JoNova
A science presenter, writer, speaker & former TV host; author of The Skeptic's Handbook (over 200,000 copies distributed & available in 15 languages).
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This comment is to Peter Fitzroy
Via a “midweek unthreaded” posting on this blog (http://joannenova.com.au/2019/04/midweek-unthreaded-67/#comments), we entered into a discussion of whether or not “An increase in atmospheric greenhouse gas levels will produce increases in (i) the temperature of the surface of the earth and (ii) the atmosphere near the earth’s surface.” I responded (comments 1.3.7, 1.3.8, 1.3.8.1 and 1.3.8.2) to your most recent comments (1.3.5.1 and 1.3.5.2), and as of 4 May 2019 8:51am California time am awaiting your response. If you decide to carry on our discussion, I prefer we do so on the original thread–http://joannenova.com.au/2019/04/midweek-unthreaded-67/#comments. Have you decided to terminate our discussion; or are you, like me, just busy? Since in a response to Michael262’s 29 April 2019 comment # 12.2.2.3.4 (http://joannenova.com.au/2019/04/huge-bang-and-house-burns-to-the-ground-just-an-e-bike-battery-mishap/#comments), you wrote (comment # 12.2.2.3.1 of the same URL/same date)
“too true, debate is difficult on this site”
I assume that you’re just very busy.
132
Reed,
I don’t think our Mr. Fitzroy is interested in debate. Most like him, meaning his attitude, are only interested in being right. When they find out that we stand our ground and present scientifically sound arguments they leave. I’ve been reading and commenting on Jo Nova for quite a while and I’ve seen all kinds come and go. If you want to silence them just ask, “What is your evidence that CO2 can actually do what it’s being blamed for doing. Never mind temperature readings or anything else, which is all weather. The underlying claim is that CO2 is doing it. If CO2 will do what it’s said to do then the games is won by the warmers. And if it can’t then they’re left high and dry.
I’ve asked that question to probably half a dozen at least and they never answer me. Not a single one could say, “This shows that carbon dioxide can warm the planet in proportion to it’s level in the atmosphere.”
They can’t do it. And that’s because CO2 can’t do it.
102
Roy,
Heres something to give you nightmares – it appears the chinese one belt one road surveillance state has landed in Australia.
Typical NWO – test on a small scale, then roll out across all of Australia.
Oz is becoming the sacrifical lamb to do all this type of surveillance state stuff in.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/chinas-big-brother-social-control-goes-to-australia_2898104.html
“Australia is preparing to debut its version of the Chinese regime’s high-tech system for monitoring and controlling its citizens. The launch, to take place in the northern city of Darwin, will include systems to monitor people’s activity via their cell phones.
“The new system is based on monitoring programs in Shenzhen, China, where the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is testing its Social Credit System. Officials on the Darwin council traveled to Shenzhen, according to NT News, to “have a chance to see exactly how their Smart Technology works prior to being fully rolled out.”
In Darwin, they’ve already constructed “poles, fitted with speakers, cameras and Wi-Fi,” according to NT News, to monitor people, their movements around the city, the websites they visit, and what apps they use. The monitoring will be done mainly by artificial intelligence, but will alert authorities based on set triggers.
“Just as in China, the surveillance system is being branded as a “smart city” program, and while Australian officials claim its operations are benign, they’ve announced it functions to monitor cell phone activity and “virtual fences” that will trigger alerts if people cross them.
“We’ll be getting sent an alarm saying, ‘There’s a person in this area that you’ve put a virtual fence around.’ … Boom, an alert goes out to whatever authority, whether it’s us or police to say ‘look at camera five,’” said Josh Sattler, the Darwin council’s general manager for innovation, growth, and development services, according to NT News.
The nature of the “virtual fences” and what type of activity will sound an alarm still isn’t being made clear.
The system is being promoted as mostly benign. Sattler said it will tell the government “where people are using Wi-Fi, what they’re using Wi-Fi for, are they watching YouTube, etc. All these bits of information we can share with businesses. … We can let businesses know, ‘Hey, 80 percent of people actually use Instagram within this area of the city, between these hours.’”
The CCP’s smart city Social Credit System is able to monitor each person in the society, tracking every element of their lives—including their friends, online purchases, daily behavior, and other information—and assigns each person a citizen score that determines their level of freedom in society.
The tool is a core piece of the CCP’s programs to monitor and persecute dissidents, including religious believers and people who oppose the ruling communist system.
Chinese human rights lawyer Teng Biao, a visiting scholar at New York University, described the Social Credit System as a new form of tyranny, meant to reactivate the CCP’s totalitarian hold on society.
“In the past, there was the Nazi totalitarianism and Mao Zedong’s totalitarian system, but a totalitarian system powered by the internet and contemporary technology has not existed before,” Teng said in a recent interview with The Epoch Times.
20
Truly frightening.
I just replied to email outlining how the movement to destroy America is going about it and one thing stands out, they don’t realize that they must ultimately go down with what they’re destroying.
I had that same reaction reading what you posted. Society will stop at some point for lack of people who know how to keep things running and still think it worthwhile to do it. The tightly controlled societies behind the iron curtain post WWII generated and nursed the seeds of their own destruction. And I think it will happen that way again. Only this time around there will be no savior for anyone, no safe place to run toward.
I hope they enjoy what they will have done to themselves.
00
Righto, reed.
I’d missed your last post, and will look at it now
42
I’ve replied to your posts, and apologies for not revisiting that page earlier, but I’ve bookmarked it now.
We probably need to agree on the equilibrium temperature concept and how that varies
Anyway – it is now your turn I think
23
Peter Fitzroy,
I’ll read what you wrote, and respond on that thread, not this thread.
10
Reed, I look forward to seeing the discussion.
However, you need to be aware that if it doesn’t go his way he quickly reverts to type.
For example:
http://joannenova.com.au/2019/04/huge-bang-and-house-burns-to-the-ground-just-an-e-bike-battery-mishap/#comment-2133145
20
It’s May Day bank holiday in England and thank goodness the MSM seem to have gone quiet at last. Presumably the reporters have flown off somewhere after having castigated us for flying.
Since January there has been such a deluge of campaigns with Vejanuary, Brexit and Climate Rebellion taking front stage, so it’s a relief to get out and do some work in the garden.
Hopefully the activists will go and contemplate what their demands will make to their lifestyles. No skiing holidays, no Carribbean cruises or flights to Phuket. My dears, life won’t be living!
112
I could do with some climate change in my garden. We are finally starting to see some blossoms on the fruit trees.
72
“Big Oil goes Big Green”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/05/04/big-oil-goes-big-green/
60
This was a fun study, I got really tired if green cranks saying I was a shill for Big Oil. They are making a fortune off of the war on coal, which they help finance. Big oil is also big gas.
110
And they hide the fact that the earth produces unlimited supply of both oil and gas. They want it to be deemed fossil to make it seem rare so they can jack the price accordingly.
“Oil companies give billions to climate alarmists, but hardly a dime to climate realists” That would seem true. Yes where is the money for the climate truthers? Come on Big Oil..FORK OUT!
Oil/gas is a great product, but ‘Big Oil’ dont behave well as they have their banks in Wall St. (except GASPROM, Russian)
60
Such an important point to make.
Coca-Cola is not worried about water. (In fact it makes a motza selling tap water in plastic bottles.) It’s not worried too much by the anti-soda campaigns, since nothing stops the world slurping their products for long. (If you look where the great “foundations” put their money much of it is in fast food and fizzy drinks.)
Coca-Cola is most worried about its true competitor, Pepsi Cola. And Pepsi is bothered by Coke.
Big Oil’s chief worry and competitor is coal. Oil and coal don’t overlap like Coke and Pepsi, but the one can easily clobber the other for billions. Many a white elephant “renewable” requires an investment in the products of Big Oil. When the carpetbaggers say “transitional” and “supplementary” they mean forever and essential.
If wind and solar were any good as mainstream tech they would be shunned. Their whole purpose is to be ineffective, for purposes of globalism, yes, but also for purposes of short term plunder.
And which country stands to be the biggest loser in all this? Who is to be the number one patsy in the War on Coal? Who is like the parched man lying by a pure and unending stream who will die of thirst waiting for a drone to bring him a bottle of imported tap water?
That’s enough hints.
160
Bottled water,in developed world, is a HUGE money making scam. People are terrified of drinking perfectly clean tap water. Except in countries with poor health regs could be excluded.
60
Funny thing about bottled water. The bit that gets thrown away, the bottle cap and label, costs significantly more than the product. i.e. the water.
It certainly is a strange world we live in.
40
meh, we use bottled water quite a bit. Have bottled water in cars , on bedside tables, in the garage, wife uses is always when travelling due to bitter experience (even in Oz). I also have a car and refrigerator and many other first world conveniences.
Bottles go to a couple raising funds for a kids sports trip to Thailand at 10c a time, and the caps go to Rotary (along with milk and soft drink caps) which they tell me goes to prosthetic limb manufacture using clean class 2/4 plastics.
20
Is that local Yarpos?
We keep a couple of empties from our travels and fill up from our own filtered tank water.
