows, in case yer tithe
        -collector-bureaucrats come callin’, cheque, tools, scythe,
        chopped firewood in the shed, library of soon-ter-be-fergotten-
        past-knowledge /check /tech-nology how to manuals,/check. Don’t
        fergit yr guitar fer merry songs of Summer and railin’ against
        famine, oh, ‘n complaints against authority,/ Check.

        Hope that covers it…

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    • #
      Annie

      Just for the record: the last four mornings here have had minimum temperatures of -1, -1, 0 and (today) -3C. If Tuesday and Wednesday nights are due to be worse I had better cover various plants. The daffodils were sagging badly earlier from the cold so I picked them for the house. Others recovered but the citrus trees don’t like it. This morning we had a hard frost which didn’t fully clear until after 1000…there was frost in the shaded areas at 1002 although the sun had melted it elsewhere.
      Also for the record: There are paddocks across the road still with some lying water from all the rain, so it isn’t drought everywhere in Eastern Australia even though the hype-mad media try to make out that it is. I know from a family member that East Gippsland is short of rain, they haven’t had enough yet. Our dams and tanks are full so we are very grateful for that.
      It snowed like mad in Marysville on 19th August and the snow at Lake Mountain was very visible from the main road near Alexandra last Saturday. It was so heavy that the road from Marysville to Lake Mountain had to be closed, disappointing many visitors from the city.

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      • #
        Environment Skeptic

        Reporting in with somewhat lesser exactitude…the Gippsland area …(Also like four days in a row ..sheesh) extensive dramatic frost during the early hours that burnt off briskly to a dry, cold, sunny, though cloudy day interspersed by the associated ambient warm infrared radiant heat from the sun when clouds occasionally parted.

        10

        • #
          Environment Skeptic

          In the power station hub of Gippsland, the pastures are green and the soil moisture content is high..
          My bees are doing well in their new insulated boxes as predicted. https://www.australianhoneybee.com.au/ These new insulated bee hives let the bees concentrate on drying out nectar into honey apparently due to the bees not having to consume so much carbohydrates like honey to keep the young brood warm. In the morning, the hive is sending out workers to collect nectar much earlier when compared to the lesser insulated wooden boxes. A great head start on these frosty mornings 🙂

          10

        • #
  • #
    Robber

    And despite little wind in SA, Vic is relying on gas from SA and hydro from Tas to meet the evening peak as Vic demand increases from 5500 MW to 6800 MW, while NSW is the supplicant state drawing power from Qld and Vic, with prices climbing to over $200/MWhr. So all dependent on some very long power cords. Interstate transmissions are currently 2300 MW to meet total demand of 26,000 MW, rising to 29,000 MW at 6.30-7.00pm.
    NSW must be struggling per AEMO: From 1730 hrs to 1800 hrs 27/08/2018 The forecast capacity reserve requirement is 1257MW. The capacity reserve available is 1400 MW.
    Hope there is no more lightning – is that due to climate change too?

    250

    • #
      PeterS

      As we all know climate change has been going on since year dot. What’s different this time is it’s shrinking the brains of the alarmists to the size of a pea.

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      • #
        Mal

        What have you got against peas?

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        • #
          TdeF

          Sizeist as well.

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        • #
          PeterS

          Nothing. I actually like them. I was referring to their size not their nature or taste 🙂 Perhaps I should use something else. How about the size of a tick or flea? More accurate too.

          60

        • #
          Annie

          Matt (pocket cartoonist in the UK Daily Telegraph) had a cartoon in the last couple of days…the Princess and the Pea, the princess lying on lots of stacked mattresses. If she could still feel the pea she was not the right social rank (too high class presumably) to work for the BBC. The latest stupidity about who should be employed there suggests analysing people’s class.

          30

      • #
        Reed Coray

        PeterS, I think you have it backwards. Climate change is expanding the brains of the alarmists to the size of a pea.

        100

  • #
    Delta

    Hmm, well right now there is a lack if reserve in NSW. 5.44 pm.
    Market Notice 64018
    AEMO ELECTRICITY MARKET NOTICE

    An Actual LOR1 condition has been declared under clause 4.8.4(b) of the National Electricity Rules for the NSW Region from 1730 hrs.
    The Actual LOR1 condition is forecast to exist until 1800 hrs 27/08/2018
    The contingency capacity reserve required is 1400 MW
    The reserve available is 1270 MW

    Manager NEM Real Time Operations

    We’re running on empty and it won’t change soon!

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  • #
    NB

    We descend into the socialist dark ages.

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    • #
      PeterS

      Hardly started. Wait till Shorten becomes PM. Then it will be full speed down the abyss unless Morrison can pull his finger out and does something instead of just talking.

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      • #
        OriginalSteve

        I strongly suggest if you dont own a generator yet, you buy one soon.

        Shorten will fiddle as “Rome” burns….

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        • #
          TdeF

          I have three. All ready for last summer but thanks to shutting down Victorian industry and paying fortunes for gas power, we avoided blackouts. Welcome to the 1970s.

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          • #
            TdeF

            Of course every shop in South Australia would have one, petrol or diesel. Even the government has giant diesels at Elizabeth for the government. All to minimize Carbon dioxide apparently. Luckily there is no Carbon Dioxide from petrol or Green diesel. Apparently.

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        • #
          PeterS

          Yes it’s already on my list. I intend to buy two, one as a backup of the backup. Diesel or petrol?

          00

  • #
    a happy little debunker

    No mention of any widespread power outage at either at the Guardian or their ABC.

    Probably just too busy trying to put the boot into Abbott!

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  • #

    If I accidentally leave the TV on after footy or listen to Talkin’ Sport near the hour I stumble on something called “news”.

    According to this “news” there has been a “coup” by a heartless wrecker, Peter Dutton, in which Tony Abbott emerges as chief villain. One victim and shining light is Julie Bishop who, as we all must know, is the stylish genius we really needed to install. She’s a chick, too! (It seems the previous lot of leaders were installed by a democratic vote of party members who had heard the voice of the nation through Miranda Devine and Leigh Sales…unlike the Dutton and Abbott coup with Kalashnikovs and Blackshirts and pop-out blades in Tony’s R M Williams.)

    Just as well I check into Jo Nova for some actual news. Seems the power grid has failed disastrously but all too predictably once again. Gee…I wonder whether this obscure event could have something to do with those very highly publicised events…

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    • #
      OriginalSteve

      Well there are predictions from a wide variety of publically available news sources that the USA may hit both Iran and finish off Syria at the same time, early November. The Iranian sanctions start on November 4th. Japan hit pearl harbour as it had be blockaded by the USA prior. Irans main income comes from oil.

      If that’s the case, fuel prices will spike as the oil companies make the most of hysteria and gouge us and jack prices by 20-40% to make extra profits while the strait of Hormuz is temporarily closed.

      It may not happen, and I hope it doesn’t, but diesel fuel may go up as well…so if you own a gennie …. stock up now….

      10

  • #
    Yonniestone

    Come on ScoMo start putting the boots into the ruinables and talk up that coal!

    For Original Steve: 26/08 Cold Wind, BOM observations Ballarat, High 10.9C @ 04:00pm, Low 3.1C @ 08:30 am, Wind ~20kph, Personal, cold cloudy with later shower 0.8mm.

    This is the last of your predictions, hope it helps, Yonnie.

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  • #
    Geoff

    Now we know where all the NSW power is going. The ABC Ultimo have Tony Abbott wired up on a rack.

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  • #
    Jeff

    ” reliable baseload generation like we used to have.”

    Is electricity reliability any worse than it used to be ?
    Maybe we have become hyper sensitized to it, because it is now a highly charged political football.

    “Reliability of electricity distribution networks is measured by a number of indicators; the system average interruption duration index (SAIDI) and the system average interruption frequency index (SAIFI)”

    “With regard to SAIDI, the Australian Energy Regulator (AER) has found that a typical customer experiences around 200 minutes of outages per year – including planned and unplanned outages.”

    “The average number of unplanned outages per year (or SAIFI) has generally declined over the past decade. NEM Customers have experienced on average around 1.5 outages each year. In 2015–16, this fell in Tasmania, Victoria, Queensland and NSW. In Queensland and NSW this fell to near the lowest levels of the past decade, with NSW recording the largest fall. “

    https://www.energynetworks.com.au/news/energy-insider/behind-news-network-reliability

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    • #
      TdeF

      I have been through ten years at a time in Melbourne without a single outage, once the strikes stopped. It used to be reliable, utterly reliable. Any claim to the contrary is fantasy.

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    • #
      Peter C

      ” reliable baseload generation like we used to have.”
      Is electricity reliability any worse than it used to be ?

      In the past outages were caused by local issues, usually storms or vehicle accidents bring down power lines. Those types of things will likely continue to happen.

      What we have now is a New type of Problem. The AEMO cannot balance the power demands with the generator capacity, because the generator capacity is overloaded with intermittent unreliables.

      That is what Jo means when she says “reliable baseload generation like we used to have”.

      Clear enough to me.

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      • #
        Jeff

        The AEMO cannot balance the power demands with the generator capacity, because the generator capacity is overloaded with intermittent unreliables.

        Maybe, but the baseload power can’t be doing too bad a job now.

        “The Committee also heard that while electricity costs had increased in the past 10 years, reliability had improved and that excluding major weather events, customers who previously experienced an average of two interruptions a year now experience one interruption each year. “

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        • #
          TdeF

          Sorry about the green tick. That was a mistake.

          We get reliability because people are paid to close and we pay a fortune for gas power in need. Under the NEG fines for not closing were to be $100Million. That’s socialism, not power distribution and reliability and accuracy.

          Then you get Alcoa in Portland where they pretend to make Aluminium. We pay $80,000 per person to pretend. It saves votes and people can say everything is fine. Outages it seem are the only measure of fine. Not having power is the price you pay to reduce the world’s carbon dioxide. Except it does nothing.

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        • #
          toorightmate

          Does the AEMO do anything other than review what happened yesterday.
          They sure seem deficient in formulating plans for today and tomorrow.

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          • #
            Serp

            They’re drawing up maps of the hundreds of projected autonomous power sharing communities which will inherit the renewables infrastructure being imposed on the country by global finance.

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      • #
        TdeF

        I guess the real frustration is to pay so much more and to get so much less. Coach at first class prices.

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        • #
          Jeff

          Fair enough, there is certainly a price to pay for maintaining the regulated reliability standard.

          13

          • #
            Robber

            Reliability at the local level is mostly to do with the resilience of the grid, and very little to do with the generators. Remember the debate a few years ago about poles and wires? The network monopolies had minimised investment, then they were given the green light to spend more with a guaranteed return, and then they were accused of “gold plating” the grid as they built backup circuits. Look at your electricity bill – $1-1.50 per day as a “supply charge” for using no electricity. That’s primarily to pay for being connected to the grid, as the network is essentially a fixed cost, with sufficient capacity available for peak delivery at 6.30pm.

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            • #
              Jeff

              Remember the debate a few years ago about poles and wires? The network monopolies had minimised investment, then they were given the green light to spend more with a guaranteed return, and then they were accused of “gold plating” the grid as they built backup circuits.

              Yes I remember well when network companies where continually criticised in the media for neglecting the poles and wires.
              Now the media criticises them for gold plating.
              Maybe they will always be criticised whatever they do.

              30

    • #
      cohenite

      Blackouts from renewables is systemic; gold platted fossil/nuclear will not have black-outs unless the whole grid is blown up. Which is what alarmists are doing of course.

      20

  • #
    OriginalSteve

    O/T but worth noting – apparently the A.C.T. govt is on a push to ban plastic straws…its a bit of a straw man argument, as there is no proof they are an issue….

    It really is a 1st world issue…..

    50

    • #
      toorightmate

      Right up there with party balloons – the streams are choked with straws and balloons.
      California, here we come.

      50

      • #
        beowulf

        Ah yes, but a metallic balloon brought down Sydney’s rail network a week ago by shorting out the wires. So ban party balloons or maybe ban birthdays, I’m not sure which.

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      TdeF

      Great comment on the straw man argument is that consumption of plastic straws in the US is quoted as 500million per day. It seems they have found the source of that incredible statistic. A 9 year old’s school project.

      It’s like the plastic bag story in Victoria. There isn’t a problem. There never was. Also from first hand experience, the takeaway plastic bags rot and disintegrate quickly, if they make it home in one piece.

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        toorightmate

        500 million per day sure is a lot of suckers.

        50

        • #
          TdeF

          That’s two a day for every man, woman and child in North America. I would go through a year without a single straw, so this is just a made up figure. I donated my 700 straws to build plastic houses for the poor.

          00

  • #
    mmxx

    It would seem that our new PM has just indicated he backs the Paris agreement and the roll-out of “ruinables” for our increasingly ration-prone electricity needs.
    Oh dear – poor fellow my country!

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    • #
      OriginalSteve

      As I have said in the past:

      “The number one criteria to being PM is doing as you are told…”

      Or – obedient sock puppets R Us

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      PeterS

      Although he might not withdraw I’m hoping he means to ignore Paris and scrap the renewables nonsense to allow coal to compete again. However, I’m starting to feel my hopes are fading away not just because I sense he’s not going ahead to scrap the renewables nonsense but also because of what I heard someone from Labor has said what they will do when the hold government. They will of course ramp up renewables at the expense of coal but use gas as the means to provide a reliable backup. I fear they will be so convincing with that approach, which would work but at great cost, to much of the public it will smash the LNP on multiple fronts especially if Labor can convince the public power costs will come down as a result even though it’s not true. By and large we are such a gullible lot. After all we voted in Rudd, Gillard and Turnbull while allowing our best PM since Howard, Abbott, to wilt in the background. Voting in Shorten will be the last straw.

