Australia Wins The Global Patsy Award 2019
The Brookings Institute released a report that claims everyone is better off economically by sticking to Paris, but check out the devastating graphs. Economically, everyone is a loser, but the three biggest losers are Australia, Russia and OPEC.
Australia is doing more, paying more, suffering more and yet will make almost no difference to the global emissions tally in anything other than a purely symbolic impress-your-dinner–guests kind of way.
If Australia left the Paris Agreement, even the left leaning Brookings Institute can’t find much difference in total global man-made emissions. Australia is forcing the renewables transformation faster than anywhere else, it will lose GDP, wages, jobs, investment, and the dollar will fall. All that, and no one could even tell the difference between Paris with Australia, and Paris without.
Clearly Australian negotiators at the UN are incompetent on a whole new scale. If they had Australian’s interests at heart, even a little bit, they would have done this study themselves, and gone to Paris with some realistic comparative data to argue that we are cutting too fast and paying too much. Finalists for most useless Global Negotiator of the Decade are Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard and Julie Bishop. Wayne Swan, treasurer of the year, deserves a mention.
Australians basically walked in to Paris and said “hit me”.
Don’t miss these fun graphs:
Bad news for the Australian dollar:
Change in exchange rates thanks to the Paris Agreement
Who needs Trade balance anyway?
At least our falling dollar will help to stop Australians importing so many goods.
Change in trade balance thanks to the Paris Agreement.
Spot the difference: If Australia left The Paris Agreement the world not even notice
Theoretically, this graph below shows how much global emissions would be reduced should the unthinkable happen and everyone actually met their Paris promises. The lowest red line is the glory of Paris “success” with Australia included.
The dashed line on top of that is Paris success if Australia bailed. Exactly.
Theoretically, this is how much emissions will be reduced if every nation sticks to the Paris agreement.
Despite the title on the graph above, this is not Global CO2 emissions at all which are around 750 billion tons. This, obviously, is the insignificant man-made part.
Go on, let’s add Global Emissions to the scale…
Everyone’s economy will shrink
Less energy means less economy.
Three regions will be the worst hit — Australia, OPEC and Russia.
Change in GDP relative to business as usual without all that virtue signalling.
Large drop in jobs coming
Whichever way you look at it, jobs are going. Just that in Australia they’re going faster. We apparently outdo the rest of the world til Russia (allegedly) catches up. Then some magical assumption happens in 2021. (Trump becomes our PM, perhaps?)
Whichever way you look at it, jobs are going.
Notice no country on Earth will get richer because of Paris
Australians are getting rid of evil capitalist wages faster than anyone, though apparently OPEC puts on a good finish in the race to the bottom.
Change in CO2 emissions, Paris Agreement, 2019. Graph.
The three biggest losers of wealth — Australia, Russia and OPEC
This graph says something.
Change in CO2 emissions, Paris Agreement, 2019. Graph.
Australians will be consuming less, are you looking forward to that?
Did I mention rubbery figures?
The researchers do some serious economic-number-mashing, converting everything into a carbon tax.
From the Brookings Institute press release:
[The researchers]… use a multi-region model of the world economy to analyze the economic and environmental outcomes that are likely to result from these [Nationally Determined Contributions] NDCs. To construct the modeling scenario, the authors convert the disparate NDC formulations into estimated reductions in CO2 emissions relative to a baseline scenario with no new climate policies. They then solve for the tax rate path on CO2 in each region that achieves the NDC-consistent emissions reductions in the target year, 2030 for most regions.
Then funny things happen where the carbon tax they calculate bears little relation to the actual emission reductions. Could it be because a tax on a universal molecule essential to life is a stupid economic idea? Some of the players won’t respond because energy needs are inelastic, and most of the players won’t respond because they are blue-green algae, or otters, or E.Coli. And some of the players who do respond pick windmills and solar panels for reasons which defy any economic or scientific analysis.
Comparing projected 2030 CO2 tax rates to the same year’s percent emissions abatement relative to baseline, the authors find that declines in CO2 emissions do not necessarily correlate with the CO2 tax rate. For example, under Paris, Japan’s emissions decline the most of all regions, but its CO2 tax is the fourth lowest at about $US 16 per ton. India and the United States share a common goal for percent reduction of emissions relative to baseline, but India’s tax rises to about $US44 per ton in 2030, about 70 percent higher than the $US 26 tax in the United States in its target year of 2025.
Rubbery figures meet Rubbery assumptions
The paper assumed a government-introduced $5-a-tonne carbon tax from 2020 — which neither the Coalition nor Labor has foreshadowed — to cut Australia’s carbon emissions by a promised 26-28 per cent on 2005 levels by 2030.
Now lets pretend there are benefits from cutting CO2
Santa Claus says reducing an airborne fertilizer is a benefit they can put a hundred billion dollar figure on.
And this comes from the Brookings Institute – friends of Big Government. Imagine if sensible independent engineers wrote it?
Australia is irrelevant.
Whatever happens: It’s gonna cost you
At least Warwick McGibbon is honest telling us that economic pain is inevitable. Furthermore he admits that if you just care about jobs and wages not the climate, you’d quit Paris.
Warwick McKibbin, an ANU economics professor and one of the report’s authors, said Australia could not avoid economic pain by pulling out of the agreement.
“If we stay in, we’re better off because if we pull out, we’ll still be getting most of the economic damage — other countries won’t be buying our resources so much — but miss out on the benefits of curbing carbon emissions such as less pollution,” Professor McKibbin told The Australian.
“You don’t have to believe in climate change at all to support staying in Paris. That said, if you just cared about jobs or real wages but didn’t care about climate or pollution, you’d stay out.”
He sings an ode about beating the mythical pollution ogre. Even if CO2 actually caused much warming, Australian emissions are irrelevant, CO2 is a well mixed gas, and there is a very substantial benefit, thankyou, in raising CO2 on a dry agricultural nation.
Frank Jotzo, Professor at ANU in Climate Policy tweeted:
Paris Agreement modelling by @WarwickMcKibbin and colleagues: meeting 2030 emissions targets to yield net economic benefits to individual countries (before taking into account avoided climate change damages)
No mention by him that Australia got one of the worst deals globally. It’s not like he is supposed to be serving The Australian Taxpayer.
Academics, we can’t sell them fast enough.
Hat tip to Pat
REFERENCE
Liu, McKibben, Morris and Wilcoxen (2019) Global Economic and Environmental Outcomes of the Paris Agreement” (PDF), Brookings Institute.
” … for almost no benefit”
Don’t you mean for ‘…. for only disadvantage’?
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“Sustainability” has a very minor benefit: you get to stay alive … for a short while, miserable, but alive.
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Except that it’s not even sustainable unless 99% of the worlds population disappears and humanity returns to a hunter gatherer existence.
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Point.
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Dang. “… for nothing”. Wrongthink snuck in there… Ta.
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Jo, I like your article but can you tell me if the study takes into account the fertilisation effect, for each 2ppm reduction in CO2 comes a 1% reduction in agricultural productivity. So every ppm reduction in CO2 over what it would be represents $300 million of Australian pain.
Australia’s interest is in increasing CO2.
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Bob – I can only clean up so much mess in one day. I haven’t read the full 29 page report, but there are zero mentions of “fertilization”, “crops” “yield” or “greening”.
There is only one mention of mortality and that’s called a “benefit” of reducing emissions, though the evidence is overwhelming that more people die of “cold snaps”, in winter, and that warming will save far more lives than it will take.
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An excellent article on what is so wrong with the climate debate: https://www.intellectualtakeout.org/article/data-show-california-living-example-good-intentions-fallacy.
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Damned if you do, damned if you don’t, based on the
fallacyscam that “carbon” is pollution.With declining economies, impoverished, declining, sick, feral populations living and dying in the cold and dark for naught, just who the hell do they think are going to pay their “carbon” taxes?
We all know that the Trojan horse of climatism was only ever that, even by their own admission, wanton destruction through pointless socialist redistribution under the economically suicidal noose of administrative totalitarian globalism, for regulation and control that, even if they are very, very lucky, will last but a moment.
The day of “settled politics” is very nearly over and they still haven’t noticed.
Now you know why there are crowds of yellow shirts.
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I think they mean higher incomes and more jobs and the country gets higher export revenue if you pull out. Just how they can call that ‘economic damage’ is beyond me, it must be groupthink by the UN Church of Climatology.
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I’m predicting the first IPPC climate denier crusade to begin in 2030 when China and India give up the game declaring the science was wrong so they won’t be activating there promises under Paris.
The UN Church of Climatology will launch their pogrom against denier states followed by the CO2 Inquisition for individuals until they confess their sins are sent cleansed to the Gai God in the sky/Land/Sea. Carbon neutral execution method to be determined!
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They get free money from the UN and suicidal West while they pander to a theory they clearly don’t believe. That won’t change until the West gives up on the delusion.
China recently cancelled solar subsidies because they were making electricity too expensive — so China has to answer (in part) to its own citizenry. But who noticed? Only skeptics.
Hence China is free to say it believes, take the cash and act in a totally contrary manner.
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Well put Joanne.
Say, whoever would ever have thought that it was only ever about the money?
Tony.
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Tony, it has always been about the money. Money for the UN to buy governments, especially western governments, and the implementation of the UN Agenda 21 and 30 permitting the removal of sovereign states and the introduction of a One World Government under the UN. If that happens heaven help our children and their children.
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Yes, there is money flow. But I think an even more important impact is to throw sand into the gears of efficient and effective economies allowing those overburdened with parasitic bureaucracies or avaricious authoritarians to better compete. It is very difficult for a protectionist cabal like the euro zone to reform their own flaws; apparently much easier to muck up the workings of the main competition; the US and Australia among a few others. The goals of ‘world government’ the the UN holds, or commercial domination that China dreams of, both of which are much aided by reducing the efficiency of the world’s successful economies, dwarf the meager cash flows, which simply echo the charitable impulses for foreign aid that we’ve held and squandered resources on for years.
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Great post and analysis, thanks Jo.
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… and still the heat waves come and the climate changes …
South Australia is only days away from a heatwave which will last for almost a week and has left Tour Down Under organisers anxiously watching the weather forecast.
https://www.news.com.au/national/south-australia/forecast-of-weeklong-heatwave-leaves-2019-tour-down-under-organisers-anxious/news-story/f9ed935711ca5efcf7ef72554bce4c2a
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roflmao.. Heat waves in SA is climate NOT changing !!
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Love it Andy, green thumb for you. Yes in Summer Adelaide’s proximity to the Simpson desert makes heatwaves inevitable in summer. I remember in my teens helping in the ash Wednesday fires with temps around the 45 mark with no humidity off the desert. A drying recipe for disaster.
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Andy, I gave you a green thumb too, #33 so far, trying to get you up to 39 . . . same as Adelaide’s ‘unprecedented 39˚C heat wave’ crippling those delicate, natural, native, South Australiastan windmills today. Thankfully we
deniers infidels unbelievers scepticsrealists have a sense of humour as wemove forward towards that existential tipping pointgo round in yet another cycle.10
I just looked at the BOM weather forecast for Adelaide for the next week…Yes it will be warm to hot there..But that is NORMAL. It is after all Summer..
So far here in the Hills we have had 3 hot days so far this ‘Summer’.
An the Tour Down Under ? It’s held at this time of the year to give the bikie folk a break from the freezing Winters in Europe…
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Great to see you fellas finally beating us at something…
From your un-venerable Bureau of M itself, http://www.bom.gov.au/ , max temps today, 10 January: Sydney 24˚, Melbourne 22˚, Perth 26˚, Hobart 21˚, Canberra 27˚ – sounds like a COLD WAVE is sweeping up and over terra incognito. Meanwhile in our little colonial outpost, https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12188033 , Napier 31˚, Auckland 27˚, Dunedin 20˚ (as the COLD FRONT bites down south). The only change is a cold change, yet that 4-letter C-word appears to have disappeared down Memory Hole #2.019.
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Australia Wins The Global Patsy Award 2019
Jan 10, 2019: Australia’s 2018 in weather: drought, heat and fire
Last year was a time of exceptional weather and record-breaking heat according to the Bureau of Meteorology’s annual climate statement, which was released last night.
One of the headline stories for the year was drought across eastern Australia — centred on New South Wales, but also affecting Victoria, eastern South Australia and southern Queensland.
https://theconversation.com/australias-2018-in-weather-drought-heat-and-fire-109575
Drought? More coal mines needed?
GREENS leader Bob Brown says the coal mining industry should foot the bill for the floods because it helped cause them.
https://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/coal-miners-to-blame-for-queensland-floods-says-australian-greens-leader-bob-brown/news-story/cbfe12042fa9c4149ea3c10524f57344
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Were those floods caused by TC Penny?
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Mark, your greens are as wacky as our greens – wow like, existential man, totally Bob. And then there’s NIWA –
https://www.niwa.co.nz/files/2018_Annual_Climate_Summary-NIWA.pdf
Pages 1 – 2: “This makes 2018 the equal 2nd-warmest year on record along with 1998 [on 13.41˚C] only placing behind 2016 which had a nationwide average temperature of 13.45°C”. Panic at the disco over a 0.04˚C ‘rise’ in 18 years? Funny coincidence: isn’t CO₂ at a ‘dangerous’ 0.04 percent too? Must be the new magic number to freak-out the proles. Page 4: “Thus, the summer of 2017-18 claimed the record of New Zealand’s hottest summer formerly held by the summer of 1934-35.” Que paso? It’s taken 83 years to beat 1935’s record hot summer? What about all those tipping points we’ve
passedsurvivedmissed?There’s then page-after-page of words/numbers/graphs and other assorted blah-blah until finally, on the penultimate (2nd-to-last) Page 38: “21 February, the Crown Range was dusted with snow as a cold southerly pushed into the South Island in ex-Tropical Cyclone Gita’s wake. The Remarkables ski area near Queenstown reported 50 cm of snowfall, with drifts up to 1 metre deep.” So in the peak of our high summer cyclone season, ex-Gita caused HALF-A-METRE OF SNOW to fall in February – now that’s diversity-plus! “6 August, a large avalanche occurred on the upper slopes of Turoa skifield on Mt Ruapehu, damaging the High Noon Express chairlift. The damage was significant enough that the chairlift was unable to be used for the remainder of the ski season.” Ski Patrol on avie control set this one off and nailed the highest (best) chairlift, dang. “17 September… 45 cm of snow was reported on the ground in some Queenstown suburbs… falling all the way down to lake level in both Wanaka and Queenstown.” Perfectly timed spring equinox dump.
