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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Statistics
what’s new with you? Check it out https://balance10.blogspot.com/2019/12/24-of-your-relatives-have-been-arrested_7.html
30
‘According to camp survivors we have interviewed on RFA, people are being drugged with unknown substances that cause memory loss.’
Its alcohol, Beijing wants men to cut off their long beards, smoke cigarettes and get tipsy at weddings. They are asking people who refrain from these activities to hand themselves into the authorities for their own good.
50
If you’ve ever had to drink Communist China’s Great Wall white wine or Great Wall red you’d understand why the Uighur want to be teetotal.
110
Well there was that Alice Springs winery, and where local legend had it that the raffle pries went
“First prize 1 bottle, second 2 bottles, third 3”
70
I know a few Australian good winemakers who have worked there. If they are getting Australian winemakers in to train them then they might be making palatable wine possibly.
20
https://balance10.blogspot.com/2019/12/we-may-clean-temple-today-and-tomorrow.html
Oh my goodness … that stuff is nuttier than a Scorched Peanut Bar.
It a quotation of the woman who headed up this lot:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Universal_and_Triumphant
Where’s my cuckoo clock? 🙂
30
Its a cult.
10
Prepare for stable climate in or around New Zealand non-gender-specific toilets at any moment …
New Zealand Takes the Lead on Climate Change
New Zealand cements itself as leader in the Pacific on climate issues as Australia abdicates.
https://thediplomat.com/2019/11/new-zealand-takes-the-lead-on-climate-change/
Climate change to steer all New Zealand government decisions from now on
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/dec/04/climate-change-to-steer-all-new-zealand-government-decisions-from-now-on?CMP=share_btn_tw
Minister James Shaw said cabinet “routinely” considers the effects of its decisions on human rights, the Treaty of Waitangi, rural communities, the disability community, and gender.
Now climate change will become a standard part of cabinet’s decision-making too, in a week in which the country has being battered by extreme weather events in both the North and South islands.
30
How fortunate for New Zealand that they have a government so willing to totally dedicate its every act to trivial pursuit. Now if they only had a president they could impeach their credentials as a model for other nations to adopt would be secure for the next century at least. Lucky, lucky, lucky New Zealand.
I do not know how to be sarcastic enough to describe this news from that great bastion of wisdom, the Guardian. Sorry, I tried but I can’t make it any more sarcastic than I have.
90
Roy, it’s worth remembering that this coalition government was not elected , and has no popular support.
They are already past their use-by date.
However fools like Shaw continue with their “tumbril talk”.
This is not going to end peacefully.
71
Pitifully deluded low-grade under-performing and under-delivering NZ political leadership gas-bags endlessly about how good it is.
But just how many times is Wellington going to re-make that ludicrous movie before the NZ people stop buying tickets to see the same laughable fake narrative presented with even shinier words, and even more hollow, phony play-acting vigorously virtue-gesticulating blowhards?
Do-Something!™
80
Nothing that an 8.6 can’t fix…
Bye-bye Beehive and all those who lurk within its dark, dank, dodgy corridors. We live in hope.
/sarc sort of
10
“…the effects of its decisions on human rights, the Treaty of Waitangi, rural communities, the disability community, and gender.”
And don’t forget silicon dummies. They may be temperature and impact-resistant but they have rights too.
40
There goes the neighbourhood:
Whakaari / White Island erupted today –
https://www.rnz.co.nz
40
Your ABC is covering it too.
One dead, more expected, as people are evacuated from the live volcano in the Bay of Plenty (north-east North Island).
Whakaari (fah-KAH-ree) is our most active volcano, and it’s burped, not for the first time. Day-tripping tourists have been evacuated to Whakatane (fah-kah-TAH-nay). Jacindarella’s on her way there by chopper. Did someone mention gender-specific long-drops?
40
Floods… volcanoes… carbon (sic) indulgences… yet no mention of freezing snow in summer?
Aoraki “Cloud Piercer” Mt Cook after 5 days of non-stop blizzards in the first week of December (3 metres new snow):
https://www.lakestonelodge.co.nz/webcamgallery
40
News reports are just coming in that there has been a massive explosion in New Zealand … of hype.
Initially beginning as a small volcanic explosion with a plume reaching only 12,000 feet in altitude, this was rapidly exaggerated by a factor of 3.28 in traditional alarmist fashion by the official government-appointed volcanologist into 12,000 metres. Victims of the hype eruption suffered credibility burns to 5% of their body corporate and included the ABC, The Sun, The New Zealand government, and numerous other supposedly professional media outlets. Victims are healing themselves holistically with a combination of denial and memoryholes.
The ABC informed viewers that the volcanic alert level for the island had been raised from 1 to 2 recently which was true. The ABC then caused a secondary hype eruption by implying that the deaths of the tourists are the fault of the company and government who allowed the tourists onto the island. This hype again confirmed their long-held view that reality is socially constructed and that natural disasters and deaths by natural causes are both impossible simply by definition.
Another victim lost in the hype eruption was the fact that an alert level of 2 put White Island in the same alert category as Yasur volcano in Vanuatu, which ejects significant quantities of ash on a regular ongoing near-daily basis and yet is observed safely from the crater rim by tourists every day of the year, and has been safely observed by tourists at close range even during times of alert level 3 when it is ejecting small amounts of lava in strombolian eruptions.
Our #thoughtsandprayers go out to the friends and families of all facts lost in the recent hype eruption.
[Jo and all the moderators add their #thoughtsandprayers to the families and fiends of all the lost facts and apologize that this message of sympathy and understanding got delayed in moderation.] AZ 🙂
10
I hope the government is factoring all the CO2 emissions from the volcano when creating their climate change policy.
20
Without being flippant, and being mindful that people sadly have in fact lost their lives, the volcanic eruption over there today has probably cancelled out any CO2 mitigation the dentally blessed one may believe she’s made.
60
It is the 7th here.
Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day (from 1941).
Articles abound.
75 years ago: December 16th, 1944 was the day the “Battle of the Bulge” started.
Wacht am Rhein the Germans called it.
They lost, but it was a most costly victory for Allied troops.
It took a couple of weeks for the “bulge” to become apparent, and then the name.
An uncle I never knew died there.
I searched for “australians in battle of the bulge”
and many hits were about 28 percent of Australians being obese, and losing the battle.
Good grief!
110
G’day John,
While no expert, it’s my understanding that we had no land forces involved in the Battle of the Bulge as they were all deployed in the Pacific theatre.
Cheers
Dave B
60
Thanks.
I believe there were some with the Brits for D-Day, but those were mostly not ground troops. And that was in June.
40
IIRC, an Australian was one of the first members of the invasion fleet to approach the French coast. At least from the sea. He was an officer on exchange and was tasked with getting eyes-on the defences early in the morning. Forget whether he was on a ship or submarine.
There were plenty of Australians in Bomber Command conducting supporting raids. My Uncle was one of them.
80
D-Day and the Allied invasion and push toward Germany was a big deal, but the fight in the Pacific was even bigger, especially for Australia, and Japan was only fought by the US, Australia and UK naval forces and a few assorted much smaller supporting forces. We had smaller versions of D-Day occurring every other month at that point in the war. I remember reading a text which claimed 24 Australians were involved on the ground during D-Day landings in France. RAAF was very much still in the fight against Germany, but the army and navy were almost entirely committed to defeating Japan during the Battle of the Bulge. The Royal Navy did do their best to help us fight Japan, but only the US was much good as our major ally in any fight centered in Asia.
That said, we’re very lucky now to have such a strong forward ally like Japan, what a mess the Western Pacific would be now without them strong and pushing back against China, (and Taiwan also). If ASEAN also had its act together in regional defense China would not be anything like the power-projector it currently is within the Indo-Pacific. I’d say that ASEAN group will effectively come apart and form into a smaller more cohesive SEA state block aligned against China, with the others turning more toward the CHICOMS.
30
I read this book just last month, it’s a detailed account of the Battle for Manus Island in PNG. It was one of so many rolling-D-Day battles in the Pacific. Major fights that have been all but forgotten about, but were hugely consequential at the time. This Manus Island battle was basically the first major attack operation that occurred after PNG was captured and secured and it was part of a series of major island attacks that set about to surround and then cutoff and bypass the Japanese forces in the SW and equatorial Pacific. It was this key battle which set the initial groundwork that lead to the US being able to move forwards into the Philippines and Marianas Islands with heavy bombers, and numerous aircraft carriers.
RAN and RAAF were both heavily engaged in this series of battles, after the PNG fight wrapped up. RAAF bombers and torpedo bombers in particular sank vast amounts of Japanese shipping during this phase of the war, which would have saved a lot of allied lives. While RAN destroyers and cruisers provided accurate up close naval artillery support for US troops ashore scores of times, whilst being shot at by accurate hardened and hidden Japanese heavy artillery emplacements ashore. Indeed lots of USN destroyers got hit hard and wrecked while doing these same types of fire-support missions during the battle for Manus Island and it seemed to be the RAN who was constantly going in close to provide fire support to troops ashore.
The ~4,000 Japs put up a nasty fight on Manus. Fortunately their Commander was not up to the task and failed to get organised and made poor tactical choices, presumptions and plans, plus their communications, command and control were all sub-standard compared to the US and AlIied force. US Army and Australian Army artillery were right beside the captured runway for most of the fight providing accurate fire to US ground forces fighting in horrible conditions. Many US soldiers did not survive Manus, and if the Allied command-&-control had not been superior, many more would have gone with them. The only reason the Japanese did not manage to throw the Allies off Manus if the first few days was because their own command-&-control was unable to organize a properly coordinated counter-attack on the runway area. The account says artillerymen were engaged in hand-to-hand fighting at night even while still firing artillery rounds at a high-tempo. For several nights the allies were close to being overrun in waves of such infiltrating attacks.
Today the US and Australia are again developing a basic naval presence on Manus Island in the event it again becomes an important strategic location and operating base for forward air and naval action. After reading this book I was amazed by the staggering determination and guts of the people in this fight. The Japanese philosophy was to build defenses so strong and lethal plus so difficult to take as to make any attacker pay a price so high that they’d just give up and go away. But these guys didn’t give up.
THE ADMIRALTIES, Operations of the 1st Cavalry Division, 29 February – 18 May 1944
https://history.army.mil/books/wwii/admiralties/admiralties-fm.htm
30
Fundamentally the Germans ran out of petrol, largely due to the delays caused by Bastoigne and the attack on the right flank by the British, but that’s it. Patton’s amazing race to Bastoigne was the end of any dream of a breakthrough. Also their army was fundamentally of teenagers with no battle experience. Great tanks, no soldiers, no air cover except winter fog and no petrol. When the skies cleared, the tanks were sitting ducks and abandoned. The supply lines through the Ardennes were non existent.
The other premise is that Hitler could break up the British and the Americans, hoping the alliance was fragile. He was wrong on all fronts.
What was really surprising was that an attack through the Ardennes was so unexpected. It was how WW1 was launched, how Hitler broke through in 1939 and of course how he broke through again. Eisenhower and Montgomery did not believe it was possible, even when it happened. However there is a sneaking suspicion that the old tank warrior Patton was ready for the attempt. He did not believe anything was impossible.
70
1940 Hilter broke through Ardennes, not 1939. Amazing how many people have no idea that the war started in 1939. Not you TdeF.
20
Eisenhower and Montgomery but continued that great tradition called, not being mentally prepared. It happened at Hickam Field the morning of December 7 when the OD did not believe the report from the radar on the northwest corner or Oahu that there was a large flight of aircraft headed for him so he gave no alarm. The Japanese were seen 30 minutes out. What difference would that 30 minutes have made? We’ll never know. But Hickam could easily have planes in the air in 30 minutes.
In a fight or even just when a fight is brewing you expect the unexpected. You don’t say, “Oh no, they would never attack Pearl Harbor.”
41
Roy…
Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but it does carry with it the delusion of wisdom.
If you are going to get things done, you must be on the offensive, and that carries the inherent risks of concentrating your forces and pursuing your own agenda, not trying to anticipate every possible move of your enemy.
The point to consider is not that the action in question achieved initial success, but that it was never going to be decisive because the Allied army had the reserves to defeat it . That is why you HAVE reserves.
30
If you’re referring to Eisenhower I agree. And he did just that and never looked back.
But at Hickam the problem was defense of Hickam and Pearl. If they put the planes in the air and all the radar saw was the expected incoming B-17s maybe someone is demoted and ends his career but no one dies. But my reading of the whole thing is that the radar operators had some good sense of the size and speed of the force heading toward them and the alarm they reported to Hickam was justified.
Expect the unexpected, it just might show up.
21
Russia also had a significant role to play in the defeat of Nazi Germany even though they were just as bad in some ways.
30
Eisenhower and Montgomery did not believe it was possible, even when it happened. However there is a sneaking suspicion that the old tank warrior Patton was ready for the attempt
Need to be bit careful with the names being used here and make sure we also put into the context of the roles and responsibilities held at the time.
Montgomery – Commanding at this stage 21st Army Group (aka the British and Canadians) which was located more or less in Holland. If he believed that Germany was in a position to attack via the Ardennes or not needs to be taken in context that his command wasn’t operating in that region. If he had concerns he could have made them up to Eisenhower, sideways to Bradley (commanding 12 Army Group, located where the attack occurred) but not sideways and down to Hodges (US 1st Army which took most of the focus of the attack).
Patton – commanding US 3rd Army under Bradley. Again not actually ‘directly’ attacked in his sector. If he believed or not the best he could have done was speak (sideways) to Hodges about his concerns. Also if he did believe then he would have started forming a plan to shift US 3rd Army north in advance. Open to correction as I am not a completely well read on this battle, but I don’t think there is any evidence of this. All movements of his command were organised – afaik – after the battle had begun.
Eisenhower – The big boss. Yeah… Buck rests with him at the end of the day, even if the fault doesn’t. Draw your own conclusions.
10
That day that would, “…live in infamy.” has become just another day in December. It only took 78 years.
40
From Dad’s logbook:
Date A/c Type No. Pilot 2nd Pilot Duty Op No.
6-Jun-44 Mosquito VI A Self F/L Barns Patrolling Roads behind invasion beachead. 69
He’d already done 56 ops in Wellingtons. His final tally was 82 operations.
He told me of the fantastic sight of the invasion fleet he had as he flew out of France at dawn on the 6th June.
100
I had an interesting conversation with a gentleman this morning, who remembers the fires and heat of 1939. He also remembers that they were attributed at the time (at least popularly) to the cannon that were fired in the first world war. Indeed, people insisted that the weather before the war was nothing like the weather since the war. Is anyone else aware of this?
130
Yes, I made a comment somewhere this morning about the emissions from the great world wars.
Pictures of WW1 in particular showing the enormous damage from shells, mortars and other explosives are shocking, how the soldiers that remained alive did so a miracle. The air was thick with smoke apparently, and the ground was muddy and full of holes. And then WW2 with the added aircraft bombing and rocket attacks and more destruction, the United Nations and the organisation first established that the UN replaced was created to deal with tens of millions of refugees for resettlement and the reconstruction of badly damaged cities and towns.
A German company, Schwing GMBH, invented their twin pumping cylinder concrete pumps for the post war reconstruction and concrete pumping pipeline booms. Pumps that can deliver concrete to great heights of multi level buildings or across level ground. Years ago I was training concrete pump operators after new pumps were delivered, and providing trouble shooting services. They were one of several construction equipment technologies I handled, pneumatic concrete pumps and diesel pile hammers, etc.
The impact of the wars on weather was apparently significant.
52
Anyone interested in the history of CO2 measurement should read this article by Prof. Zbigniew Jaworowski.
http://www.warwickhughes.com/icecore/
EG Beck also did much work which showed spikes in Co2 levels in the 1940s.
40
Sounds like an interesting Gentleman.
We often remember the past fondly as a more golden time than the present, so personal recollection might have limited usefulness.
You might expect changes:
There’s WW1, the cannons etc, devastating in terms of utterly shocking senselessness of gratuitous slaughter, but in terms of atmospheric effects, surely dwarfed by WW2.
After the great wars, military pollution continued and grew in wars around the world from Agent Orange in Vietnam, to atmospheric nuclear testing in Australia and the Pacific.
In total nuclear test megatonnage, from 1945 to 1992, 520 atmospheric nuclear explosions (including eight underwater) have been conducted with a total yield of 545 megatons, with a peak occurring in 1961–1962, when 340 megatons were detonated in the atmosphere by the United States and Soviet Union. Source
Then there’s the rocketry. many decades of testing using various toxic propellants, (I believe even hydrazine was used), used all levels of the atmosphere as dumping ground for the thick and toxic exhaust wastes.
The amount of fuel burned by these things is mind-blowing. The US military alone uses 48,000,000 Litres of fuel per day. Source
Then there’s the equally enormous growth in civilian effects on the atmosphere, from industry, transport, agricultural spraying, forest clearing, the list goes on.
Whether all these effects on the atmosphere result in changes to weather or climate I don’t know, but if a butterfly in the amazon or WW1 cannons can change the weather, then surely what’s happened since might.
It would be very interesting to ask people who were alive before WW1, but for anyone to remember the patterns of the weather prior to 1914 they’s have to have been born in or around 1894 which would make them 125 years old today. I asked my 88 year-old mother who was a young teenager living through the London Blitz but she said from her comparatively recent perspective the weather is no different than before.
So that leaves us with the instrumental record, and also what might have been recorded in written history from that period.
61
I was born in Australia after WW2 ended so my weather memory goes back to around 1949 and during my growing up years.
There were in the 1950s and 1960s from memory summer days that were often quite hot often followed by thunder storms and later high humidity and too warm houses for sleeping comfort until early morning hours.
One Christmas Day at a relatives home not far from the Queensland Border in New South Wales it was so hot during the day that ginger beer casks produced from clay exploded, the top blowing off and ginger beer gushing out and drenching decorations above the dining table. Adding to the fun was the wood stove and oven cooking our lunch. In the afternoon we children climbed into Willow Trees to watch the older boys and men play cricket on the field near a hotel, and late afternoon the thunder storm arrived and humidity increased. We all sat on the front verandah to escape from the hot house. And watch Mount Warning as the Sun set.