      50

    • #
      angry

      MORRISON IS A TURNCOAT CLONE……….

      FFS!

      40

      • #
        OriginalSteve

        What else did you think out of all the theatre would happen? Progress?

        Turncoat will be given a pile of money and a cushy UN job to further the destruction of personal liberties and freedoms……..

        50

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    pat

    27 Aug: ABC: Prime Minister leaves climate change debate for ‘another day’ during drought trip
    ABC Rural By the National Regional Reporting Team’s Anna Henderson
    Standing in front of the microphone in the searing bare heat outside the Tully family’s house paddock, the Prime Minister holds up a message of hope.
    It is a photo of a lush green paddock, taken on the same barren earth where politicians and the media pack are standing.
    The image was taken just two years ago on the same land…

    The Quilpie region has been drought declared since 2013.
    Stephen and Annabel Tully have destocked significantly and they have prepared their property for the dry.
    The questions soon round on that of climate change.
    Mr Tully wants to make it clear that debate is not his priority as they deal with daily pressures.
    “Whether it’s not climate change or it is, is completely irrelevant to any of us here. It’s still marginal,” he says.
    “You can’t argue any other way. People are hurting now, we need it fixed now.”

    He also points the family’s own records which he believes show this drought is not unusual.
    “We’ve got 100 years of (rainfall) records,” Mr Tully says.
    “What’s happened here, so far, still sits within those records.”

    The Prime Minister echoed that position.
    “I don’t think people out here care one way or the other,” Mr Morrison said.
    “I don’t think that’s the issue.”
    When pressed to give a clear answer about whether he believes the prolonged dry period is associated with human-induced climate change, he is more blunt.
    “The climate is changing. Everybody knows that,” the Prime Minister said.
    “I know what you are trying to ask and I don’t think that’s part of this debate. That’s my point.
    “If people want to have a debate about that, fine.
    “It’s not a debate I’ve participated a lot in, in the past, because I’m practically interested in the policies that will address what is going on here, right now.
    “And I’m interested in getting people’s electricity prices down, and I’m not terribly interested in engaging in those sorts of debates at this point.
    “I understand the arguments about all of that, I understand the positions that are held.”…

    Mr Morrison said people applying for emergency financial assistance, through the beleaguered Farm Household Allowance program would not be thinking about that question.
    “Practically, it doesn’t help me a lot in terms of working out how you make a human services form that is too long and invasive and takes people a lot of time to fill out, that debate doesn’t help that form get filled out any sooner.
    “It certainly doesn’t help ensuring you’re keeping dogs out of your farmland.
    “I’m going to leave that debate for another day.”…
    http://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2018-08-27/pm-leaves-climate-change-debate-for-another-day-on-drought-tour/10168860

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    • #

      Quite apart from the irrational, disastrously unscientific association of “global warming” with drought…

      There are old rainfall records for that Quilpie area going back to 1884 though there have been some gaps post-2000.

      The driest years (5th percentile at South Comongin) have been 1982 (driest) followed by 1965, 1940, 1951, 1946, 1902, 1905. A nearby gauge starting 1941 shows 1980 and 1986 as very dry. An old gauge a bit further away is still current and shows severely reduced rainfall, but only from February last year.

      Looking at runs of years, the worst droughts for the area are, not surprisingly, the Fed, the WW2 and Millennium, though there are variations even in this one region of Qld where someone gets lucky for a few days. When you only get about 330mm annually, a lucky local fall really throws out the stats for the region, which is why it’s good to compare a few gauges and apply some common sense.

      In an age of dogma, ritual and soothsaying, it’s nice to be able to grab a fact or two.

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    pat

    27 Aug: ABC: Perth weather: Last rain of winter set to soak the city in wettest August for years
    By Irena Ceranic
    Just when it looked like Perth’s winter had run its course, another storm is on its way and could deliver enough rain for the city to record its wettest August in decades.
    The Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) said the system will deliver some wintry weather to south-western parts of the state, and is expected to arrive in Perth overnight.
    “We’re expecting a rain band ahead of a cold front to reach the Perth metro area around midnight, potentially just after that, and then we should see areas of persistent rain through to the morning, around 8:00am or 9:00am,” forecaster Cameron Lewis said.
    “Then it should start to transition into more showery weather with the potential for isolated thunderstorms.”…

    As a crippling drought grips the eastern states of Australia, Perth has experienced its wettest winter in years and is on the verge of recording its strongest August rainfall since 1992.
    Perth has received 146.6mm of rain so far this month and needs another 30mm to exceed the 2004 total of 175.6mm.
    “From there it will need an extra 15mm or around about 45 in total to try to get over what we got back in 1992,” Mr Lewis said.
    With more showers forecast for Perth on Wednesday, that is shaping up as a real possibility.
    Perth’s cumulative rainfall for the year is also tracking above average…

    The Bureau of Meteorology is predicting spring to be drier than average in the south-west of WA…
    The strong winter rainfall over Perth has given the dams a welcome boost.
    Perth’s biggest dam, Canning, is now at almost 90 per cent capacity after receiving 10 billion litres of streamflow since the start of winter.
    The average streamflow for this time of year is 6.6 billion litres.
    But despite the dam nearing capacity, the Water Corporation said it is not expected to overflow this winter.
    “Canning Dam last overflowed in November 1974,” the spokesperson said…
    “While the dam is currently at 86.6 per cent capacity … not all of this water comes from winter’s streamflow.
    “Desalinated water and groundwater have been stored in this dam over many years to be used during periods of high demand over the warmer summer months.”
    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-08-27/forecast-rain-likely-to-mean-the-wettest-august-since-1992/10169300

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    • #
      Graeme#4

      Once again, when the BOM has to report weather conditions that don’t support the AGW meme, they only reference records back to 1992, when the Perth measuring site was moved to Mt Lawley, a hotter location. But if the weather matches the AGW meme, then it’s the worst evahh…

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      TdeF

      Isn’t Perth Flannery’s ghost town, deserted because of the lack of water?

      Is there a single prediction of Australia’s utterly unqualified Chief Climate Commissioner which has been right? Even the rain which falls will not fill the dams. Another dam silly prediction from Flannery. It nearly led to the collapse of the Wivenhoe dam and the end of Brisbane and a million lives.

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  • #
    pat

    ends with anonymous source spelling out the probably real reason they aren’t too concerned!

    27 Aug: SMH: Energy industry calls on Taylor to not give up the energy policy fight
    By Cole Latimer
    Industry is looking past the anti-windfarm headlines that new energy minister Angus Taylor has generated in recent years and hoping his expertise in the sector will allow him to forge a national policy…
    The change in ministers did little to spook energy stocks, which had a relatively flat performance on the ASX on Monday, with wind power generator Infigen Energy’s share price lifting 4.4 per cent on the back of surging profit.
    “I know Angus Taylor and he isn’t so much anti-wind or renewables as against subsidies,” Infigen chief executive Ross Rolfe said.
    “He is of the view that it should be a level playing field for all types of energy.”

    One energy retailer said there was “cautious optimism” over Mr Taylor’s appointment.
    “He’s someone who has shown a lot of interest in the sector,” the retailer said of the former management consultant and Rhodes scholar.
    “He seems to understand the issues and that bodes well, however, the greener part of the sector may be concerned or show some cynicism over his appointment.”…

    The founder of retailer Energy Locals, and a former EnergyAustralia director, Adrian Merrick, said Mr Taylor could potentially finish the reform task before another federal election
    “His predecessor was on the brink of having the National Energy Guarantee implemented and we’d hope that, rather than starting again, the new minister can pick up the baton and carry it over the line,” he told Fairfax Media…

    Spark Infrastructure, which owns major South Australian and Victoria electricity distribution networks and transmission company TransGrid, said it hoped Mr Taylor was willing to engage with the sector…

    “We’d hope that as energy minister he puts any preference for, or criticism towards, certain forms of generation to one side,” Mr Merrick (EnergyAustralia director) said.
    “Splitting environment from energy is in some ways disappointing, given the inherent connection between the two, but regardless of the organisational boundaries within government we’d hope that emissions reduction is seen as an achievable necessity by the energy minister in his quest to deliver a new energy policy.”…

    A source at another electricity company said while it would focus on building a relationship with the incoming minister as change was likely again next year.
    “The question is how long we have this government for, as we’ll likely be working with [Labor energy minister] Mark Butler next year,” he said.
    https://www.smh.com.au/business/the-economy/energy-industry-calls-on-taylor-to-not-give-up-the-energy-policy-fight-20180827-p50019.html

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  • #
    pat

    27 Aug: Ch9Finance: Regulation could raise power prices: Spark
    Network operator Spark Infrastructure has warned that further regulatory changes to the energy market risk raising consumer power prices as it increasingly shifts to renewables.

    Spark, which lifted first-half profit 19 per cent to $58.1 million, on Monday said many of what it called “an unprecedented level of concurrent and overlapping reviews … seek to undermine the integrity of the regulatory system”.
    Highlighting the Australian Energy Regulator’s proposed rate of return guideline and regulatory tax allowance review, Spark – which operates in NSW, Victoria and SA – said changes could be to the detriment of consumers.
    “We are concerned that, in an industry that requires significant investment to transition efficiently to a new energy future and to maintain a focus on energy price affordability, these changes will add considerable risk and uncertainty to the process,” chief executive Rick Francis said in a statement…

    Nonetheless, Mr Francis said Spark was committed to the transition to a low carbon economy.
    “We’re also seeing continued growth in (NSW network) TransGrid’s renewable energy connections business in NSW, and we see this as an area of ongoing investment and growth,” Mr Francis said.
    “We are not only delivering more affordable network services to customers now but we are also investing wisely to help Australia’s transition to a lower carbon emissions footprint for the future.”
    https://finance.nine.com.au/2018/08/27/09/37/regulation-could-raise-power-prices-spark

    no other coverage found online:

    27 Aug: CarbonPulse: Australia seeks to breathe life into dormant aviation offset programme
    Australia has launched a review into its project methodology for allowing airliners to earn carbon credits, after seeing more than three years go by without issuing a single offset to the aviation industry.

    00

  • #
    Richard Ilfeld

    It appears through this morning that the American Press and electronic media have totally ignored the role of energy in Australia’s political tumult. “What to do about the Chinese”, “Immigration and antipathy to people of color”, and “intraparty personality clashes” are the three excuses of choice. There have also been a couple of folks who confused Australia and New Zealand. Unless OZ also filmed some hobbit movies. Sheeesh. I can sort of understand when a news bimbo botches reporting on a plane crash; no dear, the 172 did not overtake the 727, but politics is what they claim to be up on. My take: your issues are just another vehicle for our press to flog their narrative.

    On behalf of the American Media, I apologise. A few of us know that Australia is more important than providing a few cultural tidbits to brand a steak house. In the age of the Pacific, with competitive powers rising, you folks will be necessary, as you were in WWII. For all your issues, Australia remains a free and fair place compared to much of the world — there aren’t many.

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      TdeF

      Not Breitbart. They had a good and accurate article on how the Australian Prime Minister was brought down by crazy climate policy. They referenced this blog.

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    • #
      Greg in NZ

      When I lived in the State – wedged between Canada and Mexico – not many, if any, knew the diff between Aus and NZ. Mind you, that was back in the Age of Crocodiles, long before the precious little Hobbitseseses made their pixelated green-screen appearance on the world stage. We still refer to Australia as the West Island – as it balances our shaky little [imaginatively-named] North and South islands. And talking of real wizards, the mad hatter of Christchurch produced this upside-down map of the world yonks ago and I’m a firm believer fan of his outlook, as it places New Zealand at the top centre of the map where it rightfully belongs. Any complaints please send to: PM Scott Morrison, Can’tberra ACT inc.

      http://www.mapworld.co.nz/wizard.html

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  • #
    pat

    27 Aug: RE News: Infigen banks windfall in Oz
    Net profit, revenue and production all up for full-year 2017-18
    Australian renewables developer Infigen Energy has banked net profit after tax of A$45.7m for the year to end-June, up 41% on the A$13.4m recorded in 2016-17 period.
    The increase was primarily due to a “deferred tax asset” of A$35.7m, the company said
    Production was up 4% year-on-year to 1549GWh due to higher production at a number of wind farms.

    ***Revenue was also up to A$210m from A$13.4m thanks partly to higher electricity prices in New South Wales…
    http://renews.biz/112244/infigen-banks-windfall-in-oz/

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  • #
    pat

    ????

    27 Aug: Renew Economy: On first day as PM, Morrison learns difference between Big Battery and Big Banana
    by Giles Parkinson
    Well, it turns out that the Tesla big battery is more useful than the Big Banana in Coffs Harbour, or even the Big Prawn near Ballina, judging by the impacts of a dramatic loss of two transmission line on Saturday that caused major power outages in NSW and Victoria.
    The Tesla big battery, also known as the Hornsdale Power Reserve, was able to play a key role in helping keep the grid stable and the lights on in South Australia on Saturday, in its biggest threat since the 2016 blackout. It did solve a problem…

    Here’s what happened…
    https://reneweconomy.com.au/on-first-day-as-pm-morrison-learns-difference-between-big-battery-and-big-banana-84075/

    from the comments:

    The_Lorax 7 hours ago
    While the HPR is clearly very effective at stabilising the grid during events such as this, and Canavan’s comments are ridiculous, is this a credible statement from Giles?
    “If NSW had a few batteries like the Tesla big battery he mocked, then the lights in the suburbs and the smelter might have stayed on.”
    NSW was importing 800MW from Qld when the event took place. SA was exporting. How many batteries would NSW have needed exactly?