10
51
As a true greenie I only drink Stout from one source:
Guinness cans.
They have my approval because of all the fizzy-drink manufacturers they’re the only ones who don’t use dangerous CO2. Their fizz comes from N2 or nitrogen.
KK
70
Your dedication needs to be more widely recognised.
70
Thanks James but must admit that I don’t drink a lot of it.
50
Speaking of Greenies – if Sarah Hanson-Young doesn’t get re-elected to the Senate, will she get a roll in the new Channel 10 soapie The Young & the Desperate?
50
Is that deliberate?
” get a roll”?
Is something being implied here?
It’s not something I’d want to watch.
40
It’s all in the mind!
30
More likely the Middle-aged and Hopeless.
30
20
A comment at Chiefio
“@tom0mason – Your comment has me visualizing something like Baghdad Bob; a weather guy or babe standing in front of the face of a towering glacier that has half-covered Edinburgh, speaking into the mic, “And today is the second-hottest day ever this year. This glaciation could turn out to be the hottest glaciation ever.”
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2019/04/26/w-o-o-d-26-april-2019/#comment-111788
132
“And today is the second-hottest day ever this year.”
January 2, maybe.
81
China news: https://balance10.blogspot.com/2019/05/the-heart-of-mass-surveillance-system.html
relevant here:: https://balance10.blogspot.com/2019/05/google-and-appleapp-highlighted-by-2.html
31
“First They Came For . . .”
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/index.php/2019/05/04/first-they-came-for/
51
good site Ian, we should have an Australian site called “roadkill”large dead animals
50
Make sure you check the comments that go with items at SDA
41
Some listening advice
”
Anchovy
May 4, 2019 at 1:55 pm
If Bruce Jenner can be a girl, Anna can be a Republican.
Reply
TheTooner
May 4, 2019 at 2:35 pm
Good point. I’ll wait until Bruce Jenner is pregnant, then I’ll listen to Ana Navarro.”
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/index.php/2019/05/04/republican-fascist/#comment-1204698
51
My original link gwpf-
The next ‘Ferrari of shale’ may be hiding in Australia’s outback
Then the full article link
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/05/03/business/next-ferrari-shale-may-hiding-australias-outback/#.XM3k4aIcWUl
Brilliant for the NT and logical,but reading through the latter part of the article, the same anti science scare Mongers are already at work.
(SIC) The opposition Labor Party, which polls suggest may win a general election on May 18 to form the next government, has pledged to spend A$1.5 billion for pipelines that would connect Beetaloo to the port of Darwin and the east coast gas markets.(EQ)
Well obviously, Bill agrees with the prose exploration,or does he? So then Why no fracking,under a labor government in Victoria Bill?
Fracking ban to be introduced in Victoria after Coalition …
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-02-07/fracking-set-to-be-banned-in-victoria/8248948
Victoria will become the first state in Australia to permanently ban fracking, after the Opposition party room agreed to support legislation introduced by the Andrews Government. The bill, to be …
50
Has anyone told him about the oil shale deposits under Qld?
https://www.ga.gov.au/scientific-topics/energy/resources/petroleum-resources/oil-shale
40
“In addition, the further geological processes of hydrocarbon migration and accumulation which produce conventional crude oil resources trapped in subsurface reservoirs has not occurred. ” Thats probably because oil isnt produced that way.
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I’d rather export coal and import oil than extract shale oil. Filthy business. That is REAL pollution.
12
Does the red thumber want a shale oil pit upwind of them?
Do an image search on Canadian oil sands. The world has enough oil without it.
00
Andrew’s is a “fracking ” idiot.
10
Can a future Parliament be bound by the legislation of the present one?
00
They would be bound until cancelling legislation is passed through parliament.
00
“Tucker Carlson Outlines Big Tech’s Moves To Control Political Speech…”
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2019/05/04/tucker-carlson-outlines-big-techs-moves-to-control-political-speech/#more-163357
Let this develop and I doubt we’ll be reading Jo Nova
90
Leftist thugs attacking homes in the USA – the new Brown Shirts?
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2018/11/08/chilling-new-details-of-the-menacing-protest-at-tucker-carlsons-home-n2535567
“Fox News host Tucker Carlson was at his desk Wednesday evening, less than two hours before his 8 p.m. live show, when he suddenly started receiving multiple text messages. There was some sort of commotion happening outside his home in Northwest D.C. “I called my wife,” Carlson told The Washington Post in a phone interview. “She had been in the kitchen alone getting ready to go to dinner and she heard pounding on the front door and screaming. …
“Someone started throwing himself against the front door and actually cracked the front door.” His wife, thinking it was a home invasion, locked herself in the pantry and called 911, Carlson said. The couple have four children, but none were home at the time. But it wasn’t a home invasion. It was a protest.
………………
“Carlson said the protesters had blocked off both ends of his street and carried signs that listed his home address. The group called Carlson a “racist scumbag” and demanded that he “leave town,” according to posts on Twitter. A woman was also overheard in one of the deleted videos saying she wanted to “bring a pipe bomb” to his house, he said…The host’s address, as well as the addresses of his brother and good friend Neil Patel, with whom he co-founded the conservative media site the Daily Caller, were shared in tweets from Smash Racism DC’s account. In a Facebook post that included video of the gathering, the group wrote, “Fascists are vulnerable. Confront them at their homes!” “Protecting ourselves and our communities means interfering with those who make a platform for hate,” the statement said. “So we will go to their homes and their workplaces, and find them in restaurants.”
70
This is appalling. Where are the police?
71
Annie
They’re only minutes away when seconds count
60
It’s a dangerous gamble to harrass people in this way in America. Unlike good old Oz, you can claim self defense for shooting someone if you think you are in danger,
30
Indeed. The other day I was talking to a couple about doing an enducational skeptical website for me, but I had to mention the possibility of green hostility. They said “we have shotguns” so I was calmed.
32
I can’t remember how to write, 1,1000,51,6 and 500 in Roman Numerals……….IM LIVID.
131
MI II,
100
Now show your calculations of a sample square root in Roman notation
40
I had a Roman notation calculator once , but the chisel broke.
60
Australia has a new contender for the world’s Renewables Crash Test Dummy: Sweden
Swedish Power Shortages Because of Renewable Energy
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/05/04/swedish-power-shortages-looming-because-of-their-renewable-energy-push/
90
Register to be a reviewer for IPCC Sixth Assessment climate report – AR6
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/05/04/register-to-be-a-reviewer-for-ipcc-sixth-assessment-climate-report-ar6/
40
Papua New Guinea news: https://balance10.blogspot.com/2019/05/cries-for-justice-have-fallen-on-deaf.html
10
And then there is Ok Tedi:
[BHP was involved]
The Ok Tedi environmental disaster caused severe harm to the environment along 1,000 kilometres (620 mi) of the Ok Tedi River and the Fly River in the Western Province of Papua New Guinea between about 1984 and 2013. The lives of 50,000 people have been disrupted. One of the worst environmental disasters caused by humans, it is a consequence of the discharge of about two billion tons of untreated mining waste into the Ok Tedi from the Ok Tedi Mine, an open pit mine in the Western Province of Papua New Guinea.
This mining pollution, caused by the collapse of the Ok Tedi tailings dam system in 1984 and consequent switch to riverine disposal (disposal of tailings directly into the river) for several decades, was the subject of class action litigation, naming Ok Tedi Mining Limited and BHP Billiton and brought by local landowners. Villagers downstream from Ok Tedi in the Fly River system in the Middle Fly District and the southern and central areas of the North Fly District, in particular, believe that the effect on their livelihood from this disaster far outweighs the benefits they have received from the mine’s presence in their area.
More at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ok_Tedi_environmental_disaster
30
This sort of pollution is appalling and demonstrates the real problem: corruption.
Without knowing the fine detail I assume that BHP has worked to a low budget with their dam and assumed that in the event of a disaster, they could buy their way out cheaply through the usual method; paying off local politicians.
This, alongside the Newcastle harbour cyanide disaster of a few years ago, is Pollution.
If the Greens were really concerned about pollution they would have jumped on both of these issues and pushed until there was restoration and significant fine to act as a deterrent.
KK
50
H
IIRC there is a prominent local name associated with that but I can’t recall who at the moment
10
Garnaut it was
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-01-12/an-ross-garnaut-resigns-as-chairman-of-ok-tedi/4462122
00
There’s something wrong going on here.
I remember a few years ago being made aware of substantial logging in the Aitape coastal area. No benefit flowed to the locals. Suspect that payment was made in Port Moresby.
Shades of Tibet.
Do you think that maybe there’s corruption?
KK
40
Peter Fitzoy,
followed by,
Peter Fitroy
http://joannenova.com.au/2019/04/huge-bang-and-house-burns-to-the-ground-just-an-e-bike-battery-mishap/#comment-2133104
I am leaving the reponse to #1 by Reed Coray for Peter Fitroy to make his reply.
As I recall Reed went of to have a think about “radiative forcing” and “insolation”,
I see now that Reed had thought that through and made several responses on the original thread.
The best way to conduct a One on One debate is to stay on the original thread. The old thread is not current so less chance of others butting in.