90
Before I started attending school I stayed in that town with relatives for a few months before returning to live with my parents, my first school was a one teacher classroom and an Uncle was the teacher, he drove a grey with black mudguards 1930s Austin 7, motor vehicles were hard to get and expensive in those times. School was several miles away from the village. Some students walked to the school, many rode Horses or bicycles. Many being maybe 30 of them of different ages.
In the months before school I was often taken by a neighbour in his truck to collect logs from the rainforests for the local sawmill, sometimes he would leave the truck on the mountain overnight and use his former Army Jeep for transport. One sight I will never forget was several Goanna Lizards that ran from one side of the gravel road to the other on their hind legs, tails waving. It was of course humid in the summer months in the rainforests.
On the other hand I spent many school holidays on a Sheep Farm about 25 miles from Goulburn NSW and remember how cold it was in winter sleeping in a hut with one bedroom and four military stretchers with grey military issue blankets. And only an open wood fire for cooking and heating. One cold and frosty morning I helped burn tussocks of grass, the technique was to pull some from a dry area and use it as a torch lit from flames on another burning. On one occasion I removed a red belly black snake with the grass, they curl up in the tussocks to escape the frost. It was unable to move because of the temperature and was dispatched by my Uncle.
One very hot summer day I stepped onto the verandah of the hut with a saddle and being a young person I could not see the ground in front and walked through snakes enjoying the shade, my Uncle close behind with his saddle chased them off with a stick.
So maybe there have been changes over the past 60-70 years to weather conditions and maybe to this climate zone?
80
My grandfather moved from Gippsland to the Eastern Riverina in 1920.
At that time, the dividing line between the “good” country and the “rabbit-infested desert” was the Sydney-Melbourne rail line. East of the line, you could grow wheat and run cattle. West of the line was only suitable for “ground lice” (Sheep, when 5he wool market was low. )
Ove subsequent decades, a lot of very good crops have been grown in that “desert”. Sure, our techniques have improved , but it looks to me like a change in rainfall reliability.
70
Skeptocynic:
You could take the extreme and unusual path of actually believing your mother.
30
I have no reason to disbelieve her, and my position aligns pretty closely with what she said.
I have my own fond memories of the early to mid 1960s school holidays lying on the wet concrete at the local swimming pool until it’s too hot and then back in the pool until our teeth were chattering. Repeat all day. We went almost black in the summer.
I remember my mid-November 6th birthday at the crowded Frankston Beach eating cherries. The last few years cherries have been arriving later and later. No more crowds at Frankston beach, its too cold to swim there in November.
My memory is, if anything it was wetter and warmer back then, but that’s subjective and memory can be unreliable.
The beach is still where it was, but all the foreshore forests of tea-trees and banksias are gone.
If there’s any difference it’s negligible and I refuse to be goaded into panic mode about something that doesn’t exist.
40
I was a high schooler in the ’50s. The weather was so bad they blamed The Bomb. But that was nuclear not gun powder. 🙂
I’m nigh on 80. The only good weather I remember was my late teens, swimming, fishing, mucking around. Even the rain and cyclones were good fun. Ballarat in winter didn’t impress me though.
90
Well nothing’s changed there!
Ballarat in winter is still distinctly unpleasant.
70
Years ago (in the 70’s) I worked with a chap who was fire fighting in the Dandenongs then. He said the crew saved their lives by fleeing the approaching fire storm and driving down into the creek, where there was enough water to dowse the truck. They looked up and watched the flames leap from the hilltop they’d left and leap across to the other side of the gully they were in, a distance of approximately 300 yards.
They waited until the fires were less, then drove downhill along the gully bottom to safety.
40
A bit of Sunday piety from Pope Gregory the Great (end of 6th century): In these our days we see more rising of nation against nation, and more distress upon the earth, than we have read of in books as ever having come to pass of old time. Ye know also how often we hear of earthquakes overwhelming countless cities in other parts of the world. As for pestilences, we ourselves suffer from them without end. As yet we do not see signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars, but the changes of seasons and climates warn us that before long we may look for these also.
So there, climate change was already a harbinger of the end times in 600 AD.
80
There shall be wars and rumours of wars….. famines and earthquakes.
A specific warning against assuming such things automatically mean the end of the world.
80
11. And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many.
60
Beware of false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves.
Could be the Fabian Society ( Labor Socialists), Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing.
https://www.bing.com/search?q=fabian+society+emblem&form=EDNTHT&mkt=en-au&httpsmsn=1&msnews=1&plvar=0&refig=107d9f9166754ed2e6b03dbaa7387382&sp=7&ghc=1&qs=AS&pq=fabian+society&sk=AS6&sc=8-14&cvid=107d9f9166754ed2e6b03dbaa7387382&cc=AU&setlang=en-US
70
It could also be wolves actually dressing up as sheep, there’s a bit of that sort of thing about these days.
50
Yes be wary of false prophets but Jesus was the real deal so those who ignore His prophecies will be doomed.
61
The Old Testament standard for judging a prophet was pretty much whether what they predicted, happened.
Some prophecies don’t have a time-line, so any discussion of them must take that into account.
Meanwhile, a lot of what get labelled “prophecies” are better understood as descriptions of reality that we all know to be true.
Life is hard. It’s harder if you are stupid. could have come out of many religious texts.
61
They didn’t have computer models in those days.
30
‘ … Jesus was the real deal …’
According to the New Testament, who wrote it?
11
Eyewitnesses. One has to take it on faith they were telling the truth, same as any other historical writing. Now if we had a time machine we could prove them either right or wrong.
40
S is correct.
There are incredibly few documents still extant from ancient times. Even what we have are copies of copies of copies.
We don’t have – for example – a copy of the description of Ceasar’s conquest of Gaul that was written within 400 years of the events described. Oh, and the original was written by Ceasar himself, so obviously it’s unbiased, right?
10
Independent verification is what historians seek but often lack. Even what appears to be separate accounts are often taken from a single account.
22
With multiple eyewitness accounts, thousands of copies and fragments of copies going back tongue first century, and no discrepancies that cannot be accounted for as variations in perspective between witnesses, the canonical NT is the best-attested document from ancient history.
It’s also supported by contemporary secular accounts.
There is not a serious scholar of that period who doubts that Jesus of Nazareth existed as a historical personage.
61
The old “not a serious” or “not a real” method of marginalising who you don’t agree with. Real scientist don’t think that…. etc
Wikipedia has a good list of citations where you can read the scholarly work of people who are evidently “not serious”.
According to the large majority of critical scholars, none of the authors of the Gospels were eyewitnesses or even explicitly claimed to be eyewitnesses.[41][42][43] Bart D. Ehrman of the University of North Carolina has argued for a scholarly consensus that many New Testament books were not written by the individuals whose names are attached to them.[43][44] He further argues that names were not ascribed to the gospels until around 185 AD.[45][46] Other scholars concur.[47][48][49] Many scholars believe that none of the gospels were written in the region of Palestine.[50]
33
‘The four canonical gospels in the New Testament are anonymous. The names of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were not attached to them until the second century. Whoever the original evangelists were, they never claimed they were reporting actual events they themselves saw.
‘The gospels function more like religious advertisements than biographies of Jesus in that they are theologically motivated. Each presents a particular interpretation of Jesus in which Jesus serves as a spokesperson for an evangelist’s theological position.’
ListeVerse
33
Its highly speculative but Apollonius of Tyana is where you should be looking, a cultural meme built over centuries. The Jesus myth is a structural simulation which fitted in well with accepted wisdom.
Of course the virgin birth and crucification were new concepts, which had a dramatic effect and elevated Christian thought.
23
From this discussion I take away the idea that I’m not allowed to give any weight to oral tradition. If so, why should I believe so much as one word in my bible or any history book? A lot of human history was not written at the time it happened and if we write off anything that isn’t an eyewitness account we have no history.
40
That’s true and yet, as of the last time I looked for anything, there is not one extra biblical reference to Jesus from the period in which he lived. Josephus is often quoted as an authority yet he wrote many years later. If I’ve missed something let me know.
Where did this God-Man come from? Do we really know?
22
The virgin birth and eventual resurrection after the crucification are important holy days, what pagan days do they replace?
12
See Is Christmas a Pagan Holiday?
20
Heavy floods are not always an indication of
a wet year ; very often they come in droughts,
and naturally follow the great disturbances
which then take place between the polar and
equatorial currents ; moreover, our rivers are
so situated with respect to the mountains, that
a heavy thunderstorm may make a flood, and in
proof of this it may be stated that the first flood
that ever alarmed the Hawkesbury settlers came
down on them without even an appearance of
rain preceding it.
In looking at these droughts whioh are
recorded, it is worth while to notice one or two
of the traditions of the blacks. When Single-
ton was first settled, in 1821, the aborigines
told the settlers that long before there was a
fearful drought, in which all the lower part of
the Hunter river dried up, and the only place
they could obtain water was at the head of the
river, amongst the mountain springs ;
that here all the tribes — even those
who bore eaoh other the greatest enmity
—collected, and for sake of dear life lived
peaceably for the time. Still the drought
dragged on. All the great gumtrees died, and
vast numbers of the blacks, who were buried by
their friends in a great field. In proof of these
statements, the graves and dead trees still stand-
ing in 1822 were shown to the whites. We
may here recall the fearful drought, extending
over many years, in the middle of the 18th
century (1740 to 1750), as shown in Mr.
Symonds’s work. And we may mention that the
drought of 1789 had its counterpart in Eng-
land in 1788 ……..
From Michael Smith News, a comment.
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That piece would not get past any MSM editor – Sooooo politically incorrect.
50
Oral history in the Riverina tells of a pre-settlement drought in which the Murrumbidgee dried up so completely that the Aboriginals could not get sufficient water even by digging in the sand of the river bed.
They decided to travel overland to the Murray in search of water, but without any supplies enroute, the old and the very young almost all died on the journey.
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The link I forgot to post above
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/18811968?searchTerm=climate%20change%20%201840s&searchLimits=l-state=New+South+Wales
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With the evidence now hanging in the air, the evidence of government b£stardry, will the governments which refused to allow preventative burns now be held to account?
Democracy must include accountability of those managing the environment supposedly for the public good.
KK
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Interesting question, for weeks, commentary on this blog has said that this is totes normal, and totes precedented. Logically that must mean that the preventative burns where also in the normal range.
This from May about controlled burns
“There are two key points to remember when we consider these questions. First, the impact on human life and property – not the impact on the environment – is the number one concern in the minds of fire officials when deciding whether to conduct a controlled burn. Second, and perhaps more importantly, evidence shows increasing the frequency or area of controlled burns does not necessarily reduce the bushfire risk.
In fact, during extreme fire danger conditions, reduced fuel loads – such as those achieved through hazard reduction burning – do little to moderate bushfire behaviour.” (Trent Penman, Associate professor, University of Melbourne and Kate Parkins, Bushfire Risk Analyst, University of Melbourne)
But as you have all said this is a normal year.
So where will you find the “evidence of government b£stardry”
When I think of the opprobrium you and others have heaped on me for suggesting that this was not normal, I do wonder what it would take to open your eyes
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If 4 deaths from fires over 3 weeks is catastrophic and unprecedented, what is the description for 400 deaths in 2 days?
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The lie that Fitz continues to peddle, is that “normal” is the same as “adequate”.
To reiterate. Every Royal Commission into Australian bushfires for the last 80 years has found that we are doing insufficient fuel reduction.
Appeal-to-authority fallacies notwithstanding, the link between fire behaviour and fuel levels has been established experimentally, (unlike AGW).
The other lie is the claim that it only matters during periods of extreme fire. Many of these fires have been burning for a significant number of days. During this, there have been periods in which conditions have moderated, and an opportunity exists to control them before conditions become extreme, again.
Low fuel levels and benign fire behaviour allow us to do that. High fuel levels do not.
I keep referring to the Canberra fires because the inquiries have been completed and I have read most of the evidence. There were over 20 fires lit over a short period by dry lightning storms.. The majority of them were controlled by Rural brigades in light fuels and with good access.
The McIntyres Hut and Broken Cart fires were not controlled, despite assessment by both the senior local RFS Officer and a group of bushfire research scientists, that windows of benign conditions existed – predictably – over the next few days.
The opportunities were lost, and after the fire had been burning for over a week, hot winds arrived and the combined fires spread east to Canberra. Four people died and 500 homes were burnt because we failed to take advantage of our opportunities.
We now have big fires in the ranges along the East Coast. Every competent planner understands that we should expect more hot, dry winds before Christmas. Either we get those fires under control ASAP, or they will drive toward the coast…. which is where all the houses are.
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No I’m saying you can not have it both ways. Either this is a normal year, or it is not. Controlled burns, like say last year, were enough then, so they should have been enough now.
Around Sydney in May 2019 smoke from those controlled burns was posing a health risk, this was reported on at the time.
And finally, hindsight is wonderful, but do you really think that the ACT had the resources, and the authority to combat fires that were started and still burning across their border with NSW
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Peter’s straw man is alight and destroying itself.
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This is a drought year (or years) caused by anomalous cold water above and below the continent. (not CO2)
Mixed with strong blustery winds, from the meandering jet stream (not CO2) and the build-up of excessive fuel load just to greenie policies.
So no, its not a normal year.
But it is normal for a bad year, which Australia has had many of in the past.
Its been greatly exacerbated by the wanton and deliberate neglect of locked up land from normal use, greenie type policies.
This has caused a build-up of fuel load, just waiting for these adverse conditions to occur.
There is absolutely no evidence that human release of CO2 has had any affect on these adverse weather conditions.
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“No I’m saying you can not have it both ways.”
No, as usual, its just a deliberate act of mis-comprehension on your behalf.
Trolling and attention-seeking.
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Fitz is lying again.
We have NOT said that this is a normal year.
It IS within the bounds of normal variability.
That is not having it both ways, because we specifically exclude one of them.
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Fitz….
You can’t help yourself, can you.
WRTthe Canberra fires, it was NSW authorities that made the decision to permit the fires in question to continue to burn.
The resources were available. The senior officer on the ground testified that he was willing and able to commence control measures.That was early.
The uncontrolled fire expanded and ran through Forest that had historically been subject to Fuel Management as it was know that fires to the west of Canberra frequently ran easy….. but fuel management had been discontinued.
But ignorance has never stopped you from commenting, yet.
100
Fitz….
You can’t help yourself, can you.
WRTthe Canberra fires, it was NSW authorities that made the decision to permit the fires in question to continue to burn.
The resources were available. The senior officer on the ground testified that he was willing and able to commence control measures.That was early.
The uncontrolled fire expanded and ran through Forest that had historically been subject to Fuel Management as it was know that fires to the west of Canberra frequently ran easy….. but fuel management had been discontinued.
But ignorance has never stopped you from commenting, yet.
41
You should avoid attempting to construct future logical arguments Peter, you really suck at it.
20
Oh and yet another lie, is that we have all said that this is a normal year.
What we have actually said, is that this year is within the bounds of normal , historical, variation.
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? you get the award for today. Normal does not equal normal
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And you get the Fitzroy Award for being obtuse.
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It’s just trolling.
Fitz doesn’t have the integrity to admit the truth, so he makes stuff up.
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You get the dumb clown award.. add it to your shelves full, PF.
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Andy
In WW2 there was “Most Highly Derogatory Order of the Irremovable Finger, abbreviated to MHDOIF”.
“If appropriate, a ‘Joint’ was awarded for additional acts of stupidity, analogous to a Medal bar. ”
As I heard it “knuckles” were awarded.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Most_Highly_Derogatory_Order_of_the_Irremovable_Finger
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No PF,
No one has claimed these fires are “totes normal” or “totes precedented”. The claims were that the use of the term “unprecedented” was not justified as there have been major fires, including in some of these areas previously.
What is unprecedented, as PeterW outlines above, is that the fuel loads feeding these is huge, being the unmanaged accumulation of decades of forest fuel within adjoining National Parks, something which is not being acknowledged in the news reports generally available.
Most of the NPs along Great Dividing Range were established in the 1970s if I remember correctly, and had their fire trails closed even later.
As I’ve commented before, the big fire closest to me is the “Gospers Mountain” fire and is frequently mentioned. It is currently reported at 3pm today as being 304,013 ha, and “being controlled”. What is not mentioned is that it is in Wollemi NP, has spread into the Yengo NP, the Dharug NP and the Parr Nature Reserve.
And that’s just one of the big fires. Similar stories apply from Batemans Bay to Ballina.
Please stop twisting the language.
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you can not have it both ways. As I quoted there were lots of controlled burns. If it was a normal year, those burns should have been sufficient.
Stop with the homilies and the folklore.
https://www.rfs.nsw.gov.au/news-and-media/media-releases/hazard-reduction-burns-continue-this-week. (this is the latest available for NSW) and was May 2016, I quoted a MAy 2019 article, so the argument about there not being enough of these burns falls flat
012
National Parks, PF
Not properly maintain
Large fuel loads.
Drought due to anomalously cold water above and below Australia
Blustery winds because of the wavy southern jet stream. (sleepy Sun)
Absolutely nothing to do with human released CO2
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Not so long ago we used to have fire breaks, where a nice, clean and wide trail would be cut, in order to isolate one section from another.
Worked brilliantly … but what happened when Parks & Sparks Department got hold of it? First thing they did was lock up all the fire trails to prevent the fire tricks having any access, and then they let them overgrow with scrub to ensure maximum fire risk. It’s almost like the whole problem was intentional.
180
The page has been taken down.
During this year I have been constantly told by RFS volunteers that planned hazard reduction burns have been stopped because of air pollution levels becoming too high.
The threat is air pollution.
https://www1.racgp.org.au/newsgp/clinical/sydney-choking-on-smoke-from-bushfires-what-gps-ne
At the moment, however, by the mechanism of backburning, the Hawkesbury fire is being contained so it does not cross the river.
This is adding to the smoke, but preventing a fire spreading through the north and north west of Sydney.
Two insurance assessors who visited and spoke to me of the fires in Victoria, were quite sanguine about the problem.
One told me that in an alternative lifestyle type bush area, the fuel was stacked high into the trees, nothing could put it out.
When faced by fire he would have turned and run.
The shacks were built right into the bush, made of recycled corrugated iron and scrap timber, fire traps themselves.
Without treading on Fundamentalist toes I suggest the adage.
God always forgives, man sometimes forgives,Nature never forgives.
So if you do not pattern burn Australian Eucalypt forests, they eventually torch out, destroying everything in their path.
They don’t understand pollution law.
180
Lewis..