Yet that’s it, no mention of April and May’s snowfalls, June and July’s blizzards, the snow storms which kept-on-a-coming through October and November, the finalé being on 22 December, the longest day of the year, our summer solstice, the first day of summer! Yet Chris Brandolino and his band of merry pranksters didn’t see fit to include these cold, snowy extremes in their summary of
weatherclimate. Problem is, proles see/hear the headlines and run with it as gospel: scientism activists wouldn’t lie – they’re concerned and there’s a consensus, Gaia dammit! She’s a hard row to hoe…50
I looked at the article. 33 degrees C in the Adelaide summer is NOT a heatwave. Call me when it starts to reach 45 degrees.
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There is something missing here.
All that food stuff we export has a significant CO2 production cost. We invest CO2 is growing and raising those food stuffs, so rather than carbon neutral we should be getting Carbon credits from the countries we sell said food stuffs to!
And retrospective credits for all food stuffs we have been exporting since this AGW nonsense kicked up in the Guts.
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Watch Craig Kelly, he will fulminate over this!
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The reality of the “Parisites” climate agreement is starting to hit home.
Moral comfort for the ruling elite, serfdom , poverty and misery for everyone else.
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Self inflicted misery. You get what you vote for. I am afraid that most of the politicians have betrayed their electorates. So suck it up folks.
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I did not votefor that!
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Some quotable quotes right here …
Why the World Bank chief quit:
Africa, US question World Bank policy on poor
But it wasn’t the text that stung so much as some of the quotes.
Indian government minister Piyush Goyal, for example, could have been speaking for Zimbabwe or any developing country when he said, ‘The people of India want a certain way of life.
They want jobs for their children, schools and colleges, hospitals with uninterrupted power.”
Solar, he complained, only worked when the sun is shining.
“We need a very large amount of baseload power and this can only come from coal.
… But the frustration of many in Africa might be summed up by Nigerian finance minister, Kemi Adeosun.
“We want to build a coal power plant,” Mrs Adeosun said.
“However, we are being blocked from doing so, because it is not green.”
http://www.thezimbabwean.co/2017/10/africa-us-question-world-bank-policy-poor/?utm_source=CCNet+Newsletter&utm_campaign=b09519252a-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_01_08_12_45&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_fe4b2f45ef-b09519252a-20142293
” Their unlikely ally is Donald Trump.”
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Bonus.
Obama: ‘The Planet Will Boil Over’ If Africans Are Allowed Cars and Air Conditioning
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBE0RKbRbl4
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Isn’t Obama’s ancestry African?
Pot calling kettle black?
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Go back far enough and everyone’s ancestry is African!
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Go back a little further, and we are all related. Every human being on this planet shares a common female ancestor….
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debunker, do you have concrete evidence for that? There appears to be some evidence of older and more advanced settlements in Europe and China.
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I think happy little debunker was referring to the “Out of Africa” theory that Homo sapiens descended from a single female in Africa about 200,000 years ago. Based on mitochondrial DNA analysis.
This idea has been delt a blow by the recent finding of possible H. sapiens fossils in Morocco dated about 315,000 years ago.
https://www.nature.com/news/oldest-homo-sapiens-fossil-claim-rewrites-our-species-history-1.22114
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The movie “The Constant Gardener” with Ralph Fiennes in it, gives IMHO, a good view of how the gloablaists view & use africa…..
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Given that Australia contributes ~1.4% of global CO2 emissions, and that includes what is produced overseas from our mineral exports, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand that the Paris Agreement is nothing but hot air. Unfortunately there aren’t enough politicians with a spine to admit that and there there are too many people fooled by the MSM.
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It also places Australia just behind Great Britain at number 16 globally. So your point is invalid.
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Your statement is made using quite misleading statistics.
Those old statistics using ‘per capita’ or ‘GDP’ is completely misleading, and somewhat out of date, as Australia’s ‘per capita’ figure has fallen dramatically, so much so that the Greens no longer wish to use it as a yardstick.
And if you remove our mineral exports, the figures for Australia would probably be about the same as for the Scandinavian or most African countries.
Try harder.
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Our total contribution is 3 times what should be expected on a population basis according to The World Resources Institute. I did not use a GDP or ‘per capita’ value.
Let’s try an example. I pay tax, even though the amount I pay is meaningless in relation to the total budget. Should I stop? If I did would I become a free rider on the country?
You are saying that in effect, Australia should be a free rider on the global economy.
Your point is still invalid
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You don’t appear to understand. Our agricultural, industrial and mineral exports are used to calculate those figures. Those exports are what allows you to have technology, electricity etc to make incorrect statements on blogs, without which you’d be in the dark and likely unemployed.
As a net exporter of what are considered green house gas products or products that at a future date will become green house gas products, will naturally increase the ratio compared to countries who are net importers of such products. So the population based ratio may be mathematically correct, but is completely incorrect when considering the context. This is how the Green Blob has maintained the lie.
Try harder.
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So you are happy to be a free riding parasite. Me, not so much.
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“So you are happy to be a free riding parasite. Me, not so much”
Then get off the “climate change™” trough, futz !!
Until you do that, you are always a free-riding parasite.
There is NO PROBLEM AT ALL with releasing sequestered carbon back into the shorter term carbon cycle where it belongs.
Australia’s mining and coal have help the world develop into a much more prosperous and developed society. It is other countries that are taking a free ride, expecting to be paid huge amounts of funds for cow-towing to the climate agenda
Your point about position of release of CO2 is all bass-ackwards, the planet needs MORE atmospheric CO2, not less,
Those countries that release it are helping plant life to FEEDI THE WORLD.
The higher on the CO2 emission list the better.
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Well, Mr Fitzroy, being so very gullible, feel free to pay my share for me. I won’t mind at all.
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In truth, you are the free riding parasite, as well as a hypocrite; supposedly believing in and advocating one thing, but doing quite the opposite.
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How is that – I pay taxes, am nice to kiddies, and recycle.
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This sort of thinking amazes me, you are willing to pay 5 times as much for unreliable energy produced by solar and wind power even though those things won’t ever save any CO2. What’s the point? Why would you do that, you do nothing for anybody, and you take money away from other investments, say curing cancer, or providing cheap electricity to everyone in the world that would make a real difference to the human condition
Wasting money on nothing helps no-one and many of the intended consequences of climate action (say denying world bank loans for coal fired power plants) are close to EVIL.
Then you call us freeloaders!
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Peter Fitzroy: There is not a level playing field in emissions reduction. There is a reason our emissions contribution is three times what it should be on a population basis- in other words, per capita.
Australia is “blessed” with a small population and vast distances. We are a long way from our trading partners, and most of the things we produce and consume must travel long distances within Australia as well- including electricity. We are further “blessed” with very little rainfall and a lack of high mountains and rivers suitable for hydro dams, and a lack of political will for building nuclear power plants- so we have little reliable low emission capacity. We therefore rely on coal and gas for electricity (and steel and cement and…), and diesel and petrol and aviation kero and fuel oil for transport. We are compared with nations with large, compact populations, short travel distances, and hydro and nuclear energy. Emissions reductions are relatively more difficult in Australia. Fair go- we are already punching above our weight economically.
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We did have a electricity supply which was a lot more local. A number of small scale hydro plants on the north coast of NSW for example. So the idea that we lack capacity for hydro is wrong. Next, as you say our distances are long, but comparable to other countries like the USA (eastern seaboards in both). However our energy consumption is way higher, which is one of the reasons why rooftop solar is so popular – for example, it’s 30 outside, my panels are powering the fridge and the air con, and still producing a surplus to the grid.
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Peter, check the Snowy Mounting Dam levels. Currently very low. The idea that we can do hydro whenever we like in a flat land of hugely variable rainfall is false.
How many valleys and species should we extinguish in the hope of slowing storms 100 years from now?
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The northern hydro plants were very small, and were not affected by droughts to the extent that the Snowy system is. The Nymbodia is a classic example of such a plant. However, the levels of most of the Snowy dams excepting Eucumbene are roughly comparable to 2017 and all are rising.
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Peter Fitzroy mentions this: (and I really don’t know why I even bother arguing with something like this)
The comparative size of continental U.S.A. is similar to the size of mainland Australia.
The population of the U.S. is around 13 times higher than that of Australia.
The power consumption of the U.S. is around 20 times higher than that of Australia.
What people fail to realise in all this debate about electricity supply is the concentration ONLY on what we personally consume in our homes, the residential sector, and that Residential sector here in Oz only consumes less than 25% of all the power, so the vast bulk of it goes to the commerce and Industry sectors. (in the U.S. 38% of all power is consumed in the Residential sector)
So, and here, perhaps the biggest factor is distance, considering the area sizes of Oz and the U.S. are similar, then, in the U.S. the populace, Commerce and Industry (ALL consumers as a whole) are closer to all sources of large scale electricity generation, and nowhere in the U.S. are they as far away from major sources of power than we are here in Oz.
So Peter, they are most definitely NOT comparable when it comes to distance when compared to the U.S. and the same might also apply with other Counrties as well.
Also, your claim that per capita we here in Oz consume more is also false considering the population is 13 time higher, and they consume 20 times more power.
You most obviously have not looked at the overall total power consumption totals, as have
97%most of the green urgers.Tony.
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“The northern hydro plants were very small,”
And the population of those northern towns is ????
.. and their industrial capacity ???
And the RELEVANCE to electricity for places like Sydney is ??????????
Wake up, futz !!
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Peter Fitzroy:
Why do they calculate it on a population basis? Surely, given that there is just the one world no matter how many people are on it, it should be calculated on a per unit area basis. How do you think Australia would rank on this more meaningful scale?
Just BTW, what do you think a population basis is if not per capita?
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Opps, my bad, Robert. Not convinced by the unit area argument, given that 90% of the worlds population live north of the equator, and we in the south have 70% of the seas.
which means the south has 30% of the land, and 10% of the population. Industrialised lifestyles are more carbon intensive than those of hunter gatherers, or subsistence farmers, so a population argument would also need tweaking.
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You do realise that Australia has been calculated to be a NET CARBON SINK, don’t you, futz !!!
So your arguments are, as always .. IRRELEVENT !!
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No Andy, they aren’t irreverent.
I agree with him, we need to become Hunter gatherers.
Methinks he’s spent too much time gathering soy lattes: this is fun, watching his mynde spill out of control all over the place.
Blocking, tacking, round and round looking for meaning in life, without his feet ever touching the reality of ground.
The new face of the “educated” man. Living the dream.
🙂
KK
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You use a population basis but that’s not a perfect capita basis?!
Er…….
What job do you do exactly?
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He’s obviously a social security sophist.
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“Australia just behind Great Britain at number 16 globally”
You are reading the table upside down. More CO2 is BETTER.
CO2 emissions are TOTALLY IRRELVENT to climate anyway.
Do you have any empirical evidence of warming by ENHANCED atmospheric CO2??
Without that evidence, the ONLY possible rational conclusion is that…
… Enhanced atmospheric CO2 is totally and absolutely BENEFICIAL to the whole planet.
Do you have ANY evidence otherwise, futz???
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Sure, its all in the IPCC papers going back to the 90’s
As to the enhanced atmospheric C02 (is that like enhanced interrogation?,) this quote “the study into how the trees would respond to increased concentrations of CO2 confirmed their hypothesis that there would be a point at which nutrient availability, specifically nitrogen availability, would limit the CO2 uptake of plants” in a paper appearing this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The point is it’s not just C02 that is necessary for plant growth
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The IPCC papers in fact says that nett benefit of CO2 is positive for up to 2 degrees of warming and bad stuff occurs only beyond that. That puts break down at around 3-4 Dec Given the global warming since 1990 is at most 0.1 degrees we’ve got a long way to go.
So your premise that the IPCC contend that any warming is negative is WRONG.
Also Peter, the IPCC carry on about warming referred to about 1850. We’ve already seen about 1 degree of that, so you (and the UN) are actually flapping around about a mere half degree, a temperature change your body can’t even feel. It is frankly implausible that such a small change will make any difference one way or the other.
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So the paper published by the National Academy of Sciences is wrong? And the IPCC did not ever say that you need 2 degrees of heating first.
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The National Academy of Sciences is wrong and I’m prepared to debate the issue.
http://www.co2science.org/data/plant_growth/dry/a/arabidopsist.php
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yep – most of the studies used supplemental nitrogen, or other feedstock (hydroponics and all). They were all short term, using seedlings which are fast growing anyway. So I would say that the paper I quoted was on the money
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Absolutely WRONG Peter.
Send the link to a paper that shows evidence of this!
Do you understand the difference between C3, C4 and CAM plants?
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Just one link to one paper or study will do Peter.
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WRONG, Futz.. there is NOT ONE paper with empirical evidence of warming by enhanced atmospheric COI2
Your INCAPABILITY of finding one, proves that point, or that you are TOTALLY INCAPABLE at the most basic level..
A paper MUST exist… surely.,…
Keep trying.. its funny to watch. 😉
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AR3 or was it 4 concluded that the next 2 degrees of warming would be next positive. You need to read the technical report to find it. Off you go now…
It’s pointless anyway because the favoured tech trinkets ( wind and solar power) don’t save any CO2. The Trillions spent are a total waste of time and money.