I will check back from time to time to see if there are developments.
Reed; To reference a comment directly, click on the date time group under the authors name, then copy the url (web address).
51
Peter, thanks for the tip. I’m going to give it a try: joannenova.com.au/2019/05/weekend-unthreaded-258/#comment-2134767.
30
It looks like I left off the “http://” Let me try again.
http://joannenova.com.au/2019/05/weekend-unthreaded-258/#comment-2134767
30
I think it makes things easier to follow if the rest of us do not interrupt the debate between Reed and Peter F.
Reed does not need any help as far as I can make out. Reed likes to define things rigor
We can discuss the progress of the debate on a current forum.
As far as I can make out the most recent comment is this;
http://joannenova.com.au/2019/04/midweek-unthreaded-67/#comment-2134822
00
Child abuse …
Zali Stegggall: “As a mother of teenagers (5) who are seriously scared about the future and the world they are going to inherit…”
https://twitter.com/SkyNewsAust/status/1123845742123212801
So much for not having kids to save the environment.
Childless is only for others.
If only Zalli’s parents were greenies, unlike Zalli the faux greenie, the planet would be saved by now.
92
I like to think that these frightened children will become angry when they have to lead normal lives.
90
I like to think that these frightened children will become angry when they have to lead normal lives.
40
Scaring the bejezus out of your kids sounds like child abuse to me.
120
Check this poor kid out …
Tears outside PM’s office as students skip school to demand climate action again
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-05-03/students-strike-around-the-country-for-climate-action/11077022
60
diddums..
Blame your mum and your teachers for being gullible and pushing their indoctrination onto you.
The Liberal government is paying way too much attention to something that is a fallacy and just isn’t happening.
Tony Abbott used to have the right idea, but is bending down.
Even Fitz agrees that the Australian Conservative Party have a very sane and rational energy policy, that doesn’t include any of the anti-science anti-CO2 nonsense.
103
They are both BS artists , literally, in Labor case, they both support (CO2)emissions reduction. Totally unnecessary and absurd. Economy destroying actions.
60
Its adults who shoukd know better.
Kids are impressionable and usually easily lead.
It only needs one court case to make a difference…
60
The DownUnder 135
I just read about the DownUnder 135 ultramarathon (Weekend Australian), which is underway at this very moment in the Lederderg State Park and adjacent Wombat State Forrest to Blackwood.
I wonder if any will finish this year due to the rain, which will likely make conditions more difficult, possible treacherous.
http://www.downunder135.com/
30
Two runners have finished.
Another 4 runners are likely to make it before the time expires at 2pm today.
https://trackme.kiwi/event/publicview/1164
40
Not a good Choice.
I just bought some Sempra, an expensive herbicide that takes out nutgrass but the label is clear: Use a nonionic surfactant! Surprisingly few household cleaners list the ingredients so I look them up on the web.
I found some Coles home brand toilet cleaner and couldn’t find ingredients but did find a Choice review. It was not flattering.
Good points • None to mention
Bad points • Equal lowest score on test
• Performs worse than water
50
About time they enforced some regulation, if they even have any, re labeling on this stuff.
40
Remember when Harpic had to drop the “clean round the bend” slogan?
Spoiled “Harpic” as a very descriptive nickname
20
Palmolive Dishwashing Liquid has been used by farmers for years as a non-ionic surfactant. All you need is something that will break down the waxy leaf coating, thus allowing the active herbicide ingredient to penetrate and do its thing. Nutgrass is notorious for its persistence.
I would be dissolving the granules before I introduced the detergent, and don’t overdo it with the detergent or agitate it too vigorously afterwards — you don’t want a foam bath. A few drops in a 5L knapsack would usually be sufficient unless your Sempra label tells you otherwise. Some herbicides like Roundup come with built-in surfactants. Apparently Sempra doesn’t, possibly because it is primarily for use amongst sugar cane, corn and sorghum crops.
You can buy commercial surfactants, but you need to watch them. In the past I found some were more toxic that the actual herbicides. The marker foam concentrate (coloured detergent that leaves foam blobs to show where you have been) that we used on our boomsprays was WAY more toxic than the real chemicals we were applying. I switched back to Palmolive + cochineal. Standard Roundup used to kill frogs when used near watercourses. They traced the effect back to its surfactant, not to the Glyphosate. Once a surfactant-free version was released — happy frogs.
40
Thanks beowulf, that is more helpful than I dared wish for.
My research found a number of nonionic products “coco*****” which appear to be “natural” from coconuts and sold to those in the home made soap and detergent business but your solution sounds easier. Thanks again.
20
Sorry. For the detergent that should have said a few drops PER LITRE rather than per 5L.
00
Here’s a press release to introduce us to a new Australian political party . . . . .
https://imoparty.com/Press-Release-Launch
20
What about their opinion on’climate change ‘ policy? Sounds like a doctors party.
20
Saw that. Unfortunate, but they do address the situation with vaccinations, and fluoride, which are both subjects which are needing some attention and are not getting any from the other parties, as far as I know.
00
Well, there goes my chance of a political career!
20
Mine is still alive, I’ve never been on social media. 🙂
00
“Larry Ledwick says:
4 May 2019 at 9:20 pm
Darwin award winner here –
Ooops I was not paying attention”
Link at
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2019/04/26/w-o-o-d-26-april-2019/#comment-111798
10
Darwin candidates seem to be clustered around the Grand Canyon of late with people going over the edge on a regular basis trying to get that perfect pic. There was also an outstanding, although amazingly unsuccessful, attempt at the Kilaeau volcano when someone went over the edge.
https://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-updates/incidents/tourist-crosses-barrier-falls-into-crater-of-kilauea-volcano/news-story/73de69aa6b7b68572dca46103dc03c45
Not good enough for a Darwin but definitely good enough for a Numpty Award.
40
Gravity – may the force go with you, or vice versa.
40
You can have a lot of fun with gravity, you just need to avoid the high speed dirt at the end.
20
I notice that the pre-poll votes yesterday were over 100,000 (or as Yonniestone might put it CM), a record amount.
Looks like a lot of people have made up their minds and aren’t waiting for the major parties official Campaign launches.
I would think that most will favour the current Government, so in a close seat the postal votes will be the decider.
30
Why? Pre-polling is being done by people who have already made up their minds when the polling was around 53/47 to the ALP.
42
According to Tingle at our ABC.
‘The staggering number of pre-poll votes in the first three days of the pre-polling period bodes ominously for the Government.’
30
“According to Tingle at our ABC.”
LOL.. a non-authority on anything!
103
Admittedly she is centre left ….”The underlying story everyone tells you is that the government is going to get smashed.” Tingle
But she might be correct on the pre-polling, more millennials than old guys.
40
Be interesting to see the demographic breakdown post election. Lots of people enrolled (go the AEC!!) and some thoughts around that are that part of it is down to large number of enrollments around the SSM plebiscite.
this may tie in with that?
41
eg, did you catch any of the ALP campaign launch today? PJK strolled in and did a pretty good interview afterwards. somewhat upstaged Swannie who was actually scheduled for then and had to wait.
22
philthegeek:
Well, they have hidden Bowen from the public so why should they warn off voters with Swannie?
20
Seriously? You dont actually follow anything in the media election coverage then?
You really need to wash, change the crusty underclothes and get out of AngryG’s bunker every now and again. 🙂
32
Poor phloop, goes all manic mindless berserker whenever challenged.
So Funny.
SO PREDICTABLE.
SO SAD !
Enjoying your leftist sewer, little worm ?
01
Gees, they really are rolling out the has-been dinosaurs, aren’t they !
Just to remind voters of the damage those two wrought to Australia 😉
And then a picture of Rudd and Gillard gleaming away in their opulence.
Even more damage done ….
But where was Turnbull ?
31
‘But where was Turnbull ?’
** chuckle **
20
Looking at the launch belatedly, Labor is matching the Coalition with the big pork barrel of VFT infrastructure in Victoria.
10
“He has no ideas, no solutions, no vision, no courage to act on climate change.” Bill Shorten
Hmmm … maybe.
10
C’mon, you’re not suggesting that a Shorten government would have anything in common with the Hawke/Keating years? They were beacons of sanity beside a Shorten/Di Natile coalition.
21
4 May: Steyn: A Hard Sell
Anyone who has had any truck with UK Tories over the decades knows that large numbers of them are devious, duplicitous, slimy, oleaginous, frankly repellent and utterly treacherous. But it didn’t matter because, when all else failed, their selling point was competence. After less than three years of Theresa May they’re now in the difficult position of having to market a not obviously winning combination of incompetence-and-betrayal.
Thursday’s local elections in England were the first test of this new strategy. The Conservative Party lost over 1,300 seats. To Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party? No. His month-old party was not on the ballot. To Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party? No. Labour managed to lose seats itself, and in fact its share of the vote was no higher than the Tories – 28 per cent. In effect, Theresa May managed to lose to no one. If she were facing no one on Centre Court at Wimbledon, she would still get totaled in straight sets…READ ON
https://www.steynonline.com/9358/a-hard-sell
30
Reminds me of the bullfighter who tripped over and stabbed himself with his sword. I thought the crowd was less than gracious in refusing his ears (or anything else) to the bull.