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    • #
      angry

      Like this LEFTIST VERMIN MOB “reneweconomy” has any credibility………..

      Should be named “destroyeconomy” !

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    • #
      yarpos

      that comment will be lucky to survive on Renew, the master does not like to be questioned on his pronouncements

      10

  • #
    Richard Ilfeld

    The American Press: part 2. Why they don’t cover Australia.

    This is a real headline.

    It is about one of our two parties. The one that believes in “Climate Change” as an existentail threat.

    “DNC Abandons Rule Requiring Gender Parity on Committees to Accommodate Non-Binary Members”

    quod erat demonstrandum

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    • #
      PeterS

      Perhaps they already have come to the conclusion Shorten will be our next PM.

      01

      • #
        Serp

        They wouldn’t have a clue!

        When Howard was in the US during 911 he was referred to as Australian Prime Minister John Hunt –at least they didn’t call him Mike.

        11

  • #
    pat

    ***talk about chutzpah!

    27 Aug: The Conversation: Michelle Grattan: Turnbull resigning seat on Friday, giving Morrison a real-time voting test
    He has written to his community and will send that letter on Tuesday.
    Turnbull repeated the point he has made about a “week of madness”, that had disgraced the parliament and appalled the nation…

    ***With the Liberals bracing for a real-time test of their popularity at a byelection expected early October, Turnbull’s son Alex fingered those backing the coal industry for their role in his father’s fall.
    In a hard-hitting interview with Fairfax Media, the younger Turnbull warned the Liberal party could be hijacked by financial interests that would make windfall profits if the government assisted coal projects. He said these interests “have their hooks into the Liberal Party … which has no money”…

    Meanwhile, around bureaucratic circles there will be interest in whether Morrison will keep Martin Parkinson, Turnbull’s right hand bureaucrat, as secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet.
    When Abbott won office, he immediately sacked Parkinson from his then position of secretary of treasury – though embarrassingly, he had to retain him for more than a year for reasons of convenience.

    Parkinson is an accomplished and long-experienced public servant. One of the main marks against him in the eyes of Abbott and his then chief-of-staff Peta Credlin was that under Labor he’d headed the climate change department, and had obviously personally believed in addressing the policy challenges associated with that issue.

    Turnbull brought Parkinson back as head of the Prime Minister’s department.
    The climate wars were one among several of the driving forces behind the coup. So the climate ideologues may gun for Parkinson.
    http://theconversation.com/turnbull-resigning-seat-on-friday-giving-morrison-a-real-time-voting-test-102215

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    pat

    finally, The Australian front page tomorrow apparently has a story about Turnbull closing in on Labor in last Newspoll (tho Coalition would still lose in a virtual landslide?) so what’s the point of the article?

    must be one of the Turnbull faction at The Oz torturing the data.

    meanwhile, Daily Tele happy to give away this for free:

    27 Aug: AS a valued reader of The Daily Telegraph, here is an exclusive look at tomorrow’s front and back pages tonight…
    HOME Affairs Minister Peter Dutton has warned there are 14,000 asylum seekers ready and waiting to hit Australian shores after the first illegal boat made it to our coastline in four years. The ***embarrassing breach to “Fortress Australia” occurred as Mr Dutton had been launching his failed leadership coup against ex-prime minister Malcolm Turnbull.
    https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/troubled-waters-14000-boat-people-ready-to-launch-mission-to-australia/news-story/dd19347e24b193633061757df87b22e5

    27 Aug: AFR: More renewables mean lower prices
    by Ben Oquist
    Scott Morrison is set to make the same mistake as the Business Council of Australia on energy and climate policy. Equating emission reductions with higher prices gets the politics and economics wrong…
    https://www.afr.com/opinion/columnists/more-renewables-mean-lower-prices-20180827-h14k5u

    26 Aug: SMH: ‘He will fail farmers’: Morrison pressured to tackle climate change as part of drought pledge
    By Nicole Hasham
    Prime Minister Scott Morrison is under pressure to acknowledge that climate change is a major driver of the drought gripping parts of regional Australia following his declaration that the big dry was his government’s number one priority…
    The vast majority of climate scientists say global temperatures are warming and human activity is the most likely cause. This is leading to extreme weather events such as drought…
    The contentious National Energy Guarantee, which purported to address emissions reduction and energy reliability, remains government policy for now…
    Mr Morrison’s office did not respond to questions over whether the drought response would involve tackling climate change…

    Labor’s agriculture spokesman Joel Fitzgibbon said if Mr Morrison’s drought pledge was truly serious he would “accept [that] drought cannot be considered an abnormal event but rather, that our climate is changing.”
    As well as prioritising a change to farming methods to help farmers become more resilient to climate change, the government should “embrace a carbon pollution mitigation policy”, he said.
    “That is the threshold test. If he is not prepared to stand up and say ‘this is a consequence of climate change and I am going to commit to both mitigation and adaptation’, then he will fail farmers.”…

    (NSW Farmers vice-president Chris Groves) said while climate change should not be dismissed, drought was a recurring phenomenon that had affected farmers for more than a century and “we’ve got to separate the two”.
    “What we need to be looking at is how we get through the natural disaster we are facing at the moment,” he said.

    However University of Melbourne climate policy expert Robyn Eckersley said the government response to the drought should involve setting “a credible target” on cutting emissions, adding that the Paris pledge of a 26 per cent cut by 2030 was “fairly woeful”.
    https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/politics/federal/he-will-fail-farmers-morrison-pressured-to-tackle-climate-change-as-part-of-drought-pledge-20180825-p4zzrb.html

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    pat

    had to post this.

    what’s with all the “Mr.” Turnbulls, Hannam?
    like father, like son. how arrogant is this guy (and writer!)?

    27 Aug: SMH: Can’t vote Liberal ‘in good conscience’: Alex Turnbull blasts climate stance
    By Peter Hannam
    Alex Turnbull blamed “rent-seekers” backing the coal industry for felling his father Malcolm Turnbull as prime minister, saying it’s “impossible” to vote for the Liberal-National coalition “in good conscience” because of its climate stance.
    In a wide-ranging interview just days after his father lost power in a party room putsch, the Singapore-based fund manager told Fairfax Media the Liberal Party faced being hijacked by financial interests that stood to make windfall profits if coal-related assets were bolstered by taxpayers…

    Mr Turnbull’s experience includes a stint at investment banking giant Goldman Sachs. Some of his work has also involved trading debt for Australian-based coal-fired power plants, giving him insights into that industry’s outlook.
    “If you create such an environment – with such a high rate of return – you’ll see a lot more of that [influence peddling],” he said…

    Speaking freely now that his father was no longer in power, Mr Turnbull said he was “massively in favour of a federal ICAC”, referring to a Commonwealth equivalent of NSW’s Independent Commission Against Corruption. “I hope they find corruption then I don’t have to believe it’s all stupidity.”…
    “He was snookered,” Mr Turnbull said of his father’s fate. “You don’t know how hard he worked on this issue.”
    “It’s impossible to vote for the LNP in good conscience,” Mr Turnbull said, adding he had no intention of entering politics himself. “My father fought the stupid and the stupid won.”…

    Mr Turnbull was also critical of the government’s overall climate action, saying that pulling the Paris Agreement – as conservative MPs and pundits have been demanding – was irrelevant at this point.
    “It’s like being in a university course, final exams are coming and you haven’t done three-quarters of the work,” he said. “You’re going to fail anyway.”…

    Mr Turnbull also noted the pressure placed by his father’s government on AGL to keep its ailing Liddell power station going beyond its scheduled 2022 closure date.
    “This is the behaviour that exists in emerging markets, where the cost of capital is much higher,” he said. “How can you expect people to make long-term investment decisions when clowns trying to game the news cycle are a key driver of investment returns?”

    He said efforts to keep ageing coal-fired power stations going were “a terrible failure”, noting Western Australia’s bid to stop the Muja plant which cost $300 million.
    “Such spending is like trying to keep crappy cars – like a 1994 Ford Laser – on the road.”
    Worse, the operators of such plants as Liddell and Gladstone ran the risk of a “horrific industrial accident” that could literally cook unfortunate employees like a Chinese dumpling.
    Such failures “could create ‘human wontons’ of any staff exposed to the 300-400-degree super-heated steam”, he said…

    Mr Turnbull declined to say much about his father’s current disposition. However, in response to a question about whether he had been disappointed he couldn’t have done more on climate action, he answered “yes”.
    The younger Turnbull had positive things to say about Tim Murray, the Labor candidate for Wentworth, his father’s electorate. “He’s a great guy and I know him well,” he said. “[It’s] hard to back a Labor guy but not Tim.”

    He predicted Labor’s left would keep that party “honest” on climate change.
    Bill Shorten “doesn’t really care about climate change – he just wants the jobs”, Mr Turnbull said, adding that there were lots of them in Victoria and elsewhere as the renewable energy boom rolls on.
    Two terms of federal Labor should mean Australia’s electricity sector “would have crossed the magic line” – such as exceeding 40 per cent of supply from wind and solar. “They’re not going to be able to go back.”
    Taking serious action on climate change “should be the response of any sane leader”, he said.
    https://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/can-t-vote-liberal-in-good-conscience-alex-turnbull-blasts-climate-stance-20180827-p50018.html

    Market wind blows Infigen’s way
    The Australian-11 Apr. 2018
    The Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is in Victorian coal country today ….. about the investment in Infigen by Alex Turnbull and the hedge fund…

    Oct 2017: Stop These Things: Time to Tear Up Australia’s Economic Suicide Note: Renewable Energy Target Must Go Now
    Malcolm Turnbull should come clean and explain to his party and the public that his son, Alex is heavily invested in wind power outfit, Infigen and did so at a time when it was on the brink of bankruptcy.
    In one of the luckiest bets of all time (see our post here), Alex Turnbull managed to buy in when Infigen shares were a measly $0.20, just before his Dad signed Australia up to the Paris Climate Change agreement, after which they rocketed to $1.20.
    https://stopthesethings.com/2017/10/18/time-to-tear-up-australias-economic-suicide-note-renewable-energy-target-must-go-now/

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    pat

    comment in moderation re: SMH: Can’t vote Liberal ‘in good conscience’: Alex Turnbull blasts climate stance

    I doubt if Erwin believes in this poll any more than I do:

    27 Aug: Guardian: Erwin Jackson: If we want strong climate action, we need to get the moderate Liberals on board
    Let’s bring the less conservative parts of the party closer to where most Australians and business have already arrived
    In June, the Lowy Institute released their annual poll on community attitudes, which found that around 60% of the population agreed that global warming is a serious problem and we should begin taking immediate action even if it involves significant costs. This number of Australians holding this view has risen over 20 percent points since 2012. Similarly, even with the Coalition’s scare campaigns on renewable energy, Lowy also found over the last year support for renewables has increased (and support for coal has decreased)…
    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/27/if-we-want-strong-climate-action-we-need-to-get-the-moderate-liberals-on-board?CMP=share_btn_tw

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      angry

      What a joke this “guardian” is !
      Bunch of communists!

      30

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        el gordo

        More correctly they are Cultural Marxists.

        10

      • #
        el gordo

        ‘The term “cultural Marxism” has an academic usage within cultural studies, where it refers to a form of anti-capitalist cultural critique which specifically targets those aspects of culture that are seen as profit-driven and mass-produced under capitalism.’ wiki

        00

  • #
    pat

    27 Aug: Reuters: S&P, Nasdaq hit records as Wall Street rises on NAFTA optimism
    by Shreyashi Sanyal
    U.S. stocks posted strong gains on Monday, with the benchmark S&P 500 and the Nasdaq hitting all-time highs, as news that the United States and Mexico were closing in on a trade deal added to optimism about the economy.

    A Mexican source familiar with the talks told Reuters “it’s almost certain” that there will be an announcement about the North American Free Trade Agreement later in the day and U.S. President Donald Trump tweeted, “a big deal looking good with Mexico!”
    Also helping sentiment was Washington pressing the European Union to speed up trade negotiations…

    Scott Brown, chief economist at Raymond James in St. Petersburg, Florida: “Easing trade and NAFTA are probably the biggest things today but I think it’s more fundamental than that, because we’re still seeing a lot of signs of strength in the domestic economy and earnings stories have been very robust.”…
    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-stocks/sp-nasdaq-hit-records-as-wall-street-rises-on-nafta-optimism-idUSKCN1LC147

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    Andrew West

    somewhat OT, but presumably the appointment of Angus Taylor as Energy Minister will very likely mean some significant shifts in energy policy.
    https://www.energymatters.com.au/renewable-news/anti-renewables-energy-minister/

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  • #
    David Maddison

    Australia is no longer a “lucky country” and Donald Horne was widely misquoted. What he actually said in his 1964 book was:

    “Australia is a lucky country run mainly by second rate people who share its luck. It lives on other people’s ideas, and, although its ordinary people are adaptable, most of its leaders (in all fields) so lack curiosity about the events that surround them that they are often taken by surprise.”

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    • #
      PeterS

      The Pied Piper will have to be paid eventually and when that times comes and we find out we can’t pay Australia will crash and burn. There’s still a chance to avoid it if two things happen. One, Morrison reshapes the LNP to be the complete antithesis of the ALP+Greens, not just in terms of climate change and immigration but also education and communications. Two, hammer the theme for all of Australia to know and understand and to explain how Shorten will crash and burn Australia so fast we won’t even have a chance for our children to grow up in a nation we can recognise any longer as it will probably be run by China at best or left to smoulder in its own ashes at worst.