I would suggest that there is nothing so obvious as that Nature doesn’t care.
It’s not punishment. It’s simply consequences.
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Indeed PeterW,
What we actually know and understand about Nature is poor and very incomplete. We know more about the surface of the Moon than the oceans or clouds.
Some other things we are trying to come to grips with …
There is the question of the sun modulating the upper atmosphere. How and why is this planet’s Thermosphere shrinking as the Solar Minimum developes?
https://www.space.com/7685-earth-upper-atmosphere-cooling-dramatically.html
Also of note is the ‘Increasing water vapor in the stratosphere and mesosphere after 2002’
see https://www.researchgate.net/publication/337058595_Increasing_water_vapor_in_the_stratosphere_and_mesosphere_after_2002
AND …
Our planet has magnet fields that appear to interact with solar magnetic variations, our earth has electric fields that also appear to interact with the solar ones. Our ionosphere is affected by the sun’s variation in charged particles that it sends our way.
This video spells it out a little better …
https://youtu.be/rEWoPzaDmOA
And those solar winds are much stranger than consensus science thought,
https://www.techexplorist.com/shedding-new-light-sun/28160/?utm_source=BNA&utm_medium=BNA&utm_campaign=BNA
Investigating and researching these processes and variations, then adding them to the UN’s preferred ‘Climate Models™’, probably would take more scientific talent than is currently available in the official scientific consensus of today.
40
and in NZ we get the aromatic scent of pyrolised eucalyptus, high level haze (smoke) and blood red sunsets.
Hello: West Island is on fire … again.
50
Still with the lies, Fitz.
1.The “normal” level of burns are not adequate.
2. We do not burn to be “good enough” in an average year. We burn so as to limit damage in a bad year.
It’s like insurance. It’s there for the exception, not the rule.
90
Actually I disagree , what’s not normal about drought , fire or flood in this country ?
60
Yep.
I’ve been commenting over the last couple of years on the appalling state of the forests, National Parks, wildlife reserves, Nature Reserves and the like on the South Coast of NSW – where I am at the moment. I walk the bush and have done for years. But not this year. I’ve recorded how the fire trails are all overgrown, the creek crossings all “gullied out”, how the gates are locked and how the build up of fuel load has continued unabated year after year.
Currently, The Kings Highway has been closed for days and the Princes’ Highway for the last week. The RFA are back-burning as the weather has turned cool and overcast. Doing what the National Parks and Forestry people should have been doing in June and July.
https://www.livetraffic.com/desktop.html
Those who are sympathetic to the inane policies of the green dingbats need to go and have a look and see the massive damage done to wildlife, rivers and streams, and plant species as a result.
If the green anti-cool burn policies are not finally seen by the incompetent politicians who are elected to run this State, as being totally destructive of the environment following this last couple of weeks, then nothing will convince them. Vote them out.
Like Paul Keating said: “This is the burn we had to have”. It’s a direct result of incompetence, cowardice and stupidity. All good green attributes.
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“It’s a direct result of incompetence, cowardice and stupidity. All good green attributes.”
PF to a tee !!
100
Oh Fitz, you really should choose your heroes more carefully.
Here’s Prof. Penman:
There were actually similar reports from Tasmania earlier in the year, but afterwards, researchers found very little [Gondwanan] rainforest had burnt even within the fire perimeter.
Another beat-up — what a surprise.
He lists Drivers of fire — fuel loads, fuel moisture, fire weather and an ignition.
There’s that pesky FUEL LOADS thing again.
Currently, we’re seeing weather conducive to fires and there have been a large number of ignitions with more than 100 fires burning in New South Wales and Queensland. Under these conditions, it’s the fuels that determine where these fires will burn.
WEATHER not CLIMATE, and fuels again. Not climate change.
https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/why-are-our-rainforests-burning
80
so ¼ of the drives of fire are fuel loads, which is what I have been saying – but you focus on 25% of the problem, good on you
And there is no gondwana forest in Tasmania.
114
There most certainly are rain-forest conditions in Tasmania. !
And no, not 1/4, a major proportion of the cause of the intensity.
Nothing we can do about normal Australia WEATHER conditions.
No warming over Australia this century, PF.
No evidence of any “human caused climate change” effect.
111
And yes, the Taswegians do refer to their patches of rain-forest as gondwana type.
PF caught in either a lie or in ignorance, yet again.
101
Well if that is true Andy, it would be a new discovery. Most references mention historical gondwana in Tasmania http://www.tarkine.org/rainforest/
But of course, if it was true you would have linked to it.
Anyway – to date no one has rebutted the original point – this is global warming, driven by CO2 in action
317
70
So PF goes with both a lie and deliberate ignorance
Thanks for the confirmation, PF
Anyone can look up the facts, except you, it seems.
You really have to stop digging yourself into ever deeper pits of your own BS, PF !
You know there is absolutely zero evidence CO2 has anything to do with it.
Nobody has to rebut a fantasy, PF
81
PF proven wrong, as always
https://chuffed.org/project/tasmanian-gondwana-film
http://www.twe.travel/tasmania-useful-facts/
Please keep digging deep and exposing your ignorance, PF, Its funny ! 😉
111
“Most references mention historical gondwana “
LOL, that is what Gondwana means.
Trying that “Simple Jack” emulation of your again, hey PF.
71
Australia and Antarctica were next door neighbours when Gondwanaland started coming apart c. 100MYA. Aus headed North and Antarctica headed south. The rest is history. Because they were `neighbours’ they share a great deal of common plant species.
However, Antarctica, ending up where it has, has little opportunity to display that relationship
except for Tasmania: a small piece of Antarctica broken away from the main body…
50
We can’t control fuel moisture, fire weather or ignition sources — be it lightning, accident or arson. If you think we can, show us how. We can control fuel loads. It’s the more than 25% that we CAN control, so let’s do that and get back to sane land management policies.
And there is no gondwana forest in Tasmania.
Ahh, you better tell that to the scientists that have been studying it there. You know, genera like Nothofagus and Lagarostrobos. Those scientists are in for a big surprise. I have doubted for some time that you knew what “Gondwanan” rainforest is, and you’ve just confirmed it.
120
no link, no proof
Why is it not part of the world heritage classification then?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gondwana_Rainforests
https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/368/multiple=1&unique_number=422
Case rests
014
For goodness sake Peter. You know the answer to that surely. If not, do some more research.
And just so you know, this is what your propaganda peddlers peddle:
https://greens.org.au/sites/default/files/2018-06/TWWHA%20Tarkine%20Extension.pdf
130
Case blown apart by your own links. Hilarious.
From your 1st reference:
“Not all Gondwanan rainforests in Australia are located in the New South Wales – Queensland region; the largest Gondwanan rainforest in Australia is located in Tasmania’s Tarkine wilderness.” Hmm, seems Andy knows more ecology than you Peter.
Your 2nd reference also details only NOMINATED SITES, not a complete listing of all Gondwanan forests in Oz.
Re: Nothofagus (Antarctic Beech in TAS)
“Antarctica is the only landmass, of those that were formerly part of Gondwana, on which it does not occur, though there is an extensive fossil record. The present distribution of Nothofagus takes in east and southeast Australasia, Australia, including Tasmania, New Zealand, New Guinea and New Caledonia. It has never been found as an autogenous fossil in India or Africa.”
https://austhrutime.com/nothofagus.htm
Re: Lagarostrobos (Huon Pine)
“The Huon pine ancestry can be traced back in time with Palynology, the study of fossilised plant pollen records. These preserved records have provided evidence that shows the genus Lagarostrobos has been around for at least 100 million years and potentially more. Around 100 million years ago the Australian continent was much further south, in the southern polar zone of the world, with this area being a much warmer place than it is today. It had not yet fully split from what was left of the super-continent known as eastern Gondwana.”
https://gardens.rtbg.tas.gov.au/the-huon-pine/
How is it you don’t even know the basics?
100
“Why is it not part of the world heritage classification then?”
It is, dumbo !!
http://www.twe.travel/tasmania-useful-facts/
Stop digging, PF, you are making yourself look like a total fool..
… still
111
“Case blown apart by your own links. Hilarious.”
He has a consistent habit of doing that.
Its almost as though he either doesn’t read his own links, or doesn’t comprehend them.
Comprehension seems to be totally non-existent facet of his brain activity, if there is any..
141
Hello Peter,
Cat got your ignorant tongue?
90
•Leading Tasmanian & Australian environment groups (including The Wilderness Society and the Australian Conservation Foundation, amongst a wide range of others)
•The Australian Senate formally recognised the World Heritage significance of the Tarkine in 2007, with a motion passed unanimously.
PF creating yet another strawman non-argument.
71
oops. blockquote in the wrong place. !
61
Disproving Mr Fitzroy is like shooting fish in a barrel — no sport at all.
From Wikipedia, Geology of Tasmania …
(and support for Andy @6.1.5.1.4…)
Section: Cretaceous
Quote:
In the Cretaceous [the] continental breakup of Gondwana started near Tasmania.
…
Flowering plants moved into Tasmania about 90 million years ago. At these times Tasmania was still connected to Antarctica with the southwest abutting Oates Land and the Wilson Hills.
Yes, Mr Fitzroy, Tasmania’s Forest is linearly descended from Gondwana land so it is fair and reasonable to describe it as Gondwana Forest as Andy has.
That’s the problem with being a Space Cadet: Space Cadets can’t do research.
61
It’s 90% of what we can control…. if not more.
60
Fitz.
forget the ignorant on this site.
Are you willing to write a report to the NSW Coroner, with supporting evidence, that climate change may have been the cause for the loss of life and property that has occurred during the bushfires that have occurred over the last 4 weeks?
The reason I ask you Fitz, is I know one of the fire investigators. He is charged to impartially gather evidence and submit a report to the NSW Coroner.
By your posts, you my friend have a first hand account and knowledge of why lives were lost.
I want to ask if you are willing to undergo an interview by the investigator in charge and submit any evidence that you may have at present or have known of, that could have caused the deaths and loss of property in NSW Due to the bushfires over the last 4 weeks?
If you have evidence, have seen, or been told by a third party the possible cause of the loss of life and property during the last month, then this is your responsibility to report it.
Fitz, you may write and submit a report, or stand before the coroner and as long as you state the truth and facts, you have nothing to fear. I have done it in my professional career, so can you.
yes or no, Fitz.. It is your call
70
You get no bushfires in a desert. So it is only fuel load. What else burns? Fires are guaranteed in dry summer Australia. That’s how trees reproduce here. It’s a kamikaze technique made far worse by the Greens who think some ancient forest elves will look after them. Or Flannery’s Gaia. It’s suicidal druidism.
How long before another Royal Commission is announced?
150
You know that these fires, while nasty, are not unprecedented,
You know their intensity is caused by drought and a wavy jet stream, but mainly a huge fuel load.
Stop your underhanded anti-science imputations that fires are not a normal event in Australia.
And stop your deceitful mantra imputations that CO2 has any cause, when you know you have absolutely no evidence.
91
By now about enough knuckles for a contest
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knucklebones
20
“But as you have all said this is a normal year.”
I dont recall anyone saying that. We live in Australia, we have bushfires that vary in size, intensity and location. That is not abnormal.
Ive lived through the Ash Wednesday and Black Saturday fires in VIC. Right now its green and cool outside after a very pleasant and slightly wet Spring. NSW and parts of QLD are having fires , its their turn at the moment. I am sure by April there will have been many other fires. We live in Australia.
60
You continue to show yourself as a fool incapable of genuine engagement.
There is only one fool bigger than you.
IF, if proper clearing of roadside growth, very costly though, and regular clearance burns had been allowed and undertaken in Victoria perhaps those One Hundred and Eighty incinerated victims would still be alive.
The whole sad story reminds me of the Aztec sacrifices that were made to placate nature.
KK
40
173.
The roadsides around here, Marysville area, are really bad again; their state is a disgrace. If they had been kept clear after the firestorm of 2009, being burnt right down, they could now be kept clear by mowing. Large trees with well trimmed trunks would make for far greater fire safety and look a darned sight more attractive to boot.
A friend whose family have lived in the area for a few generations says that this is how it used to be kept. Now it is an ugly, scruffy, highly flammable mess.
80
Annie,
You can’t expect everything.
You have the best roads, the lowest cost power and the most honest and diligent state government.
40
roads arent bad really (by Oz standards), but that other stuff must be a parallel dimension somewhere
20
That’s unlikely because they’ve not yet been held to account for this even though it’s been identified many times over many years.
What’s good is that they’re finally apprehending the causes of these recent so-called “unprecedented” bushfires – namely, the firebugs and arsonists.
“Of the 74 people arrested over fires in the past two months, almost 50 were juveniles, prompting the Queensland Police Service to issue a stark warning that convictions for arson attacks can see offenders jailed for life.” Source
That’s 74 fire-lighters in Queensland alone over just two months!
I don’t know the total for NSW, but we keep hearing stories of more and more NSW firebugs being caught, including a couple of arsonist firefighters.
Firebug Danger Rating
70
“What’s good is that they’re finally apprehending the causes of these recent so-called “unprecedented” bushfires – namely, the firebugs and arsonists.”
True to a point but it’s the sort of thing used by politicians to distract from the real issue.
Preemptive burns must be done regularly and this has been stopped by Greens.
As Annie said above, 173 dead.
KK
40
There will be a Royal Commission. As always. You could copy the results of the last few and save the expense. Fires are inevitable. We have to plan for them and only backburning will stop them. Nothing has changed, except Greenies building in the forest and insisting that their house burned down because of Climate Change.
130
Perhaps we get the Politicians we deserve KK.
How to explain the judgement of the voters of Warringah?
They elected Zali Steggal in preference to Tony Abbott!
80
Indeed we do get the politicians we deserve simply due the fact voters elect them in the first place, and keep voting them even when they are bad. Many examples of that. As I keep saying the system is not the problem, the voters are. Wake up Australia!
60
Democracy does have some form accountability; it’s call the next election. If voters don’t like who they have elected to represent them they have the opportunity to vote for someone else at the next election. One would think a better system would be America’s democratic republic where the President can be held accountable through several checks and balances and the courts. However, that is open to abuse as we are seeing today with the attempts to impeach him. We might be able to make our system a little better by having more frequent elections to keep politicians on their toes but not many have an appetite for that. Besides, voters tend to be impatient so by having more frequent elections can lead to chaos too. The only real solution is for voters to do their own research and make intelligent choices. Good luck with that one.
60
If the Beijing princelings were running the show they would reduce the size of our national parks and forbid people living in fire prone places.
10
Thanks to Bill of Oz and Graeme#3 for doing the leg work in organising the venue for the SA Chapter of Christmas drinks. It was at a café in Stirling yesterday and we ended up with fifteen attendees including the dog. We had a few people from the country as well as Adelaide and Hills residents and also the United States. We went around the table introducing ourselves, giving background and what brought us together at Jo’s site for sceptics. Not surprisingly there were several people with a scientific and/or engineering background and also farmers, teachers and a public servant. Bill gave a short talk and then it developed into individual conversations and before we knew it, two hours had passed.
Bill, you mentioned your BoM Weather Watch forum on Facebook. Would you be able to provide a link to it?
Overall, an enjoyable afternoon and a great initiative of Jo’s!
160
Sign that dog up for membership in the “Union of Concerned Scientists” – company for Anthony Watts’s dog Kenji
80
Bill brought along masking tape and a marker pen for making name tags. The dog had her own tag, “Emma” I think it was. (Someone correct me if that’s wrong.)
50
Yes, a well behaved and intelligent dog. Obviously not a believer in Man made climate change.
60
Yes!
🙂
30
Just walked past the head office of a major outdoor and sports company. The building is pledged to be carbon neutral. On a street-facing window is a big mural of a silhouetted mountain and the words NoCO2. Reading their website, they are proudly in partnership with Australia’s Carbon Reduction Institute. The owner of the company is a former Winter Olympian.
Which strikes me as a piece of scientific illiteracy. No CO2 means no life on earth. Not much fun being outdoors then, is it? And as for food… there won’t be any. Nothing green will grow at all.
The propaganda never stops, does it?
230
It is as meaningful as councils declaring their municipalities nuclear free zones.The only thing it conveyed was that the council was greens dominated and stupid. It is the same stupidity that convinces corporations to hand wave with the CO 2 neutral advertising. Heavens if they were CO 2 neutral they would have no employees at all and they wouldn’t be productive in any sense!
120
I loved the carbon free sugar some idiot outfit was advertising a few years ago, take the carbon out of sugar and you are left with what flows out your kitchen tap…
50
Thanks to everyone that attended last Friday’s Melbourne meet up for contributors to this blog. There were 14 attendees, including myself.
110
I would have attended if I had known but must have missed the notice.
30
Thanks David,
It is good to put some faces to names. I regret that I did not get to talk to everyone, but I did talk to quite a few. It was well worth the effort of getting there.
Hopefully when we meet next year, there will be better things to report on the climate and culture wars.
Thanks for making the arrangements.
80
Climate wars, culture wars, gender wars, history wars. When anyone disagrees with journalists and refuses to believe anything without facts, it is always a war. I just wonder how the world is going to cope with 200 genders. It’s going to make a mess of medicine and veterinary science, let alone the Olympics.
90
We’re going to need a crapload of extra toilets!
80
Interesting choice of units.
70
How is the world going to cope with 200 genders?
Natural Selection.
50
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Origin_of_Species
20
Peter C I regret not being able to explain myself regarding the public event no show, I respect your resolve and realised people rely on one’s word, this will be amended.
A pleasure to meet you.
30
Thanks Yonnie,
All forgiven. I don’t think it would have changed anything.
Thank you for coming down to Melbourne for the get together.
30
seemed like more
40
Thank you David for organising the meeting. Look forward to another meeting in 2020.
50
Perhaps a June 30th meeting, in the middle of winter to celebrate man made Global Warming? It’s cold enough in summer these days.
90
Do they still hold Earth Day? When did they hold it? I can’t remember anyone in this town actually holding it for years.
Sorry, obviously not in the middle of winter when no heating was allowed. And not in the middle of summer when blackouts occur. Mind you I had the (gas) fire going for 3 mornings (and one evening) at the start of December, and the airconditioning going today. Damn climate isn’t behaving as predicted.
50
Thanks again David for organising this it was interesting to put faces to avatars after 12 years of following Jonova blog, it was well worth the Melbourne traffic, looking forward to the next one.