10
behind paywall:
4 May: UK Times: Call to spare poor households from paying green levy
by Ben Webster
Poorer households could be exempted from contributing to the costs of making the UK carbon neutral under proposals for a review of how renewable energy subsidies are funded.
The Committee on Climate Change is calling on the Treasury to consider funding subsidies via taxation rather than the present system of imposing levies on energy bills paid by all households.
The existing system is regressive because a wealthy household pays the same amount as a poor one with a similar level of energy consumption.
The average household already pays about £100 a year in green levies to subsidise wind and solar farms. The committee, which advises the government on its climate targets, estimates this will rise to £150 by 2030 as renewable power capacity expands.
The total costs of the transition to carbon neutrality will be much higher than this as it will mean replacing 26 million gas boilers and 34 million petrol and diesel cars with low or zero emission alternatives…
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/4c27d950-6deb-11e9-bf02-7f5aa383779f
40
pat:
Transated from the English “we want more money”.
10
behind paywall:
4 May: UK Times: Lord Deben’s climate report helps firms that gave his business £500,000
by Dominic Kennedy, Investigations Editor
The Conservative grandee Lord Deben’s family firm has received nearly £500,000 in fees from two businesses poised to benefit from key recommendations in his climate change report.
The peer, 79, launched the blueprint this week for Britain to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 although he remains under investigation by a Lords watchdog over whether he properly declared his interests in green clients.
John Selwyn Gummer, who served in the cabinets of Margaret Thatcher and John Major, has since become highly esteemed both as a businessman and politician specialising in environmental sustainability.
The Lords commissioner for standards, Lucy Scott-Moncrieff, launched an inquiry in February into whether Lord Deben had properly registered and declared his business interests.
Leaked documents showed that his consultancy, Sancroft International, was…
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/3312b30a-6de0-11e9-bf02-7f5aa383779f
3 Feb: Daily Mail: Dominic Lawson: The High Priests of the Green lobby and a shaky claim to the moral high ground
Oh look, another member of the great and the good is in the soup. And, not for the first time, it’s one of those who preaches to us about our duty to ‘save the planet’.
Yesterday, the Mail on Sunday revealed that a private company owned by Lord Deben (who, as John Selwyn Gummer, was Environment Secretary under John Major) had received more than £600,000 in undeclared payments from businesses which come under the purview of the Government’s Climate Change Committee (CCC), which he chairs.
The most significant payment came from the firm Johnson Matthey, which makes batteries for electric cars.
It paid Gummer’s company, Sancroft, almost £300,000 over five years — before he urged the Government to speed up plans to make all new cars on British roads battery-powered…
Gummer declared his chairmanship of Sancroft, but apparently not these payments — including one from so-called ‘green energy’ producer Drax, which paid Sancroft £15,500 while Gummer’s committee was writing a report about its activities…
A few years ago, Gummer’s Tory colleague Tim Yeo, as chairman of the House of Commons Energy and Climate Change Committee, was caught out by Sunday Times reporters posing as representatives of a solar energy company pushing for new laws to help their business.
Yeo appeared to gobble at the chance to act as their paid advocate. After the Sunday Times published, Yeo sued.
But the judge in the case, Mr Justice Warby, said the story was ‘substantially true’, and that parts of Yeo’s evidence were, variously, ‘unreliable and untruthful’, like ‘a fish wriggling on a hook’ and ‘unworthy of belief’…READ ON
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-6664081/The-High-Priests-Green-lobby-shaky-claim-moral-high-ground.html
40
UK Times Lord Deben gets less than £500,000 while the Daily Mail Lord Deben gets more than £600,000.
I think I would trust Dominic Lawson on this.
20
no need for an opposing view, Herald Scotland?
3 May: Herald Scotland: Heat from the ground up is a better solution to gas heating
HEAT pumps are not an easy technology for people to get a grip of. The idea that you are taking something that is basically cold – be it air, the ground, or water from a lake or river – and making heat by taking a few degrees out of the heat source, is counter-intuitive.
This is particularly true when the heat source is at, say, 8C and you are talking about delivering hot water at 40-60C. Yet heat pumps can be shown to do this very successfully, so arguing against them makes no sense.
The technology is well proven and has been deployed successfully both in Scotland and for many decades in Scandinavia. Moreover, as Ross Skirton, sales and technical director at Incognito Heat Co, explains, there are plenty of residential premises in Scotland where a heat pump of one sort or another would work very well.
By this he means that for many in Scotland’s off-gas areas the heat pump could be shown to be a cheaper and substantially greener solution to the household’s heat and hot water requirements than an oil-fired boiler, an LPG-fuelled system or an all- electric heating solution.
For houses that have access to the national gas grid, the case is much less clear. The problem with replacing a gas-fired boiler with a heat pump solution is that gas prices in the UK are very low, particularly in comparison to some areas of Europe, where gas prices can be 40-50% higher than here…
Heat pumps still require electricity to operate, but as Mr Skirton explains, a heat pump rated at a coefficient of four will generate four units of heat output for every unit of electricity consumed by the pump. By comparison, an all-electric heating system has a coefficient of one – you get one unit of heat out for every unit of electricity consumed.
What this means is that the householder could see their electricity bill reduce by three-quarters. On top of this, because Incognito Heat Co is a micro-generation certified supplier (MCS), the system will qualify for payments under the Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI). The RHI scheme is a mechanism to incentivise and reward householders to invest in renewable energy, a scheme that Mr Skirton believes will lose its relevance as acceptance grows and heat pumps become the new normal. Unlike the Feed-in Tariff for solar and wind, which came to an end on March 31, RHI payments will continue for all installations commissioned before March 31, 2021.
Mr Skirton points out that over the seven-year period covered by an RHI agreement, the householder can expect to recoup either all, or a very large part, of the capital costs associated with installing a heat pump.
These costs will generally work out at around £10,000 for a small house running an air-source heat pump driven system…
The key point is that where a household is using, say, 20,000kWh of electricity a year on space heating, with a properly rated heat pump that would come down to 6,000kWh – and the rest would be pure, free, renewable energy.
https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/17616323.heat-from-the-ground-up-is-a-better-solution-to-gas-heating/
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pat:
Heat pumps still require electricity to operate, but as Mr Skirton explains, a heat pump rated at a coefficient of four will generate four units of heat output for every unit of electricity consumed by the pump.
Given the coming problems with the UK electicity supply that would seem to rule out heat pumps.
That coefficient of four would have been calculated at a standard temperature (probably 23℃) in the input AND output zones. Taking heat in fromf the ground at 8℃ and out at 25 or, more likely, at 32℃ would see a drop in the coefficient, i.e. higher electricity usage (which means bigger bills).
10
Here is the abc electorates by state guide for the election.
You can see all the candidates in your seat, and link to their websites for policies.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/elections/federal/2019/guide/electorates-by-state
I have a postal vote this year, and am struggling.
After the Abbott/Steggall debate, the slogan “a vote for an independent is a vote for LaboUr” rang loud and clear for me.
Then I saw the Morrison/Shorten debate, and this quote, Scomo: ““Both parties have plans to tackle [doomsday global warming].
Ours is a 26 per cent emissions reduction target; Labor’s is 45 per cent one.”
https://twitter.com/SkyNewsAust/status/1124257170688634881
So the choice is between dumb and dumber.
My electoral seat has seven candidates.
Only one party has these policies:
*** ****** will implement low cost, reliable, dispatchable power by building new low-emission coal-fired power stations.
We will restore Australia’s essential 90-day fuel security policy and commit to reducing cost of living expenses while ensuring manufacturers have a globally competitive power source.
*** ****** believes Australia should withdraw from the Paris Agreement signed in 2016.
LaboUr are the bookies favourites, what a choice.
51
Seven?
Consider yourself lucky. I have five, of whom the Labor sitting candidate is a shoe-in, with a last-minute token Liberal, a Green, an Animal Justice Party(Greens that care about doggos) and a policy free Clive Palmer drone..
How is one to protest vote with that choice??
10
There were some comments during the week about China Hydro, and I mentioned how they now lead the World in hydro power plant technology.
In the early days of hydro in China, (and here I’m only going back 25 years) they got in the big electrical equipment and turbine manufacturers to help out, with the proviso that the Chinese then ‘take it from there’.
Just for the sake of comparison, take the big two here in Australia. Murray One and Two have generators capable of 100MW to 125MW, and Tumut Three as turbine generators capable of 250MW
Three Gorges has turbine generators of 700MW. It has 32 of them for a Nameplate of 22500MW.
Xiluodu has turbine generators capable of 770MW. It has 18 of them for a Nameplate of 13860MW.
The nearly finished Baihetan will have turbine generators capable of 1000MW. It will have 16 of them for a Nameplate of 16000MW.
These three hydro plants generate the same power in a year as every power generating source in Australia combined.
In much the same way as China is designing and constructing larger generators for coal fired USC plants, they are doing the same with hydro, designing and constructing new and larger generators for their hydro plants.