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      • #
        angry

        The dumbing down of citizens begins at school…………..

        Australian student writing standards plummet to a new low: One in three Year 7 students are still learning to read and almost half of 15-year-olds need help to construct a sentence

        http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6102905/National-writing-test-scores-plunge-new-low.html

        Can’t read/write/add up but i’ll bet they will tell you all about the evil global warming and how white people “invaded” Australia!

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        • #
          PeterS

          Yes the schools have a lot to answer for but it actually starts at the home. More and more parents now don’t give a damn about what they teach at school. If parents bothered to find out and had the right attitude about what schools should be teaching instead of treating them like day care centres, there ought to be a mass revolt by now. If the parents cared a long time ago it wouldn’t have been let to become this bad in the first place. It’s a lot like voters electing parties to government – people need to take notice of what’s going on and do something about it instead of treating it as it doesn’t matter and letting things go pear shaped before they prick their ears up and start noticing something is going wrong.

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    Another Ian

    David

    Years ago I was given this appreciation of education in Australia:-

    “Its problem is that people on study tours bring back the latest developments from overseas. By the time enough enthusiasm builds to introduce those developments here they are being discarded as useless in its home province”.

    Seems to work with other things too – like Paris.

    And seems that not only the LNP are demonstrating Einstein’s definition of insanity as “Doing the same thing over and over and hoping for a different result”

    “Another “Ship of Fools” gets grounded in Arctic ice, needs rescue”

    https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/08/27/another-ship-of-fools-gets-stuck-in-arctic-ice-needs-rescue/

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  • #
    TedM

    “Once upon a time, Australian states were self sufficient, now interconnectors allow us to share problems:”

    Jo are you going op write a book with your classic satirical comments? I have no doubt it would be a best seller. I just love them, they really drive the point home.

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    • #
      PeterS

      Sounds like what Churchill said: “Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.” Oh of course; it is socialism we are talking about. If Shorten becomes our next PM, which appears very likely thanks to Turnbull’s efforts over the past 3 years to destroy the LNP, Australians hopefully will finally learn that lesson albeit the hard and very painful way.

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        • #
          PeterS

          Yes he must and in fact we’ve given him enough notice that his core supporters demand it. If he has a tin ear like his predecessor then it’s all over for Australia regardless of who is the next PM. As I said in another note, ALP is already preparing to convince the public their policy on energy is better, and I suspect it will be so convincing to the public they will win by a landslide. So Morrison better start activating the booster rockets to launch his party to victory or else the public will press the “kill/destruct” button.

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          Kinky Keith

          Good article.

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        • #
          angry

          If morrison doesn’t abandon this RET and build some coal power stations then he and his mates are TOAST!

          40

          • #
            el gordo

            Yes but what about this …

            ‘Australia’s new minister for population says the nation’s growing pains are caused by migrants … “I am big believer in high-speed rail,” he said.’

            Turnbull received the submissions from the different consortiums and put them in the bottom draw.

            Morrison might pull this rabbit out of the hat and win the election, but would a continental bullet train network require coal fire power stations to operate?

            The aim is to soothe the electorate over immigration, with a decentralisation carrot.

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            • #
              angry

              There no jobs in rural Australia now.
              Where the hell does this idiot Morrison envisage that these so called “immigrants” will find work?
              That is assuming that they even want to!

              Rural Australian Communities don’t want to be swamped with “individuals” from a certain background that have no intention of integrating into Australia and we don’t want the crime and social problems that come with that!!!

              Keep them in Canberra!

              RIP LIBERAL PARTY!!!

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                el gordo

                If they build satellite cities connected to capital cities by bullet trains, they will come.

                First phase is the infrastructure and land capture to build the cities, which will be occupied by baby boomers fleeing capital cities.

                Riff raff will be discouraged from making the journey, so the place will be swamped with individuals from a certain background and ethnicity.

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                PeterS

                First phase actually is for China to tak eus over then we can build the satellite cities. They are good at that sort of thing.

                10

              • #
                el gordo

                Ghost cities are a thing of the past, due diligence will be mandatory for the planning and construction of a very fast train network.

                The American/Australian consortium want the Sydney-Melbourne run, land capturing along the way, so how do you feel about a China-Australian consortium doing the same thing from Sydney to Parkes?

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                el gordo

                From Parkes they could then build a parallel line with Inland Rail to Brisbane and Melbourne, a lot cheaper than the American tender.

                https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fS19D-vEHM

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                PeterS

                Actually those ghost cities are either full or nearly full. News stories about them only lasted as long as they were empty, which is now not the case.

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    yarpos

    Another Hannam masterpiece at Fairfax.

    https://www.theage.com.au/environment/climate-change/can-t-vote-liberal-in-good-conscience-alex-turnbull-blasts-climate-stance-20180827-p50018.html

    Highlighting young Alex Turnbull calling others rent seekers. I know, breathtaking isnt it. Not one mention of Infinigen.

    Turnbull rails against coal power and in a new tactic along the “unreliable coal” BS meme, calls workers in those plants “human wontons” at risk of steam cooking. Aside from his imaginings he fails to mention actual fatalities that are business as usual in the turbine game (112 recorded to date)

    http://www.caithnesswindfarms.co.uk/accidents.pdf

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    PeterS

    While our government is still thinking about whether we should use less or more of our vast coal reserves, the US has made one more step to sanity:
    UPDATE: Trump Emissions Plan Aims to Boost Coal-Fired Power

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    pat

    27 Aug: WUWT: AGW Gatekeepers Censor The CO2-Climate Debate By Refusing To Publish Author’s Response To Criticism
    by Anthony Watts
    A 2017 peer-reviewed paper authored by physicist Dr. Hermann Harde drew considerable response upon its publication in the journal Global and Planetary Change. Harde’s conclusion that less than 15% of the increase in CO2 concentration since the 19th century could be attributed to anthropogenic emissions was deemed unacceptable by gatekeepers of the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) viewpoint. A critical reply to the paper was consequently published, but it included assumptive errors and misrepresentations of the original points. Harde’s exhaustive reply to the criticism has been refused publication, which has effectively silenced scientific debate on this salient topic…

    After receiving appeal-to-authority pressure from Gavin Schmidt and other activists at RealClimate.org, the overseers of the Elsevier journal Global and Planetary Change have refused to allow the public to read the exhaustive response to criticisms levied against a peer-reviewed paper they originally agreed to publish…READ ON
    https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/08/27/agw-gatekeepers-censor-the-co2-climate-debate-by-refusing-to-publish-authors-response-to-criticism/

    27 Aug: WUWT: Monday Mirthiness – The climate intolerance platform
    by Anthony Watts
    Josh writes on Twitter::

    A riposte to hilarious letter in Graun from intolerant alarmists. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/aug/26/climate-change-is-real-we-must-not-offer-credibility-to-those-who-deny-it … … Even funnier, @Jonathan__Leake says Porrit works for Palm Oil industry clearing forests.

    JOSH CARTOON
    https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/08/27/climate-intolerance-platform/

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    TdeF

    As said above, I believe each state should and could be self sufficient. Interconnectors should be for emergencies because of the inevitable losses and the consequences of dependenence on one or two connections which can break, as we have seen repeatedly. Remember the disaster in Tasmania for six months when they ran their water reserves down, ran out of water and power and the cable broke?

    The story put out by Green grid pushers is that the wind is different for different areas, allowing load to be moved. This was the story in Europe. However they found in practice many times that the wind was uniformly strong, uniformly weak, they had winter and summer at the same time and the heat of August hit them all at the same time. This large area collection idea was a furphy, a nonsense.

    What kept them going in Europe this summer when the wind did not blow at all in the UK for 8 days was French nuclear power.

    So the grid idea failed. Are we learning the same lesson? In which case each major population centre, Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne, Hobart, Sydney, Brisbane, Townsville, Darwin must be self sufficient. The load shifting, power shifting grid idea is a failed Green concept at enormous expense to justify the wind folly. It doesn’t work. Fix each state. Get back to where we were before Canberra started to meddle. Rebuild, fix, update, rehabilitate the ‘old’ coal power stations we had and long term, over 300 years, get nuclear.

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      TdeF

      Besides, while an old windmill at 20 years is replaceable and the bill will be immense along with the cost of removal and disposal and the difficulty, there is not such thing as an old coal power station. There is only one which is not maintained. Even very Green Alan Kohler said this. It’s like the old axe with five new heads and four new handles. It is only about maintenance.

      The so called ‘renewables’ are exactly that, replaceables. Maintenance is impossible. When Hepburn Wind’s private cash generating turbine stops working, they will want us to buy them a new one. Don’t.

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      Graeme#4

      Perth is already self-sufficient because WA is thankfully not tied into the “national” grid. No blackouts and reasonable cheap reliable power. Yay!

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        TdeF

        Too bad all your GST money is stolen by South Australia, who try to shut down their mines and power and wonder why everyone is leaving. Houses in Adelaide, which is a lovely city, are now the cheapest in Australia. For good reason. Everyone is leaving.

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    PeterS

    New wind and solar now competes with existing coal and gas The point it misses is that might be so in Europe but it’s certainly not the case here in Australia given our vast resources of cheap coal and gas. Of course they also neglect the reliability and availability factors. We all know even if renewables cost nothing to install and maintain (impossible) the only way they can compete with base load power from coal and gas is to spend trillions on backup batteries. Grid batteries do not come cheap.

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      TdeF

      Batteries are a new story, a desperate and very expensive attempt to justify in hindsight a failed idea, reliable wind and solar power. They were not on the radar ten years ago and like interconnectors and huge distribution networks, they all need maintenance and replacement.

      If Snowy II made economic sense, it would have been built in the first place. You have to pay to pump water back uphill and balance this expense and loss against any gain. If you have plenty of power on tap, why bother?

      The other story of batteries is that they cover for the lack of synchronization which means whole farms of windmills and solar do not trip out together. So more money to cover an intrinsic fault with the Greens crazy schemes.

      Worse, each state eventually resorts to huge diesels. South Australia. Tasmania and perhaps Victoria. Now would someone please explain why really dirty diesel is preferable to clean energy from coal? Or is that another Green myth?

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        TdeF

        I would love to know how many South Australian homes and shops and businesses have had to import diesel and petrol generators to save their lives and businesses now that the State has self sufficient wind and solar? It would be in the tens of thousands, all imported.

        We don’t even refine diesel and petrol here anymore, another industry gone. For my lifetime, we were self sufficient in these, as any island country should be.

        Now Australia will build $60Bn of diesel submarines running on imported diesel, imported by shipping for a country which would shut down without diesel imports? Some defence scheme. There is no point building submarines when we have eliminated the energy sufficiency we used to have. We are at the mercy of our suppliers, something we desperately wanted to avoid after WW2. The submarines are not even built yet and they are useless, worse than what we have.

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          angry

          The subs should have been nuclear powered.

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            PeterS

            Well if we ever enter into a war situation our diesel reserves would run out very quickly and our subs end up being useless. We’d might as well hand them over to the enemy so they can fuel them and speed up the invasion to get it over and done with.

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            TdeF

            Of course. We already have perfectly good Collins class submarines. These ‘new’ ones are no better and possibly worse. Why bother? That’s $1,000 from every man, woman and child in the country to get nothing at all. Thanks to Christopher Pyne and the people against nuclear power. I doubt we could actually afford torpedoes. I’ll bet they’re imported as well, as we make nothing now. We can arm the submarines with Chicko Rolls. They’re deadly.

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          angry

          They are probably more interested in painting their finger nails then properly defending our country!

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        Bobl

        Because Diesels emit real pollution, SOx, NOx and particulates. But since Diesel is a hydrocarbon 50% of the energy comes from oxidizing the hydrogen. Kg for kg, CO2 is lower for hydrocarbons than carbon fuel just because of the chemical reaction. Greens don’t care anymore about real pollution or whales, since it seems CO2 is now the only game in town. Don’t ask them to simultaneously walk and chew gum either.

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      angry

      Australia has around 1000 years of coal reserves to provide us with cheap reliable electricity………

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    destroyer D69

    Have been receiving cold calls lately requesting info on whether or not my house has solar power installed. Claims to be a survey of some type and there is great emphasis that the call is NOT marketing or sales related.Very persistent and they will ring back if you do not give the information to them. Is this some precursor to a solar power levy or something similar?

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    • #
      Bobl

      No they are trying to sell you rented solar systems. The latest con that tries to milk your Feed in tariff.