10
I’m really sorry I wasn’t able to attend. I’m still not feeling well enough for social events but hope to be able to attend any subsequent gatherings.
40
Ditto…
00
Did you get a doggy to attend, David?
If not, ADELAIDE WINS!!!
00
Hi David,
My thanks as well it was great to put faces to names and shame couldn’t spend more time talking to everyone.
Thanks all
20
Watched a documentary on Coca Cola on TV, on it they interviewed a woman from Greenpeace who railed against the evils of oceanic plastic bottle pollution, with Coca Cola being a prime culprit. Next a Coke honcho demonstrated a new vending machine where you can refill your own bottle and design your own soft drinks, adjust flavours and sugar levels and whatnot. But I got the feeling that whatever Coca Cola did, it would not appease the green tyrants. Because Coke is a multinational corporation. And they are supposed to be bad.
Greenpeace were also behind the plastic bag ban. What will be their next target? Must we all live like the Amish? Will they then be satisfied?
70
I doubt Coca Cola will ever reach the level of Monsanto bad.
70
Not a chance. Their continued existence depends on finding (or creating) new windmills to tilt at, (so to speak).
If there are no more monsters, their crusading life is over.
90
One upside of the drought.
The animal supplement we use comes in a plastic lined woven bag which holds 25 kg.
It just happens to be the right size for our kitchen bin, which is somewhat deeper than a shopping bag.
Recycling in action
90
“More blimy trouble”
“EXCLUSIVE: Here’s An Inside Look At How Climate Crusaders Are Kickstarting A Campaign That Is Getting Hollywood’s Attention”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/12/07/exclusive-heres-an-inside-look-at-how-climate-crusaders-are-kickstarting-a-campaign-that-is-getting-hollywoods-attention/
40
It’s amazing how in the US if you have enough money, you can sue anybody about anything. The latest view from the Trump impeachment is that the Democrats have legal advice that Trump can be impeached without actually breaking any laws, simply because he thought about breaking a law! How they know that is interesting, but we are in a fact free area here. And that change would put most people in jail for thought crimes, even alleged thought crimes. What sort of justice is that? Stalin though would approve the actions of the Democrats. The question is whether the American people will accept it.
110
“The tide will turn against extremist activism, because reality is not on their side – future climate scenarios are distant, theoretical, and rapidly losing their ability to scare people. At the same time, the world’s demand for petroleum products continues to grow. Time to fight back against indoctrinating extremism, but let’s do it on the battlefield we choose – not theirs. Read on… ”
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/index.php/2019/12/07/dealing-with-the-current-insanity-of-fossil-fuel-narratives-the-smart-path-forward/
50
Article 2, Section 4.
“The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”
It’s amazing how Wikipedia says the ground of impeachment are not defined and no crime has to be committed. I would have thought Treason, punishable by death, was a very high crime. Bribery is also a high crime, especially for the President or any senior public servant.
Unlike Wikipedia I would have thought the word ‘other’ means similar high crimes and this was added as a rider for other crimes not specifically nominated. It was not meant to be a way for the Congress to remove an elected President because they did not like his policies or views.
The logic being used is that because the punishment is just removal from office, not hanging they argue that it does not have to be a high crime after all. Despite the clear wording.
And the Democrats have tried to impeach every elected Republican President since Eisenhower.
So everyone is having a say on what the writers of the constitution meant. Frankly, I would have thought it was plain speaking and could not be any plainer, but clearly not when you hate a President. And his family. I now cannot watch a lot of Hollywood actors and some are just appalling. They never have a bad word to say about Hitler or Stalin or Mao or Castro or Maduro.
However in his next term, I think we will see real action on Climate Crap. America has the scientific muscle to destroy this scam. If only because there is no significant fossil fuel CO2 in the air anyway.
100
except Gerald Ford.
All Democrat attempts failed. Only two Presidents have been impeached, Jackson and Clinton, both Democrats.
80
Gerald Ford was not elected.
70
You’re right, must’ve skipped that word with my lazy eye!
30
An excellent reason to not donate to the latest Wikipedia funding drive
60
I have donated before. No longer. Everything I read is so biased. Even science articles like the Suess effect. What was absolute truth has become leftist science fiction.
60
Another Ian:
They have Buckley’s chance, even in the American legal system.
Years ago (in the 70’s), a drum of chemical came into the warehouse in the Company I worked for (Multi-National) from a source in the USA.
It was properly labelled and caused some anxiety, like hysteria, among the staff because the expert was away that week. When faced with the legal phrases he decoded them to plain English (except one) and order was restored. Instead of donning full isolation gear before approaching the drum in a cordoned off half a warehouse, the operator filled it into a pail (using the tap on the horizontal drum), carried it up the stairs and sloshed it into the mixer.
The one phrase he couldn’t explain, and neither can I after many years including a stint in Health & Safety was “Known to cause cancer in the State of California”. Apparently a very selective problem, or some bureaucrat writing a silly law, which was passed by silly politicians.
The same expert pointed out that at some stage Coca Cola found that ONE State in Aust. wanted their product sold in black plastic bottles embossed POISON, and a label saying KEEP OUT OF REACH OF CHILDREN and IF SWALLOWED SEEK MEDICAL ADVICE**. I’ve never been keen on Coca Cola but I thought that someone had blundered. So did Coca Cola and there was a hasty change in packaging laws.
**Coca Cola contains 0.45% of (75%) phosphoric acid, food grade. The agreed National Regulation was supposed to exclude anything under 0.5% but some State bureaucrat decided differently “to be safe”.
60
G
Phosphoric acid is a flux for soldering stainless steel.
I’ve contemplated but never tried Coke for that
10
Another Ian:
You would have too much water for it to be a good flux (and extraneous matter like citric acid, caramel, coca leave extact, and flavourings (minimal)).
20
Seen it used for galvanised sheet but never stainless steel .
00
It’s good for cleaning the inside of the kettle and rust removal.
10
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-08/authorities-look-to-control-house-rooftop-solar-power-in-wa/11773436
So the duck has landed in WA. Rolling power outages recommended. Damn solar.
40
When theory ain’t right or
yr policy based on same,
theory inoculation’s called for,
adjustments must be made.
30
Ducks do try to land on tin roofs at night believing them to be water, dams or lakes. The shine is what gets them in. Any shine from solar panels glass covers?
30
Rick Will and Michael H.
At the xmas drinks Michael showed me a graph which I think was OLR vs time.
It showed an annual sinusoid variation with a gradual increase possibly corelating with the increase in CO2.
Can either of you give me the reference?
30
Would a correlation with CO2 by itself actually be at all meaningful?
Just asking.
If the planet warmed between 1970 and 2000 by whatever cause, wouldn’t that alone result in a slight increase in OLR over time?
Is there any need to invoke CO2 here?
PS: I wouldn’t mind seeing that graph too.
20
No. Not on its own. TdeF actually came armed with a book full of spurious comparisons.
However increased CO2 is supposed to keep heat in, not let it out.
30
Yair I saw that book laying on the table.
O OK, is it not supposed to absorb it and then re-radiate in all directions?
20
Depends on P and T, i.e. Altitude.
20
Ok makes sense thx
10
The American radio guy Will J said that the cooling mechanism of CO2 only became operative at about 14,000 metres altitude where T would be about minus 38°C.
If this was correct it shows that the thermal offload is extremely unimportant.
KK
10
Rubbish
14
A heading with no substance.
How usual from PF. !
KK happens to be correct, btw !
50
PV=nRT governs the air as shown by the recent Irish work.
When, and if, CO2 eventually reaches a cold spot it may then do its duty as a “greenhouse gas”, but the effect is not to heat the earth but cool it.
20
Probably too late to join the conversation, but…
Nope, CO2 doesn’t have time to re-radiate in the troposphere. See William Happer’s comments on this. The CO2 molecule has a far greater chance of being hit by other gas molecules before it can re-radiate the energy – any ratio from100,000:1, up to one billion:1. (Happier says 1bn:1) So the energy gained is dissipated by kinetic means with collisions, not radiation. Can dig up the link to Happer’s thoughts on this of required.
30
Only re-radiates above about 11km.
https://i.postimg.cc/cLxbTpGL/stratospheric_cooling.jpg
30
The link doesn’t work Andy. Says can’t connect to server.
00
And surely at that height will radiate mostly towards outer space?
00
hmm.. must be a server issue..
I actually picked up the link from the server, but can’t get access now.
00
Mean free path of that band of radiation in the atmosphere is measured in metres, some 10m – 100m at atmospheric conditions, iirc.
So emissions from 11km are never going to get anywhere near the surface.
00
PV=nRT.
Just as water operates as a liquid between 0 and 100°C the air in the atmosphere operates as gas up to a certain temperature, pressure, altitude.
Only when it gets into higher, colder territory, as Andy says 11 km, can it begin showing off as a greenhouse gas.
Dumping energy, “in all directions”, ha ha, is Not going to heat the earth from a base point of Minus 38°C. All of that very low grade energy is going to be drawn to deep space at minus 274C°, just a fraction above absolute zero.
There is no CO2 Heating Mechanism.
KK
10
It’s never too late to join the conversation about the most important part of the man made Climate Change theory.
20
Good question.
I suspect the number of EFFECTIVE variables effecting number well into double digits.
I strongly doubt that CO2 is an effective variable. It is definitely a lagging indicator of temperature movement. The lag time is also very contentious, but it is not short term (ie seems greater than 50 years).
The CO2 carry on from academia [who are greatly dependent on climate alarmism to maintain high living standards for them selves] is PATHETIC. The lack of balance by the media and governments in relation to the scientific snivelling and outbursts is sickening.
30
CO2 doesn’t achieve anything in the atmosphere, even though it is capable of doing so. Like putting a mouse in a room with a herd of elephants and expecting the mouse to consume all the food there.
40
🙂 🙂
KK
00
Yeah!!!!!!!!!
00
Love it!
00
Peter
Best place to get most climate data is KNMI. This is OLR:
http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/iumd_olr_0-360E_-90-90N_n.png
This is the data link:
http://climexp.knmi.nl/selectfield_obs2.cgi?id=someone@somewhere
This link is the monthly recorded data.
You can get climate model data from the KNMI site as well.
Not sure what Michael had in his papers but I have shown that precipitable water vapour is highly correlated with OLR. Essentially one is a proxy for the other. This is the correlation for 2018:
https://1drv.ms/b/s!Aq1iAj8Yo7jNg1ITK3Yk3q3yhL3_
As water vapour goes, OLR goes up and when water vapour comes down, OLR comes down. This is the exact opposite of the greenhouse effect the IPCC would like us to believe.
This link has a long term trend for TCWV:
http://clivebest.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/fig4c_tpw-1024×320.jpg
30
Peter
Michael did not realise water vapour cycled so much each year. The influence of CO2 is insignificant compared with water vapour. There are very cold surface locations like Antarctica where the energy impact of CO2 is detectable but not over the oceans where the heat in the climate system gets stored and released.
40
Thanks Rick,
Excellent. Many interesting questions arise from that.
I might start this up again on a future unthreaded.
00
PETER C:
Is that the one showing rising OLR with increasing CO2 concentrations? I dismissed it as merely showing that the concentration of CO2 was rising.
Otherwise the claim that OLR is rising while the sun has constant output (a belief in AGW circles) merely shows that more heat is leaving, in other words, that the Earth is cooling (compare weather conditions reported lately).
The problem is WHAT are they measuring? Is it the total energy flowing out of the Earth which would involve some knowledge of the electro-magnetic behaviour above the Stratosphere. It would also raise the question as to what is being radiated by nitrogen, oxygen and argon (approx. 22 times the concentration of CO2) because, according to Stefan-Boltzmann et al. they must radiate too.
“Planck’s law describes the spectrum of blackbody radiation, which depends SOLELY on the object’s temperature. Wien’s displacement law determines the most likely frequency of the emitted radiation, and the Stefan–Boltzmann law gives the radiant intensity.”
00
Now I’m going to have to be careful to keep out of moderation with this one but I’ll give it a go .
The rural city of Wangaratta (which is where I live) have a mayor that doesn’t like our logo and wants it changed (bin chicken) .
After consulting experts in the field he came up with the proposal that looked exactly like the arch window from play school but locals put paid to that idea so he went away for some months and now has come up with what he believes is what he wants and has already decided that this is it .
Leaked but then removed from scrutiny is absolutely hilarious the logo he is so fixated on , upon first look it’s just another bin chicken just done with scribble but someone pointed out it resembles one person bent over with another behind up to no good .
So now there is a competition on local Facebook to ” adjust” the logo even worse and my god there are some clever entries but all too risky too reveal here .
Have a feeling the mayor will be busy with the media this week .
60
Recall that logo of NSW Ag Dept that was known as
“The Flying A-hole”
10
Glad to see Wang council so focussed on the big issues.
20
Yeah no climate emergency here just a logo emergency .
10
both are must-reads:
6 Dec: WorldNuclearNews: Nuclear for Climate speaks at COP25
The nuclear industry took part in the UN climate talks this week at a time when the subject is no longer merely climate change, but climate emergency. At a side-event organised by Nuclear for Climate, panellists described how nuclear power is an essential part of the global response to that emergency.
The panellists in the session, titled, No time to lose – why the world needs all low-carbon energy sources to achieve its climate goals – were Valérie Faudon, co-founder of Nuclear for Climate and vice-president of the European Nuclear Society (ENS), Ignacio Araluce, president of the Spanish Nuclear Industry Forum, Jadwiga Najder, vice-chair of the ENS Young Generation Network, and Sebastien Richet, chair of the Global Initiative to Save Our Climate (GISOC)…READ ALL
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Nuclear-for-Climate-speaks-at-COP-25
6 Dec: EurActiv: ‘Do no harm’: Nuclear squeezed out of EU green finance scheme
By Frédéric Simon
European Greens claimed victory on Thursday (5 December) after EU negotiators reached agreement on a green finance taxonomy aimed at channelling billions of private investor’s money into clean technologies. Coal, and – in principle – nuclear power, are out.
The deal, reached by national envoys and EU Parliament negotiators yesterday evening, marks a stunning defeat for France, which lobbied hard to win recognition for nuclear energy as a low-carbon source of energy…READ ALL
https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy-environment/news/do-no-harm-nuclear-squeezed-out-of-eu-green-finance-scheme/
50
What makes his very interesting is tha Poland is insisting that the EU fund nukes to replace its baseload coal burners, otherwise Poland will veto the 2050 net zero emissions target. They do not want gas fired generation because that gives Russia, where the gas comes from, too much power. This fight is just gearing up to be big.
120
Bring it on…it will be interesting to se how the green infested European Soviet will react. I suspect they will bring huge pressure to bear, or possibly organize “regieme change” in Poland.
With the extreme greens, you appear not to be dealing with rational people, but rather religious zealots who could become a bit wild eyed when they are opposed….
30
According to the 6pm news on Channel 7, maximum temperature in Sydney today was recorded at 2.52pm. IIRC, back in the old days temperatures were taken at specific times during the day. Can’t remember what the times were, but say 12 noon, 3pm, 6pm etc. In other words, if that were still the case todays maximum temperature in Sydney would have been lower.
Who said man made global warming wasn’t real?
P.S. And, that’s still not allowing for the difference between electronic and mercury measurements.
90
Hatrack Not quiet correct.
Self recording thermometers were used since very early times. They may have been read at specific times but recorded the most extreme moment after being reset the last time.
This from Adelaide in 1856.
More here.
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/49757682
70
Maximum and minimum temperatures from mercury thermometers. And good luck with that as it required some care and attention to set them and get accurate readings.
Mind you, with Sir Charles Todd in charge people were trained properly, and performed properly or they were not required,
80
South head Sydney 1841,42,43 and 44.
“N. B. — That these extremes of temperature
are not obtained from a register thermometer :
consequently, although the maxima may be
taken as pretty correct, the minima cannot be
so considered.”
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/161167054
40
Hobart 1855 “Self Registering”
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/2479396
Goulburn 1857
“The thermometers are all self-registered.”
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/13000519/1494758
Bathurst 1857
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/60263459
30
Thank you Siliggy for correcting my misconceptions about historical temperature recording methods. Who would have thought that they had self registering thermometers in the 1850’s? I am continually amazed by the ingenuity of past generations.
60
Thank you Hatrack for taking it so well. You were not wrong about the effect one little bit just surprised by how early they solved the problem.
Please please gently correct me when the reverse situation happens.
By the way there are real problems with how modern thermometers and screens compare with older ones and these seem to mostly be related to low wind speed and radiation. A thermometer can only tell us the temperature it has been exposed to during its settling down over a response time. If that temperature is the temperature inside a wooden box for that time instead of a different air temperature outside the box, we have a problem.
50
Tony Heller’s latest video.
Australia’s ABC mentioned.
“Mass Climate Hypnosis”
https://youtu.be/6T-Yrrg5iJs
50
It must be cooling here
“Migratory birds shrinking as climate warms, new analysis of four-decade record shows”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/12/08/migratory-birds-shrinking-as-climate-warms-new-analysis-of-four-decade-record-shows/
We currently have a pair of butcher birds with two chicks and the chicks are visibly larger than the parents.
what’s that you say? A big call based on only two chicks?
Well if two 20 metre transects is sufficient to call the demise of the GBR then obviously two chicks are more than sufficient!
(/s just in case)
70
See Tony H on “Everything looks like a nail”
20
Descriptive
https://www.redpowermagazine.com/forums/topic/121995-since-the-joke-thread-is-gone-here%E2%80%99s-something-to-chuckle-at/page/41/?tab=comments#comment-1362638
00
Out of interest
Can someone else see if they can post a link to a Tony Heller thread please?
This site doesn’t seem to accept any from me and I’d like to know which of us is drawing the crabs.
20
I just tried Ian. The entire comment went into the ether somewhere, not just the link. ZIP.
10
Tried it with the hyperlink removed. That comment disappeared in its entirety too.
10
Check back now, see if it is there.
There seems to be a 30 min or so time delay.
20
Beowulf
Thanks.
Now the question id “Why”
Andy, none of my comments with those links have showed as yet.
30
I note that NGOs are whining again….
"Fossil fuel groups ‘destroying’ climate talks, say NGOs"[https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2019/12/08/fossil-fuel-groups-destroying-climate-talks-say-ngos/ ]
The NGOs are absolutely correct!