Take Xiluodu for example. It has two turbine rooms with 9 generators in each hall. Those turbine halls are constructed ….. INSIDE the mountains on either side of the dam wall. Here at this link is an image of one of those turbine halls. Under each of those large blue circles are the generators. The image at this link is one of those 770MW generators being put in place during construction. Consider that the total Nameplate for the Snowy hydro is around 4000MW. Five of these large Chinese generators have the same Nameplate as all of Snowy Hydro.
Consider that a large hydro plant has a Nameplate of greater than 2500MW, (so around the same Nameplate of a large coal fired plant like Bayswater which is 2640MW) Across the whole World, there are currently 44 of these large hydro plants of greater Nameplate that that figure of 2500MW. 16 of them are in China alone.
Tony.
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Yep they need that power too. China cant run on wind or solar. Never will, even though they are building a few of them, but I think mostly for remote areas.
40
It might actually surprise you how close the percentages are.
Australia has a Nameplate for wind power of 6106MW.
China has a Nameplate for wind of 184260MW, so the Australian total multiplied by 30. The Chinese total generated power from every source of power generation is Australia multiplied by 35. (the population of China is Australia multiplied by 57, so you can see how we here in Australia have a far far greater per capita access to electrical power)
The Capacity Factor for wind power in Australia is (around) 30%.
The Capacity Factor for wind power in China is 21%.
Of all generated power in China, wind power delivers 5.23%. (Australia – 7.23%)
Of all generated power in China, solar plant power delivers 2.53%. (Australia – 1.90%)
Tony.
80
I see allot of cn TV, theres huge investment of super transmission line projects into remote areas, mostly mountainous West regions.
30
I think I read about China building new hydro dams in the upper reaches of the Makong river, in Yunan, which flows downstream through Laos, Cambodia & Vietnam..The downstream folk are very worried as these new dams will bust the hydrological cycle completely..No regular annual floods. = No rice crop growing !
41
clearly CAGW is not an issue in the Indian election:
4 May: News18: Even as Cyclone Fani Hit Campaigns, Climate Change Yet to Find Space in India’s Political Discourse
Although India has pledged ambitious targets to cut carbon emission within the country, the poor engagement of politicians in this area may limit the country’s endeavours in this direction.
by Hridayesh Joshi
While one hopes that the declaration of climate emergency by the British Parliament will trigger a wave of climate actions across the globe, India, particularly, needs to sensitise and remind its policy-makers and politicians to engage with the phenomenon of climate change more seriously and consistently, because our country is going to be worst impacted by global warming.
The warning of disastrous consequences of climate change have appeared frequently and India needs to act not only at the domestic policy level, but also internationally with nuanced diplomatic skills.
In 2017, India was rated as 6th most vulnerable country to climate impacts in the world.
Last year, in January, there was a report by HSBC which said India was the most vulnerable of the 67 economies, even as World Bank said that we would lose trillions to climate change effects…
One of the biggest concerns for India is the policies of rich nations like the United States and China that are clearly not in sync with proposals to protect the planet from global warming.
While China recently announced that it would finance coal power plants worth $36 billion across the world, the US continues to set up increased number of oil and gas pipe lines…
Not surprisingly, the Global Energy Monitor has warned that more than 50% of world’s new gas and oil pipelines will come up in North America alone…
Until these issues do not become a part of (Indian) election campaigns and everyday agenda of our politics, there is little hope for any change to save the world for posterity.
https://www.news18.com/news/india/even-as-cyclone-fani-hit-campaigns-climate-change-yet-to-find-space-in-indias-political-discourse-2128265.html
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5 May: Quartz: Tesla says it can’t make affordable autonomous vehicles without China’s help
By Dave Gershgorn
If Tesla CEO Elon Musk is ever going to sell fully autonomous cars, it seems as though he’s going to need China to help him do it.
Since July 2018, Tesla has petitioned the US government to exclude an electronic control unit for its Model S, Model X, and Model 3 from a 25% tariff when importing the part, according to government filings obtained by Reuters (LINK) and TechCrunch (LINK). Authorities have denied the requests for the Models S and X, and the Model 3’s request is still pending.
The electronic control unit that Tesla is trying to exempt was described as the “brain” of the car in the documents. At a company event last month, Elon Musk said that this Autopilot 3.0 hardware would be the technology to allow full self-driving capabilities on Tesla vehicles. While Tesla designs all of these hardware components internally, it relies on other companies around the world to actually manufacture the parts on a large scale for the production of vehicles…
These parts are crucially important to the future that Musk envisions for Tesla. He said last month that his cars would be “appreciating assets,” meaning they would become more valuable over time, due to enhancements of the self-driving software being updated on the Autopilot 3.0 hardware.
https://qz.com/1611999/tesla-says-it-cant-make-affordable-autonomous-cars-sans-china/
3 May: CNBC: Here’s the email Tesla sent employees telling them to stop leaking info
by Laura Kolodny
Tesla sent an e-mail to employees on Thursday warning them not to improperly talk about their work.
In the e-mail, Tesla details a number of lawsuits and dismissals the company enacted when workers uploaded files to personal data storage accounts, or published company information on social media.
The email, which was shared with CNBC and verified with multiple current employees who requested anonymity, warned that outsiders who “will do anything to see us fail” are “targeting” employees for information via social networks and other methods…
The email was in part directed at leaks to the media, noting, “In January an employee was identified for sharing confidential business information on Twitter, including production numbers, with journalists.”…
In the past two weeks alone, reporters have broken unfavorable news about Tesla, including…READ ON
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/03/tesla-email-warns-employees-stop-leaking.html
20
4 May: NJ.com: N.J. man admits he duped government out of millions by faking solar panel installations
By Cassidy Grom
A New Jersey native admitted in court Friday he duped the U.S. government out of millions of dollars by taking federal rebates for solar panels he never installed.
Charles E. Kartsaklis, 41, pleaded guilty in federal court in Camden to one count of wire fraud.
Kartsaklis, who previously lived in Erial but now resides in Davenport, Florida, was the president of now-defunct Code Green Solar LLC. He falsely claimed Code Green installed solar panels at five different New Jersey businesses and obtained more than $3 million in federally funded rebates, according to a press release from the Department of Justice…
Authorities allege he created phony documents and sent them to the U.S. Treasury Department, including applications for the money, “Solar Power Purchase Agreements” emails verifying the installation of the panels and five annual reports, which claimed the panels were still generating electricity…
Kartsaklis faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Kartsaklis agreed to make full restitution by paying $3,081,938.
He is scheduled to be sentenced on August 23, 2019
https://www.nj.com/news/2019/05/nj-man-admits-he-duped-us-gov-out-of-millions-by-faking-solar-panel-installations.html
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5 May: ThisIsMoneyUK: The green con: How energy firms are exploiting cheap certificates that mean they can charge YOU more
•One million homes are now supplied with so- called ‘green’ gas
•Most providers of ‘green’ tariffs derive little or no energy directly from renewable sources
By Laura Shannon and Jeff Prestridge for The Mail on Sunday
Yet there is one area of the energy market where the current levels of confusion, deception and customer exploitation are stratospheric. It is in the supply of ‘green’ energy.
‘Green’ energy tariffs have become increasingly popular in recent years as householders seek to do their bit for the planet. In theory, such eco-friendly deals dovetail perfectly with Government ambitions spelt out last week to make Britain the first major world economy to reduce its carbon footprint to zero by 2050.
The Government was responding to a report from the influential Committee on Climate Change, an organisation set up to advise it on how to respond to ever rising global temperatures. The committee said the country would have to stop using fossil fuels – oil, gas and coal – and quadruple the current number of offshore wind turbines.
One million homes are now supplied with so- called ‘green’ gas – an astonishing increase of 150 per cent in just one year – with most energy companies providing at least one green option. Customers have also seized on green electricity deals.
Yet the more you dig under the skin of many of these green tariffs, the less green (climate-friendly) they become. Indeed, the energy you are supplied with under such an eco-friendly deal is often anything but green. It’s called smoke and mirrors – classic energy company deception.
As if that was not enough, many consumers are paying a heavy price for going green through higher energy bills. Surprise, surprise. Yet more unchecked profiteering from suppliers, often owned by overseas conglomerates.
THERE ARE DIFFERENT SHADES OF GREEN
Anyone taking out a green energy deal would assume that the gas or electricity piped into their home would be derived from renewable sources – essentially energy generated by wind, water or the sun.
In some instances this is the case…
But it means their tariffs are expensive. The annual average energy bill for a household using a truly green tariff from either Green Energy or Ecotricity is as least 50 per cent higher than the cheapest ‘green’ deal available in the market.
Yet these companies, in terms of green purity, are the exception, not the norm. Most other providers of ‘green’ tariffs – everyone from Centrica-owned British Gas through to German-owned Npower and eco-friendly brands such as Pure Planet – derive little or no energy directly from renewable sources. They simply buy the right to label tariffs as ‘green’ through a complex ‘certificated’ system. It’s head-scratchingly complicated so clear your head and concentrate…
One certificate represents one megawatt of renewable energy generated and costs a supplier anything between 10p and 30p (peanuts). To put this into context, an average home uses about three megawatts of energy a year.