      20

  • #
    pat

    27 Aug: WUWT: Another “Ship of Fools” gets grounded in Arctic ice, needs rescue
    by Anthony Watts
    It’s deja vu all over again. (with h/t to Yogi Berra)
    We have another winner! This time in the Arctic.
    A few weeks ago I covered this:
    Student propaganda cruise to the Arctic to be carried by webcast…

    Then predictably, this happened …READ ON
    https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/08/27/another-ship-of-fools-gets-stuck-in-arctic-ice-needs-rescue/

    27 Aug: Bloomberg: Merkel Balks at Tighter EU Climate Goals as Germany Faces Crunch
    By Arne Delfs
    German Chancellor Angela Merkel rejected a proposal for stricter emissions targets in the European Union, underscoring the clash between climate goals and the country’s booming economy…
    “This constant setting of new targets, I don’t think it makes sense,” Merkel told broadcaster ARD in an interview on Sunday. “I’m not so happy about these new proposals, since many EU member countries are already behind in meeting their pledges.”…

    She was responding to a European Commission plan to examine a stricter climate target that would allow the bloc to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by at least 45 percent by 2030. The existing 40 percent target is considered too lax to meet the Paris climate agreement’s goal of keeping the rise in global temperatures well below 2 degrees Celsius…

    (???)The EU, China and other major economies are upholding the Paris accord after Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from the climate deal in 2017…
    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-26/merkel-calls-on-eu-to-step-up-on-defense-climate-in-trump-era

    Reuters surrounds Merkel’s quotes with EXTREME weather in their coverage:

    27 Aug: Reuters: Merkel says EU should meet existing emissions aims, not set new ones
    by Thomas Escritt
    A proliferation of extreme weather events around the world provides ample evidence that climate change is a reality, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Sunday, but she rejected calls for more ambitious climate protection goals…

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  • #
    Crakar24

    Torrens island begins shutting down next year with a loss of 480mw this will be the black out we had to have. Once completed our pollies will have nowhere to run no where to hide.

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    • #
      angry

      WTF!!!

      Make Canberra powered entirely by Wind/Solar !!

      No more coal for them!

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      • #
        Bobl

        Yes, I’ve always that Canberra energy be forcibly reduced (by load shedding) to match the percentage of renewable nameplate any time available. Since CF is around 20% Canberra should on average be 80% blacked out at any time.

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    TdeF

    On Federal matters, Simon Benson in lead articles in the Australian is arguing that Turnbull had turned the coalition around and were close to closing the gap on Labour. He even argues that the Newspoll was terrible at 45:55 because of the removal of Turnbull. Unfortunetly for him, the polls in previous weeks were already at 45:55, so he is rewriting history just days later.

    This whole business of a National Grid, national Laws, National ripoffs in our electricity system and more National laws to punish businesses who use electricity is a complete travesty of good government. We need to get the Federal government out of electricity, as it used to be and to force the states to take responsibility for their own supplies.

    We could be the only country in the world to go from local, plentiful and suffient coal power to imported diesel and wind. Where do we benefit? Where does the environment? We are being led to the knackery by overseas interests and globalists like so many of our politicians.

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      TdeF

      They are taking our coal, our iron ore and we are being told to buy their steel and their diesel. How have we come from self sufficiency to this? How has it come to this? Who put the bankers in charge?

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        Crakar24

        Ted, your job is to work all your life and struggle to make ends meet then retire on a very low pension so that they can generate maximize profit. If maximum profit means destroying the country then so be it, they don’t live here so they don’t care.

        40 MPs is not enough to solve this problem its time labour MPs grew a spine.

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      • #
        PeterS

        We did by letting them. Most people don’t have a clue or don’t give a damn how serious the situation is here.

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    • #

      Tdef where do you get your data?

      It was 49-51 two weeks ago and 44-56 post coup. No rewriting of history by anyone other than you. Of course a messy leadership change will cause a dip in the polls.

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      • #
        TdeF

        Sydney Morning Herald 19th August 2018

        An exclusive Fairfax-Ipsos poll shows the Coalition has suffered a horror slump in its primary vote from 39 to 33 per cent over the past month amid open disputes on energy and speculation over the leadership.

        In its worst result since early last year, the Coalition now trails Labor by 45 to 55 per cent in two-party terms in a result that would cost the government more than 20 seats at a general election.

        You need to read more. There are many polls.

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        • #
          TdeF

          Are you seriously suggesting more than half the MPs decided to sign a public declaration of loss of confidence in the Prime Minister on a whim? Maybe Abbott or Dutton convinced them? Nine ministers resigned! They had all had enough.

          The only people who liked Malcolm would not vote for him. He was a disaster, the best Green/Labor Prime Minister since Rudd. The most worst coalition leader since Billy McMahon.

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          • #
            TdeF

            He didn’t just lose on Newspoll. He lost 40 in a row!
            The first among equals was posting policies on Facebook without consulting his ministers.
            The great communicator did not even let his own party read the NEG Act even after he had given it to Labor for approval.
            These were the excuses he and his friends used to get rid of a popular PM. Same as Gillard. Same ethics too.

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        • #

          there are many polls. and I was correct about newspoll and you were wrong.

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    pat

    freezing at the ODI cricket in Belfast yesterday as well, BUT DM goes along with this CAGW rubbish anyway:

    27 Aug: Daily Mail: Ski season starts in… August: European heatwave comes to an abrupt end as snow falls in Germany and Austria
    •Up to 40cm of snow was dumped in parts of Europe – despite it being summer
    •The German Weather Service said the temperature plummeted 86F (30C)
    •’Anyone without a sweater or jacket was probably shivering quickly,’ it said
    By Debbie White
    About 25cm of snow was dumped on Germany’s highest peak, the Zugspitze, where temperatures reached a decidedly chilly 19.4F (-7C) yesterday…

    And according to Mountainwatch, heavy snow fell above 1,500 metres across the European Alps over the weekend, ‘with a number of destinations reporting over 40cm of the fluffy white stuff’.
    Skiing was possible across half a dozen glacier dependent ski fields across Switzerland, Austria and Italy, it added…

    The German Weather Service said it was ‘hard to believe’ there was such ‘freezing air at the end of August’…

    A proliferation of extreme weather events around the world provides ample evidence that climate change is a reality, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Sunday, but she rejected calls for more ambitious climate protection goals.

    ***Extreme temperatures across the northern hemisphere this summer have fuelled concerns that climate change is gathering pace, leading dozens of countries to call for greenhouse gas emissions to be cut at a faster rate than planned…

    Merkel’s government has already faced criticism for abandoning emissions targets it had set itself for 2020 after concluding they were unachievable, while sticking to a target it had set itself for a decade later…
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/germany/article-6101991/Ski-season-starts-August-European-heatwave-comes-end-snow-falls-Germany-Austria.html

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    pat

    comment in moderation re: Daily Mail: Ski season starts in… August: European heatwave comes to an abrupt end as snow falls in Germany and Austria

    anonymous sources say!

    28 Aug: AFR: Scott Morrison sticks to Paris climate deal
    by Phillip Coorey
    The Morrison government will resist any internal push to walk away from its commitment to the Paris climate change targets, despite it dropping emissions reduction as a consideration of energy policy.
    As the Coalition reeled from another shocking poll result caused by its infighting, some conservatives, while welcoming the shift in energy policy, demanded Prime Minister Scott Morrison go further and abandon the commitment to reduce emissions by 26 per cent to 28 per cent on 2005 levels by 2030.

    Senior sources said that though the government was now unsure how it would reach the targets, which were set by Tony Abbott in 2015, there could be no walking away from them.
    For starters, it would jeopardise any prospect of a free trade deal with the European Union…
    One senior source said the government could let the electricity sector help reach Paris passively, given it was moving to cleaner energy, without policy guidelines.

    The designers of the NEG said without a 26 per cent target imposed on the sector, it would not reach that target by 2030, despite it being on track to hit 24 per cent in 2020-21, the first year of the NEG…
    https://www.afr.com/news/morrison-will-fight-to-stay-in–paris-climate-deal-20180826-h14jfj

    Bolt isn’t waiting for sourced confirmation:

    28 Aug: Bolt blog: UH OH. MORRISON STICKS WITH PARIS
    No wonder Labor leader Bill Shorten welcomed this on the ABC this morning:
    LINKS TO AFR
    https://www.heraldsun.com.au/blogs/andrew-bolt/uh-oh-morrison-sticks-with-paris/news-story/ee038bc6a18d2e3d5cd59244d615f8db

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    Mark M

    Wait. What?

    “But of course it is hard to legislate against lightning, which in this case triggered two interstate interconnector cables to trip and cause blackouts.”

    https://theconversation.com/amid-blackout-scare-stories-remember-that-a-grid-without-power-cuts-is-impossible-and-expensive-102115

    Perhaps they haven’t heard of a carbon (sic) tax?

    Lightning storms less likely in a warming planet

    https://www.leeds.ac.uk/news/article/4185/lightning_storms_less_likely_in_a_warming_planet

    Climate Change Could Bring A Dramatic Increase In Lightning

    https://www.iflscience.com/environment/global-warming-could-bring-dramatic-increase-lightning/

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      el gordo

      ‘Scientists from Edinburgh, Leeds and Lancaster universities used an approach that took into account the movement of tiny ice particles that form and move within clouds.

      ‘Electrical charges build up in these ice particles, in cold water droplets and soft hail which form inside clouds.

      ‘These are discharged during storms, giving rise to lightning flashes and thunder.

      ‘Increasing temperatures around the world will make it harder for the ice crystals to form, the new research suggests.

      ‘This contradicts a number of previous studies that have suggested climate change will increase the chances of such storms.’

      Daily Mail

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    pat

    27 Aug: PR Newswire: Farmers’ Almanac’s Teeth-Chattering Forecast Melts Rumors of Mild Winter
    LEWISTON, Maine: If cold temperatures, above-normal snowfall, and biting winds aren’t your favorite, you’re not going to like the forecast from the 2019 Farmers’ Almanac. “Teeth-chattering,” “biting,” and “stinging” cold are a few of the adjectives the Farmers’ Almanac is using to describe the upcoming winter, and not only in northern areas.
    “Contrary to some stories floating around on the internet, our time-tested, long-range formula is pointing towards a very long, cold, and snow-filled winter,” reports Editor and Philom., Peter Geiger…

    The 2019 Farmers’ Almanac forecasts the coldest weather of this winter season to pour south from Canada and blow into the Northeast, New England, Great Lakes, Ohio Valley, and Southeast during mid-February…
    Some of this snow may start early with snow predicted in New England and Mid-Atlantic regions during December 2018. Above-normal snowfall is predicted for the Great Lakes states, Midwest, and central and northern New England. The Pacific Northwest and Mid-Atlantic regions of the country are also forecast to have an abundance of snow and wet/icy conditions this winter…ETC
    https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/farmers-almanacs-teeth-chattering-forecast-melts-rumors-of-mild-winter-300702401.html

    27 Aug: UK Express: WATCH: SNOW hits Italy as temperatures PLUMMET to -8C in sudden end of summer
    A NORTHERN Italian town close to the Austrian border was hit by severe snowfalls over the weekend as temperatures dropped dramatically to -8C.
    By Alessandra Scotto di Santolo
    The northeast Italian town of Pordenone also experienced strong snowstorms over the weekend where residents were hit by a sudden change in temperatures…

    Parts of Austria have also seen a dramatic shift in weather over the weekend.
    At Oberbayern, a ski resort in Salzburg, almost 40cm of snow fell.
    Here, temperatures dropped to 2C and nearly -1C in other parts of the country.
    In northwest Austria between 25 and 30cm of snow fell.
    Snow in Austria in August is not uncommon but forecasters have claimed the quantity of snow this year to be unusually high…

    27 Aug: CBS Denver: Summer Snow Falling In Montana, Idaho And Wyoming
    by Chris Spears
    An unusually cold late August storm system is bringing a chilly rain and some high altitude snow to parts of Wyoming, Montana and Idaho. The National Weather Service says as much as 4-8 inches could fall in elevations above 9,000 feet in the mountains of Montana and Wyoming. Some areas have been placed under a Winter Weather Advisory…
    Some colder air will filter into northern and northeast Colorado by Tuesday with highs dropping 20-30 degrees from Monday.

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      A couple of big problems face us if we turn to the short term solution of diesel for power, a solution favoured by many greens because they know that renewables are inadequate and gas infrastructure too far off.

      If you charge enough for electricity (South Australia leads Denmark) all sorts of miracles are possible. So far cost has been a bigger problem than blackouts, though there have been some grim blackouts. But winter is coming to the north and it is not uncommon for a hot summer to be followed by a heavy winter (as recently and in the 1930s).

      So the first problem will be northern hemisphere demand for oil in winter. Remember just this last winter in N America and India.

      The second problem is the Middle East. There are reports that the Syrian conflict is about to be re-ignited. The Russians and Syrians have briefed their people on the likelihood of a White Helmet-staged chemical attack to enable militants and “freedom fighters” to win back a strong position in Idlib. I realise that many here would incline to the NATO side of the story on Syria and I don’t want to argue about that. You may even be right.

      But even if you don’t subscribe to the idea of a deliberate plan to dismantle Syria and balkanise the ME (in which fanatics we are supposed to be fighting are often protected and even employed by our own side) it’s hard to believe that the Persian Gulf will forever stay stable enough so that oil can flow as it has done these last years.

      Renewed Syrian conflict and war with Iran may not happen. The Persian Gulf, Red Sea and Suez may be fine for some years. But how good a bet is that? The number one thing Australia must do is make sure it is dependent on domestic resources for its power generation. This means coal above all. The national security reasons for basing our power on coal are compelling. The fact that this is seldom discussed has to remain in the realm of mystery.

      And if you are wondering how we can be encouraged to increase our dependency on green fairy floss for our domestic power while we are at the same time encouraged to export as much coal as possible…that too must remain in the realm of mystery. After all, who wants to be called a conspiracy theorist?

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    pat

    inevitable – young Turnbull allowed to make wild economic & other claims by theirABC’s Alberici, who questions nothing:

    28 Aug: ABC: Alex Turnbull: Coal miners exerting ‘undue influence’ on Liberal Party, says son of former PM Malcolm Turnbull
    PM By chief economics correspondent Emma Alberici
    Alex Turnbull, who describes himself as a keen environmentalist, studied economics at Harvard and runs a private hedge fund in Singapore.
    Before leaving Australia he spent five years at Goldman Sachs, where he was responsible for buying and selling the debt and assets of energy companies.