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I’ll put up skeptical science because its where Peter gets his opinion.
https://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-plant-food.htm
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WRONG.. No papers give empirical evidence of warming by enhanced atmospheric CO2.
It is purely and totally A BASELESS SUPPOSITION. !!
Produce the paper, futz.. OR NOT !!!!
103
from the link published by el Gordo and in reply to all the above
Jauregui et al. (2015)
Shoot biomass of plants grown hydroponically for 15 days and then transferred to other hydroponic containers filled with modified Rigaud and Puppo’s solution, where the nitrogen source (NH4NO3) was replaced every 3-4 days for a period of five more weeks
eat it
11
Well DuuuuuR !!!
If something is growing faster, OF COURSE it needs a balance of other nutrients.
DENIAL of measured science seems to be the basis of the anti-CO2 meme.
12
Tell greenhouse plant growers about it.
REALITY BITES the AGW mantra.
You have NOTHING, futz.
2ºC warming in MOST parts of the world would dramatically increase plant growth, especially when combined with ENHANCED atmospheric CO2.
And as the “mysteriously allusive” global warming would apparently happen in colder parts of the globe, and enhance rainfall in warmer parts, the BENEFITS would be astronomical. 🙂
74
Yup. Enhanced CO2 say in a hydroponics setup? Worthless unless you up the light levels by quite a lot and deal with the various consequences of that.
23
Hot off the press at CO2 Science, a major staple monoculture.
http://www.co2science.org/articles/V22/jan/a6.php
00
true.
Also Im not convinced the so called CO2 increase quoted by BOTH sides is actually very factual. The reading seem to be quoted from one source, Mauna Loa, fairly high up. There may be other measurement stations but one satellite data of the global CO2 levels seemed to show a large range of levels less over the oceans more over high pop densities which makes sense. Considering nearly all is absorbed by the oceans and rain forests.
83
Cape Grim
https://www.csiro.au/en/Research/OandA/Areas/Assessing-our-climate/Latest-greenhouse-gas-data
20
Thanks, theres something totally fishy about those graphs..looks ‘too good to be true’ too linear to obvious.
Another BS alarmist site from NASA https://climate.nasa.gov/climate_resources/99/graphic-measuring-carbon-dioxide-from-space/
YOU are on this planet and its getting HOTTER, OH MY! let me off!
If you look down to the so called alarmist pic near the bottom you can see the red areas around all industrial activity and blue over the oceans. RED being high BLUE being low. A bit of a contradiction in pictures.
Well let the plants grow, more plant food!
AND this contra statement of the obvious.
‘As photosynthesis ramps up, plants breathe in carbon dioxide (CO2), and atmospheric levels of CO2 begin to drop. Then in fall and winter, when trees lose their leaves and foliage declines, CO2 levels begin to rise again. This up-and-down sequence creates an annual cycle of minimum and maximum levels of atmospheric CO2.’ (my emphasis bold)
Of course ..
51
I’m pretty sure that the 1.4% only concerns emissions within Australia and thus does not include minerals used overseas unless they are processed here. Do you have a link showing that it does include mineral exports used overseas?
It certainly includes the massive amount of food we export though.
10
Another example of the Cooperative of Politicians in Australia, no real opposition, just two sides squabbling over which side drives the gravy train.
250
Indeed. With two major parties like the LNP and ALP who needs enemies like terrorists to chip away and destroy our nation? Our current political “masters” and soon to be new “masters” are and will continue to do a much better job at it.
190
More like a pack of crows squabbling over the carcass of a once functioning being….
170
Good description. Also one could view it as a race to the bottom. Unfortunately we the people end up with the booby prize of crash and burn.
50
How is this man a professor of anything?
Warwick McKibbin, an ANU economics professor and one of the report’s authors, said Australia could not avoid economic pain by pulling out of the agreement.
“If we stay in, we’re better off because if we pull out, we’ll still be getting most of the economic damage — other countries won’t be buying our resources so much — but miss out on the benefits of curbing carbon emissions such as less pollution,” Professor McKibbin told The Australian.
Is he any relation of Weepy Bill? The whole point of Global Warming is that it is, well … global! as CO2 is “well mixed” local emissions effect on the costs / benefits of “less pollution” is proportionate to their global impact, that is, for Oz, bugger all. So whatever you do- you will get what shit is coming.
This is the big elephant in the cosy living room of the climate change advocates. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
The ONLY logical response is to enhance your social, economic and logistic strength to enable your adaption to whatever change is going to come as its mitigation depends on actions outside your control, as was demonstrated by Lomberg two decades ago. Be assured that China, India, Indonesia etc have followed this maxim ever since this game was initiated over 40 years ago, and have succeeded in their economic growth and power in the teeth of the efforts of the “developed” nations to prevent this outcome.
The game is over. The stalemate gives victory to the defenders. The only option for the aggressive is defeat and the only victims will be their suicidal acolytes.
100
” we’ll still be getting most of the economic damage ” by going down the path of useless (un)renewables…
30
For a small capital outlay we could achieve the 2030 CO2 emissions target THIS year!
Look at any of the Global CO2 emissions pretty pictures of the Globe and you will see that Australia is much the same color all over. How is this so, well EXTRAPOLATION of course!
The CO2 monitors are along the East coast and although CO2 is heavier than air it can cross the dividing range against the prevailing winds quite easily, it just takes the stroke of a pen!
So place ten CO2 monitoring stations around the red center and our total emissions go down way down!
250
For no capital outlay the Paris temperature targets can be met, provided that mitigating warming from CO2 emissions is the actual goal.
81
Nothing a few ‘adjustments’ cant fix 😉
30
I wonder if the BoM/CSIRO would consider that CO2 homogenizing??
120
Australia appears to be the designated yellow coloured global crash test dummy, to be crashed at high speed into the UN – designed and engineered New Age green religions’ test wall…..
This is a religious war – the West and its Christian-Judeo values, versus the New Age pagan occult green religion.
Its interesting watching “Vikings” on streaming. The vikings for a long time were pagan, and thought nothing of slaughtering a lot of people but were without Christian moral restraint – the New Age religion driving globalism is very similar, based on empirical observations so far. The fact that the new green pagan religion would put a whole country to the “sword” of green-driven population control through tearing down long held and functional Christian morality and replacing it with Godless-ness, while targetting particularly the vulnerable through imposing energy rationing, is unconscionable.
( I know someone will point out the crusades and the Inquisitions as being ” christian”, but these dont reflect actual Christianity, rather its a form of nationalism using religion as a cover.)
172
All true. Sadly but not surprisingly we will see the persecution of true Christians once again on a mass scale. Of course it has already been pretty much completed recently in some countries like Syria. The West is next and as a result it will play a major part in the downfall of the West.
102
I often wonder if the green religion will morph into the twisted religion of the person Christians know to be the Anti Christ…..in which case, will be a figure who will put the whole world to the sword, while appearing intially charming and able to solve previously intractible problems…..
142
Could the so called ‘Anti Christ’ be a self-serving bureaucracy and not an individual?
The Pope fails to recognize the evil driving the UNFCCC’s agenda owing to a cloak of benevolence.
142
I wouldn’t spend too much time trying to figure out the details before they occur. They will become clear as they occur and the pieces of jigsaw puzzle gradually fall into place for all to see. For example, whether it will be the extreme element of the Greens that end up dominating the world for a short period or some other extreme element only time will tell. As Jesus said:
“Watch out that no one deceives you” (Matthew 24:4) and “keep watch” (Matthew 24:42). Paul also warned us to “keep watch” and “be on your guard”.
So stay awake and be alert. I’m not suggesting we will see Jesus return in our time. Perhaps He will but regardless watch the signs and avoid going astray and falling for the evil one.
92
Carbon is 6 protons 6 neutrons 6 electrons ? 666
00
” …. someone will point out the crusades and the Inquisitions as being ” christian” ”
Yes, I will. The crusades did start as a christian issue. The date of 1260 was given in John’s Revelation. They assumed it was 1260 AD and did not consider that it could be 1260 AH.
A clue for OriginalSteve and PeterS to follow up 🙂
51
A common complaint by the prophets in ancient Israel related to syncretism whereby the people of Israel had forgotten their roots based on the Covenant with YAHWEH. Instead, they tended to follow the pagan, mostly fertility cults, of neighbouring tribes. There are quite strong hints of syncretism in the New Testament, Saints Paul and John allude to these in some of their epistles. In the NT case it is ideas and beliefs that are syncretistic. Much of the modern Church, especially the Western Church,is behaving syncretistically in relation to the AGW CULT. The problem is that church leaders are too easily seduced by the AGW promoting MSM. They suffer from group think and virtue signalling – useful idiots. When challenged, because they don’t know what they are talking about, they behave as a members of a cult, or trot out the Al Gore rubbish, or say the ‘science’ is settled, or decline to engage in any sensible discussion. It amazes me that so many often well educated and occasionally sensible people can act so perversely in the face of observable evidence of the world around them. The thing that really hurts me about the attitude of my Church towards climate change is that the policy adopted is totally at variance with scripture in that it ignores the God given gift of creation and it ignores the plight of the poor.
110
Do you mind if I print your comment for future reference? One of the better comments on that specific issue I have read.
20
Dave, by all means. Let me know if you like another sermon!
00
I don’t accept that models can predict economies any better than they can predict the weather, but it’s fun that people who might want to disagree with the conclusions of this research are going to have to use all our arguments about modelling: complexity, unknowns, chaos, etc.
It’s a win-win for the rationalists. Either Paris is all pain, no gain for Australia, or models aren’t a guarantee, so why would we sign up to Paris?
210
Signed the Paris Agreement in April 2016 in New York and when the Turnbull government learnt that the US was pulling out Minister Hunt was sent back to New York to ratify the Paris Agreement.
And later the National Energy Guarantee was created including writing into Australian Law the Paris Agreement emission reduction targets to make it more difficult for future governments to pull out. Thankfully the NEG did not proceed but Shorten Labor have said they would proceed with the legislation if elected.
Another part provided politicians with an effective quarantine from constitutional law if challenged over implementation of UN Treaties without holding referendum.
170
The physical reality is that NO model can predict chaos. Most of these processes are chaotic esp much of the weather! These are deep processes impossible to predict even with data, much the same as predicting nuclear decay. ‘The universe is statistical, if you dont like it , tough’ Feynman.
10
Warwick McKibbin, an ANU economics professor – says that we will miss out on the benefits of curbing carbon emissions such as less pollution. And those benefits would be ….?? And this from a professor of economics – no wonder we are heading for economic pain – higher electricity prices due duplicate investment, less competitive business environment, less consumer spending. But trust these “experts”, soon we will have climate utopia – no more soaring temperatures, no more droughts, no more floods, no more nasty storms, more ice, more snow.
And what does he propose? “The attempts to avoid the idea of pricing carbon have become so absurd that it now might be possible to start again with a design that is based on science and expertise rather than the nonsense that has passed as political debate driven by political cowardice”. But he adds some common sense: “Australia acting alone will not change the global climate.” “If no other countries take action, or the cost of Australia’s actions end up being higher than predicted, then there needs to be a way to vary the emissions reductions target over time.”
But then, back to utopia: “The policy should directly improve the hip pockets of voters and also line up industry lobbyists in support of the policy.”
When given the vote, Australians voted down a carbon tax. But now we have de facto carbon taxes through the RET, solar subsidies, Clean Energy Regulator, Australian Renewable Energy Agency, Clean Energy Finance Corporation.
And what does “our” government’s Department of Environment and Energy say: “The Paris Agreement is a powerful symbol of countries’ commitment to a low-carbon, climate resilient future.” Tell ’em they’re dreamin’.
150
http://climate.anu.edu.au/research/policy-and-economics-climate-change
“Biography
Warwick McKibbin is the Director of the ANU Research School of Economics. He is a non resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington D.C.; a Professorial Fellow at the Lowy Institute for International Policy; and president of McKibbin Software Group. Professor McKibbin was a member of the Board of the Reserve Bank of Australia for a decade until July 2011. He has worked at the Reserve Bank of Australia, Japanese Ministry of Finance, US Congressional Budget Office and World Bank and advises governments and corporations globally.
His research project entitled, ‘Macro economics: Climate Change & Energy’ focusses on rapid global economic growth, particularly in China and India, and its important implications for global energy use as well as causing a rapid rise in greenhouse gas emissions with implication for climate change. Thiis program focuses on the importance of energy use and climate change as well as the associated policy responses on the macro-economy.”
60
Since human caused ‘climate change’ is total bulldust, which they should know, how can they sleep at night after publishing such C R A P. as ‘Macro economics: Climate Change & Energy’ etc.
61
The old joke used to be that if you laid all economists in the world end to end, they would still never reach a conclusion….
Aparently the green religion changes that age old scenario….its the 100% renewable(TM) pixie dust that must have done it!!
70
Our Prime Minister a few decades ago, Robert Muldoon, famously said, “If these economists knew what they were talking about, you’d only need one!”
30
Many politicians are ignoring the will of the Australian people on both sides of the House.
Our only way of showing them we disagree is via the ballot box at elections (federal, state and local government), Labor Green last, Liberal National above them and a carefully selected (not a major supporter masquerading as an independent) candidate for our primary vote.
Break the two party stranglehold.
150
‘…not a major supporter masquerading as an independent …’
What about an independent who supports the ‘ginger group’?
30
WHO,
Who owns Australia? Why did he run straight to New York, for a debriefing?
How much of what happens here is decided outside of Parliament?
We are now aware that approximately $3 Billion is creamed off our electricity accounts annually. What I wasn’t aware of was the possible similarity with our petroleum usage.
I pay about $1.40 a litre for petrol. What should it cost if we did it ourselves; no middleman.