International Climate shindigs must be made fossil fuel free!
Fossil Fuel groups and their devilish suppliers sell their fantastic products to these wastrels so that they can get chauffeured in limousines, flown by fossil fuel powered jet planes, have to stay in air-conditioned luxurious hotels, hotels which were built using fossil fuels, are powered by fossil fuels, and incorporate so many modern fossil fuel derived products and amenities.
All this must stop !
Henceforth all climate conferences/parties/orgies MUST only be convened without the assistance of ANY fossil fuel derived power and products what so ever!
90
Apparently, solar panels don’t work when covered with snow. The guy down the street had a new home built and it has solar panels on the roof and a pitched array about the size of billboard off to side of the house. He has been risking life and limb removing snow each time it snows. We have been averaging about two snow storms a week.
90
Hmmm…a safer option might be a warm water spray from the ground?
But see this is also putting the CAGW nonsense to the test…I wonder if the panels are locally lowering the global temp *just* around his house, so it snows more just on his house?
Sorry …a bit tongue in cheek…. 🙂
50
Someone (may be you, Dave) also mentioned recently that in the rush to install planet saving LED’s in traffic lights, somebody forgot to consider an important function of incan traffic lights in the winter in northern parts of the US. The incans generate enough heat to melt the snow on the lights. I guess they’ll have to retrofit heaters now…
90
From time to time we wonder how the pointy heads in DC, or the capital of your local choice, can be so obtuse & stupid.
We wonder the same about those who oppose us rhetorically, and they wonder about us, I suppose.
The triumph of politics over science on a large scale that kills people or makes life for many worse is not, however new.
Nor, really is the scale of harm….it’s the size of the media machine that differs.
For example, for a number of years after the mosquito vector for both yellow fever and malaria were clearly demonstrated
by public, reproducible research, governments the world over continued to resist the relatively simple and cheap measures
necessary to control these nightmares, and continued to follow the advice of sensationalists and pseudo-scientists, and defenders
of the older theories while hundreds of thousands died.
It took an experiment on Roosevelt’s troops in Cuba and a larger demonstration in Panama to demonstrate that the “science” was right.
The science that was right did not hide behind academic secrecy, false models, falsified and adjusted tad, polemics, and character assassination,
this was where the “bad air, bad earth, bad sanitation, bad morals” people were.
The long term and meticulous data that proved the case, was public, published, reviewable by all, and repeatable.
And still it took decades and a demonstration project the size of the Panama Canal to convince most, some remaining unpersuaded still.
We have had many other examples on both sides; where there is good scientific work but the con artists are louder and gain the public ear,
or where there is bad, or simply premature science we grasp on to and apply before we should.
The woke warmists are very loud.
The various folks in the world who don’t want to be left out of the industrial age are having more impact.
As I’ve noted elsewhere, Australia is a good example of bifurcated environmental behavior, blowing up coal plants whilst exporting 200 million tons
a year to burn elsewhere.
I’m waiting for the Panama Canal of environmental demonstrations: is it the bad earth of bad models or the mosquitos of natural variability.
May take a long time to figure out.
30
I think its simply that the eco-loons operate at a very high level and basically dont like their fellow humans, but they of course are a “special” case.
There appears to be a strain of eugenics that runs through the powers that be, that are happy to see population reduction ( e.g. through with-holding mosquito control across the planet to ensure plenty of people die, to “protect” the planet ).
Here in Oz, if “they” decree removal of electricity will aid in more people locked down ( or better, removed ) to protect their mythical “gaia” then that is what will happen.
It a form of illness, as they say, absolute power corrupts absolutely. As best I can work out, the Elite follow a form of an occult, New Age belief system, that has eugenics as part of it. It appears to be a form of eco n*zism.
Agenda 21 and Rewilding appears to be eco n*zism formalized and pursued via the UN.
When you view activities through this lens, what appears to be “random” stupid stuff takes on relevance as you see the pattern of Agenda 21 and Rewilding taking place around you.
50
I found this extraordinary – https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/scienceshow/controlled-burns-destroy-ecosystems-and-may-not-reduce-fire-risk/11774496?fbclid=IwAR2Z05F9R4ammG4jndnjtDc7haXDRhWgy7yHE4F0FAC_siVVeELxOT8BYh0
25
I didn’t bother.
Greens have done something monstrous to Australia by denying preemptive burns.
Just keep in mind the horrific deaths of 173 Australians.
173KK
90
On the morning of 7 February northwesterly winds in excess of 100 kilometres per hour scoured the state, bringing hot, dry air from Central Australia – Black Saturday
These fires have been running since September, and they have already burnt 4 times the area in NSW alone, than that of the Black Saturday fire.
So you confirm that the 2019-20 fire season is exceptional and unprecedented.
08
Fires can happen any time during summer, troll !
So no, not unprecedented.. certainly near the top end of natural range.
In fact the peak fire season is generally November, December.
And fires have often occurred earlier.
You have been shown these facts, but again, just blah on regardless.
The severity is to do with weather, drought and fuel load.
There is no evidence of any CO2 warming anywhere in the world.
70
No, what is exceptional and unprecedented are the fuel loads. See 26.8
70
Appears to be a propaganda piece to convince stupid people that common sense doenst apply.
Only from “our” Bolshevik Collective…..
80
Lantana ecosystems need to be destroyed. !
80
I wonder how the ABC intend to burn the same piece of wood two times?
100
Yes Tel , that’s my take on this rubbish as well , burnt is burnt .
80
Quite right Vishnu. As a guide, and for this blog, the quicker the dismissal, viz “ I didn’t bother.” – first 3 words of the first response – means you are closest to the truth.
013
Conversely the inverse Will apply but only until such times as it’s digitised and homogenised.
173KK
70
You never bother to read even your own links, PF
Why would anyone bother reading anything from the ABC.
All you are ever going to get from that source is a load of mantra drivel mis-information.
I thought you wanted to get rid of pollution. !
91
The Greens believe in “rewilding” and also the deliberate depopulation of humans from the planet. Opposition to fuel reduction burns and hence deadly fires supports both those objectives. Hence also their opposition to agriculture in general.
70
If anyone here were to flash a Fox News reference for our GeeUppers it would meet with contempt. (As a total MSM abstainer I might even agree in part.)
Yet they give us The Guardian and ABC, as if the snootiness and self-importance of those posh-left outlets make them credible. It’s all slop, guys, filtered, distorted, political, compromised, manipulated and manipulative. Please wake up.
God ‘elp us…they even expect us to read The Conversation! (I say read, because you certainly don’t get to converse.)
110
I would avoid MSM as well
06
Poor PF, tries a joke and it falls flat as well.
A bit like atmospheric CO2, isn’t it
No known provable problems with the MSM you linked to
https://www.webmd.com/vitamins-and-supplements/msm-methylsulfonylmethane-uses-and-risks#2-4
Climate change agenda, on the other hand, has been proven to cause unsubstantiated verbal regurgitation by klimate klowns.
53
I think Peter Fitzroy is a terrifically important contributor to this site. Without him and his declarations we wouldn’t have anything like as much good information from others who post by way of contradicting his writings. Thank you Peter you are enabling us to learn much because of you, not from you. ToM
70
No comment.
173KK
20
So firestorms don’t obliterate ecosystems? I note Dixon does not address the issue of fire intensity. Do you imagine a few ground-level fires trickling through the bush would have killed Fitzy’s koalas? Strange that periodic burning — which created this eucalypt landscape — won’t work now. No one is suggesting that a forest with a natural fire periodicity of 80 years should be burnt off every 5 years. Disingenuous.
And this just in from the Institute of Foresters and the Volunteer Firefighters Association. Pay particular attention to the very last point.
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/prescribed-burning-key-to-controlling-fires/ar-BBXVscE?ocid=spartandhp
In summary:
• A forestry expert has condemned bushfire prevention strategies in an open letter to the Prime Minister and premiers, saying it is entirely within their power to put an end to the situation by prescribed burning . . . says Australians are being told that “fires are uncontrollable in extreme weather and there’s nothing we can possibly do”.
• He said the “simple solution” of preventative or prescribed burns to reduce fuel levels of leaves, dead twigs and other vegetation emerged from a House of Representatives inquiry after the 2003 Canberra fires …
• “The fires that burnt Canberra in 2003 jumped over miles and miles of bare paddocks. The problem is if you have three-dimensional, continuous fuel and extreme conditions, you can generate ember showers that travel tens of kilometres ahead of the front. A fire break is going to do nothing at all. You have to manage the whole landscape.”
• Fire captain Brian Williams, 73, vice-president of the Volunteer Fire Fighters Association, supports the prescribed burn argument.
• “The hazard-approval process is what is stuffing the whole process. It is bogged down by green [environmental] and red tape which makes getting approval for a prescribed burn a very slow and complex process. They have introduced a system that makes it virtually impossible to manage the bush in a sustainable way. I am just one of thousands of volunteers out there who are frustrated.”
• David Packham, a former bushfire researcher at CSIRO, said fuel levels were at their highest since European settlement.
90
To my surprise the SMH has published a similar report:
Prescribed burning ‘key to controlling fires’
Expert says blazes have burnt where hazard-reduction took place two years ago.
http://www.smh.com.au/national/prescribed-burning-key-to-controlling-fires-20191128-p53f9o.html?btis
…
Cheers
Dave B
30
David….
I see that the RFS official line still includes the excuse that HR does not “stop” every fire. It’s a lousy excuse. The intent is not to “stop” fires, but to reduce their intensity and lethality.
It’s the same excuse that they’ve been using for over 20 years.
Those of us who live in a grassland environment know that grassy fuels will burn every year…. but they are far more controllable. It’s still early in our fire season, here, but we have had a number of fires. All of them have been contained within the first couple of hours.
30
Agree.
But my reading of the Herald article is that, as beowulf reports, the people interviewed are advocating the use of HR burning. And going as far as claiming it as a solution. Which is great.
Cheers
Dave B
20
David.
Yes. “Firestick Ecology” by Jurskis, is well worth the read. He has the practical as well as the scientific Cred to speak with authority.
David Packham has been accredited expert witness in major inquires.
20
2 old farts complaining about things going to the dogs! no wonder you quoted them. I was quoting actual, on the ground statistics.
113
No PF, in this case you have not quoted any evidence at all, from anywhere.
And when you do attempt to, you invariably mis-quote because of your basic lack of any comprehension of anything.
40
Beowulf.
I’d actually suggest that forests with long maturity intervals for the dominant canopy species should be burnt at less that five year periods.
Do it frequently enough and the fuel levels are kept so low that mature trees are not killed. This is a far better model than trying to keep fire out for the decades required for regrowth to mature and set seed. It’s what produced the big Mountain Ash forests that we don’t see any more.
Our academics can’t address this issue without addressing intensity, so they dismiss it. The obvious solution is unpleasant to them, so they don’t even address it.
50
I note that an “expert” is anyone who agrees with Fitz, and an “old fart” is someone who doesn’t.
So runs the cultist narrative.
40
Evidence… not in his vocabulary !!
30
Yep, I’d agree. 80 years is an odd fire frequency anyway. It was a hypothetical. Most of our landscape is designed to burn far more frequently. The Wild Sorghum in the NT swamps frequently burns twice per year. It depends upon what species are present and what your vision for the particular area is, given that apart from core rainforest areas very little of our country is actually “natural”, our forests and grasslands having been created by human fire over thousands of years in parallel with hundreds of droughts.
It needs to be managed on a case-by-case basis, but that should be done on the ground and done once, not controlled by head office bureaucrats in Sydney, with a 12 month lead time prior to every controlled burn and no flexibility to carry it out. Too often a lack of burning has wiped out the very endangered animals it was supposed to protect by locking up forests.
If rainforest is re-invading a wet sclerophyll area, I’d leave it alone. In general, as long as seed-set is adequate for regeneration of the majority of species in an area then the fire frequency and timing can be tailored to suit those species. Fire frequently stimulates intense eucalypt regeneration in the ash-bed after it has gone through, but most of those seedlings will be killed off by subsequent low-intensity fires, which leaves a few saplings as replacements for the senescent trees. Recruitment only needs to be at a low level. For things like Mountain Ash the optimal intense fire frequency (enough to kill mature trees) is about 600 years minimum. Intense fires even 30 or 40 years apart will kill the entire forest because there is no reproduction by the young trees. Seed production doesn’t commence until about 200 y.o. and peaks at about 600 y.o. The obvious thing to do is exclude intense fires by fuel reduction.
People whinge that the species mix can change after a fire, but the hard seed for the wattles and shrubs that pop up has lain in that soil for years, proving that mature specimens of those species formerly dominated that area in any case. Forests change. The climax species will come to re-dominate over time.
The hardest parts in re-establishing a HR program will be emasculating the bushfire bureaucracy and its politicised agenda. The second is dealing with the excessive fuel loads in those initial burns after decades of neglect. Once the fuel is knocked down, maintenance burns will be much easier. Third is educating the public that tolerating some smoke from HR burns is way better than having an inferno at your back door. Fourth is to disempower the city Greens and tree-changers who have invaded our bush with no idea about fire in the landscape.
40
Oh…. and in the 2003 fires, the updraft created by the highly intense fires led to confirmed spotting activity up to SIXTY KILOMETRES in front of the fire.
We had a helo-pilot report having a wrist-thick branch strike his aircraft at 1500’agl. Another -flying doors-off, had a fire in his lap from burning material landing there.
Incredibly hairy conditions in which to fly.
30
Vish…
Classic example of an ivory-tower academic not understanding what we are trying to achieve.
He makes “biodiversity” his measure of appropriateness, without reference to whether the species common in an infrequently-burnt landscape naturally belong there. It is simply wrong to argue as though we can count species when what we are trying to do is to thin or remove some species from sections of the landscape.
His argument tries to conflate the overly long interval (or absent for decades) Burning in Eastern Australia, with the successful (see the work of Roger Underwood) in the Western Australian forests.
Again, he’s ignoring the difference between long-unbury dry sclerophyll, and “wet pocket” forests. Forests that have not “developed a resistance” to fire through lack of HR, but due to their topography, soil-type and aspect….. Those are the historical refuge areas that remain unburnt, but the species growing there do not persist on the dry ridges, particularly those with a northern and westerly aspect.
If you are not burning enough to see species variation in relation to topography, soil and aspect, then you are Not. Doing. It. Right.
He wants to talk about environmental damage, but wants to dismiss intensity. I’ve been in country so severely burnt that even after three years, the birds were only just starting to come back. For two years there were hardly even insects. His bloody millipedes had all been crisped.The river and creeks were choked with silt and ash. There were no native mammals. No bush rats. No possums. Nothing.
How. The. Hell can you look at that and simply dismiss it with some hand-waving?
70
Well I have to agree. I was quite gob stopped. Apart from rainforest all our vegetation eventually burns. The longer the time since a fire, the more intense and devastating it usually is. Fuel load. A massive conflagration just nukes the whole landscape. And I agree after rain creeks are choked with silt and charcoal. I’d be interested to know what data he is citing.
41
Seriously Vishnu, you could just ask. Ask nicely and you’d be surprised at what you can get.
Treat all databases with appropriate scepticism until veracity can be proven — which means you try for more than one source.
20
After the Canberra fires, they actually lost the use of water from the Bendora Reservoir because of ash run-off.
Ash contains mineral clays, concentrated chemicals, as well as organic carbon and phosphorous which de-oxygenate the water and also cause turbidity..
They had to use aeration to try to get the water quality back up to usable.
After a bushfire event, people should also be very careful using rainwater from tanks.
https://www.waterquality.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/impact-bushfires.pdf
30
COP 25: Hysterics march to no avail in Madrid (my latest)
https://www.cfact.org/2019/12/08/cop-25-hysterics-march-to-no-avail-in-madrid/
Friday was hysterical marching day, so they dutifully filled a street in Madrid. In addition, in a carefully orchestrated show, hundreds of demonstrators were let into the COP 25 conference center. These marches are family social affairs, so there were mothers with babies, etc.
Ironically, while this family social occupied one part of the center, the 26,000 negotiators, observers and press were busily ignoring them in another part. The great gulf between action demanding hysterics and no action moderates was within a single building.
The march did have one very interesting feature, which for a change was not Greta Thunberg, queen of the hysterics, even though she was around. According to the website, this march was co-sponsored by Greenpeace.
To my knowledge this is the first time a mainstream green group has publicly aligned itself with the Greta group. Greenpeace is a very deep pocket, with annual income in the hundreds of millions of dollars. This could give the hysterics serious money muscle.
On the hilarious side, Greta gave us a true “out of the mouths of babes” moment. Speaking at a pre-march press conference she said their many marches had “achieved nothing.” I am sure she meant it as yet another call for action, but it correctly describes the futility of what the hysterics are doing, at least for now and especially at COP 25. Her speech writers, who are normally very good, seem to have flubbed the sound bite.
The point of these negotiations is to get compromises between well established and opposing national positions. There are no surprises. All these hysterical calls for bold action are irrelevant. Even the smallish goal of increased ambition in reducing emissions is simply not on the agenda.
I mean that literally, there is no item on the crowded COP 25 agenda that even allows for tabling increased ambition. That item is scheduled for COP 26, a solid year from now in Glasgow UK. These are, after all, Soviet style five year plans and the next plans are not due until 2020.
Of course at this point the hysterics can still hope (against hope). Next Friday will be a different story, as COP 25 comes down to the wire. Mind you there will be a fanciful reason for hope, at least for a while.
Each COP is run in two stages. In the first week or so the grunt national negotiators work to make the major disagreements as clear and simple as possible. In the second week we get what is called the ministerial session. Here the high ranking national politicos fly in (for shame) to shoot for settlements.
There is always a cliff hanger over the biggest issue, which in this case is emissions trading. Technically this is Article 6 of the goofy Paris Accord, the only article left to finalize. The differences between nations are enormous, with potentially billions of dollars at stake for giant countries like China and Brazil. This is funny money which many smaller countries want to deny them, in the name of integrity. Yes integrity; I am not making this up.
The last day’s session typically goes into a prolonged overnight overtime. But the hysterics despise emissions trading, as it is the opposite of bold action, so they will see no significance in this late suspense. Moreover, this last day happens to fall on a Friday, so it is a marching day. At this point all hope for bold action will be lost, barring some sort of miraculous change in UN procedures.