    It was during that time that he began to appreciate the consequences of what he calls 10 years of energy policy “panic and mania”.
    Speculating on the value of the debt at companies like Alinta or AGL made Goldman Sachs hundreds of millions of dollars…
    Mr Turnbull, 36, bought the debt cheap. But when Labor decided to provide generous compensation to those high emitters, the debt price spiked and the investment bank made loads of money selling it…

    A big part of his job was to forensically analyse the cost and viability of coal-fired power stations.
    Speaking to ABC Radio’s PM program, he said it made no economic sense for the Coalition Government to be entertaining the idea of underwriting new coal-fired power plants.
    “Coal prices are now high enough that it is very hard for coal to be competitive. You cannot buy a tonne of coal for the 2002 price any more easily than you can send your kid to a private school for the 2002 price of school fees,” he said.

    Mr Turnbull referred PM to a February 2017 analyst report by new energy finance analysts at Bloomberg.
    It stated that if new coal stations were to be built in Australia, electricity prices would be “substantially higher” than with a combination of wind, solar and gas (provided gas markets operated efficiently).
    The report warned that investing in new coal would be “very risky” for four main reasons…ETC

    Asked whether debate about the economics of coal-fired power was being muddied by the lobbying of coal miners, Mr Turnbull said people who “own a lot of coal in the Galilee Basin (Queensland)” were exercising “undue influence on Liberal Party policy”.
    Described as “small miners” he said “they have assets they probably regret purchasing that don’t make a lot of sense anymore and they’re trying to engineer an outcome which makes those projects economic.”
    Australia’s mining industry represents about 8 per cent of GDP and employs 200,000 people, but the younger Turnbull said it was not the Government’s job to choose which jobs it was going to protect and which ones it would not…

    A week before Scott Morrison appointed him as new energy minister, Angus Taylor told a commercial radio station that “the obsession with emissions at the expense of reliability and affordability has been a massive mistake.”
    The younger Turnbull rejects that entirely.
    “It’s a mistaken idea that there is a conflict between decarbonisation and reducing power prices,” Mr Turnbull said.
    “Renewables are the cheapest incremental source of power. If firmed well with hydro projects, they are unquestionably the lowest cost way to get more power generation and thus reduce people’s power bills.”
    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-08-28/alex-turnbull-says-coal-miners-have-undue-influence-on-liberals/10170908?section=business

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      “Coal prices are now high enough that it is very hard for coal to be competitive. You cannot buy a tonne of coal for the 2002 price any more easily than you can send your kid to a private school for the 2002 price of school fees,” he said.

      Of course, you wouldn’t want to buy coal now at the 2008 price. I’m sure there’s a private school where young Turnbulls can go to become as tricky as old Turnbulls. This one is well on the way.

      I wonder what those importers of Australian coal do with all that coal they obviously can’t afford to use…but which they insist on buying in such great quantities. It must be the boat trip. Yes, the boat trip to Asia makes it worth 2017’s record dollar expenditure on Australian coal. The coal is enhanced by exposure to sea air and gets better, like a monsooned Malabar coffee. That would explain it…though a chief economics correspondent for the ABC would never be some thoughtless as to inquire.

      Or maybe there is a difference between “forensically analysing” and using your loaf.

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    pat

    27 Aug: CBC: Winter is coming: Snow hits in mountains west of Calgary
    There are some disturbing signs that summer in southern Alberta could be coming to a very early end…
    The webcams at Sunshine Village ski resort in Banff National Park show the hills are starting to turn white long before the summer hikers give way to the boarders and skiers.
    Alberta’s ski resorts usually open at the beginning of November…
    There was even talk on Twitter of snow falling early Monday morning on the highway heading west into Canmore…
    Calgary’s forecast high Monday was a paltry 12 C with showers…

    Snowfall in Calgary at this time of year is not altogether uncommon. On Sept. 8, 2014, Calgary was walloped by a major snowfall that caused power outages all over the city and destroyed or damaged thousands of trees…
    https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/calgary-august-snow-mountains-canmore-summer-over-early-winter-1.4800413

    28 Aug: ABC: Climate change is World War III, and we are leaderless
    By David Shearman
    (Dr David Shearman is the honorary secretary of Doctors for the Environment Australia and Emeritus Professor of Medicine at Adelaide University)
    “World War III is well and truly underway. And we are losing,” writes environmental activist Bill McKibben (LINK), so when Malcolm Turnbull implied that the insurgency that demolished his government was based on climate ideology, what lessons are there for Scott Morrison?…

    The US response to the climate threat has been withdrawal from the Paris agreement and a full-frontal attack on the US Environmental Protection Authority, a national defence against climate change, pollution and ill-health — as irrational as if the Germans had demolished their “Siegfried Line” of WWII.
    As a doctor, I know that they will compromise the health of children and families from relaxation of pollution standards on coal-fired power stations and from weaker fuel standards. Their actions are an attack on all humanity and thereby the US has abandoned world leadership…
    Like the US, Australia is failing to save the lives of its citizens by prolonging the life of polluting coal-fired power…

    Mr Morrison, think of your lovely young children…
    Please study the collective action plan so badly needed (a report co-authored by leading medical scientist Fiona Stanley) to avoid burning their futures in a hot, hungry, stormy and resource-conflicted world.
    And please call for a personal briefing by Australia’s leading climate scientists on these and related issues.
    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-08-28/climate-change-is-world-war-3-and-we-are-leaderless/10168962

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    pat

    27 Aug: WeatherNetwork: Alberta: Late summer SNOW: It’s late August and it’s SNOWING. There’s a windchill too
    by Andrea Bagley
    We know it’s Monday, so we won’t blame you for doing a double or even triple take of this August snow in Alberta. That’s right we said SNOW. As the final week of August wraps up, snow has been reported west of Calgary along with a windchill making things feel closer to the freezing mark. Get ready for a possible repeat performance on Tuesday as well. More on these chilling details, below…
    Cooler than seasonal conditions look to dominate through much of this week and into next week as well across Alberta with a reinforcing shot of cooler weather behind an incoming system…
    WE WEREN’T KIDDING. HERE’S A LOOK AT MONDAY’S SNOWY SCENES…
    https://www.theweathernetwork.com/news/articles/alberta-snow-canmore-highway-1-wind-chills-near-freezing-calgary-colder-than-seasonal-pattern-dominates/110119

    PICS/VIDEO: 27 Aug: IndependentSouthAfrica: LOOK: This is why it was snow cold in the Western Cape this weekend
    Cape Town – The Western Cape is in the grip of a cold snap which started over the weekend with snow on a number of mountains around the province and a hail storm in the Cape Town metropole on Sunday…
    On Saturday, the South African Weather Service issued a warning of adverse conditions with gale force winds, heavy rains and localised flooding. The heavy rainfall came as a welcome boost for the province’s dam levels which are sitting at just over 60 percent at the moment…

    It was the snow, as always, which captured the most attention on social media though. Many locals posted pictures of the snow covering the Cederberg, Hex River Mountains and the Boland mountain ranges.
    https://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/western-cape/look-this-is-why-it-was-snow-cold-in-the-western-cape-this-weekend-16757057

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    PeterS

    Although Morrison appears he won’t withdraw from Paris we need to wait and see what the new energy minister Taylor has to say and do about energy policy. We could still recover if they just ignore Paris as many other nations are already doing. I personally don’t care whether we withdraw or not as long as it doesn’t end up being legislated and we scrap the renewables subsidies that’s protecting the CACGW scam.

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    pat

    a slightly different take on Morrison/Paris than was conveyed by anonymous sources in AFR:

    28 Aug: SBS: Backbench MP George Christensen says the government should abandon ‘costly green treaties’ as Mr Morrison reportedly urges colleagues to stick with Paris
    By James Elton-Pym
    Conservative MPs are maintaining public pressure on new prime minister Scott Morrison to abandon the government’s in-principle support for the Paris climate targets…
    Within days of the new Morrison leadership, backbench Coalition MP George Christensen told his Twitter followers “more was needed” to reduce power bills.
    He called on the government to “abandon costly green treaties” and praised his LNP colleague Keith Pitt for resigning from the ministry in the recent reshuffle, reportedly over wanting to put “power prices before Paris”…

    The Australian Financial Review reports Mr Morrison ***is fighting to convince colleagues to stick with Paris, partly because walking away could jeopardise a pending free-trade deal with the European Union…
    Coalition backbencher Ian Macdonald has also been open about recommending the government drop the Paris targets…
    https://www.sbs.com.au/news/conservatives-keep-pressure-on-morrison-to-drop-paris-targets

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      PeterS

      Oh dear! If Morrison is not careful we will see a continuation of the friction between the pro-renewables and anti-renewables groups within the LNP. As a result we would still see the end of the party as we all feared it was heading under Turnbull. Morrison really has to lay down the law on all this just as any true leader would and did under other important times throughout the history of Australian political leaderships. Morrison please take note, the alarms bells are ringing.

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      • #
        angry

        Meet the new boss……..

        SAME AS THE OLD BOSS!

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        TdeF

        Morrison is a great operator. He is just not an original thinker. He was great under Abbott. He was terrible but very workmanlike under Turnbull.

        My fear is that Morrison will keep believing in Malcolm long after Malcolm is irrelevant. He really needs Abbott on the front bench or he and Frydenberg are lost. Abbott would be happy to advise. He has had enough of being beaten up by everyone for just doing his job. If Morrison doesn’t wake up soon, he is lost.

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        • #

          ‘Limited’ is ‘sheeple think.’ Bring on yer Trump – fake –
          news – sindrome – attack…re Socrates, Galileo, Isaac Newton,
          Adam Smith, James Hutton, Charles Darwin, Richard Feynman,
          Karl Popper on yr ‘Open Society,’…Q uestion! Write! Email!
          Telephone yer sheeple MPs. Git the message out! Say, where’s
          me serf’s scythe!

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        • #

          ‘Limited’ is ‘sheeple think.’ Bring on yer Trump – fake – new
          – sindrome – attack dogs …re Socrates, Galileo, Isaac Newton,
          Adam Smith, James Hutton, Charles Darwin, Richard Feynman, Karl
          Popper on yr ‘Open Society, at risk,’…Question! Write! Email!
          Or telephone yer sheeple MPs. Git the message out! Say, where’s
          me serf’s scythe!

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      PeterS

      Another reason for Morrison to lay down the law and clear the air properly. I’ve just had a look at Bolt’s blog and it appears his followers are past being restless and have already given up on him. It’s starting to look he’s Turnbull 2.0 🙁
      Morrison please do something and do it very soon.

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      • #
        el gordo

        It would be best for Tony to remain on the backbench and not accept the ‘envoy’ job, because they don’t want him, which gives him the opportunity to get the Opposition leadership after the election.

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        • #
          PeterS

          That I think was always his plan when Trunbull was PM. I also think the party has to split because there are far too many lefties who really belong in the ALP and a few even in the Greens. What’s left of the LNP will then have to form a coalition or alliance with certain minor parties to survive. As long as the party remains as it is it will forever have internal fighting and it will implode eventually. Another option is for a visionary to sack the left retards and replace them with new blood with the right values. We need an updated version of Menzies. I was hoping Morrison might partly be that sort of person but now I’m not so sure. Too early days but he’s starting to look like Turnbull 2.0. I hope I’m wrong.

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            el gordo

            Its a bit early to call, clearly Immigration and Energy are the problems for Morrison, who may be devoid of imagination and fail to seize the opportunity.

            If the Coalition is thrown into the political wilderness, then there is a possibility that the Nats might break and become a rump.

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            • #
              PeterS

              The irony of it all is Abbott is perhaps the only one with at least some vision yet he is hated by much of his own party, all the left and most of the MSM. As you, I and others have suggested he might still end up picking up the pieces as the opposition leader but I wish there was a Menzies/Trump/Thatcher like leader around. Perhaps there is and we haven’t noticed yet.

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        Another Ian

        See #51.2.1.1.2

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    Douglas

    Andrew Bolt – Why Paris Agreemnet is a fraud
    Yet we rush ahead like lemmings to comply with this lunacy – all the while destroying our dispatchable energy plants – Why for god’s sake?

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      el gordo

      Thanks for that, William Kininmonth is an ideal candidate for our scientific Blue Team.

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      PeterS

      Why? Because they are either insane (literally), clueless, couldn’t care less or the worst of them all – economic and/or other kinds of terrorists who want to bring down our Western way of life. That surely must cover at least the vast majority of those who want to continue with the global emissions reduction plan, which happens not to be global any more. The icing on the cake is Australia is the only nation in the world going on this hard and strong in deliberately letting our base load power plants to deteriorate and replacing them with renewables, at least up to know. It’s all up to Morrison to turn things around, if he really wants to, which is still unclear.

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    old44

    Batteries, lots and lots of batteries, that’s the solution i am given whenever I criticise the unreliable nature of renewable power.
    Three or four hundred $150 million 100Kw Elon Musk batteries should do it.

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    • #
      PeterS

      There are grid storage solutions around but the cost would be in the trillions if we needed to be say 40% renewables with appropriate backup storage using batteries – https://eosenergystorage.com/
      Prices will of course come down but not enough to be justified in the forseable future – perhaps 20 years from now they might be competitive. Even then the replacement cost and environmental damage would be massive. If anyone today wants to be serious about reducing emissions in a cost effective and sustainable way the only real answer is nuclear. I rather follow the world trend and continue to use coal as our primary base load power source. It’s cheap, it’s plentiful and it’s reliable. As for emissions we can wait for the rest of the world, in particular China, India, Russia and US to do their bit and we can follow. Unfortunately, both major parties are full of greenies so I’d say we will have to crash and burn first to learn the great lesson on how to provide power to a modern society, a lesson already known to those countries I’ve listed above.