How long have we been Enslaved by rigged markets?
http://joannenova.com.au/2019/01/midweek-unthreaded-55/#comment-2092794
KK
150
I hope you are seeing someone. Oh wait be careful… they might be one of the people running the country.
68
Geez
Malcolm Turnbull ratified the Paris Agreement and Putin hasn’t, what does that tell us?
170
that putin isn’t rushin’ in to anything?
91
Good answer and here is why he is unlikely to ratify.
“The issue is not stopping it… because that’s impossible, since it could be tied to some global cycles on Earth or even of planetary significance. The issue is to somehow adapt to it.”
Vlad Putin
140
I think Vladimir is a ‘denier’ – unspecified publicly. 😉
40
Also its worth remembering that the Russian models are closer to the observed changes in world temperature.
Malcolm Turnbull is the polar opposite of Vlad.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-07-22/turnbull-climate-speech/2805536
This is history but you can see why he had to sew up all the lose ends and ratify.
70
Also the Russians are almost the largest oil and gas (mainly gas) producers. Why? Because they know oil and gas come from deep in the earth’s mantle with nothing to do with ‘fossil’ sedimentary deposits. They know where to look using proper techniques. Many sources are up to 40,000′ deep, well past any fossil layers.
70
That is true, but its bigger than that, out of 29 climate models the Russian is prophetic.
‘…we again note that of all the models, one, the Russian INM-CM4 has actually tracked the observed climate quite well. It is by far the best of the lot.’
Patrick J Michaels
10
Hope so. On evidence, Putin is complete lowlife scum.
11
Yes, Much different to Turnbull. Putin’s approval rating in Russia has reportedly fallen to 62%.
We might do better with some local politicians being patriotic and advancing Australia’a interests.
40
“Putin is complete lowlife scum.”
Shorten and Putin ..
Turnbull was hi-life scum, in his own mind.
22
So long as they are not the murderous lying homophobic bottom feeding lowlife liar that Putin is. 🙂
Although the Donald seems to be giving his boss Vlad a run for his money at the moment??
23
poor phlip.. a manic, almost rabid case of TDS.. to go with your ADS.
00
Putin is a nasty piece of work but he listens to scientists who have remained outside the AGW tent, in the same way that Donald has Will Happer as his advisor.
10
“open borders” NBC has no qualms reporting the following. must be why they hate Trump for boosting the US economy:
note: the CAGW mob – incl most of the FakeNewsMSM – never seem to be concerned about all the extra CO2 emissions that would result from open borders.
9 Jan: NBC: Economic expansion boosts carbon emissions, despite green-tech gains
Experts say it may take a recession to reduce the gases that are warming the planet.
By James Rainey
No matter that coal-fired power plants went out of business in record numbers, or that Americans nearly doubled their purchases of electric cars. The U.S. increased its carbon dioxide emissions in 2018, and a large part of the reason was one normally cited as a bonus — substantial economic growth.
A booming American economy meant increased industrial production, more truck and air travel and more offices and other workplaces to heat — all combining, along with other factors, to create the second-largest annual increase in the key greenhouse gas emissions in more than two decades, according to new estimates from the Rhodium Group (LINK)…
Drexel’s Tapia Granados co-authored a study in 2012 (LINK) which found that, from 1958 through 2010, CO2 emissions were closely linked to increased economic activity.
“It’s a message no one wants to hear: to slow down global warming, we’ll either have to put the brakes on economic growth or transform the way the world’s economies work,” a summary of the study said.
“If ‘business as usual’ conditions continue, economic contractions the size of the Great Recession or even bigger will be needed to reduce atmospheric levels of CO2,” Tapia Granados said at the time of the paper’s release…
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/economic-boom-spikes-carbon-emissions-despite-green-tech-gains-n956336
Bloomberg: Rhodium Group, LLC
The company was formerly known as China Strategic Advisory, LLC and changed its name to Rhodium Group, LLC in April 2008. Rhodium Group was founded in 2003 and is based in New York, New York with operations in Shanghai, China; and New Delhi, India.
60
dismiss cold winters:
9 Jan: Scientific American: U.S. Emissions in 2018 Saw the Second-Largest Spike Since 1996
The uptick came despite significant coal plant closures, pointing to the growing influence of other greenhouse gas sources
By Chelsea Harvey, E&E News
The findings were published Monday by the Rhodium Group, an ***independent research firm, largely drawing on data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration…
A December report from the research consortium Global Carbon Project found emissions grew worldwide by about 2.7 percent to reach an all-time high in 2018, at a time when scientists warn they should be dramatically falling…
Still, as per the rules of the Paris Agreement, the United States can’t actually officially exit the agreement until November 2020—the day after the next presidential election. A new administration could potentially re-enter it right away and begin work to get back on track.
In that case, the findings from 2018 may provide some important insight into the areas emissions most need to be tackled…
Both the Global Carbon Project’s December report and the Rhodium Group’s new analysis suggest the weather played a significant part in 2018’s emissions spike.
***An unusually cold winter caused U.S. “heating degree days,” or the number of days in a season when buildings need to be heated, to increase by about 15 percent during the first few months of the year. The GCP report also suggests that a warm summer may have driven up air conditioning and electricity demand in 2018, as well…
There are several takeaways from these findings. The reports both imply that fluctuations in the weather—which, itself, is influenced by climate change—can have surprisingly large effects on nationwide carbon emissions, as long as heating and air conditioning remain as carbon-intensive as they are…
***That’s important to consider in a world where summers are getting hotter and heat waves are on the rise.
***It may also be important to consider in places like the U.S. East Coast, where some research suggests that individual winter storms may actually be worsening under climate change even as temperatures continue to rise overall…
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/u-s-emissions-in-2018-saw-the-second-largest-spike-since-1996/
40
Global Carbon Project etc.
This is the other BS they write so often, carbon is an element Carbon dioxide is the gas (they hate or want you to hate), Terming it carbon is used to scare monger the ingnoramuses to think that anything ‘carbon’ is evil to be eliminated.
The term ‘low carbon economy’ is the most idiotic term ever invented (please insert any other). Low what? We are all carbon in one form or another, low HYROCARBON economy will basically stop modern industry from any further development. That, Jeves, is the dastardly plan of the AGENDA.
81
The relatively precise increase in heating days is quoted as 15%. That clearly puts a number on how much colder irt was than average. There is no precise number given for cooling days but rather some throwaway about the possibility that a warmer summer increased air-conditioning demand. So we are certain it was colder but uncertain that it was warmer – solid data says it was colder while speculating it was also warmer!!
30
Good comment, Rick.
Here, where I live at the the top of the South Island, NZ, we had 234 Growing Degree Days (base 10°) for December 2017, and 201 GDD in December 2018. (GDD and cooling degree days being the same thing.)
Therefore, December 2018 was only 86% as warm as the previous December.
For those not familiar with the terms, from the Davis weather station Help File:
Cooling degree-days are used to estimate the amount of heat that must be removed (through air-conditioning) to keep a structure comfortable. Heating and cooling degree-days are based on departures from a base temperature, typically 65°F (18°C).
20
every country should ditch Paris. put all these CO2 cowboys out of business:
9 Jan: E&E News: Steel or concrete? Trump’s wall could bust carbon budgets
by Mark K. Matthews
At issue is the question of carbon emissions, specifically which material contributes more to global warming: steel or concrete…
Jeremy Gregory, who serves as executive director of the Concrete Sustainability Hub at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said engineers and architects often wrestle with the question of which material to use. The size of the carbon footprint typically depends on the way concrete and steel are incorporated…
As for the steel-versus-concrete debate, one analyst recently made the case that a steel wall would produce significantly more carbon emissions than a barrier made of concrete.
“A reinforced concrete wall would result in 6.2 million [kilograms] of CO2 emitted per mile of wall built, just for the manufacturing of the materials in the wall (the concrete and the steel rebar reinforcements inside the concrete),” Jeffrey Rissman, industry program director and head of modeling of Energy Innovation, a California firm that analyzes climate policies, wrote in an email to E&E News.
A steel wall, meanwhile, would produce more than 10 times as much carbon dioxide.
“A wall built of steel slats with gaps in between and a concrete foundation would result in 75 million kg of CO2 emitted per mile built, again just for the manufacturing of the materials in the wall,” wrote Rissman.
Put another way, building 1 mile of a steel wall would be equal to “driving 183 million miles in an average passenger car,” he noted…
Not everyone agrees, however, that steel would be worse than cement for the climate.
“It seems logical to assume that the concrete wall would have a significantly higher carbon footprint,” said Robert Phinney, director of sustainable design at Page, an architecture and engineering firm. “Between the unit-based increase of concrete over steel and the fact you would need more volume of concrete than steel for the same wall performance, I can’t see it being a close call.”
What is indisputable is that both steel and cement have a significant impact on U.S. carbon emissions.
According to EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program, the production of iron and steel in 2017 was by far the largest emitter of carbon in the U.S. metals sector, with about 72.6 million metric tons in emissions.
A similar case holds true for concrete in the U.S. minerals sector. Cement production accounted for more than half of carbon emissions by that industry in 2017, with about 66.8 million metric tons…
More needs to be done, however, if the United States and the world want to lessen the impact of global warming.
A new report out yesterday by the Rhodium Group estimated that energy-related U.S. carbon emissions increased by 3.4 percent in 2018.
“That’s the second largest annual gain since 1996 — surpassed only by the 3.6 percent increase that occurred in 2010, ***when emissions rebounded from a recession-driven 7.2 percent decline the year before,” according to the report.
https://www.eenews.net/stories/1060111331
30
Why not go low cost high tech.
Probably cheaper to embed spikes in the ground with high powered lasers or maser above the spikes. The range of new military laser is about 1 mile so there would be a laser post ever mile with a laser weapon having automatic targeting scanning in each direction along the spikes to ensure overlap.
The spikes would provide the necessary visual deterrent and the lasers would provide the actual deterrent. A few plastic skeletons draped in torn clothes and with rotting meat placed at strategic intervals once the installation was complete would get plenty of news coverage to make it reasonably clear it is not a place to cross.
To go all out on the high tech, the lasers could be run from solar panels and Tesla batteries. in fact, just increase Elon’s grant money to include the laser gun posts. The spikes could be made in a remote factory and shipped to the site; just requiring grading to some degree or more frequent or higher laser placement where ground is undulating.
30
AUSTRALIA might be worse off. But the ‘Australians’ who signed their country up will do every nicely indeed, thank you. As they move to the head of the line at the UN trough.
122
As important as it is to point out the limits of the intended responses to the Paris Accord and contrast their costs to their benefits we are remiss to infer that our CO2 has any discernible effect on the climate or the temperature and thus the benefit calculations of emissions reductions are meaningless. At most we are responsible for about 3% of the recent increase of CO2 not all of it as is preached by the IPCC. There is no statistical response of atmospheric CO2 to anthropogenic emissions for any period up to 5 years. If we have not changed the atmospheric content so far there is nothing to “change back”. This fact should be at the center of every response to claims of benefits of reducing emissions but is almost never seen outside the skeptic community and most consensus scientists haven’t heard it let alone considered it. The whole anthropogenic global warming edifice is built on the erroneous proposition that our emissions control the atmospheric composition. Every reasonable person that comprehended this fact would reject any effort to control the temperature through our emissions so we should be making it central to our discussions until there are major efforts by the IPCC types to refute it and they are forced to see its validity.
111
Agreed, I spend all my time looking for global cooling signals, irrefutable evidence that CO2 is a harmless trace gas.
61
Excellent.
There IS no CAGW issue.
It’s all an elitist manipulation of the Serfs.
KK
92
Yes.
The good news is that 39% of Australians believe in climate change caused by natural fluctuations in the system and not CO2.
60
Frankly, whenever I see any reference to “decarbonization” or any of its associates, I stop parsing the input and simply look for the a break in the semantic stream at which point I can begin reading again.
There is no logical coherence in the would be argument asserting that atmospheric carbon dioxide level constitutes a knob controlling global temperature and anybody subscribing to that thesis can only be doing so through rote obedience to the directions of the grossly repetitious propaganda the MSM lavishes upon us.
As an exercise, politely engage one of your AGW believing acquaintances in the pursuit of the reasoning leading to that view and see where it leads.
30
7 Jan: American Thinker: Jay Lehr: Climate-Modeling Illusions Not Based on Reality
(Jay Lehr is science director at The Heartland Institute)
Dr. Willie Soon of the Harvard-Smithsonian astrophysics laboratory once calculated that if we could know all the variables affecting climate and plugged them into the world’s largest computer, ***it would take 40 years to reach a conclusive answer…
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/12/climate_modeling_illusions_not_based_in_reality.html
***Soon was being optimistic!
60
The report by the Brookings Institute is more computer generated supposition based on computer generated supposition.
Extensive climate data clearly shows that temperature change precedes CO2 change so it is impossible for it to be caused by the later. Further, it shows that the annual rate of change of CO2 concentration matches the Tropics temperature profile implying that temperature either directly or indirectly determines the rate of generation of atmospheric CO2.
Add to this, the CO2 profile, from stations around the World, display a regular 12 month seasonal cycle and we can be sure that the CO2 does not cause the 12 monthly orbit of the Earth around the Sun. Also, the annual rate of change of CO2 concentration matches the profile of the Oceanic Niño Index 3.4 used to track El Niño events, the World’s major short term (in years) temperature cycle, again not caused by CO2.
That is, CO2 has not caused global warming or climate change but climate change has caused the changes in CO2 concentration.
Australian Governments are wasting billions of dollars in a futile attempt to combat an imaginary threat. It is time that this nonsense ceased.