I can hardly wait to see what happens in the streets, as the hysteric’s complete failure to generate bold action becomes crystal clear next Friday. It is hard to imagine these gentle folk rioting, but who knows. There is a lot of emotion here. What will Greta say?
More deeply the question is how will the hysterics recover from this almost certain monster failure? The critical COP 26 is a long year off. Have the hysterics peaked too soon or will they continue to march, and march, and march? Perhaps the U.S. Presidential race will restore them.
In the short run the end of COP 25 looms very large. By coincidence this supremely unlucky day for the hysterics is Friday the 13th. How cool is that? Time will soon tell.
I wonder if the press will notice this glaring failure?
170
Grumpy Greta says 500,000 people marched. The Spanish say 15,000. Then that is what Greta does. Facts are the tool of the devil. Obviously 485,000 perished from heat exhaustion on the way to the march.
160
COP25 is not about saving the planet. It is the Climate Industry annual meeting chaired by the UN who created it. They are paid trillions to stop Climates Changing and their total failure to do so will be heroic and very profitable. This is about the redistribution of wealth, from us to them.
No one believes in man made Global Warming for a second, except those who profit by it. And there are now millions of them. And Hollywood actors are their spokespeople. It’s a living. And Tom Cruise and John Travolta think Scientology is a real religion.
91
G’day David,
A little while back it was reported that the UN was running out of money. Do you know how they’re going with that? Are they trading while insolvent by any chance?
Cheers
Dave B
60
You can’t make this stuff up surely?
Joint annual report of the Technology Executive Committee and the Climate Technology Centre and Network.
Draft conclusions proposed by the Chairs.
The Technology Executive Committee adopted an approach to integrating gender considerations into its rolling workplan for 2019–2022.
Notes with concern the challenge of securing sustainable financial resources for the Climate Technology Centre and Network.
Notes the initiative of the Technology Executive Committee, under its rolling workplan for 2019–2022, to promote innovative approaches to upscaling adaptation technologies, including through the organization of an in-session technology day in 2020.
10
Who would have thought we’d still be needing icebreakers . . . . . .
https://gcaptain.com/serious-concerns-raised-over-inadequate-icebreaking-capabilities-on-great-lakes/
110
Ahh! Gitche Gumee.
Lake Huron rolls, Superior sings
In the rooms of her ice-water mansion
Old Michigan steams like a young man’s dreams
The islands and bays are for sportsmen
And farther below Lake Ontario
Takes in what Lake Erie can send her
And the iron boats go as the mariners all know
With the gales of November remembered
Tony.
70
Thanks Tony, I was born up in that area but I hadn’t been introduced to those words in that order before.
10
Hire them from the Russians 😉
50
Ah, The Great Lakes. Climate Change™ is expected to cause all of them to dry up except when it causes them to overflow, so I would not be surprised to hear that Climate Change™ will also cause all of them to be ice-free the entire year except when it causes them to be frozen-up the entire year.
70
Conversely it might be seen that,,,,,,,,,
10
That’s why I suggested the renting Russian ice breakers.
After all, they won’t need them in the Arctic will they. 😉
30
the devils are in the details:
9 Dec: RenewEconomy: Electricity prices set to plummet as strong wind and solar investment kicks in
by Michael Mazengarb
The Australian Energy Market Commission has predicted electricity prices across Australia may fall by as much as 20 per cent in some places, as strong investment in solar and wind projects drives down wholesale electricity prices.
In its latest electricity price trends report, the AEMC has predicted household electricity costs could fall by 20 per cent in south-east Queensland by 2021/22, followed by falls 8 per cent in New South Wales, 5 per cent in Victoria and Tasmania, and 2 per cent in South Australia.
The two jurisdictions with the highest renewables uptake, Tasmania and the ACT, will continue to pay the lowest, and second-lowest, electricity tariffs respectively…READ ALL
https://reneweconomy.com.au/electricity-prices-set-to-plummet-as-strong-wind-and-solar-investment-kicks-in-77816/
8 Dec: RenewEconomy: Coalition embraces the 50% renewables target it said was “reckless”
by Giles Parkinson
https://reneweconomy.com.au/coalition-embraces-the-50-renewables-target-it-said-was-reckless-69429/
60
listen from 4m54s: batteries, demand management. deceptive summary suggests everyone gets a big drop in price:
AUDIO: 7m19s: 9 Dec: ABC Breakfast: Power prices set to fall: AEMC
On Breakfast with Hamish Macdonald
Australian households are expected to pay almost $100 less in electricity bills over the next three years.
A new report by the Australian Energy Market Commission predicts that retail electricity prices will fall significantly, after rising by more than 50 per cent over the past decade.
Guest: Tim Nelson, executive general manager of strategy and economic analysis, Australian Energy Market Commission (AEMC)
https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/power-prices-set-to-fall:-aemc/11778880
20
In an ABC TV news interview, Tim Nelson went to pains to stress that the report predictions specificly refered to electricity “COSTS” and not “PRICES”. !
he also pointed out that the reductions would result from the introduction of more wind, solar, AND GAS generation for “dispatchability”
anyone aware of new GAS generation plants being constructed ?
20
Electricity prices set to plummet?
Vic wholesale price 2015/16 4.6 cents/kWhr, 2018/19 11.0 cents/kWhr.
Vic consumer electricity price index June 2016 121.5, June 2019 144.5. That is, a $1400 annual bill this year was $1178 just 3 years ago.
And the AECC “projects” that Vic prices might reduce by $53 over next three years.
But that’s before devilish Dan decides to offer more handouts paid for through higher electricity prices.
40
Madness takes its toll…Bjorn Lomberg says Denmark’s New climate law will cost an additional 1-6% of GDP for a value of reducing temperatures by a ten thousandth of a degree. https://twitter.com/BjornLomborg/status/1203294551542312960
90
They want to change the rules about how emissions are calculated to include the coal ,gas and oil we export which will raise our share of emissions from 1.4 to 5% .
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-09/analysis-exported-emissions-from-fossil-fuels/11752012
40
In other words, double counting of carbon emissions, once by attributing the emissions for coal, oil and gas to the country of origin and again by attributing the emissions to the manufactured products.
80
Seems he was blinded by more than the smoke …
A Sydney circled by fire could never have hosted the Olympics – by Bob Carr.
“The CSIRO first warned in 1988 that, with the climate changing, we would see a worsening fire danger in grasslands and forests.”
https://www.smh.com.au/national/a-sydney-circled-by-fire-could-never-have-hosted-the-olympics-20191208-p53hva.html
Wait.
in 1988 CSIRIO’s Top Scientist Predicted 2-4 C Warming By 2018
https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2015/05/13/csirios-top-scientist-predicted-2-4-c-warming-by-2018/
… and … what of 97% scientific predictions that there would be no more Olympics by 2016 because of global warming?
Global warming could make 2016 Games ‘the last Olympics in the history of mankind’, says Tokyo governor
https://www.reuters.com/article/olympics-tokyo-environment-idUSLU38985020090930
>> Really?
Is that the best the doomsday climate zombies can manage?
80
Well Bob’d know, wouldn’t he? After all he was hugely responsible for building the fire bombs now called National is Parks, the automatic fuel collectors surrounding Sydney. Smoke? He’s made lots of it.
Cheers
Dave B
60
Well the 68 0r so listed in Ian Plimer’s “The End is Nigh” section had no better luck. Some even with multiple tries.
30
Makes you wonder why the Queensland government is bothering to make a bid for the 2032 Olympics then, doesn’t it.
I mean, they all “believe” in climate change, and the coming catastrophe, so they must also believe that there’ll be no Queensland in which to hold their Olympics.
00
The BoM failed to predict the coldest start to Summer. Ever.
If extreme cold weather is proof of global warming, surely the BoM could forecast it …
Oct 14, 2019: Also published today is the October to April Severe Weather Outlook, which examines the risk of other weather extremes like flooding, heatwaves and bushfires.
http://media.bom.gov.au/social/blog/2261/australia-could-see-fewer-cyclones-but-more-heat-and-fire-risk-in-coming-months/
Fail.
Climate and Water Outlook for summer 2019–20, issued 28 November 2019
https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLbKuJrA7Vp7naJL31deES8QAV5E0q6U_H&v=Qk4qFQnNL_Q&feature=emb_logo
Fail.
Coldest maximum summer temperature on record at Thredbo
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-07/lowest-maximum-summer-temperature-at-thredbo/11774908
80
theirABC loves this story:
AUDIO: 3m27s: 9 Dec: ABC AM: Power prices to fall with renewables a game-changer in the energy market
By Nick Grimm on AM
Now a new report has confirmed the good news that power prices are on their way down.
In fact, the Australian Energy Market Commission predicts over the next three years households can expect to see their bills decrease by an average of close to one hundred dollars thanks in large part to the increasing supply of renewable energy like wind and solar.
Featured:
Simon Macks, Newcastle solar panel owner
Tim Nelson, Head of Strategy and Economic Analysis, Australian Energy Market Commission
Bruce Mountain, director, Energy Policy Centre, Victoria University
Mark Coughlin, Energy, Utilities and Resources Leader, PWC
https://www.abc.net.au/radio/adelaide/programs/am/power-prices-to-fall-with-renewables-changing-the-energy-market/11778632
9 Dec: ABC: Power prices forecast to slide in next three years, with increasing supplies of renewable energy a primary driver
By Nick Harmsen
Official forecasts published by the Australian Energy Market Commission (AEMC) show the continued price falls are primarily driven by increasing supplies of primarily renewable energy generation in the electricity market.
The advisory body predicts further investment in batteries, wind and solar as an “optimal mix” of generation investment to meet power system needs at the lowest cost to consumers.
No new investment in gas or coal generation is forecast beyond projects already committed…
John Pierce, the AEMC’s chairman, said the forecasts reflected a significant injection of nearly 5,000 megawatts of new power supply across the country over the next three years…
While the new generation is the biggest driver of the forecast price drops, falling distribution costs and cheaper large-scale generation certificates under the Renewable Energy Target are also contributing…
The government advisory body also modelled a further investment in 15,55MW of battery power, 1,553MW of wind power and 372MW of solar power to meet the market’s needs.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-09/power-prices-set-to-slide-in-next-three-years-says-aemc/11778476
10
They just approved a massive hike in electricity prices for Victoriastan the 5% over three years is a joke just like renewables put downward prices on electricity.
50
A re-run of Grimm’s Fairy Tales”?
40
ABC being “economical with the truth” again . !
No mention of the extra gas generation that the report sites as being a key component, ?
And if you read between the lines as well as on them, it is apparent that the savings are based on a large uptake of ROOF TOP SOLAR and batteries !
So , obviously the “average” consumer bill may well reduce because more people will be producing their own electricity and dramatically reducing their bills, which will pull down the ‘average’. Bill value
But of course those with no RT solar will not.actually see any reduction in their bills and those with RT solar have simply “Pre Paid” for their power.and a reduced bill.
Its just financial “smoke and mirrors”
60
“The government advisory body also modelled a further investment in 15,55MW of battery power, 1,553MW of wind power and 372MW of solar power to meet the market’s needs.”
Once again, people who should know better, talking about batteries as if they are generators
50
A week ago the Mayor from Mid North Coast Council covering a huge area including Barrington Tops section of the Great Dividing Range said on radio that the emergency (as compared to climate emergency hoax) was al about poor land management to dispose of the ever increasing fuel load that the many recent and still burning wild fires consumed.
He said that he had spoken to an indigenous ratepayer who reminded the Mayor about traditional seasonal burning and cooler fires resulting so that most of the wildlife could escape harm.
100
first the good news!
9 Dec: Daily Mail: Climate change activist Greta Thunberg says she doesn’t want to be ‘the only voice of the youth’ at global climate change summit in Spain
•The Swedish environmentalist seen leaving Complutense University of Madrid
By Amelia Wynne
She looked serious as she wrapped up in a blue and grey tracksuit as she left the building along with streams of other people who had attended the meeting.
At the meeting she said she wants to take a ***secondary role at the two events she will attend in the second week of the summit, saying ‘I don’t want to be the only voice of youth at the summit,’ according to people present…
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7769593/Climate-change-activist-Greta-Thunberg-looks-leaves-meeting.html
now for the bad news – Miss 8-year-old will probably take over the primary role!
PIC: 8 Dec: NDTV India: ANI: Manipur Girl, 8, With Climate Activist Greta Thunberg Has Special Plea For PM Modi
8-year-old Licypriya Kangujam’s plea for Prime Minister Narendra Modi, “Please pass the Climate Change law in the ongoing winter parliament session.”
For long, the young activist has been holding talks, organising awareness campaigns, rallies and has helped victims of natural calamities. She recently met Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg in a climate change event in Madrid in Spain…
“I urge him and all MPs to act on climate change now and save our future. The sea levels are increasing and the Earth is becoming hotter. They should act now,” she had told ANI…
She has also been recognised for her work and was awarded the 2019 World Children Peace Prize Laureate.
Licypriya Kangujam is also the founder of “The Child Movement”, a voluntary movement by the children to raise their voices on global issues…
https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/manipur-girl-licypriya-kangujam-8-with-climate-activist-greta-thunberg-has-a-plea-for-pm-on-climate-2145404
can it get any sillier?
50
I actually saw something interesting and positive on the ABC. Yes! I know, shocking isnt it?
There was a drought related item about a young boy in the Tenterfield area (I think). He was hand catching native fish slowly dying in parts of a drying up river and relocating them to a dam area in the same system. Did it on his own initiative supported bt Dad once he worked out what he was up to. Dispatches the carp while he is at it. A bright self motivated young bloke doing something positive for the environment. Worth 20 Gretas.
80
Yarpos the serial ABC climate change frordster Nick Kilvert did a story on a platypus killing a water rat which was an amazing read with photos , no mention of CAGW just an interesting nature article like they used to do .
20
thick with virtue-signalling:
9 Dec: ABC America: Climate scientists try to cut their own carbon footprints
Some climate scientists are limiting their airline flights so they don’t worsen the global warming they study
By SETH BORENSTEIN; Associated Press writer Ben Finley in Hampton, Va., contributed to this report.
For years, Kim Cobb (Georgia Tech professor) was the Indiana Jones of climate science…
Now she is about to ground herself, and she is not alone. Some climate scientists and activists are limiting their flying, their consumption of meat and their overall carbon footprints to avoid adding to the global warming they study. Cobb will fly just once next year, to attend a massive international science meeting in Chile…
Texas Tech’s Katharine Hayhoe, an atmospheric scientist who flies once a month, often to talk to climate doubters in the evangelical Christian movement, was blasted on Twitter because she keeps flying.
Hayhoe and other still-flying scientists note that aviation is only 3% of global carbon emissions.
Jonathan Foley, executive director of the climate solutions think-tank Project Drawdown, limits his airline trips but will not stop flying because, he says, he must meet with donors to keep his organization alive. He calls flight shaming “the climate movement eating its own.”…
“I feel real torn about that,” said Indiana University’s Shahzeen Attari, who studies human behavior and climate change…
Attari’s research shows that audiences are turned off by scientists who use lots of energy at home…
“It’s like having an overweight doctor giving you dieting advice,” Attari said. She found that scientists who fly to give talks ***bother people less…
Pennsylvania State University’s Michael Mann, who flies but less than he used to, said moderation is key…
Mann said he gets his electricity from renewables, drives a hybrid vehicle, doesn’t eat meat and has one child…
When Hayhoe flies, she makes sure to bundle in several lectures and visits into one flight, including 30 talks in Alaska in one five-day trip…
Former Vice President Al Gore, who has long been criticized by those who reject climate science for his personal energy use, said he has installed 1,000 solar panels at his farm, eats a vegan diet and drives an electric vehicle…
https://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/climate-scientists-cut-carbon-footprints-67576958
20
“Some climate scientists and activists are limiting their flying, their consumption of meat and their overall carbon footprints to avoid adding to the global warming they study.”
Limiting? If they seriously believed what they are saying they would immediately stop flying and eating meat and would reduce their “carbon footprint” to zero.
90
RicDre.
Unfortunately if the climate scientists and activists do as you suggest, they would still have a carbon footprint.
A human being creates 0.5 to 1kg of carbon dioxide per day by respiration.
Even if we shamed Al Gore and sat him in a corner for a year, Al would still create 365kg of CO2. Al, the climate scientists and activists can never be carbon neutral. Unless they hold their breath.
50
Indeed. Even if they set a good example and led the way on population reduction, how much pollution would be caused by burning or burying their remains?
20
My goodness! Polish those tarnished haloes. Quick, where’s the Brasso?
10
Survey: Aussie Voters Put the Economy and Healthcare Ahead of Climate Change
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/12/08/survey-aussie-voters-put-the-economy-and-healthcare-ahead-of-climate-change/
50
141 replies at time of posting wouldn’t suggest huge popularity:
TWEET: Greta Thunberg
Tomorrow morning at 10.30 ***@Luisamneubauer and I will host a press conference with young climate activists in room Mocha, hall 4 at #COP25 . Livestream will be available here: https://unfccc-cop25.streamworld.de/live
8 Dec 2019
https://twitter.com/GretaThunberg/status/1203710567355211776
remember, it’s not politically partisan:
Wikipedia: ***Luisa Neubauer
Luisa-Marie Neubauer (21 April 1996, Hamburg) is a vegan, socialist, radical-feminist climate politician . She is one of the main organisers of the School strike for climate movement in Germany. She advocates a climate policy that complies with the Paris Agreement and endorses de-growth. Neubauer is a member of Alliance 90/The Greens and the Green Youth.
Neubauer has been a youth ambassador of the NGO ONE since 2015. She has also been a member of the Foundation for the Rights of Future Generations[, 350.org, the Right Livelihood Award foundation, the Fossil Free campaign and The Hunger Project…
As guest author on the official WWF blog, Luisa Neubauer described the urgency she perceived regarding climate change etc…
Neubauer has received negative press for her past flights to countries like the USA, UK, Hong Kong etc…
She makes todays political class responsible, especially white men from the nothern hemnisphere, for being painfully slow while implementing needed clima measures.