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        Robber

        How do we get the message across simply?
        Assume 40% wind/solar is mandated to meet total demand of 24,000 MW on average (overnight minimum 18,000 MW, evening peak 30,000 MW).
        Assume 50/50 wind/solar mix with average 25% capacity factor.
        That means nameplate capacity of wind/solar must be 160% of average demand (ie 38,400 MW).
        Yet when wind isn’t blowing and sun isn’t shining we need dispatchable supplies equal to 125% of total demand plus some contingency for outages and to meet peak summer demand (ie about 36,000 MW).
        Therefore we need full capability from coal/gas/diesel/hydro always ready to meet peak demand. So all that investment in wind/solar is redundant as we end up with total nameplate capacity of nearly 300%. The only possible saving is in incremental fuel costs.
        Now tell me again how wind/solar are cheaper?
        Ah, so to make wind/solar dispatchable, we now need to add the additional costs of pumped hydro and big batteries. Not 100 MW for an hour like the Musk battery in SA, not 2000 MW for 7 days from Snowy2, but at least 10,000 MW for 7 days. Only then can we shutdown some coal/gas generators.
        Is that really worth the investment? And it has made an infinitesimal difference to the global or the local climate.

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        angry

        All totally unnecessary.

        JUST USE COAL!

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          PeterS

          You, I, most of us here and billions of other people all over the world agree because they are building many hundreds of new coal fired power stations but for some reason much of Australia don’t want to use coal. Go figure.

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    OriginalSteve

    Is this jumping the shark? Have they finally lost it….?

    Cue music from Les Mis……storming the barricades etc etc…*yawn*

    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-08-28/climate-change-is-world-war-3-and-we-are-leaderless/10168962

    “”World War III is well and truly underway. And we are losing,” writes environmental activist Bill McKibben, so when Malcolm Turnbull implied that the insurgency that demolished his government was based on climate ideology, what lessons are there for Scott Morrison?

    As a child in Britain during WWII, I lived in a street of mothers and children. Every father was away fighting. Each house and garden was surrounded by a metal palisade fence.

    Families rushed to harvest hay, to clear the snowy roads in winter, to house the bombed families and to “make do and mend” with clothes and shoes.

    Britain was a united and cohesive community. Young and old worked daily in small ways for the common cause. But most importantly, in the free world, two countries — Britain and the US — had leaders in Winston Churchill and Franklin D Roosevelt who could explain the need for duty and sacrifice.

    Their like is yet to emerge today, and indeed the Western world is bereft, perhaps apart from French President Emmanuel Macron, who explained to Congress and the American people that secure borders are irrelevant to this threat, and all of us are world citizens needing to act in concert. “There is no Planet B,” he said.”

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    pat

    27 Aug: Reuters: Climate fund snags threaten opportunity to fight warming – Ban Ki-moon
    by Megan Rowling
    Ban told the Thomson Reuters Foundation that decisions by U.S. President Donald Trump to withdraw his country from the 2015 Paris Agreement on global warming, and to walk away from promises on climate finance jeopardized global commitments.
    “I am deeply concerned that the GCF – while it has been really trying to work – has not been fully funded,” Ban said in an interview from South Korea, where the fund is also based.
    “With the U.S. pullout of this (Paris) climate agreement, we are not sure whether $100 billion by 2020 will be met,” he added…

    But the last meeting of its 24-member board in July was blocked by disputes over policies and governance, meaning no new projects were approved.
    Ban, who is president of the ***Global Green Growth Institute, ***a GCF partner, described that result as “quite unfortunate”…

    Ban said the fund should focus on getting things done
    “It should be more effective; it should be more agile,” he said. “Otherwise if you have to wait many months or years to get the funding, by that time we will miss the opportunity to mitigate and adapt (to climate change).”…

    At its next meeting in October, Manzanares is hoping projects worth up to $1.3 billion will be approved, and about 15 new agencies accredited to lead work in the field…
    “We are now dealing with a situation of demand that clearly outstrips supply,” he said. “The difference is so huge that there is a true need to start replenishment.”

    If all goes well, a pledging meeting for donors could be held ***late next year, he noted, although it remains unclear whether a target amount will be set…READ ON
    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-climatechange-politics/climate-fund-snags-threaten-opportunity-to-fight-warming-ban-ki-moon-idUSKCN1LC01T

    reminder for those who missed it:

    11 Aug: Spectator: Green Climate Farce
    Despite its hopeless record, we’re still shipping millions to the Green Climate Fund
    by Tony Thomas
    Can you feel sorry for a climate bureaucrat? Well I do. Look at my fellow Aussie Howard Bamsey. He’s been implementing climate policies abroad for the past decade, after a stint as deputy secretary in Kevin Rudd’s Climate Change Department in 2008-10.
    Then he ran the Seoul-based multilateral Global Green Growth Institute and 18 months ago became executive director of the UN-created Green Climate Fund (GCF), now the financial muscle of the 2015 Paris Accord.

    At the 24-member board meeting last month at the Songdo, South Korea headquarters, the chaos was such that he finished the meeting by tabling a surprise resignation effective immediately (‘pressing personal reasons’). He walked out of the room a free man…

    The previous board minutes ran to 111 single-spaced pages plus 130 pages of appendixes, in total about 100,000 words. Maybe poor Bamsey couldn’t face another 100,000 word write-up, especially as this meeting could well precipitate the GCF’s collapse or a split into separate donor and recipient entities…

    We Aussie taxpayers have so far contributed $A185m cash to the Green Climate Fund, with another $A15m due before Christmas: total $A200m. This is as pledged by PM Tony Abbott in December 2014 (what was he thinking?). It could be worse: Sweden ($US580m) and Norway ($US270m) have peed more against the GCF wall. Those canny Kiwis across the ditch ‘invested’ only $NZ3m. The Danes stopped at $US72m. Canada put in $US275m, but $US100m of it was a loan. Our $200m is just the tip of an iceberg – Turnbull pledged ‘at least’ $1b in Paris fealty in 2015 just as Donald Trump won office, and the billion’s now more-or-less delivered…

    GCF’s previous executive director, Hela Cheikhrouhou, had chirruped about a need for $US450b a year after 2020, $US350b for fewer emissions and $US100b for adaptation…READ ON
    https://www.spectator.co.uk/2018/08/green-climate-farce/

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      Kinky Keith

      This is terrible.

      Terrible from the Australian taxpayers point of view.

      How do our representatives get to throw so much of our cash away to to “calm the winds” of climate change.

      KK

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      angry

      Ban Ki-moon==== UN AHOLE!

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  • #
    pat

    a bit more background on GGGI. why is Australia always in the mix?

    Wikipedia: Global Green Growth Institute
    There were 18 founding members: Australia, Cambodia, Costa Rica, Denmark, Ethiopia, Guyana, Indonesia, Kiribati, Mexico, Norway, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, the Philippines, Qatar, the Republic of Korea, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and Vietnam.
    Since its inauguration as an international organization, Fiji, Hungary, Jordan, Mongolia, Peru, Rwanda, Senegal, Thailand, and Vanuatu have become Member countries…

    On January 11, 2012, a Memorandum of Understanding was signed between GGGI, the UNEP, OECD, and the World Bank to establish the Green Growth Knowledge Platform. This signing was followed by the inaugural Green Growth Knowledge Platform conference in Mexico City…

    In January 2015, GGGI was accredited as an observer organization to the Green Climate Fund (GCF)…
    (EX EXEC DIR)
    The Executive Director of the GCF, Mr. Howard Bamsey, is a former Director-General of GGGI…

    GGGI works together with the World Resources Institute, Climate Policy Initiative, Ethiopian Development Research Institute, Indian Council for Research on International Economic RElations, London School of Economics and Political Science, Overseas Development Institute, Stockholm Environment Institute, and Tsinghua University…
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Green_Growth_Institute

    Bloomberg: Frank Rijsberman, Director General, Global Green Growth Institute
    Dr. Frank Rijsberman has been Director General of Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI) since October 1, 2016 and leads the Seoul-based international organization. Dr. Rijsberman served as Director of Water, Sanitation & Hygiene initiative – Global Development Program at Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation since October 11, 2010, where he developed a strategy to help achieve universal access to sustainable sanitation services using radical new technologies and innovative market-based mechanisms. He served as Chief Executive Officer of the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) Consortium. At CGIAR, he led the Consortium’s transformation from 15 independent research centers towards a single integrated organization.

    Dr. Rijsberman served as Philanthropic Program Director at Google.org where he led grant making in the public health initiative and was responsible for programs and partnerships in health, disaster response, geo-informatics and climate-change adaptation. Before Google, he was Director-General of the International Water Management Institute, an international research institute with HQ in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Dr. Rijsberman served as director general of IWMI where he transformed it from a single, localized institute into an international research network with 12 offices across Africa and Asia. He was also a member of the Task Force on Water and Sanitation for the UN Millennium Development Goals Project and one of the key organizers of the second World Water Forum.

    He served as part-time professor at the UNESCO-IHE Institute of Water Education, the world’s largest facility dedicated to research and capacity-building in the fields of water, environment and infrastructure…
    https://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/person.asp?personId=114447035&privcapId=245859452&previousCapId=245859452&previousTitle=Global%2520Green%2520Growth%2520Institute

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    pat

    interview with Nigel Farage:

    AUDIO: 14mins56secs: 28 Aug: 2GB: Alan Jones Show: ‘It’s always controversial when you talk common sense’: Nigel Farage heading to Australia
    https://www.2gb.com/its-always-controversial-when-you-talk-common-sense-nigel-farage-heading-to-australia/

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    pat

    28 Aug: The West Australian: RCR Tomlinson suffers $57m solar project blowout, to raise $100m at huge discount
    by Peter Williams
    RCR Tomlinson is raising $100 million from investors at a heavy discount after suffering a $57 million blowout on a solar power project.
    The engineering company today reported a $16 million net loss because of the disastrous Queensland contract which saw Paul Dalgleish depart as managing director this month.
    RCR blamed the $57 million writedown regarding the Daydream and Hayman solar farms on “several compounding project-specific issues”…

    The entitlement offer launched today if offering RCR shares on a one-for-1.65 basis at $1 each. The price is a 64 per cent discount from the stock’s last trade of $2.80.
    The offer is underwritten by Macquarie Capital…

    RCR’s shares have been suspended from trading since July 30 while an investigation into the problems at $315 million solar project was carried out.
    Mr Brown said the blowout on the $315 million solar project had been the product of external delays, worse sub-surface ground conditions than allowed for in the tender estimate and poor weather.
    He said RCR said was altering its strategy to one that had a more acceptable risk profile. This included being more selective in the renewable energy sector and shifting towards “alliance-style” contracts…

    Mr Brown said WA-based non-executive director Eva Skira would retire ahead of November’s annual meeting after 10 years on the board.
    Non-executive director Bruce James has been interim chief executive since August 7
    https://thewest.com.au/business/energy/rcr-tomlinson-suffers-57m-solar-project-blowout-to-raise-100m-at-huge-discount-ng-b88942556z

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  • #
    pat

    28 Aug: AFR: RCR takes $57m write-down on Daydream, Hayman solar farms, reports $16m net loss
    by Jenny Wiggins
    RCR was awarded a $315 million contract to build and operate the two solar farms, which are near Collinsville in northern Queensland, for Edify Energy in mid-2017.
    The write-downs are due to delays, unexpectedly poor sub-surface ground conditions, and bad weather, RCR said on Tuesday…
    The write-downs were only recently identified because people working on the solar farm sites did not follow the company’s standard procedures on procuring materials, RCR said…

    If RCR cannot raise at least $50 million in the equity raising, which is being underwritten by Macquarie, and cannot get “ongoing support” from its banks, it may not be able to continue as “a going concern,” the company said…

    RCR warned investors on Tuesday that there was a risk of a class action lawsuit following the solar projects’ writedown, but said it was not aware of any class action lawsuits being prepared.
    It also warned of a “specific tax risk”: that the Australian Tax Office may not agreed with RCR allocating “certain expenditure” between 2014 and 2017 as research and development activities.
    https://www.afr.com/business/rcr-takes-57m-writedown-on-daydream-hayman-solar-farms-reports-16m-net-loss-20180827-h14lfz

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    pat

    VIDEO: 27 Aug: Digital Trends: Say what!? A wind turbine in Japan got blown over by — the wind
    By Trevor Mogg
    Strong gusts brought by Typhoon Cimaron on Friday, August 24, caused a massive wind turbine in western Japan to topple over.