For detail see: https://www.climateauditor.com
111
9 Jan: UK Mirror: RIP Economy Energy, the latest widely loathed utility to bite the dust
Yet another energy company goes to the wall leaving a mass of angry customers in its wake
by Andrew Penman
I told last week how one reader spent eight months trying to get her £127 balance refunded after she left the gas and electricity supplier for another utility.
The next day the energy regulator Ofgem declared that the company’s performance was so bad that it was being banned from taking on new customers “on the basis that Economy Energy is unable to provide adequate customer service to its existing customers.”
Several have contacted the Mirror, including Lynda Dacey of Porthcawl, Bridgend. She told me how she is owed more than £255 after switching to a different supplier but cannot get Economy Energy to pay, adding: “I am a pensioner and need this money to go towards my winter bills.”
Gareth Jones, also from South Wales, is owed almost £290 and said: “I have made a number of telephone and email requests for the refund, but to no avail.”…
On Monday this week I visited the company’s office to see if 33-year-old Lubna Khilji, the founding director, wanted to talk about this abysmal service – she didn’t.
Ms Khilji seems to have done nicely for herself though – she bought a mansion on the leafy Kenilworth Road outside Coventry for £964,000 in 2016.
Then on Tuesday, Economy Energy, which had built a customer base of 300,000 clients, ceased trading, becoming the ninth smaller energy company to collapse within a year…
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/rip-economy-energy-latest-widely-13834949
8 Jan: UK Telegraph: Bulb Energy burns through investment as losses spiral to £24m
by Jillian Ambrose
Britain’s fastest growing energy supplier is on track to burn through its milestone private equity investment after plunging to a £24m loss last year.
Bulb Energy said a boom in its customer numbers drove the business to an annual loss for the year ending last March which was ten times higher than its £1.9m loss the year before.
The East London start up “unashamedly” wiped out its £12m gross profit in a bid to acquire new customers.It reached 220,000 accounts at the end of the most recent financial year.
Bulb’s losses are expected to balloon in the current financial year after the company trebled its customer base to around 870,000 by the end of 2018.
The growth threatens to eat through the £60m it raised from a pair of private equity backers less than six months ago…
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2019/01/08/bulb-energy-burns-investment-losses-spiral-24m/
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8 Jan: iNewsUK: Economy Energy goes bust: How safe is it to join smaller energy suppliers? Questions have been raised about the stability of the UK energy industry
by Rebecca Jones
Jane Lucy, founder of auto-switching site Labrador, says: “Many of these small suppliers have very high levels of debt that Ofgem is doing little to address, while some are employing customer policies that might prove problematic in the long term.”
The latter category includes Bulb, recently named as the UK’s fastest growing company as it hoovers-up market share through its generous referral scheme, which pays both existing and new customers £50 each for a successful sign-up.
Lucy adds: “Suppliers make around £50 per year profit from each customer, so it’s hard to see how Bulb can make this work. It is a very long term strategy in a segment of the market where people are very active, and switch regularly.”…
Similarly, Kate Bateson found her bill with Bulb increased not long after switching: “I switched to Bulb in April because their quote was about £50 a month cheaper, plus I also got a £50 referral incentive from a friend. However, now I’m paying the same as I was with NPower.” According to comparison site USwitch, Bulb has increased its prices three times in 2018, alongside fellow small providers Igloo Energy, Outfox the Market and Pure Planet…
It is possible we will see the demise of more small suppliers in coming months. Indeed, a recent report from the regulator shows that £58.6m in renewable energy obligation payments is now owed by suppliers unable to pay…
https://inews.co.uk/inews-lifestyle/money/is-it-safe-join-small-energy-supplier-what-happens-goes-bust/
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8 Jan: BBC: Report: US 2018 CO2 emissions saw biggest spike in years
The spike is the largest in eight years, according to Rhodium Group, an ***independent economic research firm…
While the Rhodium report notes these figures – pulled from US Energy Information Administration data and other sources – are estimates, The Global Carbon Project, another research group, also reported a similar increase in US emissions for 2018…
Analysis by Matt McGrath, Environment correspondent, BBC News
There are a number of factors behind the rise in US emissions in 2018, some natural, mostly economic.
***Prolonged cold spells in a number of regions drove up demand for energy in the winter, while a hot summer in many parts led to more air conditioning, again pushing up electricity use.
However economic activity is the key reason for the overall rise in CO2 emissions. Industries are moving more goods by trucks powered by diesel, while consumers are travelling more by air…
All this presents something of a problem for the Trump administration…
Despite this, there is little to cheer in the US data for those concerned with climate change on a global scale…
The last time the US saw such an increase in emissions was in 2010, as the country recovered from its longest recession in decades…
Part of last year’s spike is also the result of economic growth, but new policies have exacerbated the effects of increased industry production…
“The big takeaway for me is that we haven’t yet successfully decoupled US emissions growth from economic growth,” Rhodium climate and energy analyst Trevor Houser told the New York Times…
And without significant changes, industrial emissions will become bigger contributors to US CO2 and greenhouse gas emissions…
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-46801108
***the independent Rhodium!
Rhodium Group: People
Daniel H. Rosen is a founding partner of Rhodium Group and leads the firm’s work on China, India and Asia.
Dan has twenty-six years of professional experience analyzing China’s economy, commercial sector and external interactions. He is widely recognized for his contributions on the US-China economic relationship. He is affiliated with a number of American thinktanks focused on international economics, and is an Adjunct Associate Professor at Columbia University. From 2000-2001, Dan was Senior Adviser for International Economic Policy at the White House National Economic Council and National Security Council. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and board member of the National Committee on US-China Relations. A native of New York City, Dan graduated with distinction from the graduate School of Foreign Service of Georgetown University (MSFS) and with honors in Asian Studies and Economics from the University of Texas, Austin (BA).
Trevor Houser is a partner with the Rhodium Group and leads the firm’s Energy & Climate team…
Trevor also co-directs the ***Climate Impact Lab, a collaboration of leading research institutions combining climate, economic and data science to quantify climate risk around the world. Through this partnership, Rhodium provides actionable information to policymakers, investors, academics, non-profit organizations and business leaders alike.
During 2009, Trevor left Rhodium temporarily to serve as a senior advisor at the US State Department where he worked on international energy, natural resource and environmental policy issues. He serves on the finance committee of the Colin Powell School for Civic and Global Leadership at the City College of New York, his alma mater. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the National Committee on US-China Relations and serves on the Advisory Board of Center for US-China Relations at the Asia Society…ETC ETC
https://rhg.com/people/
***ClimateImpactLab: The Climate Impact Lab team combines experts from the University of California, Berkeley, the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago (EPIC), Rhodium Group, and Rutgers University. EPIC provides core financial and administrative support for the Lab. Other support for the Lab has been provided by: Mac and Leslie McQuown; David G. Booth, University of Chicago Booth School of Business, MBA’71; Stuart Goode; Matt Mackowski; the National Science Foundation; the Skoll Global Threats Fund; the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation; and the Tata Centre for Development.
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The worse case scenario in regards to IPCC climate model projections for a doubling of CO2 in an increase in global average temperature of 4.5C
Australia’s contribution to this would be 0.045C
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Missing a few zeros I think .
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4.5C x 1% = 0.045C , a little over 4 one-hundredths of a degree C…. worse case scenario
00
Very informative, thankyou.
The fossil fuel exporters, like Australia, will be big losers under a Paris agreement.
Hopefully the politicians will read this.
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Why are fossil fuel exporters the big loser; there is no current plan to reduce CO2 that actually results in CO2 being reduced.
The reduced investment in new fossil fuel sources (excluding USA and Russia) means existing fossil fuel producers earn more:
https://www.smh.com.au/business/the-economy/rising-coal-prices-biggest-contributor-to-lifting-power-prices-report-20181202-p50jo2.html
The silliest part is all the extra carbon combustion required to support the effort to reduce carbon combustion. Solar and wind generators cannot break even on CO2 reduction over their life time.
Nuclear power could reduce CO2 output but many countries are turning away from nuclear.
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“there is no current plan to reduce CO2 that actually results in CO2 being reduced.”
ten thumbs up if I could 🙂
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I’m just assuming the report is correct about Australia being hardest hit by a Paris accord
Are you saying that a Paris Accord will be good for Australia ?
00
The report says
00
Very informative, thankyou.
The fossil fuel exporters, like Australia, will be big losers under a Paris agreement.
Hopefully the politicians will read this.
10
[…] 20%, China 5, Europe 4, India 11, Japan 1, OECD -2.5, US 14. See also Jo Nova’s report on Australia as the test dummy for emission reduction. Although Germany is probably the real test dummy, along with South […]
00
extraordinarily, but not surprisingly, there is still no MSM coverage anywhere in the world of the Brookings report, apart from The Australian!!!
this appears to be a new piece:
behind paywall:
Without China and India cutting emissions our efforts are futile
The Australian – 12 hours ago
Paris is looking very much like extremely expensive and futile international…
To meet obligations of a treaty that will do nothing to help the environment unless China and India agree to curb emissions instead of increasing them…
Any way I look at it, the Brookings report suggests Australia should stay in the Paris accord — there’s little or no economic benefit if we leave…
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though not showing up in any google results, I have just now come across AFR coverage!
8 Jan: AFR: Paris Agreement costs Australia, but withdrawing costs more
by Ben Potter
The finding backs Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s refusal to bow to backbench pressure to pull out of the Paris agreement from climate change…
(excerpts from outline.com – which don’t include the Scott Morrison line above, which I found at the AFR link)
Although these numbers sound large, Professor McKibbin and the other researchers, who include his longtime Brookings Institution collaborator Peter Wilcoxen of Syracuse University in New York state, warn that when looked at over more than a decade into the future “they are generally small – about a typical year’s GDP growth or less”.
They also point out that the estimates do not include the costs of economic retaliation against countries backing out of Paris and “may be overly optimistic about the benefits .. of withdrawing”.
The researchers’ estimates of variations in wealth follow a similar pattern, except the numbers are smaller and the changes are positive for all regions bar Australia, OPEC and Russia.
But when environmental co-benefits are included, “participating in the Paris Agreement is in the self-interest of almost all regions – that is…countries withdrawing from it make themselves worse off,” the researchers say…
https://www.afr.com/news/paris-agreement-costs-australia-but-withdrawing-costs-more-20190108-h19un1
for full article, place url in outline.com
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8 Jan: Edie.net: Sarah George: Solar households to be paid for excess power after Government U-turn
The UK Government has made a U-turn on its decision to end the solar “export tariff”, confirming that households which install solar panels in the future will be paid for excess power they generate and send to the grid.
Officials from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) last month said the Government would be ending the “export tariff” for solar panels under the feed-in tariff (FiT) scheme, which is closing in April.
The decision, which meant that people installing solar panels on their estate after April 2019 would not have been paid for sending excess power to the grid, sparked outrage from homeowners, green campaign groups and renewable industry bodies alike.
However, the UK Government has today (8 January) overturned its decision, promising to replace the FiT scheme with an updated framework.
Under the new scheme, which will be called the smart export guarantee (SEG) programme, households and businesses installing new solar panels will be guaranteed compensation for any power provided to the grid…
Energy Minister Claire Perry: “It could also reduce strain on energy networks with a more decentralised and smarter local network delivering resilience much more cost-effectively, unlocking innovative products for electric vehicles and home energy storage.”…
With the FiT scheme closing on 1 April, there will, therefore, be an unspecified period during which no legislation for recompensating small-scale solar generators will be in place – meaning they will be providing power to the grid for free.
Nonetheless, the Renewable Energy Association (REA) welcomed the proposals, claiming they could help “usher in a new era for small-scale renewables”…
https://www.edie.net/news/11/Solar-households-to-be-paid-for-excess-power-after-Government-U-turn/
8 Jan: UK Telegraph: Energy companies to buy solar power from their customers
by Jillian Ambrose
Britain’s biggest energy suppliers will soon be buying their renewable electricity from a new fleet of upstart power generators: their own customers…
Officials believe the scheme could unlock a fresh area of competition among energy suppliers as homes begin to adopt “smart” energy technologies such as battery storage and electric vehicles.
The new scheme could boost the efforts of suppliers to help use energy more efficiently and reduce overall costs.
The Solar Trade Association gave a cautious welcome to the plans, but warned the scheme will need to determine a fair way to determine the market price. “The devil really is in the detail here,” said the association’s boss, Chris Hewett. “So we very much hope that government will listen very carefully to the responses to this consultation.”…
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2019/01/08/energy-companies-buy-solar-power-customers/
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Owners of rooftops with solar must be as powerful lobby group in the UK as owners in Australia.
If rooftop solar exported is deemed worthless then why are grid scale solar and wind not also worthless. Hard to argue that one source of intermittent power is better than another source of intermittent power.
30
8 Jan: EnergyLiveNews: Claire Perry: ‘From power stations to solar panels, the future is local’
An opinion piece from the Energy Minister
With over 50% of our power last year coming from low carbon sources such as offshore wind farms, a clean growth revolution is well underway, cutting carbon emissions and replacing dirty coal with clean energy.
This revolution has also taken root at a smaller scale up and down the country as more homes, schools and businesses choose to generate their own electricity from solar panels, small wind turbines and hydro power…
We are delivering a smart energy system fit for the 21st Century, that will benefit every home and business. It will allow suppliers to better understand you as a user and offer you products to help you save money; working with smart appliances in the home to hand back control of energy use, and ultimately control of your bills. Smart meters, better data, smarter networks and the right rules and incentives are necessary for this to take place.
Small scale generation and battery storage can play a crucial role in cutting carbon emissions as part of this smarter energy system by reducing local demand and providing clean power into the grid when it is needed. This will help avoid costly future connection costs for communities as power consumption grows with electric vehicle uptake and a growth in electric heating.