So the purchase of three certificates per household is enough for an electricity company to claim the tariff it is offering customers is green. Just sit back and think about the maths. For the cost of less than £1, a supplier can stick a green label on a tariff and charge annual prices at least £100 more than the most competitive energy deal available in the market.
There are similar certificated systems in place for gas. A single certificate costs from £7.50 and offsets one ton of carbon dioxide. For the average household, which emits about four tons of carbon dioxide a year, this would cost a supplier wanting to bolster their ‘greenness’ about £30.
For example, the Energy Plus Protection Green May 2020 tariff from British Gas matches electricity through the purchase of renewable energy certificates. Gas is carbon-offset through the purchase of certificates relating to projects in developing countries…
Research by energy regulator Ofgem suggests consumers can pay up to £300 a year more for a deal with a supplier that invests in renewable technology innovation, compared to one where the supplier simply buys certificates…
https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/bills/article-6992675/The-green-energy-firms-exploiting-cheap-certificates-mean-charge-more.html
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Independent’s website – like so many others – is dominated by solar ads:
4 May: UK Independent: How climate change is affecting your finances
The consequences of climate change are already making British people poorer
by Felicity Hannah
From insurance to taxes, here’s how a warming planet could affect your pocket…
Investments could suffer
Business owner Janaya Wilkins, who founded sustainable oceanwear brand SLO active, is concerned that investors are looking to historic data when making decisions, instead of the changing scientific reality.
She says: “With the world population expected to grow to approximately 10 billion by 2050, demand will increase. As the supply goes down, the demand stays the same, if not, increases. Therefore, prices become higher and less people can afford to buy, and companies make less money…
“It still baffles me that large scale investment decisions are not science-based and are often based on historic trends, rather than future opportunities and threats. Large financial companies have trillions of pounds in assets that will be jeopardised by climate change.
“More intelligent investment strategies need to be made from the top down in order to change behaviour and drive more positive economic opportunities in local communities.”…
https://www.independent.co.uk/money/spend-save/climate-change-personal-finance-tax-insurance-cost-a8897491.html
4 May: UK Independent: Why your current account is funding environmenta destruction
But there is some good news
by Kate Hughes
Investing
“People can see their savings, pension or ISAs as a drop in the ocean compared to institutional investments,” says Quintin Rayer, head of research & ethical investing at P1 Investment Management. “Even though individuals may feel their potential impact on financial markets is too small to matter; like casting their democratic vote or recycling their plastic bottle, they can have confidence their contributions add up.”
He believes there is a lack of understanding as to what investors can do. Many people in the workplace do not realise their pension is an investable asset, he believes, probably the largest they own, and that it is their pension, not the employers. “It is essential to educate people to ask where their pension is invested and whether there is an ethical option.”
There’s certainly an appetite for it. More than half of UK investors want their money to support companies that contribute to making a more positive society and sustainable environment, according to (Dutch ethical bank) Triodos.
More than 60 per cent of investors believe that for the economy to succeed in the long-term, investors need to support progressive business tackling the big issues we face.
In fact, the UK market for socially responsible investing (SRI) is expected to grow by 173 per cent to reach £48bn by 2027…
As for performance, a range of academic studies (like this one)(***LINK) can quickly dispel the age-old myth that pursuing an ethical strategy can only mean a hit to performance…
The key point is that while ethical can’t be guaranteed to out-perform, that doesn’t mean it must under-perform, Rayer says…
So where do we find such investment opportunities? And without years of experience in the City how do we work out how green our investments really are?
Luckily there’s help out there…
ShareAction, for example, which seeks to influence significant action on environmental and social responsibility via shareholders and institutional investors has recently released its in-depth report into how some of the largest defined contribution pension providers rank for climate risk engagement…
To create fundamental, permanent change, this has to be institutionally led too.
This week, climate activists were outside the Bank of England calling for the central bank to go green…
But with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warning that we have only 11 years to avert the devastating impacts of climate change, campaigners believe central banks can and must go further.
As Bank of England governor Mark Carney recognises, meeting even the modest targets of the Paris Agreement will require a massive reallocation of capital – trillions of pounds globally – to deliver the transition to a low-carbon economy…
https://www.independent.co.uk/money/spend-save/banks-fossil-fuels-environment-credit-card-current-account-a8897486.html
***links to WileyOnline:
2007: The Effect of Socially Responsible Investing on Portfolio Performance
by Alexander Kempf & Peter Osthoff. Dept of Finance & Centre for Financial Research, Uni of Cologne
10
It has been fascinating and appalling to watch this gross misinterpretation of the IPCC report take hold. What they said was that limiting future warming to just 0.5 degrees C would require drastic action (according to their hot climate models). They said nothing about this tiny warming being a threshold to catastrophe, just that there would be more damage if it were exceeded. Some damage models even show it as net beneficial. Yet here we are, living the big lie.
00
VOTING
I plan to vote tomorrow.
I was wondering where to place the UAP candidate on my preferences.
The best thing is to check the UAP website.
There I found a lot of things that Clive Palmer did and is proud of, including;
• Saved the Climate Change Authority.
• Saved the Clean Energy Finance Corporation.
• Saved ARENA (Australian Renewable Energy
Authority).
• Saved RET (Renewable Energy Target)!
Therefore I will place the Liberals above UAP, despite the Libs many faults.
140
Three last votes: Labor, PUP, Greens… in that order.
94
Yep Peter the UAP is full of contradiction, those blanket media ads are borderline psy-op material but the number of people sucked in by them is frightening.
I even had to explain Palmer’s political history to friends who share similar political views to myself.
Palmer almost epitomises the Australian or even global political scene, completely self serving without loyalty or conscience.
100
George Carlin had it right: “Don’t sweat the petty things and don’t pet the sweaty things”.
50
A question on voting below the line, tying to find a white ballot paper for Victoria I can download to work out a numbers list to transfer them when in the booth, might be losing my touch but can’t find one online for the life of me.
20
https://www.aec.gov.au/election/voting.htm
30
https://aec-search.clients.funnelback.com/s/search.html?collection=aec&form=simple&profile=aec&query=victorian+senate+candidates
Select your State from the bar on the lower right, then open.
There is a long list of them. It is not a facsimile of the actual paper but the candidates are listed in the order that they will appear on the voting paper, grouped by party.
The Libs are the winners with the first spot on the paper (A).
The Australian Conservatives scored position AB, ie 28th position just after Fraser Annings party.
A note on the senate preferential voting system, which is new this year.
In previous years you either put a [1] above the line, in which case you vote was distributed according to some predetermined party agreements, or you had to vote below the line.
Under the new system, the parties cannot determine the preferences. Only the individual voter can do that.
Consequently there is less need to vote below the line, unless you want to preference someone who is not the parties first pick.
However, voting above the line now means numbering a lot of boxes. A vote with just a [1] is valid, but if the candidate gets excluded your vote is “exhausted” to use the AEC wording.
50
Six numbers above the line or twelve (at least) below the line.
Tony.
40
Or this.
https://www.aec.gov.au/election/candidates.htm
00
2 May: TimesAgeNZ: Bridges to hear farmers’ concerns
by GIANINA SCHWANECKE
Wairarapa farmers are hoping to voice their concerns about the growth of forestry when National Party leader Simon Bridges comes to town today…
Daniell said a group of concerned farmers had met to organise the discussion with hopes to inform Bridges of the issues farmers faced with proposed changes to the Emissions Trading Scheme.
“We want to push back on this brain-washing of the general public that planting millions of hectares is the best thing for the long-term future of New Zealand,” he said.
“Now they’re planning on imposing the Emissions Trading Scheme on farmers and calling it subsidy. That really is picking on us and making us look like scapegoats.”
He said he was concerned the ETS would make farming more difficult as land was converted to forestry and farmers were encouraged to reduce the amount of grazing stock.
“I haven’t heard of any other country in the world that wants to shaft their main exporting sector or reduce their number of ruminants.
“The reduction in livestock and the reduction of land under grass is already substantial.”
He spoke out about the sale of Hadleigh Station, a 1050-hectare sheep and beef farm sold to a company which organises forestry investments, as well as afforestation in Pongaroa, Ngawi and Lagoon Hills, south of Martinborough…
https://times-age.co.nz/bridges-to-hear-farmers-concerns/
4 May: Wairarapa Times-Age: Farmers question Bridges
by GIANINA SCHWANECKE
More than 200 people from the farming industry turned out to hear from National Party leader Simon Bridges, during an event at the Carterton Events Centre on Thursday afternoon…
At the forefront of many farmers’ minds was Wairarapa Federated Farmers president William Beetham’s question about whether National would support bringing farmers into the Emissions Trading Scheme.
“I don’t support agriculture coming into the ETS at this moment,” Bridges said.
He said he believed in “human-induced climate change” but advocated for an independent science-based climate commission to oversee policy.
“Climate change is real, but that doesn’t mean we should be crazy in our response to it.”
Bridges also took a similar question from Wainuioru sheep and beef farmer James Cates, who asked whether National supported the Government’s one billion trees project.