Therefore the northern atmosphere is obligated to decrease their standard of living to pay for the future change of the global south towards an environmental way of life
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luisa_Neubauer
20
ABC deceptively uses “government” in headline whereas, previously, it might have said “politicians”, eg –
30 May 2018: ABC: Australians don’t trust politicians, but the pollies don’t appear fussed
AUDIO: 9m39s: 9 Dec: ABC Breakfast: Trust in government at record low: new study
On Breakfast with Hamish Macdonald
The Australian National University election survey polled over 2,000 voters, identifying a number of trends that helped the Coalition win the May election…
Guest: Dr Sarah Cameron, research fellow, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Sydney and co-author, Australian Election Study
https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/trust-in-government-at-record-low:-new-study/11778928
the “climate election”:
9 Dec: Guardian: Climate change concern helped Labor at 2019 election but Coalition won on economy – survey
ANU survey finds Labor loss due to erosion of working class base and Coalition’s perceived advantage on economy and tax
by Paul Karp
The proportion of voters nominating global warming and the environment as their top issue is at an all-time high, helping Labor win votes at the May 2019 election despite its shock loss.
That is the conclusion of the Australian National University’s election survey, released on Monday, explaining the result was caused instead by an erosion of Labor’s working class base and the Coalition’s perceived advantage on the economy and taxation…
The study confirms a trend of declining satisfaction with Australia’s democracy – down 27 points since 2007 to ***59%…
The most important policy issues for voters were management of the economy (24%), health (22%), taxation (12%), the environment (11%) and global warming (10%). One in five respondents nominating environmental issues as their top concern is a record, up from fewer than 10% of voters in 2016…
On the environment and global warming, 40% of voters preferred Labor, about 20% nominated the Coalition and 22% saw no difference…
Just ***one in four Australians believe that people in government can be trusted to do the right thing…Trust in government has declined by nearly 20% since 2007…
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/dec/09/climate-change-concern-helped-labor-at-2019-election-but-coalition-won-on-economy-survey
can’t see any big decline from 2016!
20 Dec 2016: ABC: Confidence in democracy hits record low as Australians ‘disaffected with political class’
By political reporter Henry Belot
The Australian National University’s (ANU) election study, released today by Professor Ian McAllister, has been billed as a wake-up call for politicians and the Government…
Trust in politicians has dropped to the lowest level since it was first measured in 1969, with only ***26 per cent of respondents expressing confidence in the Government…
***Close to half of the respondents were not satisfied with the state of democracy in Australia, which is the lowest level recorded since the 1970s…
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-12-20/2016-australian-election-disaffected-study/8134508
30
“ANU survey finds Labor loss due to erosion of working class base and Coalition’s perceived advantage on economy and tax
by Paul Karp”
I wonder into which of those categories would Bill Shorten’s inability make a decision on the Adani coal mine fit. He couldn’t oppose it because the CFMEU wanted all labor politicians to sign a pledge supporting the coal mine, but he couldn’t support it because the Greens keep labor in many seats with their preferences.
50
But we can’t blame the Greens for anything because they haven’t been “In power”.
40
The greenie agenda has infected many councils and establishments in Australia
Its an insidious disease bereft of any common sense.
50
Drove down two inner city roads today that I hadn’t seen for a couple of years.
Council “reserves” were chock a block with ground growth, Lantana was especially noticeable.
For such a woke council you’d think that they’d be right on top of invasive foreign species that are dominating the “native” flora.
Hypo Krits.
KK
30
In Newcastle? I’ll bet Blackbutt is choked with the old ‘tana too. Nuatali would be right onto it . . . if only she knew what it was. Wild Olive is another one that is all over the place now which you may not be familiar with. Spread by birds and foxes. BTW how’s Glenrock going since its near-death bushfire experience?
10
Will check out Blackbutt tomorrow but the burnt out headland between Murdering gulley and Glenrock looks nice and green from a distance.
Thankfully the onshore wind of the last couple of days has (easterly) cleared smoke from the coast and kept us cool.
173 KK
00
We all know the Greens and the UN have been jointly in power in Oz for a looooong time. They have been controlling the MSM and twisting the goolies of governments for decades.
10
should have excerpted this from the Guardian piece –
“Nevertheless the Australian election study – which used a nationally representative sample of 2,179 voters – found that narrow majorities approved of Labor’s individual tax policy measures to limit franking credit rebates and negative gearing.”
—
about as likely as much of the rest in this “study”.
30
I seriously doubt that the majority of the election time commentariat really understands how franking credits and negative gearing really work. I’d be in favour of phasing out future negative gearing if only to stop people talking about it.
10
Any fairytale is fair game for politicians when you’re trying to manipulate voters with Envy.
173 KK
00
I have just updated my TPW and OLR data.
From July 2019 to October 2019, the atmosphere lost 994Gt of water vapour. On human scale, that is a lot of water. If you understand the “greenhouse effect” as taught in schools and in every IPCC report, you know this is going to result in massive cooling. That is 994Gt of the “most powerful greenhouse gas”. In fact it is scary because it must mean the next glaciation is already on us.
However it is also worth noting that from July 2019 to October 2019, the OLR reduced by 4.8W/sq.m.. So more heat was being retained in October than it was in July despite the massive loss of “the most powerful greenhouse gas”. The sea surface temperature fell a modest 0.18C; barely measurable.
Despite the dramatic loss of water vapour in the latter half of 2019 I can reassure everyone that it will begin to rise in January to moderate the increase in insolation that is currently occurring. Insolation at zenith will peak on 4th January at 1407W/sq.m; well above the annual average od 1361W/sq.m. Australian solar panels that stay cool and have clean air above will sing for a month or two as that radiated solar energy gets converted to electrical output.
30
It can go the other way for a while though, if the 994Gt of water vapor normally produces cloud and rain, as its absence means less cooling from shade clouds, lower albedo (warming) and fewer cool rain drops falling into a warmer surface level. Rain also drags down cooler winds from higher altitudes creating cooling drying surface winds as outflows. Thus less evaporation, and drier soil profile, with less cooling from plant transpiration.
So less water vapor, alone, could lead to warming in the mid-latitudes, under a clearer hotter daytime sky with lowered albedo. Thus NET more surface thermal energy available to be ‘trapped’ by that diminished NET lowered water vapor, so the effect could be NET warming.
But if you had an expansion of cooler polar air over a warm lower mid-Latitude ocean and land you then get a setup promoting more convective thunderstorm activity (promoted by a lower freezing altitude over warm moist air) and for more precipitation, which could reduce by 994 Gt water vapor – which would be NET cooling for the same result. A clearer sky means more radiation escapes sooner, and more sinking air during the night, so if that sinking mid-lat air were already colder it would mean lower mins, colder mornings, more frost and dew, and lower atmospheric humidity for more of the day, then evaporation cooling even as the surface warms.
In other words you still seem to need a NET cooling atmosphere to get a NET cooling surface.
In which case you’d be right except the cooling came first, not the 994 Gt loss, which would be a symptom not the cause.
And where was the water removed from? The upper troposphere? The lower stratosphere? A bit of both?
30
From IPCC:
https://www.ipcc.ch/2019/05/13/ipcc-2019-refinement/
There is no qualification here. According to IPCC “grreenhouse gases” trap heat in the atmosphere.
IPCC state water vapour is the most important greenhouse gas:
https://wg1.ipcc.ch/publications/wg1-ar4/faq/wg1_faq-1.3.html
So the atmosphere is depleted of 994Gt of water vapour over a 4 month period and the rate of cooling reduces – more heat is being retained when the water vapour goes down. Over the four months, July 2019 to October 2019, the UAH global lower troposphere temperature actually increased 0.08C; consistent with more heat being retained as the water vapour reduced. Complete opposite of what IPCC claim.
30
Good stuff; but that assessment involved “measured” quantities “relating” to each other and that is the essence of Reality which must never taken seriously in the Soros Scheme of control.
173 KK
20
We also know in reality that 0.08C is nothing when taking into account even just ENSO change so qualification is necessary as it isn’t clean-cut.
20
So irrespective of surface temperature the globe shows high POSITIVE correlation between TCWV and OLR. EXACT OPPOSITE of what the IPCC claim; end of story.
All climate models based on the greenhouse effect are simply nonsense because the basic premise can be easily demonstrated to be not only flawed but the exact opposite of what actually happens.
21
Alright Rick.
I accidentally gave you a red-thumb, sorry about that.
10
“trap heat in the atmosphere”
If increased CO2 was trapping heat in the atmosphere over time, the measured Outgoing Longwave Radiation would diverge from the atmospheric temperature over time.
It doesn’t
40
Measured OLR and surface temperature appear reasonably well correlated over the long term. As you point out, if there was a “greenhouse effect” then they would diverge with surface temperature increasing while OLR remained steady.
This is OLR for the last 40 years:
http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/iumd_olr_0-360E_-90-90N_n.png
This is surface temperature for last 40 years:
http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/ihadcrut4_0-360E_-90-90N_n_1980:2020.png
Both data sets show a dip around 1985 and a step increase around 1998. The 2016 peak in surface temperature does not seam to have a matching increase in the OLR although there is a slight dip in both traces after that year.
I will spend some time to see how closely these data sets correlate. Obviously there annual cycle in OLR is not repeated in the temperature. The only factor that correlates with the annual cycle in OLR is the change in water vapour and, as noted earlier, they are strongly positively correlated.
40
of course it is.
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/GlobalWarming/page2.php
how about posting something that can be verified for a change
18
GISS is a joke. Shows UHI effects and mal-adjustments.
Not representative of anything but data corruption.
How about posting something that is actually real, for a change.
Or you could just ignore the fact that you are incapable of producing any evidence of CO2 warming and rabbit on with empty propaganda pap, as usual.
40
Was that link written by a Greta, aimed at 5 year olds.
Certainly seems to have taken you in, PF
I mean, so funny… so non-science nonsense.
Hilarious…
Swallow it and regurgitate, PF 😉
41
From a different field of discussion, but it Fitz
Ideological Possession – “It’s the perfect recipe for total stupidity“
The Anti-XXXX brigade are a collective with ideological possession. Those lucky enough to break free from its mind numbing shackles ….describe it as a cult.
………..Professor Bruno de Souza explains Ideological possession.
Ideological Possession:
It means that they have internalized a pre-programmed script of statements and responses to promote a specific narrative about how things are that, due to logical fallacy (usually tautology, but there are many others), is applicable to any situation. Once one accesses that “script” and begins to execute it, a series of automatic behaviors emerges that involve no deliberation, judgement, inquiry or, God forbid, personal perspective or creativity. It’s just pattern recognition and rote memory (IF → GOTO).
In such a state, people become unable to perform any form of higher-order thinking regarding the subject in question. This makes them impervious to any logic and evidence, to which they react simply following the particular script they internalized, even when doing so is contradictory, tangential, off-topic, non sequitur, observably wrong, etc., for such shortcomings will simply be ignored, dismissed or altogether unperceived.
It’s the perfect recipe for total stupidity, at least while the script is being run, and, in some cases, it never stops running.
It is quite hard to win an argument against people who are ideologically possessed, for, as the saying goes:
The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits – Albert Einstein
The reason why an ideological script gets internalized in the first place has to do with its ability to reduce anxiety by simplifying one’s understanding of the world and their associated decision-making, as well as the emotional gratification coming from the collective approval of those who share the ideology. When said ideology spreads to the point of providing some level of social influence and power to the leaders of the movement, there can even be economic incentives to following the script.
All in all, ideological possession is a dangerous and viral process that must be nipped in the bud when possible, for it is very hard to cure and often intellectually fatal.
Source:
https://thealdenham.wordpress.com/2019/12/04/the-anti-hunt-collective-cyber-trolling/
80
Truely weird. Do not paint me with you delusional rankings. It’s not my fault you can not accept science, nor is it my fault that you can not understand reason and logic.
But then ad hom is all you have.
09
“Do not paint me with you delusional rankings.”
But you are. !!
And you have no science.. you are bereft, empty.
And your comprehension and logic are lower than that of a junior high dropout.
30
“It’s the perfect recipe for total stupidity, at least while the script is being run, and, in some cases, it never stops running.”
A PF descriptor. !
10
In considering man made Global Warming as the fact free religion it is, there are some amazing parallel with ancient religions. The most striking is that Hell is a very hot place and according to Greta, the planet is burning. People are dying. Greta said so.
No one is afraid of freezing in hell and it is a balmy -22C at the North Pole right now in mid winter. The much colder South Pole though is at -24C with passing clouds in mid summer when the sun never sets. No naked red devils with pitchforks at either.
Meanwhile the regular summer fires in Australia are also obviously Climate Change, as is the long drought in Africa and warmer water around the Great Barrier Reef. How these are connected is never explained, but clearly retribution for fossil fuel.
But what is the endless fascination with heat and hell? It seems to be an Augustine invention and hell was not mentioned in the Greek bible.
However in the Book of Revelation
“These both were cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone.”
Revelation 20:10 “And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever.”
Now that sounds a lot like Al Gore, Climate Change and Greta but it’s really all about the money.
90
It may well have something to do with pre-industrial societies viewing fire as the most common way of destroying unwanted material or cleansing from biological plague. Maybe the most complete form of destruction with which they were familiar.
Plus fire hurts. A lot.
When fire is your only method of cooking, everyone learns this that hard way.
……and when you think about it, Fire is an odd phenomenon. To the pre-technological mind, it could easily seem a little weird that wood that might last a millennia as part of a building, should disintegrate in flames while producing heat that is not obviously there in the solid wood.
No wonder the ancients thought fire was a thing of the gods…. but I’m speculating.
40
I see heads of 2 power companies in the Northern Territory have been sacked after a investigation into the 10 hour blackout of Alice Springs in October.
Apparently a solar farm was pumping out 3.3MW when a cloud came over and destabilised the output which then suddenly dropped to 0.5MW. It happened so quickly that the baseload backup was unable to stabilise the grid and all the fail safes tripped and shut it down. The grid needed to be re- initialised which I guess is the explanation for the 10 hour outage. I don’t know the full details but there may have been a battery backup which failed when it was suddenly pushed up to full output.
Not sure why the 2 people lost their jobs when the minister responsible and the public servants involved with promoting this nutty renewable energy scam seem to have kept their jobs.
100
It’s actually a Religious requirement and the proper way to sate the unreliables Gawd:
Scapegoat
1: A goat upon whose head are symbolically placed the sins of the people after which he is sent into the wilderness in the biblical ceremony for Yom Kippur
2: One that bears the blame for others.
50
Surely Yom Kippur is some sort of Thai Fish soup?
40
LOL … close
20
DonS,..
NT doesnt have any solar farms…yet !
The sudden demand variation that caused the blackout was due to a cloud bank masking most of the RT solar in Alice, just as peak demand was building.
The “back up”. ( main grid) generators were not on standby as they should have been due to a saga of poor management decisions etc
..hence the heads rolling !
40
VIDEO: 1m11s: 9 Dec: news.com.au: Farmers forced to cough up for Qld govt water management plan
Queensland farmers will be charged up to $100,000 to install water meters under a new plan to manage the state’s water supply. The Palaszczuk Government wanted water licence holders to install water meters and data loggers to send live measurements to bureaucrats to monitor the state’s water take. Farmers said the meters would be measuring dry river beds and were a waste of money. A consultation paper revealed the cost of installation, maintenance and operation for the mandatory loggers would fall on farmers. Under the plan, the government said people who unfairly took water beyond their entitlement would be held accountable
https://www.news.com.au/national/farmers-forced-to-cough-up-for-qld-govt-water-management-plan/video/aa55dff69e4aa30da79ee01dea320100
8 Dec: SMH: NSW to consider tearing up Murray-Darling agreement
By Kylar Loussikian
The Berejiklian government will on Monday formally consider tearing up the current Murray-Darling Basin agreement by demanding more water be kept in the state, leaked cabinet documents show.
State and federal water ministers will meet on Tuesday next week to discuss changes to the controversial agreement, with NSW demanding more water be made available for irrigators and towns instead of flowing to the ailing river system.
The cabinet submission, marked “sensitive” and obtained by the Herald, also shows eight of the 20 water resource plans required to be completed by the state before the end of the year may not be submitted in time, “resulting in non-payment … of $16 million”…READ ON
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/nsw/nsw-to-consider-tearing-up-murray-darling-agreement-20191208-p53hy3.html
10
Maryanne Slattery, former policy director, Murray Darling Basin Authority, may now be with The Australia Institute, & the following may be on the CAGW-obsessed community radio prog, The Wire, but what she says about Vic Govt assessing the water needs of the “nuts” according to what would be required in 5 or 6 years’ time is interesting…if true:
AUDIO: 5m31s: 5 Dec: The Wire: ‘Can the plan’ Murray protesters targeting the wrong mob
Water researcher Maryanne Slattery says the water is mainly commercial not environmental and intended for vast foreign owned agribusinesses downstream which have priced ordinary farmers out of the water market…
Featured in story:
Maryanne Slattery, Senior Water Researcher, Australia Institute
http://thewire.org.au/story/can-the-plan-murray-protesters-targeting-the-wrong-mob/
10
The Fire at Ross’s Farm.
“This poem by Henry Lawson was published in Short Stories in Prose and Verse (1894) and In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses (1896).”
70
“Lord Monckton At COP25 Madrid”
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2019/12/09/lord-monckton-at-cop25-madrid/
20
Worry beads time
Links at
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2019/12/08/w-o-o-d-7-december-2019/#comment-120894
10
Adam Bandt was on Sky with his lookalike, Sky reporter Tom Connell, for what seemed like forever just after 1pm, but I can’t find anything online as yet:
9 Dec: Australian: Matt Canavan challenges Anthony Albanese to voice Adani coal support
by Olivia Caisley
Resources Minister Matt Canavan has challenged Labor leader Anthony Albanese to say he supports the Adani coal mining project during his tour of central Queensland this week…
“They say now they support the export of coal,” he told Sky News. “I haven’t heard Anthony Albanese say three simple words: ‘I support Adani.’”…
Greens MP Adam Bandt savaged the Labor leader.
“As Australia burns and Sydney chokes, Scott Morrison and Anthony Albanese are abandoning climate action. Liberal and Labor value coal more than human life,” he told reporters in Melbourne.
“Coal is fuelling the fires, coal is fuelling the drought, and coal is fuelling the smoke over Sydney, Canberra and Brisbane. If you don’t have a plan to get out of coal you don’t have a plan to deal with the climate crisis. We stopped selling asbestos and we need to phase out coal exports too.”
But Mr Albanese said Australia needs a “sensible” approach to dealing with emissions, arguing coal will be phased out by the market anyway.