Rather than a new cable costing tens of millions of pounds, using solar, batteries and smarter management of the local network can deliver resilience much more cost effectively. That’s why we are investing £170 million in smart systems innovation to ensure energy use is more flexible and efficient, and £246 million in the Faraday Battery Challenge to help the UK become a world leader in the research, design, development and manufacture of batteries…
However I believe that until that market is mature, we need to make sure that consumers don’t give away the power the they have generated for free simply because this system is not ready to offer them payment for their power…READ ON
https://www.energylivenews.com/2019/01/08/claire-perry-from-power-stations-to-solar-panels-the-future-is-local/
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9 Jan: BusinessGreen: Report: UK-EU electricity interconnectors ‘crucial’ for post-Brexit decarbonisation
by Michael Holder
Status of cross-border electricity cables connecting UK and Europe must be top priority for future relationship with EU, argues think tank E3G
The UK government must continue to work closely with the EU to develop cross-border electricity cable connections after Brexit if it is to ensure the lowest-cost pathway to decarbonisation.
That is the headline conclusion of a new policy paper from climate policy think tank E3G, which was released on Monday (LINK), and which argues electricity interconnectors physically linking the UK and EU power grids are becoming increasingly important to the delivery of climate and energy goals, as they can help boost energy security and flexibility amid rising renewable energy capacity on the grid…
Last year interconnectors provided six per cent of electricity supply in the UK, making it a net importer of power across these cables. The government also currently envisages the development of at least 9GW of additional capacity as part of its broader policy to decarbonise the energy system.
As a result, imports of electricity to the UK are expected to more than triple by 2025, with interconnectors supplying nearly a third of domestic power demand, according to the E3G paper…READ ON
https://www.businessgreen.com/bg/news/3068984/report-uk-eu-electricity-interconnectors-crucial-for-post-brexit-decarbonisation
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o/t but posting because it is a Fox affiliate.
it doesn’t surprise me, because Fox News content – as opposed to op-ed hosts such as Tucker/Hannity/Ingraham/Judge Jeanine – is often no different to the rest of the TDS FakeNewsMSM.
from online comments yesterday, Fox News Q13 was not the only media house altering the raw video:
VIDEO: 14sec: 9 Jan: MyNorthWest: Was video of President Trump’s Tuesday address doctored?
By Todd Herman
Did Q13 Fox in Seattle deface President Trump during his address Tuesday evening?…
That comparison reveals the Q13 video creating a loop of the President licking his lips — making it seem bizarre and unbalanced — it also seems that someone distorted the President’s face and my have added an orange tone to his skin…
“We are investigating this to determine what happened,” said Q13’s news director. “This does not meet our editorial standards and we regret if it is seen as portraying the President in a negative light. The editor responsible for editing the footage is being placed on leave while we investigate further.”
http://mynorthwest.com/1237906/was-video-of-president-trumps-tuesday-address-doctored/
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this could just as easily be addressed to BBC/NBC/CNN/NYT etc., not just WaPo. worth a read:
9 Jan: Townhall: WaPo: Actually, Trump Is Right. There Is A Crisis At The Border
by Matt Vespa
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2019/01/09/wapo-actually-trump-is-right-there-is-a-crisis-at-the-border-n2538734
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US- MEX border , its circular…CIA supports drug lords in Mexico – Mexicans flee to USA to escape drug lords and poverty – USA tries to stop them – more druglords supported by CIA – more poor Mexicans flee to USA.. Is Trump in the middle here?
20
whatever. lol:
8 Jan: ClimateNewsNetwork: Swedes top climate change resisters’ league
by Kieran Cooke
There are countries that are in earnest about the way humans are overheating the planet, the climate change resisters; and there are others that give what is one of the most fundamental problems facing the world only scant attention.
Annually over the past 14 years a group of 350 energy and climate experts from around the globe has drawn up a table reflecting the performance of more than 70 countries in tackling climate change.
Together this group of nations is responsible for more than 90% of total climate-changing greenhouse gas emissions (GHG).
In the just published index looking at developments in 2018, Sweden, Morocco and Lithuania are the top performers in combatting global warming. At the other end of the scale are Iran, the US and – worst performer by a significant margin – Saudi Arabia.
The analysis – called the Climate Change Performance Index (LINK), or CCPI – is published by German Watch and the New Climate Institute, both based in Germany, plus the Climate Action Network, which has its headquarters in Lebanon…READ ON
https://climatenewsnetwork.net/swedes-top-climate-change-resisters-league/
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Reading the printed version of Daily Telegraph today an article regarding the coming NSW state election referred to: YouGov Galaxy Poll.
You will recall that YouGov is a left leaning UK firm that was involved in the US Presidential Election campaign and favoured the Democrats and candidate Clinton.
In Australia they also now own Newspoll.
So folks, remember, polls are not necessarily accurate polls.
60
Dennis –
was annoyed to read about this recently. MSM/pollsters – almost all entirely fake – and almost all working on behalf of the CAGW agenda. shame.
40
Is there not a 2nd part to the Paris thing (non-treaty)?
I’m thinking of the pledges to the Green Climate (slush) Fund.
I found a link to a pdf that shows [ 8 May 2018 ] that USD 10.21 billion was announced.
Then, I think there is a typo mistake. The chart shows ‘million’ but shaded as though it means ‘billion’.
Status of Pledges
Then, at the bottom there is:
A detailed overview of pledges and contributions by amount is shown on the reverse side
I do not get the second page.
I think, for the USA, Obama gave the GC Slush Fund USD 1 Billion before he was asked to leave town.
How about Australia; what are you fine folks doing in this regard?
50
Paris was just one of the continuum of giant money wasting scam conferences that have been going on since Rio 1992. Totally meaningless, entities suggesting they can save the planet by stopping globull warming, King Canute style, hoping the world’s stupidia will fall for the scam and buckle under to their new millennium masters.
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“If they had Australian’s interests at heart, even a little bit, they would have done this study themselves, and gone to Paris with some realistic comparative data ”
1. …and gone to Paris
with some realistic comparative dataand told them to get lost.2. .. and NOT gone to Paris ..
50
The BOM is gleefully shouting that we have just had the third hottest year on record, and early it said that Sydney had its fifth hottest. That rather surprises me as Winter, Spring and this Summer have been uncommonly cold here this year with just a few hot days to speak of. I don’t recall last Summer or Autumn to have been particularly hot, so how is this so?
I did note that the BOM graphs start at 1910 just missing the Federation Drought and associated heatwaves.
100
The B O M always shuts every year as the hottest . EVEN WITH THE EXACT OPPOSITE REAL WORLD EVIDENCE TO THE CONTRARY. So many northern cold record snowfalls broken this NH winter. It cant possibly be the so called ‘hottest’. Totally absurd rubbish. The Polar ice is INCREASING, more snow is falling. So the big AU is hot in the interior, so whats else is new, BOM!
101
Hear, hear!
50
The Conversation fleshes it out.
https://theconversation.com/australias-2018-in-weather-drought-heat-and-fire-109575
20
9 Jan: Forbes: Calls For A Carbon Tax Are Coming After Dour 2018 Report. Republicans Are Leading The Charge
by Ken Silverstein
When news hit on Tuesday that CO2 emissions in the United States rose by 3.4% in 2018, it sucker punched the environmental community. But it also jolted the Trump administration, which said that its coal-friendly energy policies had not prompted any rise in domestic carbon levels…
Indeed, former Republican members of Congress such as Ryan Costello from Pennsylvania and Bob Inglis of South Carolina are among two of the champions of a carbon tax. They have joined former Secretaries of State James Baker and George Schultz, whose Climate Leadership Council has said that energy producers don’t bear the environmental price; rather, it is the broader society.
“It is also vital that Congress exert leadership on climate due to the Trump administration’s roll backs to critical federal programs that encourage growth in the clean energy and transportation sectors, clean our air and water and reduce carbon emissions,” says a letter from 500 business leaders across the United States representing E2. “By the end of the century, climate change could cost the U.S. economy $500 billion per year. This sum is much larger than the current GDPs of most states.”
That group is preceded by BP, Chevron Corp., ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch Shell and StatOil that have said that a carbon tax is superior to an international patchwork of laws. Moreover, those oil giants have major investments in natural gas, which has become the leading fuel to replace to coal — and, which also accounts for 1.9% of the overall 3.4% increase in CO2 releases…
As for oil companies, they know that tougher carbon constraints are coming and that they need to be at the table. Today, for example, those businesses back the Paris climate agreement to limit temperature increases to no more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit by mid century, from pre-industrial levels…
The Republican-led Climate Leadership Council says that British Columbia has such a carbon tax: government gradually increased the tax and then redistributed it to individuals. The council proposes to tax carbon at $40 per ton, which it says would generate $194 billion in year one and $250 billion 10 years later…
A joint report issued by the Brookings Institution and the American Enterprise Institute says that pricing carbon is the most efficient way of reducing CO2 releases…
The Trump administration is an aberration, not just because its policies depart from those of the international community but also because they are contradicting the actions of American businesses. Most are trying to cut their carbon footprints. But in the wake of the 2018 carbon update, some companies and some Republicans are calling for a carbon tax. With proper vetting, the idea could catch on and the United States could once again become a global role model…READ ON
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kensilverstein/2019/01/09/calls-for-a-carbon-tax-are-coming-after-dour-2018-report-republicans-are-leading-the-charge/#14a8bdde2d31
re the writer:
Wikipedia: Ken Silverstein (business journalist)
Ken Silverstein is an American business journalist who focuses on global energy issues. He is a contributor to Forbes and The Christian Science Monitor…
As a columnist for IssueAlert, Silverstein focused on ethics, corporate culture, crisis mitigation, and Enron. At the time he placed part of the blame for the Enron crisis on the media…
Silverstein’s work continues to be cited on news sites and referenced in national magazines, newspapers and journals such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, EnergyBiz, Atlantic Monthly, Chicago Tribune and the HuffPost. His business reporting and columns about global warming and the environment focus on coal, natural gas, nuclear, wind, and solar energies…
00
Silverstein’s reference to Brookings concerns a different report to the one being discussed on this thread.
theirABC loves to quote Brookings e.g.
The seven countries in our Asia-Pacific backyard where kings and queens still rule
ABC – 9 Jan 2018
“In all cases, the surviving monarchies of South-East Asia have power and influence that potentially or in reality exceed that described in constitutional terms,” he says in an opinion piece for the Brookings Institution.
Donald Trump’s Defence Secretary Jim Mattis becomes latest departure from his inner circle
ABC – 21 Dec 2018
Mr Trump’s White House has had the highest turnover of senior-level staff of the past five presidents, according to the Brookings Institution think tank…
Democrats a safe bet to pick up enough seats for ‘comfortable’ majority in the House: expert
ABC – 7 Nov 2018
For more on the midterms, AM spoke to Thomas E Mann, a Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at The Brookings Institution, who feels it’s a safe bet that the Democrats will win at least 30 seats.
Donald Trump announces Arthur B Culvahouse Jr as ambassador to Australia after two-year gap
ABC – 6 Nov 2018
He has been on multiple US advisory panels including the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, the Intelligence Oversight Board, the Supreme Court Fellows Commission, and is currently on the board of the foreign relations think-tank The Brookings Institution, where contact with senior Australian thinkers and analysts is inescapable.
Why there’s ‘nothing normal’ about a possible White House meeting between Trump and Putin
ABC – 3 Apr 2018
“It would confer a certain normalisation of relations and we’re certainly not in a normal space,” said Alina Polyakova, a foreign policy fellow at the Brookings Institution.
FAIRFAX AND GUARDIAN QUOTE BROOKINGS EVEN MORE OFTEN, IF THAT’S POSSIBLE.
YET NOT A WORD ON THE BROOKINGS PARIS REPORT. WHAT A DISGRACE, ESPECIALLY AS REGARDS TAXPAYER-FUNDED ABC.
NOTHING FOUND ON SBS, OR AAP.
10
Pat,
Ryan Costello has expressed very interesting views about the Republican Party, voters, and Millennials, also known as Generation Y. He may be correct about these ideas, that lead him to the need for Republicans to address climate issues.
While many of us do not think there is a climate issue, apparently many folks under age 50 think there is. The Republican Party needs voters to exist.
Read his opinions from the perspective of maintaining a healthy Republican Party, and not from maintaining a healthy climate.
The climate doesn’t care.
01
John. fat finger. Supposed to be green.
10
given the state of our media, here’s a couple of pieces worth reading:
2 Jan: Epoch Times: Bolsonaro Vows to ‘Tackle the Marxist Garbage’ in Brazil’s Schools
By Ivan Pentchoukov
Bolsonaro issued the messages one day after declaring in his inaugural speech that his election victory liberated Brazil from “socialism and political correctness.”
“One of our strategies to get Brazil to climb from the lowest spots of the educational rankings is to tackle the Marxist garbage in our schools head-on,” Bolsonaro wrote on Twitter. “We shall succeed in forming citizens and not political militants.”…
In November, Bolsonaro appointed Ricardo Vélez-Rodriguez, a self-described anti-communist, to lead Brazil’s education ministry. Weeks before being appointed, Vélez-Rodriguez wrote in a blog that Brazilians have become “hostages of an education system that indoctrinates students into scientism and Marxism.”…
Vélez-Rodriguez was endorsed by Olavo de Carvalho, a U.S.-based Brazilian conservative, whose work was among the four books on Bolsonaro’s desk during his election victory speech, according to The Nation…
“They control all the media, with one or two small exceptions. They control all the universities. They control all the cultural institutions. They control practically everything,” de Carvalho said of the communists in Brazil…
https://www.theepochtimes.com/bolsonaro-vows-to-tackle-the-marxist-garbage-in-brazils-schools_2755389.html
25 Oct 2018: Epoch Times: An Interview With Brazilian Writer Olavo de Carvalho
by J.R. Nyquist
https://www.theepochtimes.com/qa-with-brazilian-writer-olavo-de-carvalho_2698443.html
20
this still shows on google results as the only other coverage of the Brookings report besides The Australian. AFR took the same line as Axios:
What they found: The authors ran simulations based on participating vs. abandoning pledges for China (now by far the world’s largest emitter), the U.S., and Australia.