“It’s PR and spin which is wasting a lot of your money.”…
https://times-age.co.nz/farmers-question-bridges/
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4 May: UK Express: Bank Holiday Weather: DEEP FREEZE? Shock Met Office forecast reveals SNOW will SUBMERGE UK
BRITAIN is braced for a bizarre Arctic weather blast during this Bank Holiday weekend – with a Met Office forecast map showing snowfall submerging two regions of the UK tomorrow.
By Oli Smith
Britain looks set to be hit with a significant snow dump this Bank Holiday weekend, following what could be a record-breaking temperature plunge. The Met Office forecast showed that heavy snowfall will blanket large regions of Scotland and Wales, as the month of May starts with a deep freeze. Freezing Arctic air will chill much of Britain overnight, with meteorologists predicting that the record-low temperature for the Bank Holiday weekend will be broken.
According to the Met Office, this weekend could be the coldest May bank holiday weekend on record as temperatures undergo a dramatic drop.
Officials claim the record minimum temperature for the holiday weekend of -6C could be smashed in the north-east.
Earlier today, the Met Office tweeted that snow will cover northern Scotland as well as higher parts of Wales, including Snowdonia, where temperatures will hit -4C.
Snow could also spread to lower levels in Scotland, and over higher ground in northern England.
Met Office metereologist Grahame Madge said: “Cold conditions are sweeping down from the north and a northerly flow coming from an Arctic direction.
“There is also a cold front coming in from the west which is causing the weather to be colder than it usually is at this time of year.
“We have already seen snow in some colder parts of the country, including the north-east, and that will spread across the rest of the UK as the weekend progresses.
“There will be wintry showers and although those won’t be constant, sometimes they will be heavy – particularly in the north-east.
“It is not definite yet but there is certainly a chance we could see a record go this weekend.”
Met Office forecaster Richard Miles added: “It will be colder, a lot colder, with showers in the north and the east of England.
“Saturday will be the worst day of the Bank Holiday weekend in terms of chilly showers and possible hail on the east coast, though Sunday and Monday will be a lot more settled.
The shock forecasts has seen the odds of snow falling over the weekend slashed by the bookmakers…
https://www.express.co.uk/news/weather/1122862/Bank-Holiday-Weather-Met-Office-forecast-SNOW-UK-Arctic-temperature-freeze
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Caused by All’s Gorebull warming !
The Met office needs to ask
Gore to ease back a bit
It’s making the UK
Too damm cold
🙂
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4 May: Denver Post: Are late-season snows becoming more common along Colorado’s Front Range?
Denver has seen later-than-average snowfall for the sixth time in the last 7 years
by John Leyba; Chris Bianchi is a meteorologist for WeatherNation TV.
Rain and cooler temperatures are likely, and even snow could once again be in the forecast, just a few days after a slushy inch of snow fell on April 29. Even if doesn’t snow next week, though, Denver has already clinched the dubious honor of finishing with a later-than-average snowfall for the sixth time in the last seven years…
ince 2000, Denver’s average last measurable snowfall date has gone back to May 1 — while the 1882 through 2019 average is April 27. A few days may not sound like a whole lot, but in an overall warming climate, it’s a strange anomaly that has other unusual implications…
In addition to later last measurable snowfall dates, the amount of snow during April and May has also ticked up in recent years. At Denver’s old Stapleton Airport observation site, May snowfall has roughly doubled since 2000, with 2.0 inches on average in the last two decades, compared to the 1981-2010 average of 1.1 inches.
And it’s not just Denver, either. In Colorado Springs, five of the last seven years have featured a later-than-average last snowfall, and Fort Collins has seen a late average snowfall in nine of the past 11 years. Boulder has seen May snowfall in 13 of the last 18 years, despite a long-term average last snowfall date of April 28.
While two decades’ worth of time is a relatively small snapshot as far as climate is concerned, the evidence appears to show at least a trend toward more frequent late-season snows. While the reason why is far from clear, part of the reason for more frequent late-season snows could be tied into a wavier jet stream (known as a “meridional” jet stream). This pattern tends to lead to more dramatic changes in weather, including an increased chance for spring snowfall.
“We are seeing a little more variation in the jet stream,” said Dr. Sam Ng, a professor of meteorology at Metropolitan State University of Denver. “The polar jet is controlled by a temperature gradient, and with the change in our climate, it’s making the jet stream more variable. The jet stream is becoming more meridional during the winter time.
“That dip in the jet stream can cause the jet stream to go a little further south.”…
Another factor could be El Niño…
https://www.denverpost.com/2019/05/04/colorado-weather-front-range-late-season-snow/
worth watching the video; Bellamy also writes for AP, which is given attribution on other media, but not here:
VIDEO: 40sec: 4 May: EuroNews: AP: Parts of Germany receive a sprinkling of snow in May
by Daniel Bellamy
In the central Harz mountains a thin layer of snow greeted residents above altitudes of 700 metres early on Saturday.
The meteorological service said a cold front would move southward and persist through Monday, with snowfall in the Alps reaching up to 20 centimetres and temperatures falling below freezing at night
A drop in temperatures and even ground frost around mid-May is not uncommon in Germany.
Folklore even attributes the phenomenon on the “ice saints” who were Christian martyrs whose saints’ days fall between May the eleventh and May the fifteenth.
https://www.euronews.com/2019/05/04/parts-of-germany-receive-a-sprinkling-of-snow-in-may
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4 May: LA Times: Ski resorts are thriving on California’s heavy snowpack — and higher prices
by Hugo Martin
PIC: Snow is piled nearly 20 feet high in Mammoth Lakes, which had more than 52 feet of snow at the summit of the Mammoth Mountain ski resort on March 13. The white winter drew a 17% increase in skiers in California and Nevada resorts.
The powder hounds were drawn to the slopes by a ski season — October to March — that buried the two western states with snowfall that was 47% above the averages for the previous 16 season, according to Ski California.
The average snowfall at California and Nevada resorts was 12 feet this ski season, compared with just under 11 feet last season, according to Ski California.
“You know it’s a good year when you look up at the mountain and can’t tell if it’s January or May,” said Joani Lynch, vice president of marketing and sales at Mammoth Mountain, the state’s most popular resort…
Lynch said Mammoth Mountain expects to keep the lifts open daily through the Fourth of July holiday weekend and possibly longer.
With business booming, ski resort operators raised lift ticket prices this season…
Daily lift ticket prices increased 12% on average over the previous year, while online prices rose 15% on average…
Ski industry experts and resort operators attribute the price hike to several factors, including rising operating expenses and the continuing consolidation in the ski industry…
The 7.3-million visitation total even surpassed the total for the 2016-17 season, when California ski resorts had so much snow that one resort toyed with the idea of staying open throughout summer and into the next winter…
U.S. ski resorts as a whole reported 59.1 million visitors in the 2018-19 season, an 11% increase over the previous season, according to the National Ski Areas Assn.
“Snow is our greatest asset and this year was one to remember,” said Kelly Pawlak, president of the trade group…
Mammoth Mountain reported snowfall totals in February of 38 feet at the main lodge and 57 feet at the summit.
“Business this season was definitely reflective of the tremendous snowfall we saw,” said Ron Cohen, president and chief operating officer of Squaw Valley Alpine Meadows. “The season is far from over, and we are currently seeing strong spring visitation.”…
The resort near Lake Tahoe reported a total of 57 feet of snow in the season, according to the resort’s website…
https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-ski-resorts-snow-fall-20190504-story.html
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4 May: CBC: So much for May flowers — chilly conditions delay garden centre operations
Local garden centres say the weather is delaying their operations, as cold and snowy conditions descend on southern Alberta.
With files from Colleen Underwood
Staff at Blue Grass Nursery near Airdrie say they’re getting lots of calls from customers looking to pick up their favourite tree, shrub or flower, but the store says it’s too cold for them to put those out…
The shop has been unable to bring in all the products that it normally would due to concerns about frost, but Haffner said there are other things people can do, like cleaning up their yards, gently raking, loosening soil, and getting lists ready for shopping…
The outlook moving forward isn’t exactly sunny.
David Phillips, senior climatologist at Environment Canada, said unseasonably cold temperatures are the result of a polar vortex-like cold front.
“We’re locked into this cold air — it’s hugging all of the province,” he said…
And while having snow in May isn’t unusual, he said, cold temperatures don’t usually linger for as long as they have.
“Usually this taste of winter is a one or two day wonder…and we may go another week with this.”
Phillips said it might be about mid-May before Alberta starts warming up again.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/delayed-garden-centres-cold-calgary-1.5123454
4 May: Sarajevo Times: Snow is a Forecast for Following Days in BiH!
Over the next few days, most of Europe will be covered with waves of extremely cold arctic air that will hold on until Wednesday, May 8th.