    The 60-meter-tall turbine was located in a park on Awaji Island, 275 miles west of Tokyo, but was wrenched from its base in the early hours of Friday morning as the typhoon pummeled a large part of the Japanese archipelago…

    Built in 2002, the turbine had been out of commission since May last year after being struck by lightning, according to the Japan Times (LINK)…

    With so many typhoons battering Japan — Friday’s was the 20th this year — wind turbines are usually stopped until the weather system passes. The constant disruption prompted Japanese engineering firm Challenergy to create the world’s first typhoon-powered wind turbine (LINK)…
    https://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/wind-turbine-blown-over-by-wind/

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    pat

    27 Aug: Daily Mail: Thousands of bats are killed by wind turbines every year because they are drawn to the blinking red lights used to ward off aircrafts
    •Wind turbines kill 80,000 bats a year in the UK, and 600,000 in the USA
    •Wind turbines kill 80,000 bats a year in the UK, and 600,000 in the USA
    •Scientists found European pipistrelle bats are drawn to red lights
    •Flashing red lights used on wind turbines attract bats to the spinning blades
    •Using on-demand lights that only switch-on when planes are in the area could drastically cut the number of bats killed by turbines, scientists say
    By Harry Pettit

    Researchers at the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research, in Berlin, Germany, say bats are particularly at risk of turbine collisions during migration flights.
    ‘Bats are at a higher collision risk at wind power stations during their autumn migration,’ said Oliver Lindecke, co-author of the study.
    PIC: Turbines use red lights to ward off aircraft at night, and experts argue this could lure bats into the path of their blades, which spin at speeds of up to 170mph (275 kph)
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-6102047/Thousands-bats-killed-wind-turbines-year-drawn-red-warning-light.html

    27 Aug: BusinessInsider: Vestas Plans To Cease Production At Factory In León, Spain
    RTT News: Vestas Wind Systems A/S (VWDRY.PK) said it plans to cease production at its assembly factory in León, Spain,, citing declining demand for the 2-megawatt wind turbine platform in Europe.
    The Denmark-based maker of wind-power plants said the move affects all 362 workers at the plant…
    Spain remains a key market to Vestas with more than 4 GW of installed turbines, 6 GW under service and around 2,000 employees as of 30 June 2018…ETC
    https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/vestas-plans-to-cease-production-at-factory-in-le%C3%B3n-spain-1027488068

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    pat

    27 Aug: Guardian: UK summer ‘wind drought’ puts green revolution into reverse
    Windfarms fall short in heatwave, but 2018 was still UK’s second greenest summer
    by Adam Vaughan
    Britain’s long heatwave threw the country’s green energy revolution into reverse and pushed up carbon emissions this summer, leading experts to stress the need for a diverse energy mix.
    The summer of 2017 was lauded as the “greenest ever” for electricity generation, thanks to a growing number of windfarms and solar installations edging out coal and gas power stations.
    But this year has seen a comparatively dirty summer for power generation, due to the weather’s impact on renewables.
    The Met Office said the high pressure that caused much of the country to bask under sunny skies had suppressed windy conditions…

    The weather proved a boon for staycations, garden centres and solar panel owners, but windfarms suffered. They usually provide four times as much power as solar each year.
    The wind drought meant that at times turbine blades sat idle for days.
    Windfarm capacity is up by more than 10% since a year ago, but the share of electricity they supplied dropped from 12.9% last year to 10.4% this summer, figures from National Grid show.
    Although record-breaking solar output helped fill some of the gap and nuclear plants provided a bedrock of supply, gas power stations were fired up to meet demand…

    ***Analysts have told renewable energy investors not to be alarmed about the lack of wind this summer.
    After examining 17 years of monthly wind speeds in the UK, Bernstein bank concluded: “We do not find any evidence of a structural trend in wind speed over time.”…

    Q&A
    Can batteries plug the gap when it’s not windy or sunny?
    Not yet…For the most part, economics and technology mean it does not yet make sense to store surplus green energy from one day to use on another etc…

    Will climate change make wind droughts a regular occurrence?
    The jury is out…One recent study predicted that if the world warms by 1.5C, UK wind speeds would increase.
    However, a peer-reviewed paper last year said global warming would hit UK wind power generation.
    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/aug/27/uk-summer-wind-drought-puts-green-revolution-into-reverse

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    pat

    28 Aug: AFR: Energy policy guessing game will kill investment, executives warn
    by Ben Potter & Angela Macdonald-Smith
    The energy policy vacuum makes it harder to justify large investments in new generation needed to stabilise the electricity system as more coal plant retires and sets the country back behind “square one”, energy and industry executives warned Energy minister Angus Taylor.

    In the past few days the government has abandoned emissions targets for electricity and separated energy and climate policy ministries after its attempt to unite them ran foul of backbench hostility to renewable energy and the Paris climate agreement…

    Australian Industry Group chief executive Innes Willox said it would be “harder to secure the investment we need in power and industry” to get energy prices down “unless investors know what the rules on energy and emissions are going to be over the long term”.
    “Climate and energy policy are joined at the hip, and we look forward to working with the capable new ministers and their senior leadership to make progress for industry and all Australians,” Mr Willox said…

    ERM Power chief executive Jon Stretch: “Stakeholders have been in need of enduring, bipartisan national energy and climate policy for a decade, to drive investment in the right places for reliability, affordability and environmental outcomes. We seem further away from that than ever.”…

    Energy Users Association of Australia chief executive Andrew Richards: “Every time a policy response falls at the final hurdle, as it did last week, it is then seen as poison and discarded. Ultimately you have to run out of viable options and we fear this is where we are at after 10 years of political chaos,” Mr Richards said…

    Mark Collette, EnergyAustralia’s top energy executive: Mr Collette agreed the abandonment of carbon emissions targets and the separation of emissions and energy into two portfolios under separate ministers put the onus back on industry to help itself…

    Ed McManus, chief executive of Kiwi-owned wind farm operator Meridian Energy Australia and retailer Powershop, cited Australia Institute polling showing two-thirds to three-quarters of voters want stronger renewable energy incentives and said, “We look forward to working with the new Minister. We know the majority of Australians support renewables, and we also recognise the need for affordable and reliable energy.”…ETC
    https://www.afr.com/news/energy-policy-guessing-game-will-kill-investment-executives-warn-20180827-h14ksy

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    Roy Hogue

    I wonder if the home of Malcolm Turnbull has ever been dark. How about Parliament Hall in Canberra? I’ll hazard a guess that those two places stay lighted no matter what someone must go through to keep them going.

    Service always gets better at the top of the pyramid.

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      Roy Hogue

      I just noticed by dumb luck that you have a new PM along with a “stability cabinet”.

      If he wants stability he should hire a few good power systems engineers, not cabinet members.

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    James in Melbourne

    Does anyone know the data (if there is any) on the other side, of Australia’s carbon fixing/sequestration performance each year?

    Isn’t it possible that Australia is a net carbon sink?

    You just never hear it spoken about. I am sure many (younger) people would not even know that it happens.

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      Kinky Keith

      I have little doubt that what you say is true, even considering the large empty centre.

      Could we please have a refund from the United Nations!

      KK

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      Bobl

      Yes, I’ve done the calculations, in 1990 we sunk around 10GT on land alone, which is around 20 times what we emit. Ironically higher average atmospheric CO2 speeds up the sinks (photosynthesis) by 1% for each 2PPM increase in CO2 so the increase in the rate of sinking between 1990 and now is about 20% or 2GT a year, 4 times what we emit. That is instead of being a 10GT-0.5GT (9.5GT) net sink we are now about a 11.5GT net sink just due to atmospheric CO2 increasing from 370PPM to 410PPM .

      I too wanna see the cheque for all that abatement.

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      Roy Hogue

      Isn’t it possible that Australia is a net carbon sink?

      And does it matter if Australia or any other place, is a net carbon sink? And so far the answer seems to be no, it doesn’t matter.

      But imaginary problems are always easier to do 2 things with.

      1. Frighten the stuffing out of everyone by telling them over and over that they have a problem.

      2. Say, “I can solve your problem and here’s how you have to suffer to get it solved.”

      The rest has already been written in the history books.

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        Roy Hogue

        And if you can profit along the way, so much the better. But I suspect China will someday have another Chernobyl sitting there in the form of the careless toxic waste dump from the manufacturing of those magnets used in wind turbines.

        How many others will be in this boat before something is done.

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          Bobl

          Is a problem related to rare earth element refining, rare earth elements are mostly found where thorium is found, but thorium isn’t currently useful, so the thorium remains in the tailings in concentrated amounts. Thorium is radioactive, not very without a nearby neutron source, but active enough to be toxic. The solution generally would be thorium reactors to use this waste product profitably.

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          Kinky Keith

          That,,,, is serious pollution.

          From a U.N. Helicopter these damaged areas look quite normal while on the ground the residents are being poisoned.

          KK

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    pat

    28 Aug: France24: Environment Minister Nicolas Hulot quits French government
    Text by NEWS WIRES
    French Environment Minister Nicolas Hulot announced his resignation on Tuesday, citing disappointment with the lack of progress on climate and other environmental goals.

    Hulot said his decision, taken on Monday night, was the result of an “accumulation of disappointments” over the inadequacy of steps to tackle climate change, defend biodiversity and address other environmental threats
    A former TV presenter and green activist whose cabinet portfolio included energy, Hulot said on France Inter radio that he had not yet informed President Emmanuel Macron of his decision to resign…

    Shortly after his announcement, government spokesman Benjamin Griveaux said he “regretted” Hulot’s exit.
    In his radio interview, however, he emphasized the inadequacy of “mini steps” taken by France and other nations to slow global warming and avert a collapse of biodiversity.
    “I don’t want to create the illusion that we are facing up to it,” he said
    (REUTERS)
    https://www.france24.com/en/20180828-france-politics-macron-environment-minister-nicolas-hulot-quits-french-government

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    pat

    BBC is turning it into a soap opera:

    28 Aug: BBC: French minister Nicolas Hulot resigns on live radio in frustration
    The former TV presenter and green activist said he had quit after a series of disappointments in attempts to address climate change and other environmental threats.
    Mr Hulot said he felt “all alone” in government.
    The decision was taken on the spot and, he added, even his wife did not know.
    “I am going to take… the most difficult decision of my life,” the minister said in an interview on France Inter radio.
    “I am taking the decision to leave the government.”…

    Mr Hulot said that he had not told Mr Macron or Prime Minister Edouard Philippe of his decision, because he believed they would try to talk him out of it…
    He also said he was frustrated by the “small steps” being taken to deal with climate change and the fact that “this subject is always relegated to the bottom of the list of priorities”.
    But the minister said he wanted his resignation to be seen as a wake-up call.
    “I hope that my act is not an act of resignation but one of mobilisation,” he said…
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-45329573

    no better time for Australia to announce it’s withdrawing from Paris.

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    pat

    poor Nicolas – the planet is becoming a “sauna”:

    28 Aug: Youtube: 52secs: The Guardian: French environment minister quits live on air: ‘I don’t want to lie to myself any more’
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8cydVXou2Q

    28 Aug: Guardian: French environment minister quits live on radio with anti-Macron broadside
    Nicolas Hulot says he is leaving government because president is not doing enough to meet environmental goals
    by Angelique Chrisafis in Paris
    Emmanuel Macron’s climate commitment to “make this planet great again” has come under attack after his environment minister dramatically quit, saying the French president was not doing enough to meet environmental goals.

    Nicolas Hulot, a ***celebrity environmentalist and former TV presenter, announced on a radio breakfast show that he was leaving the government over “an accumulation of disappointments” with its measures to tackle climate change, defend biodiversity and address other environmental threats…

    Hulot’s differences with the government had been exposed in recent months. He had been disappointed when the government backtracked on a target to reduce reliance on nuclear power to 50% of the country’s energy mix by 2025…

    (Macron) has lost support on the left in recent weeks and his approval ratings have dipped as he struggles to shake off the label “president of the rich”…

    In February, (Hulot) denied a magazine report of a historic allegation of sexual assault made against him by a woman in the 1990s…

    After the anti-nuclear Hulot quit, shares in French state power company EDF rose more than 2% in early trading. Hulot had repeatedly said EDF must close up to a third of its 58 reactors to reduce the share of nuclear energy.
    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/28/french-environment-minister-quits-live-on-radio-with-anti-macron-broadside

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    pat

    28 Aug: DesmogUK: French Environment Minister Nicolas Hulot in Shock Resignation over Lack of Action
    By Chloe Farand
    Describing his “immense friendship” with Macron’s government, Hulot said that although he had no regrets in joining the government he had suffered from his time in office, increasingly accommodating himself with “small steps” at a time when “the planet is becoming a sauna and deserves that we change the way we think and operate”.
    “Am I up to the task? Who would be up to this task on their own? Where are my troops ? Who is behind me?”, he asked.

    The environmentalist and former TV presenter admitted that he had been thinking about resigning throughout the summer but that it was the presence of hunting lobbyist Thierry Coste at a ministerial meeting to which he was not invited that prompted him to take the decision.
    “We have to talk about this because it’s a democratic issue to ask who holds the power and who governs in this country,” he told France Inter.

    Hulot said his time in office had been “an accumulation of disappointments”, citing France’s failure to move away from nuclear power. He said he felt like he had “a bit of influence but no power”.
    He stressed that the transition to a carbon-free world was a “collective responsibility” and that the dominating liberalism model had to be put into question if the world was to move to a green economy.
    “I hope that my resignation will lead to a profound introspection of our society on the reality of the world,” he said, pleading all sides not to use his resignation as political tool…

    Ségolène Royal, former environment minister under the previous socialist government during which the Paris Agreement was signed, wrote on twitter: “I respect Nicolas Hulot’s choice. As I know from experience, he has proved that the battles for the environment are very difficult but so crucial.”
    “France needs to keep the climate leadership and be ready to fight for those forces around the planet that hope for a better future.”
    Yannick Jadot, from the French Green party, said: “The departure of Nicolas Hulot from the government is the consequence of the absence of environmental policies from this government.”
    https://www.desmog.co.uk/2018/08/28/french-environment-minister-shock-resignation-over-lack-action

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