•”We find that non-participation leads to economic gains for these countries relative to participating, illustrating the challenge of forging an international agreement with participation by all major emitters and fossil fuel producers,” they found.
•But, but, but: “[W]e also find that if we account for the monetized climate and domestic co-benefits of emissions reductions, those countries are worse off if they unilaterally withdraw from the Paris Agreement than if they participate.”
00
somehow the beginning and end of the Axios article were not included in my comment:
8 Jan: Axios: Ben Geman: Brookings: The economic case for staying in the Paris agreement
Nations who abandon the Paris agreement designed to tackle global climate change would ultimately be worse off economically despite some GDP benefits from reneging, according to a new analysis of the Paris climate deal by researchers with the Brookings Institution.
Why it matters: The study arrives at a fragile moment in global climate diplomacy, even as more research piles up about the dangers of failing to steeply cut emissions. The U.S. is preparing to abandon the deal and now Brazil’s new far-right president is undercutting confidence in that country’s green commitments…
What they found…ETC
https://www.axios.com/brookings-makes-economic-case-for-staying-in-paris-agreement-88edc3e8-c946-4777-b4f5-190d676b806a.html
00
9 Jan: ClimateChangeNews: Departing World Bank chief leaves climate job unfinished
Jim Kim reformed world’s largest development lender, but it continues to finance fossil fuels and his climate legacy could be challenged if the US chooses his successor.
By Natalie Sauer
By deciding to resign as head of the World Bank, Jim Kim is leaving the job of decarbonising development unfinished, experts told Climate Home News…
Experts working in development finance paid tribute to the most active president on climate change in the World Bank’s history. Kim will be remembered by many for pulling the plug on many fossil-fuel projects, not least coal…
Kim “completed the shift in energy policy begun under Bob Zoellick [world bank president 2007-2012] and challenged all parts of the bank to understand what unmitigated climate change does to the development aspirations of all countries,” said Rachel Kyte, a UN sustainable energy leader who worked as the World Bank special envoy on climate between 2014 and 2015.
“Jim Kim has been the most strident of the bank’s presidents yet in committing the group to climate goals – as befits our times,” Glada Lahn a senior researcher in energy at the Chatham House said…
Whoever is chosen as Kim’s succesor, Lahn said, would need to collaborate with other actors to expand the climate advances made by the bank to other institutions.
“The World Bank cannot work alone. While it may be phasing out fossil-fuel related infrastructure, Asian export credit banks and others are funding a lot”…
Judy Shelton, the US executive director on the board of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, a London-based multilateral lender, told the Financial Times that Kim’s departure presented “interesting potential opportunity.”
“We need fresh ideas on development finance,” she said. ***“Climate change has become too much of an obsession, displacing more urgently needed job-creating infrastructure projects.”…
http://www.climatechangenews.com/2019/01/09/departing-world-bank-chief-leaves-climate-job-unfinished/
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SAME SNOW, AS IN ***EVERY YEAR!
MULTIPLE PICS: 10 Jan: BusinessInsider: What life is like in the snowiest city in the world, where snow tunnels can reach 26 feet high and tourists come to see lanterns and ‘monsters’ made out of snow
by Rachel Askinasi
•The snowiest city in the world, with an average of 26 feet – or eight meters – of snowfall ***every year, is Aomori City in Aomori Prefecture, Japan.
•For comparison, the average snowfall in Sapporo, Japan, – which comes in at number two on the list of snowiest cities – is 16 feet, or almost 5 meters…
•During the winter you may find yourself driving alongside a wall of snow that’s several feet high.
•Locals celebrate the snow with winter festivals at castles and parades down the city streets.
Driving in Aomori can sometimes feel like you’re driving between glaciers…
The snow tunnel is so impressive that visitors come every year to walk roughly five miles — or eight kilometers — through the corridor along the Hakkoda-Towada Gold Line before the highway is reopened…
Shoveling snow can feel like a never-ending cycle in Aomori. “Snow shoveling morning, noon, and night is only to be expected,” reads Aomori Unearthed, a magazine produced by the city. “As much as I shovel, I can’t keep up,” a resident told author Anthony Rausch…
Some city footpaths, however, are heated, keeping them relatively free of snow and ice. In 2002, the city installed a system of boreholes and electric heating pumps across a total of 7,100 square feet…
(COAL STOVE???)
Or if you want to take in the scenic view of the snowy countryside, you can travel nostalgically on a potbelly train — aptly named for the potbelly stove that heats up its passenger cars…
Passengers can sit right in front of the stove to keep warm…
… which needs to be poked and prodded to make sure it keeps burning…
Winter in the city and surrounding areas can be extremely harsh, but those harsh conditions can also make for some pretty stunning photo ops. Just look at this rime ice — the thickening layer of ice that’s a result of fast-freezing moisture coming off of an object — on the trees…
There are also trees all along the nearby Hakkoda mountains that get buried in snow and ice throughout the winter that have come to be known as “silver frost sculptures” or “snow monsters.”…
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/photos-life-aomori-japan-the-snowiest-city-in-the-world-2018-12
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PICS: 10 Jan: Gizmodo: Rare Snow Has Turned Greek Ruins Into A Winter Wonderland This Week
by Brian Kahn on Earther and shared by Andrew Couts to Gizmodo
On Tuesday, otherworldly scenes emerged across the country as snow caked iconic tourist attractions like the Acropolis and bent olive and cypress trees’ branches. Tourists and locals alike stopped to gawk at the ethereal sites and snap photos.
Athens was far from the only locale to see snow. That coastal resort town of Thessaloniki in northeast Greece was buffeted by snow. Drone footage shows the incongruous scenes of snow on the Mediterranean beaches that are normally a tourist hot spot (at least a few locals still decided to take a polar bear plunge)…
The pattern befalling Greece has brought wild weather to the rest of Europe as well. Ski resorts in the Alps have seen up to 100 inches of snow fall, creating deadly avalanche conditions…
But it’s the Greek snow that’s been a real show stopper…
https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2019/01/rare-snow-has-turned-greek-ruins-into-a-winter-wonderland-this-week/
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10 Jan: HydrogenFuelNews: New solar energy study finds that snowy mountaintops could be ideal for generating power
by Jan Bergenson
Swiss researchers suggests solar panels on snow-covered mountains could improve energy generation during winter.
A new solar energy study recently published in the journal “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,” by researchers from Switzerland, found that installing solar panels on snowy mountaintops could help close the gap between energy demand and production during winter months…
Unlike typical urban installations on rooftops and in fields, the researchers believe that installing solar panels on the snow-covered mountaintops will not only generate just as much energy as these regular urban installations, but will require less surface area to do it.
Theoretically, solar panels installed at higher elevation can capture a greater amount of the sun’s energy due to less solar radiation being absorbed by the thinner atmosphere at high altitudes. Moreover, mountaintops in the Swiss Alps typically peek through the wintertime cloud cover and these snow-covered peaks can reflect some of the solar power hitting the ground back up at mountaintop panels. Plus, a solar panel produces more electricity when it is in a cold environment…
Switzerland is planning to phase out nuclear power, and this was one of the driving forces behind the study, according to study lead author Annelen Kahl, a postdoctoral researcher at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland…
Kahl does say that the study does not address all the possible obstacles of installing solar arrays in the mountains (e.g. logistics, economics, social acceptance, etc.)…
http://www.hydrogenfuelnews.com/new-solar-energy-study-finds-that-snowy-mountaintops-could-be-ideal-for-generating-power/8536715/
PNAS: The bright side of PV production in snow-covered mountains
Authors: Annelen Kahl, Jérôme Dujardin, and Michael Lehning
PNAS published ahead of print January 7, 2019
LINKS
https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/01/02/1720808116
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the relationship between the elites and socialism – it gets more and more obvious by the day:
9 Jan: The Local, Switzerland: Davos approves anti-Trump protest during WEF meeting
Authorities in the Swiss town of Davos have given the youth wing of Switzerland’s Socialist Party permission to stage an anti-capitalist protest during US President Donald Trump’s attendance at the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting later this month.
Giving its reasons, the local government in the Alpine resort said it was important that people could exercise their right to protest and express their opinion, even during the WEF annual meeting, which is taking place from January 22nd to January 25th.
But the decision represents a change of heart on the part of local authorities. Last year, a similar request by the Young Socialists to protest in the town during Trump’s controversial first WEF visit was turned down with city hall city saying there was “too much snow”…
The demonstration has been authorized for Thursday January 24th from 3pm to 6pm.
No other groups have applied to stage a protest, Davos authorities said on Wednesday.
The Young Socialists welcomed the decision by the town…
https://www.thelocal.ch/20190109/davos-approves-anti-donald-trump-protest-during-world-economic-forum-wef-meeting
send the deputies, but stay at home, would be my advice!
White House mulls canceling Trump’s Davos trip due to shutdown
The Hill-11 hours ago
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Some strange non- correlations in those graphs. Sharp falls in employment but real wages recover? Sharp falls in employment and wages but consumption returns to where it was?
The simple fact us that less efficient and more costly energy powers productivity and that makes everyone poorer.
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what a waste of taxpayer money!
10 Jan: ABC: ABC launches review after admitting it underpaid casual employees
Head of public affairs Emma McDonald said in a statement that a detailed review was underway to confirm how penalties, allowances and loadings should have been calculated and applied in the cases of some 2,500 staff over the past six years
She said the broadcaster was notifying affected employees and reviewing its processes.
It is not clear how many of the 2,500 staff have been underpaid…
Sinddy Ealy, the ABC section secretary at the CPSU, said she expected the ABC to face a significant bill for underpayments, citing the case of one employee who the ABC admitted underpaying by $19,000.
“If there are 2,500 people affected and one individual with three years of employment under their belt was [underpaid by] $19,000, we’re anticipating the liability to be sizeable,” she said…
“Our priority right now is to make sure that casual ABC workers are paid any back payments they are entitled to, and obviously to try to secure permanent jobs for some of these people, who have been working for the ABC for decades in some instances.”…
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-01-10/abc-says-it-underpaid-casual-employees/10705334
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Join the queue! The UK needs him more than you do…
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Universiy of Sydney pulls support for GetUp campaign
The Australian – 1 day ago
The University of Sydney was last night forced to delete a Facebook post in which it pledged support for left-wing activist group GetUp’s new campaign to target 18 conservative MPs in the lead-up to the federal election…
excerpts from Catallaxy Files comments:
OldOzzie #2902218, posted on January 9, 2019 at 10:35 am
In a post yesterday that drew angry responses before it was removed, the university’s law school publicised an article by The Guardian about GetUp’s push for the public to name the “worst” Coalition MPs so the group could finalise its targets for the election.
“New Year fun: GetUp asking you to nominate which conservative Coalition MP you would most like to see out of Parliament,” the University of Sydney Law School said on its Facebook page.
Among the Coalition MPs that can be nominated are Scott Morrison, Peter Dutton, Tony Abbott, Josh Frydenberg, Christian Porter, Greg Hunt, Barnaby Joyce, Alan Tudge, George Christensen and Michael Sukkar…
Facebook users, some of them former University of Sydney law students, were highly critical of the post.
“I wouldn’t call myself a defender of the far Right, but it’s completely inappropriate for the law school, as a body, to engage in such flagrantly biased political advocacy,” one wrote.
Another responded: “At least the law school is open about its bias now.”
After being alerted by The Australian, the University of Sydney last night investigated how the post was published…
GetUp blamed Mr Abbott for his “destructive” campaign to reinstall himself as prime minister, along with his comments questioning climate change…ETC ETC
http://catallaxyfiles.com/2019/01/07/monday-forum-january-7-2019/comment-page-5/
29 Apr 2018: Facebook: GetUp! has given academics at Sydney’s University of Technology a year’s worth of funding to ‘keep corporate power in check’
LINK: The Australian: GetUp! funds uni to fight business
Activist group GetUp! has stepped up its campaign against corporate…
https://www.facebook.com/theaustralian/posts/10151106073319978
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10 Jan: Reuters: Trump nominates acting EPA head, an ex-coal lobbyist, to run agency
by Lisa Lambert; Additional reporting by Chris Prentice; Writing by Richard Valdmanis; Editing by Tim Ahmann, Jonathan Oatis and Bill Berkrot
U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday nominated acting EPA chief Andrew Wheeler to run the agency permanently, the White House said, placing a former energy lobbyist at the helm of the nation’s top environmental regulator.
The widely anticipated nomination provides Trump another avid supporter of his deregulatory and pro-fossil fuels agenda, but without the constant criticism over alleged mismanagement that plagued Wheeler’s predecessor, Scott Pruitt…
The decision pleased Republican lawmakers and industry groups eager for less onerous federal environmental oversight, but drew criticism from environmental groups critical of the EPA’s direction under Trump…
In November, Trump announced during a Medal of Freedom ceremony at the White House that he had made up his mind to make Wheeler permanent, saying he had been doing a “fantastic job.”
The U.S. Senate, led by Trump’s fellow Republicans, is expected to approve Wheeler’s nomination…READ ON
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-epa/trump-nominates-acting-epa-head-an-ex-coal-lobbyist-to-run-agency-idUSKCN1P324H
old polls from polling companies that said Trump wouldn’t win the Presidency?
9 Jan: CNN: Voters have moved away from Trump on coal
by Grace Sparks
Recent polling suggests more Americans want to cut down on coal usage, with even Republicans divided on the issue.