It is announced that on Sunday, May 5, there will be snowfall on Alps, Slovenia, Austria, Slovakia and parts of Croatia, BiH, northern Italy, parts of France. The temperature will be much lower than it is usual for this time of year from the 3rd to the 7th May…
The morning air temperature will be mostly between 5 and 10, south to 12 degrees Celsius, and the highest daily air temperature between 6 and 13, in the south and north of the country from 13 to 16 degrees…
The morning air temperature will be mostly between 0 and 6, in the south to 9, and the highest daily air temperature is between 4 and 10, in the south of the country 10 to 15 degrees…
https://www.sarajevotimes.com/snow-is-a-forecast-for-the-next-day-in-bih/
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very funny, including the one comment:
15 Apr: Arab News: Why such rainy, cold weather in the Middle East this spring?
by Caline Malek
DUBAI: Unstable weather conditions across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) have left residents and experts wondering why spring in the region has felt more like winter.
From cloud seeding to climate change, a number of reasons have been attributed to the storms, rainfall and lightning that have hit the region this month.
“It’s usually warmer in April. This isn’t familiar weather in this period,” said Dr. Ahmad Habib, a meteorological expert at the National Center of Meteorology in the UAE. “It’s a period of instability for all the region.”…
Climate experts have called the sudden change in weather “exceptional” compared to the last three years of dryness witnessed across MENA. Last week, several parts of Tunisia were hit by snow and torrential rainfall, causing fatalities. Floods and colder temperatures were also felt throughout the Levant.
“This April was exceptional in many countries, like the snow that hit Tunisia … We feel it’s exceptional because the last three years have been three successive dry years in North Africa,” said Dr. Karim Bergaoui, a climate and water-modeling scientist at the International Center for Biosaline Agriculture in Dubai.
“It has been a very cold and rainy year, even in Jordan, where there were a lot of floods. This year was exceptionally wet.”…
“The differences we’ve experienced are the result of high-level atmospheric conditions, which have brought predominantly low pressure systems over MENA,” said Dr. Rachael McDonnell, global fellow at the Daugherty Water for Food Institute at the University of Nebraska…
While Bergaoui called for more analysis, he said climate change could be one of the causes of such unstable weather conditions in the region. “We know from a climatological point of view that the sea surface temperature really affects the convective system (a collection of thunderstorms that act as a system) here, so it might be one of the causes. We need to study the sea surface temperature in the Gulf,” he added…
Dr. Taoufik Ksiksi, associate professor of biology at United Arab Emirates University, said: “We can be sure that when these extreme events become more frequent and more intense, it can be attributed to a change in climate.”
He added: “We’re using more fossil fuels, and we aren’t relying enough on renewable energy. We’re changing land use from a natural ecosystem to a human-made ecosystem, and we aren’t energy efficient anymore in transportation…
Ksiksi said: “The weather is unusual in North Africa and West Asia … Such extreme weather events, whether it’s very intense snow or rain, are out of season. You see snow in relatively mild weather periods, and floods, dust storms and colder temperatures in some parts of northern Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and parts of Syria, all of which are very likely the outcome of this changing climate and increased greenhouse gases.”…
Johnny Bowen of outdoor clothing company Great British Outfitters noted a 26 percent increase in sales of winter clothing in the region during the first quarter of 2019 compared to the same period last year.
“Last month, there was a surge in sales of rainproof jackets to the UAE,” he said. “Often, the sales come when people from the UAE are going on holidays where the climate is colder. This year, we’re seeing them buy jumpers and jackets to wear in the UAE … It has been really unusual.”
http://www.arabnews.com/node/1483071/middle-east
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CO2 makes deserts wetter and cooler.
This is a global crisis. Deserts may go extinct and the biota may have excess water.
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Testing.
10
Read you 5
10
I can’t hear you.
01
new keyboard?
00
No, just working out the gremlins on the site after signing in again.
00
On a previous attempt, my complete post as below appeared in the damn email part of the ‘sign in’ section.
00
Shared from another Facebook poster.
Howdy, I rather like the idea of electric cars once they can be charged ‘on the go’ and via solar ….. I’m particularly looking forward to a viable 4WD that can be run on this basis.
That said I just received the following which I thought gave an interesting perspective and is also similar to other readings on this topic.
Apparently the cat who wrote it does this sort of thing (but who really knows?)
— // —
I recently did some work for the body corporate at the Dock 5 Apartment Building in Docklands in Melbourne to see if we could install a small number of electric charging points for owners to charge their electric vehicles. We had our first three applications. We discovered:
1. Our building has no non- allocated parking spaces ie public ones. This is typical of most apartment buildings so we cannot provide shared outlets.
2. The power supply in the building was designed for the loads in the building with virtually no spare capacity. Only 5 or 6 chargers could be installed in total in a building with 188 apartments!!
3. How do you allocate them as they would add value to any apartment owning one. The shit fight started on day one with about 20 applications received 1st day and many more following.
4. The car park sub-boards cannot carry the extra loads of even one charger and would have to be upgraded on any floors with a charger as would the supply mains to each sub board.
5. The main switch board would then have to be upgraded to add the heavier circuit breakers for the sub mains upgrade and furthermore:
6. When Docklands was designed a limit was put on the number of apartments in each precinct and the mains and transformers in the streets designed accordingly. This means there is no capacity in the Docklands street grid for any significant quantity of car chargers in any building in the area.
7. It gets better. The whole CBD (Hoddle Grid, Docklands)and Southbank is fed by two sub stations. One in Port Melbourne and one in West Melbourne. This was done to have two alternate feeds in case one failed or was down for maintenance. Because of the growth in the city /Docklands and Southbank now neither one is now capable of supplying the full requirement of Melbourne zone at peak usage in mid- summer if the other is out of action. The Port Melbourne 66,000 volt feeder runs on 50 or 60 year old wooden power poles above ground along Dorcas Street South Melbourne. One is pole is located 40 cm from the corner Kerb at the incredibly busy Ferrars /St Dorcas St Intersection and is very vulnerable to being wiped out by a wayward vehicle.
8. The infrastructure expenditure required would dwarf the NBN cost excluding the new power stations required
These advocates of electric vehicles only by 2040 are completely bonkers. It takes 5-8 years to design and build a large coal fired power station like Loy Yang and even longer for a Nuclear one (That’s after you get the political will, permits and legislative changes needed ). Wind and solar just cant produce enough. Tidal power might but that’s further away than nuclear
Its just a greenies wet dream in the foreseeable future other than in small wealthy countries. It will no doubt ultimately come but not in the next 20 years.
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Tidal power .??
I thought that had been dropped by everyone who has attempted it ?
Back to EV charging…..you can see why some of the smarter thinkers are looking seruiouly at fuel cells.
Personally, i think we missed a big oportunity with CNG.
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“I thought that had been dropped by everyone who has attempted it”
Literally IIRC
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This article does not discuss EVs, but it sort of does. It talks about the creation of a false market by giving cash for clunkers while doing a government rescue of the US industry a decade ago. What we’ve seen since the GFC is the US flooded with cars somebody other than customers might want, and Europe flooded with compact diesels deemed “green” just long enough to get them made and sold.
So what’s it got to do with EVs? “More than 4.2 million new cars are stacked up unsold as of this month – which is an alarming half-million more cars than were stacked up guess when?” says the article. So how do they keep making cars with all those millions of new cars unsold? You guessed!
It seems that the conglomerate of government, industry and finance we laughably call free enterprise has found another way to park new-minted money and new debt in new cars few want or should want. Well, I guess it will make the next market stimulus around 2030 (“Cash for lithium clunkers”?) a bit easier to push.
Plunder and false markets are not new. But this is the real face of Big Green: plunder and false markets drenched in such an odour of sanctity nobody can raise a peep as trillions get flushed. And how many shiploads of our coal have to be mined, exported and incinerated to wage this War on Coal? On our coal? They don’t care. They’re plunderers. But we should care.
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Great stuff, Bodge. I was just reading some US utility reports saying we can handle the generation side of EVs, for a while anyway, but the distribution side is impossible (they say difficult) for just the reasons you outline. Local distribution systems are sized to present need, while chargers add a lot of new need. This is true on both sides of the meter.
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I noticed that the one and only Jo Nova gets a mention in this video “are renewables cheaper?”:
https://youtu.be/xsF2S8dWlEI
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Can anyone advise? Where does Deutsche Welle sit on the spectrum of climate reporting?
I haven’t really been aware of them.
Asking for a friend who seems rather taken with this piece of reportage.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=cl4Uv9_7KJE
Cheers,
Eddie
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Eddie,
Right alongside the BBC, ABC etc.
Will be very well photographed but they’ve had experience back to Goebbels.
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It’s a disgusting politically inspired piece of junk.
People are inhabiting areas that in previous times would have been avoided for common sense reasons.
The area may be fine for a decade or two as population builds and then disaster: the flood or drought.
Nothing to do with climate, it’s all about bad leadership and reliance on superstition.
KK
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I’ve lost my adblocker (on Firefox). Tried to reload but tells me that I already have it, but it’s not working. The ads are very intrusive indeed on The Telegraph (UK) site; it’s almost unreadable because of the distraction and this is despite the fact that we are subscribers to the wretched thing. The failure started with taking out a subscription to The Australian and I first thought that might be related to the problem (?) but I have seen search results that indicate Mozilla are having trouble with their adblocker.
Does anyone here have any ideas as to a reliable alternative ad block? I would be grateful indeed for advice.
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Acidification good for salmon.
http://www.co2science.org/articles/V22/jan/a15.php
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