In a Pew Research survey (LINK) from April 2018(???), two-thirds of Americans said they think developing alternative sources such as wind, solar and hydrogen technology should be the priority over only 22% who thought expanding exploration and production of oil, coal, and natural gas should be the priority. That’s the largest number who wanted to develop alternative sources since Pew began tracking the question in 2011…
Again, Republicans were split in a Gallup poll taken in March 2018. When asked if the US should emphasize production of more oil, gas, and coal supplies or emphasize more conservation by consumers of existing energy supplies, 47% of Republicans reported they wanted to emphasize production and the exact same said they wanted to emphasize conservation. Around three-quarters of Democrats and 63% overall said they wanted to emphasize conservation…
A Quinnipiac poll taken in April, 2017 (a little dated, but still a useful reference point), found that over half (56%) wanted the US to discourage the use of coal while only around a third wanted to encourage it…
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/01/09/politics/trump-coal-polls/index.html
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no rush:
9 Jan: CleanEnergyWire: Coal mining state premier says Germany will exit coal in 2030s
by Sören Amelang
Rheinische Post
Germany’s coal commission will agree on a phase-out within around 20 years, according to Armin Laschet, premier of the western coal mining state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW). “The coal exit will take place in the 2030s,” Laschet told business leaders, according to a report by Antje Höning for the regional newspaper Rheinische Post.
He added the exit date must not be chosen randomly.
***Instead, it is important to make sure that energy-intensive businesses can be supplied with affordable and reliable power. RWE currently plans to mine lignite until 2045, according to the report…ETC
https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/coal-mining-state-premier-says-germany-will-exit-coal-2030s
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I can’t til the SHTF. No,seriously.
We’re all on a boat, and most people around us are cheering while a select few are blowing holes in the hull.
And there’s no wait out.
Well, I don’t care. I’ve got what I need to survive, and every single one of my friends and family who are cheering on the “climate change” brigade can go f&^% themselves.
When the power goes out, and the economy tanks, and the shit happens, I’ll be fine.
Can’t say the same for the rest of them.
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10 Jan: Guardian: He’s been president a week – and already Bolsonaro is damaging Brazil
by Eliane Brum
(Translated by Diane Grosklaus Whitty; Eliane Brum is a Brazilian journalist, writer and documentary maker)
Jair Bolsonaro’s messianic brand of capitalism threatens minorities and the rainforest that protects the planet
The world needs to understand what Brazil has become, before it’s too late. Jair Messias Bolsonaro’s Brazil is not just another country that elected a far-right president at a time when the world’s most powerful nation is led by Donald Trump. It’s not just South America’s version of the current trend of countries sliding into authoritarianism, like we’ve seen in Hungary, Poland, Turkey and the Philippines. It’s not simply a peripheral nation with a pathetic leader. Brazil has become the apocalyptic vanguard that signals how radical this moment is – one with the power to worsen the climate crisis at top speed and blight the entire planet…
Bolsonaro was elected in October, on his pledge to go back “50 years”…
It was a time when white, heterosexual men held power and knew precisely who they were. They may have faced some resistance from minorities, but they still enjoyed absolute hegemony.
We cannot comprehend what is now happening in Brazil – and around the world – unless we understand that our culture wars are tightly bound up with humanity’s need to say goodbye to 20th-century illusions of power and face a planet made more hostile by human hand. Things will soon reach catastrophic levels if nations and their residents do not unite in a global effort to do something extremely hard and unpopular: impose limits on ourselves to counteract global warming.
The election of Bolsonaro ties all this together like no other event…
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jan/10/jair-bolsonaro-brazil-minorities-rainforest
reminds me of BBC – which lists everything bad about Brazil and blames it all on Bolsonaro, ignoring the fact the left have ruled Brazil for 30-plus years & he has just been inaugurated!
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unattributed – an editorial?
10 Jan: Irish Examiner: Climate change: We need a popular carbon tax
While the Taoiseach is enough of a realist to know he must build a broad consensus on the issue, he also recognises that time is of the essence and that we have to get serious about having an increasing levy on fossil fuels, such as coal, oil, gas and peat. The current tax on the use of fossil fuels is levied at €20 a tonne. Recent research by the Economic and Social Research Institute indicate a massive rise would be required in the next decade — to ***€300 a tonne — if Ireland is to meet its commitments to reducing CO2…
The fact that there was not even a modest increase in carbon tax in last October’s Budget, shocked environmentalists, who railed against Ireland’s dismal track record so far. The figures are, indeed, startling. Per capita, Irish people generate 13.7 tonnes of carbon a year, compared with an EU average of 8.7 tonnes…
Support for the Taoiseach has come most notably from CapX, a British news website founded by the London-based Centre for Policy Studies, with writer Joe Ward contrasting his approach with the mistakes of French President Emmanuel Macron, noting that they both entered office in the summer of 2017, with Macron riding a wave of purpose and popularity.
“Nearly two years on, following a bruising encounter with the gilets jaunes protesting about French fuel taxes, it is Varadkar who could teach his French counterpart a thing or two about how to introduce a market-based solution to addressing climate change,” writes Ward…
Mr Varadkar could do worse than look at the approach taken in Canada where householders actually profit from carbon taxes…ETC
https://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/views/ourview/climate-change-we-need-a-popular-carbon-tax-896641.html
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dare I say…read it all. it goes on and on:
9 Jan: LSE: Another humiliation for British climate change deniers and their promoters in the media
by Bob Ward
‘The Daily Telegraph’ has been forced today to publish corrections to an error-filled article about climate and energy policy by the newspaper’s former editor after it was ruled to be inaccurate and misleading.
The Independent Press Standards Organisation, which has been set up and funded by a group of British newspapers including ‘The Daily Telegraph’, upheld my complaint that the article had breached the Editors’ Code of Practice.
The column by Charles Moore, which was published online and in print on 2 June, praised President Trump’s policy of inaction on climate change, and was riddled with false claims.
The newspaper refused in June to publish my letter, which drew attention to the main falsehoods in the article.
However, it has now been forced to admit that the carbon footprints of Japan and Germany have reduced rather than grown, and to acknowledge that the price of electricity has been increasing for consumers in the United States, despite the “shale revolution”…
Surprisingly, IPSO did not rebuke the newspaper for failing to disclose to its readers that Mr Moore is a trustee of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a campaign group set up by Lord Lawson to lobby against policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions…
http://www.lse.ac.uk/GranthamInstitute/news/another-humiliation-for-british-climate-change-deniers-and-their-promoters-in-the-media/
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what will come next from Harrabin?
10 Jan: BBC: Climate change: Will insect-eating dogs help?
By Roger Harrabin
Do you fret that your pet pooch is blamed by environmentalists for turning rainforests into poo in the park?
Have no fear – you can now fatten Fido on black soldier flies instead of Brazilian beef.
A pet food manufacturer now claims that 40% of its new product is made from soldier flies.
It’s one of many firms hoping to cash in on the backlash against beef by people concerned that the cattle are fed on soya…
At first sight it seems obvious that feeding your dog meaty food is bad for the environment. The link between humans eating meat and the allied emissions of CO2 and methane is well established – and pets are estimated to eat 20% of global meat…
But actually the analysis is more subtle than that – because as societies become more wealthy, people often turn to muscle meat and reject the animal’s offal…
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-46811358
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Climate change belief should be declared a notifiable mental disorder.
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for local consumption:
9 Jan: BBC Highlands & Islands: Hydro power ‘threat’ to Skyfall’s Glen Etive
Small-scale hydro power schemes threaten to spoil a Highlands glen, according Mountaineering Scotland.
Seven projects have been proposed for Glen Etive, according to the body that represents the interests of outdoor pursuits enthusiasts.
It has urged planning authority Highland Council to protect the area, well-known to film fans as a location for 2012’s James Bond movie Skyfall.
The council has been asked to “defend this much-loved landscape.”…
Glen Etive, near Glen Coe, is a National Scenic Area, and a Wild Land Area…
Mountaineering Scotland said constructing the hydro power schemes on the rivers and burns in the glen would involve road and bridge building, use of cement and the laying of power cables.
Chief executive Stuart Younie said urged Highland Council to look at “whole picture of development” in the glen rather than treating each application in isolation…
A spokeswoman for Highland Council said: “Every planning application for hydro schemes is assessed on its merits, taking into account relevant development plan and national policy, including those relating to landscape impact…
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-46814967
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***switch everything off?
10 Jan: UK Times: Energy watchdog fails to penalise errant suppliers
by Emily Gosden
The energy regulator was attacked on two fronts yesterday as MPs criticised its handling of the smart meter roll-out and an industry chief condemned its approach to companies going bust.
Rachel Reeves, chairwoman of the business and energy select committee, said that Ofgem’s performance was “not good enough” after it admitted it had not penalised a major supplier for failing to advise customers ***how to use their smart meters to save energy.
Ofgem was also criticised after claiming that the cost of a string of small suppliers going bust would be “small” and insignificant, despite industry estimates that the bill was likely to run to tens of millions of pounds.
The government also agreed yesterday to review the timetable for the smart meter roll-out, which was supposed to be completed by 2020. It admitted that completing even 75 per cent of installations by that deadline would be a “challenge”…
MPs are taking evidence about the £11 billion roll-out after a National Audit Office report warned that there was no way the deadline could be met and that the programme was at least £500 million over budget with a risk of costs spiralling by £2 billion. The government has claimed that the roll-out will deliver savings of £17 billion, including about £5 billion from households becoming more efficient. The NAO questioned whether these benefits would materialise.
Ms Reeves said that the committee was “very concerned” by its finding that a third of consumers did not recall being given advice about how to use their meters to save energy, despite suppliers being obliged to do so…
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/9c002214-144c-11e9-8239-c0a124428b01
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lol.
9 Jan: SouthChinaMorningPost: How China’s fight against climate change is finding allies in the business sector
•Wang Shi says China’s booming private sector has been upping its role in the fight against climate change, with the real estate industry making some pioneering moves
by Wang Shi
(Wang Shi founded Vanke in 1984 and led it to become the world’s largest residential home developer and a Fortune 500 company.
***He now sits on the board of the World Wildlife Fund US and the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council, with a focus on forests, biodiversity and climate change)
When the history of the early 21st century gets written, 2018 may prove to have been a turning point when the world finally woke up to the threat of climate change…
Natural disasters from typhoons to heatwaves and forest fires gave us a glimpse of what could become commonplace if we miss that target…
At the same time, another powerful and influential sector has also been responding to the climate crisis – the global business community…
The most recent and bold example is that of the world’s largest container shipping company, Maersk, announcing plans to be carbon neutral by 2050…
In recent years, companies from China’s booming private sector have been stepping up to pull their weight, too…
China’s real estate sector, in which my career has been focused, is already making moves. As of 2018, a total of 18 per cent of the sector, representing 1.9 trillion yuan (US$280 billion) in sales revenue, has signed up to an initiative on greening supply chains, which was initiated in 2016 by Land Sea Green Properties, SEE Foundation, China Urban Reality Association, the China Real Estate Chamber of Commerce and my own company, Vanke…READ ON
https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/united-states/article/2181194/how-chinas-fight-against-climate-change
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Snow in Austria
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IPCC WG lll 2008-15 co-chair Ottmar Edenhofer, November 2010:
“…one has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. Instead, climate change policy is about how we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth…”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2013/02/05/in-their-own-words-climate-alarmists-debunk-their-science/#62f01aeb68a3
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Jo, PLEASE present a post in rebuttal of the BOM’s claim of 2018 record high temperatures.
No mention of coldest minimum temperatures.
No mention of small number of hottest days.
No understanding of overall heating effects for the year.
Surely you can tear their arguments to pieces?
Best regards, Ken McMurtrie.
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I’m sure Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD will be on the case: “Those who have followed my work for sometime know that I have many issue with the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. Of all the organizations in denial, of all the organizations doing real harm to science, this is the organization that needs fixing first… in my opinion. I wrote something not too serious, and not too technical about this just last year. A version of the article was published by The Spectator Online and entitled: ‘Not Really Fit for Purposes: The Bureau of Meteorology’.”
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Thanks!
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UAH has 2018 for Australia in 7th place.
Any surface temperature fabrication is subject to unscientific 1 second readings, urban heat smearing across areas that do not experience urban temperature, and manic homogenisation to create a flat trend positive commensurate to the AGW meme.
Note, in Australia, the ratio of urban area to non urban area is probably some 1:100,000
… yet most of the surface temperature data is from urban effected areas. NOT REAL!
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“1:100,000” is just a wild guesstimate
Anyone want to try to do the calculations 😉
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There’s that interesting thing I heard that if you put all of the world’s cities and towns side by side, they would fit inside an area the size of Spain.
We humans overestimate our impact.
KK
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I’m shocked that Australians would attempt to take the grand title of “Worst casualty of Paris” away from Canadians. Canadians led by Justin the Idiot, have succeeded in destroying our economy like no other country on this planet.
Oil pipeline construction delays by the Idiot have left our economy with higher taxes, a lower dollar and unemployment.
What is interesting is, why do British colonies struggle with common sense?
20
Just see how British parliamentarians are struggling with common (?) sense re. Brexit. They have succumbed to a globalist view which is at odds with the majority of voters.
10
And I am British/Australian so you can see why I am so upset/angered by what is going on in our countries.
10
It seems that “commonsense” is far less common than it used to be.
Not limited to Western countries but more noticeable.
It could be considered that it is being deliberately bred out of our civilization, or is it a natural progression? “survival of the fittest” is becoming “survival of the rich and powerful”.
If so, it is at a terrible expense to a humane society.
A civilization that is not civilized.
“1984” becoming a reality. “War is Peace”, “Propaganda is Truth”, etc.
Confusion is rife, Realism is lost to propaganda, entertainment and self-gratification.
Self-destruction in action.
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[…] According to Joanne Nova, Australia Wins The Global Patsy Award for 2019. Australia is doing more, paying more, suffering more and yet will make almost no difference to the global emissions tally in anything other than a purely symbolic impress-your-dinner–guests kind of way. […]
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