“I think, very clearly, it’s obvious to all there won’t be a new coal-fired power built in Australia. The market is indicating that just won’t happen. There’s nothing stopping it at all except for the economics.”
The Australian revealed on Monday revealed Jenny Hill, the Labor Mayor of Townsville, had lashed the ALP’s “anti-worker” and “disruptive” environmental wing, arguing federal Labor did not have an answer to problems in north and central Queensland and was too focused on “elitists” in capital cities.
Ms Hill’s intervention came as Labor MPs Meryl Swanson and Terri Butler warned at a conference held by a Labor think tank on the weekend against talking down coal jobs in favour of lower-paid jobs in the renewables sector.
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/matt-canavan-challenges-anthony-albanese-top-voice-adani-coal-support/news-story/706bea5f09b47a7798a56f6c6222fe1e
also heard on radio this morning Qld mines minister Anthony Lynham (Labor) calling LNP “renewables deniers”. can’t find that online either.
30
here is the Bandt interview with Sky’s Tom Connell…WATCH:
VIDEO: 12mins: 9 Dec: news.com.au: Sky News: Greens want to save the planet by ‘exporting Australia’s sunshine’
Mr Bandt said burning coal had made Australia’s deadly bushfires “much more likely” and warned there was “now no distinction” between Labor and Liberal party policies.
He told Sky News that his solution would be to “export” sunshine to Asia…
“Start exporting our renewable energy in the form of hydrogen or in the form of direct connections across to Asia through undersea cables. “We need a ten year plan to phase out our exporting of thermal coal.”
https://www.skynews.com.au/details/_6114140399001
20
says UN-back PRI in report by Vivid Economics:
9 Dec: BBC: Polluting firms ‘will be hit by climate policies’
By Roger Harrabin
Carbon-intensive firms are likely to lose 43% of their value thanks to policies designed to combat climate change, a report says.
Meanwhile the most progressive companies will see an uplift of 33% in their value.
The forecast was commissioned by the UN-backed Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI)…
Car-makers with the swiftest transition to electric vehicles (EVs), for instance, are projected to increase in value by 108%, according to the study by Vivid Economics.
Manufacturers slow to move to EVs will see their value fall, as governments realise that petrol and diesel models must be phased out faster for climate targets to be met.
Warning on coal
Meanwhile, the study predicts that the world’s largest listed coal companies could fall in value by 44%. And the 10 biggest firms in oil and gas could lose 31% of current value.
Electric utilities with the strongest strategy for renewables could see values increase by 104%, while laggards could see them fall by two-thirds.
Miners producing minerals critical for the transition may see a 54% upside, while those with the smallest share of “green minerals” will witness valuations almost halving.
Agricultural firms with high exposure to “sustainable” biofuels and non-beef protein sources could gain at least 10% of current value.
Those exposed to under-pressure sectors such as cattle may lose between 15% and 43% – depending on their links with deforestation.
***The figures are inevitably speculative, and rely on an assumption that politicians will be forced to respond strongly to the growing climate crisis – which, given current political progress, remains debatable.
But they do echo the warnings issued by the Bank of England governor Mark Carney, who said firms ignoring the climate challenge would go bankrupt.
Already some insurance firms are refusing to offer cover to new coal-fired power stations because the risk of policy change is so great.
The giant AXA, for instance, says it will stop insuring any new coal construction projects, and totally phase out existing insurance and investments in coal in the EU, by 2030…
Mike Tholen, from industry body Oil and Gas UK said: “The (oil and gas) majors targeted in this report are actively reducing their carbon footprints, pursuing technologies including Carbon Capture and Storage and diversifying their businesses into a broader mix of renewable energy.
“Oil and gas remain an important part of the energy mix for decades to come, and will be used in an increasingly low carbon manner to meet global energy needs.”
This confident response will alarm scientists who were warning at the UN climate conference last week that emissions from oil and gas were growing strongly, as coal growth slows…
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-50706923
20
***Vivid Economics’ Alex Child has found a new home!
12 Nov: HedgeWeek: Carbon Cap Management makes several new appointments ahead of fund launch
The World Carbon Fund, which is set to launch in early 2020, will focus on the international CO2 emissions trading markets.
Founder and CEO, Michael Azlen says: “Carbon markets have been a successful policy tool in the effort to reduce emissions and now carbon is emerging as an attractive and investable global asset class. Carbon markets are expanding quickly around the world and the launch of China’s carbon market next year means that 14 per cent of global emissions will be covered under a “Cap and Trade” carbon market.”
Nigel Felgate PhD is to join as the fund’s portfolio manager. Felgate has previous experience working in the energy and carbon markets. Prior to joining Carbon Cap, Felgate worked as a proprietary trader across energy commodities including carbon emissions at BNP Paribas. (FROM OPALESQUE) Before that, he was a senior trader in carbon markets at Morgan Stanley, Bank of America and JP Morgan…
***Alex Child joins as head of carbon markets research. He joins from ***Vivid Economics, where he was employed as a climate change and energy economist. Child has helped designed climate policies and market-based carbon mechanisms around the world, including South Africa’s carbon tax.
Alzen adds: “The World Carbon Fund is unlike other investment funds in that it will be an absolute return fund focused purely on Carbon and environmental markets.”…
“Carbon pricing has proven to be a successful tool to encourage emissions reductions and we believe that carbon prices will continue to rise over the next decade as policy makers increase climate change ambition” adds Azlen…
As part of the fund’s impact credentials, a fixed percentage of its performance fees will be used to cancel and offset carbon allowances and emissions in order to achieve direct climate impact.
The fund will invest into a variety of instrument types including physical carbon allowances, as well as futures and options…
https://www.hedgeweek.com/2019/11/12/280312/carbon-cap-management-makes-several-new-appointments-ahead-fund-launch
00
wonder why a UN-backed org – PRI – would employ Vivid Economics?
24 Oct 2016: Paul Homewood: Conflicts Of Interest At The Committee On Climate Change
Sam Fankhauser, 49, is a professor at the London School of Economics’ Grantham Institute on Climate Change, funded by the radical green billionaire Jeremy Grantham – the world’s most generous donor to green activist groups.
Prof Fankhauser admits he is paid an undisclosed sum as a director of ***Vivid Economics, which offers business clients advice on how to respond to green Government policies – such as those set by the CCC…
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2016/10/24/conflicts-of-interest-at-the-committee-on-climate-change/
Wikipedia: Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI)
The United Nations-supported Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) is an international network of investors working together to put the six principles into practice…
As of August 2017, more than 1,750 signatories from over 50 countries representing approximately US$70 trillion have signed up to the Principles. In some cases, before retaining an investment manager, institutional investors will inquire as to whether the manager is a signatory…
The Principles are based on the notion that environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues, such as climate change and human rights…
The Principles ETC ETC
The PRI is a founding member of the United Nations Sustainable Stock Exchanges (SSE) initiative along with the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), the United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative (UNEP-FI), and the UN Global Compact…READ ALL
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principles_for_Responsible_Investment
20
Say listen, whatever you do, take anything you read in the media or hear in the media or see in the media, about how coal fired power is a failing enterprise with a liberal dose of Himalayan Pink Salt
Now, while I’ve been doing this now for just a little less than twelve years, and looking at the data for all that time, I have been watching power generation data on a daily basis now for four years ….. on a DAILY basis, not modelling, not media reports, not comment, but actual data from the AEMO for power generation.
I’ve done the Base Load Series for 18 Months, the full power generation data from every source Series for 18 Months, and now the Wind data Series for seven Months.
In that time, I have all the figures for coal fired power for that huge AEMO coverage area, everything East of the WA border, so, effectively, everywhere that the media concentrates on in Australia.
Four years ago, when I started the Base Load Series, coal fired power was delivering an average of 70% of all power on a daily basis across the year.
Right now, four years later, coal fired power is delivering ….. 70% of all power.
No matter that wind power Nameplate has ramped way up, Solar plant power has ramped way up, and rooftop solar power has gone, well, off the Planet if you believe the media.
And coal fired power still stubbornly delivers 70% of all power.
Average power generation on a daily basis across the year sees the average daily generation at 23500MW. It varies from a low of 18000MW to a high sometimes around 34000MW plus. (today the maximum was 31600MW, the first of the big Summer days) Those average highs and lows vary a little with the Seasons, sort of on a sinusoidal basis, and the average (zero) line is those averages I quote.
Coal fired power varies on a daily basis from a low of around 55% to a high of 80%, (nearly always at that 4AM point of minimum Base Load) and sometimes, usually on weekend days that Base Load coal fired level can be as high as 85%.
So, despite all the talk you hear of how renewables are taking over, well, they just aren’t.
So would that not make you all think that hey, there must be somewhere all that power is being consumed, and consumed to the point of hardly changing at all.
You only need compare the weekend Load Curves for actual power consumption to weekday ones.
The power consumption for weekends in the Midday to 3.30PM time slot are around, (and wait for this) 5000MW to 8000MW lower, and sometimes there’s even larger a gap than that 8000MW.
The difference. On weekends, very few are at work, and none are at school. Nearly all Industry is shut down, and a lot of workplaces are not in full operation.
All those high rise workplaces in Cities are closed, so just humming along at low consumption, and in Summer, there is higher consumption in all those high rises in that mid day period than there is in Winter.
Don’t fall for the meme that coal fired power is on the way out.
When they need an average 16500MW of power ABSOLUTELY for each and every day, there is only one place that can come from.
Coal fired power is a conversation whose time is rapidly approaching, only this time, it’ll be the truth.
Tony.
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Thanks Tony for what you contribute. Something we will never hear on the MSM, for sure. I always look for your posts on every energy subject that comes up here on Joanne’s blog.
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Thank you Tony!
It’s hard data and facts like these that will ultimately have to win the day with common sense over stupidity.
I’m not sanguine that it will happen soon enough, though.
10
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/12/08/craig-kelly-mp-on-cop25/
Worth a listen 🙂
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Only the facts. There is no problem, except the UN manufactured one. Socialist Climate Change, the only Climate Change which exists. Pure financial manipulation by the now destitute UN. Perhaps they really expected that $100Bn a year? The shame is other politicians are just as deceitful as those in the UN. They can always ask Donald Trump for the cash. Ha!
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Yes, he’s very forthright and we need more like him.
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Does anyone know why we are importing electricity from NSW in Queensland? Not having enough generation so early in the summer does not look good for keeping the lights on.
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That is a pretty rare occurrence.
Maybe a couple of the coalies in Qld are doing some maintenance and its cheaper to get it from NSW than to start up an extra gas supply.
It will only be cross-border stuff anyway.
Tony would have a better idea of the why.
50
IIRC Qld power goes to NSW and then some comes back to the area around Texas and Inglewood. Thus those users don’t qualify for any Qld discounts – according to a not-pleased friend
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behind paywall:
6 Dec: UK Telegraph: Energy suppliers forced to pick up £100m tab under green scheme
By Ed Clowes
Power companies that have paid their green energy payments on time have been left to pick up a £100m tab by others that have failed to honour their commitments.
Suppliers that have paid part or all of what they owe to the Government’s green scheme will be tapped for a further £97.5m, according to the latest data from energy watchdog Ofgem.
A recent spate of insolvencies in the energy market have been blamed in part on the requirement for companies to pay into the renewables scheme…
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2019/12/06/energy-suppliers-forced-pick-100m-tab-green-scheme/
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7 Dec: ClimateChangeNews: Irresistible Greta Thunberg meets immovable UN climate talks
By Chloé Farand
“We don’t want more promises. It is your action that are going to save us,” Vanessa Nakate, a youth climate striker from Uganda, told negotiators at the UN’s Cop25 conference while protesters were gathering in the Spanish capital. Organisers claimed half a million people took part. Local authorities estimated the crowd was closer to 15,000…
Negotiators failed to agree a common timetable for countries to present new climate plans. Nor could they agree on when to agree. Meanwhile, entrenched political positions on global carbon markets means the talks remain in stalemate…
https://climatechangenews.com/2019/12/07/irresistible-thunberg-meets-immovable-un-climate-talks/
6 Dec: Common Dreams: In a tweet from the march and rally, Thunberg said the marchers may have numbered as many as half a million — a figure echoed by Greenpeace Germany.
6 Dec: El Pais: The march, called under the slogan “world is waking up to the climate crisis,” has the support of 850 social and environmental organizations…
850 orgs and only 15,000 could join in at the end of the working day on a Friday.
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8 Dec: Fox News: Vegan influencer eats meat for 30 days, shocks fans by saying she’s healthier than she’s ‘felt in years’
By Michael Hollan
A formerly vegan influencer revealed to her fans that she spent 30 days eating nothing but meat and animal products. She also revealed that the new diet had some surprisingly positive effects on her health.
Alyse Parker, who has over 200K Instagram followers and over 700K Youtube subscribers, explained her decision on Instagram. In a post, she revealed that she decided to try the Carnivore Diet after hearing about all of the health benefits from friends who switched from being vegan to eating only meat and animal products.
Parker explained, “I had my own fair share of health struggles and eventually reached a breaking point where I was willing to try anything to function properly again.”…
“I swallowed my pride and decided I’d give it a shot,” she continued. “Full-on carnivore. I woke up the next morning feeling more mentally clear, focused, wholesome, and healthy than I had felt in years.”…READ ON
https://www.foxnews.com/lifestyle/vegan-influencer-carnivore-healthier
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Interesting.
20
Funny about that!
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Something I do occasionally is check the headlines at news.com.au or smh in case there’s been a volcano, a cathedral fire or some event that’s hard to beat up or fake. Best to cut the cord totally, but that’s tricky. It’s only a minute or two of media in the day, not as bad as listening to the “news” or soaking up some tripe called “current affairs” for half an hour.
So I checked the headlines and found two maps of Australia. One is all red, brown and purple and is click bait for what is supposed to be an impending warmeggedon. (I didn’t click.) The other map is a really comforting sky-blue and describes – wait for it! – falling power prices. You get little yellow arrows indicating how much they’ll drop in each state (except WA). There are no percentage points but it looks pretty sciency to me.
Can you guess the reason for these price drops which haven’t materialised yet but which merit their own sky-blue map and yellow arrows. Really? You can’t guess what miraculous new technologies will be behind these massive savings for all you mums and dads? (Hint: it won’t be durrrrrdy coal.)
Go on. Just take a guess.
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For those who subscribe, check out the video at the top of this Herald Sun article: https://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/victorians-brace-for-swelting-temperatures-fire-bans/live-coverage/5da2fb9aed8a8f882fd35f5da12e7d40
We’re doomed!!!!!
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Trump Science Advisor Happer Says President Understands Climate Change Is ‘Mostly Hype’
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2019/12/08/happer-trump-understands-climate-change-is-mostly-hype/
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Yes and when he wins the Presidency again, he will have no shackles. Right now Climate Change is so ingrained in the US from 30 years of propaganda, that he dares not do more. In his second and final term, the US will do what China and Russia and India are doing. Ignore the whole thing. And if the Republicans win Congress, the US can do much more. Their huge scientific community can destroy it. In weeks. Goodbye man made Climate Change.
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read all:
9 Dec: AliceSringsNews: Letter: Power problems: Reporting inadequate, warnings disregarded
from Monica Tan, Repower NT, Manager for the Environment Centre NT
Sir – The investigation has exposed deep systemic problems in the NT’s energy agencies. The Gunner government should take responsibility for their failure to manage urgent, system grid upgrades.
These blackouts were avoidable. As noted in the independent report by ENTURA, cloud cover is a normal event and any well-designed energy system using existing technology has the capacity to handle changing weather.
Also noted in the Utilities Commission report: “The Commission notes, and agrees with Entura, that the sudden unforeseen (by those managing the system) reduction in solar generation due to cloud which precipitated the system black is not considered a root cause of the system black, as a power system should be designed as far as practical to be sufficiently robust to withstand this.”
Solar energy is not to blame here…READ ALL
https://www.alicespringsnews.com.au/2019/12/09/power-problems-reporting-inadequate-warnings-disregarded/
9 Dec: AliceSpringsNews: PowerWater, Territory Generation CEOs sacked
By ERWIN CHLANDA
https://www.alicespringsnews.com.au/2019/12/09/powerwater-territory-generation-ceos-sacked/
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I’ve searched & searched, but haven’t found a word from theirABC today on the NT report. it’s not like they don’t know about it:
15 Oct: ABC: NT Chief Minister announces review into Alice Springs power blackout as residents feel the heat
By Steve Vivian
NT Chief Minister Michael Gunner told ABC Darwin Breakfast the outage stemmed from a generation issue.
“We’re not quite sure what’s happened there,” he said.
“It shouldn’t happen … there seems to be an unacceptable failure here between the battery and the gensets [generation sets].
“We should be able to handle switches between solar and gensets.”…READ ALL
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-10-14/michael-gunner-nt-review-alice-springs-blackout/11599546
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in fact, theirABC was still spruiking more REs for NT while the review was underway:
25 Nov: ABC: NT Government criticised over ‘incompatible’ renewable energy strategy
By Chelsea Heaney
As some states race ahead in the development of renewable energy, the Northern Territory continues to lag significantly behind the rest of the country — according to a report released by the Climate Council…
The Climate Council’s Greg Bourne, former president of BP Australasia, said there was a contradiction in the NT Government’s plans to set renewable targets while also supporting growth in onshore fracking and gas exports…
“But the good news is the Northern Territory is starting to look at things now and there is a lot of opportunity for solar.”…
Mr Bourne said the Northern Territory would bear the brunt of some of the most severe effects of climate change.
“The intensity of cyclones are going to increase, there is no doubt about that,” he said.
“We’re expecting to see, during the dry season, much more intense bushfires as well, just like on the east coast at the moment where we are seeing these tragic situations.”…
Mr Bourne said it was the states and territories, rather than the Federal Government, driving progress in renewable energy.
He said the NT Government needed to act with a “forward” focus to catch up.
“We need to be facing forward, not facing backwards. I look at Prime Minister [Scott] Morrison with despair as a person who is walking into the future facing backwards holding a lump of coal to his chest. That’s not the way forward,” he said
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-11-25/renewable-energy-review-finds-northern-territory-running-last/11734952
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““The intensity of cyclones are going to increase, there is no doubt about that,”
really? BOM empirical data says otherwise, otherwise we have assertions. I guess you can have no doubt about those if you like.
I hope the new solar powered Singapore extension cord works better than this. Would hate for the lights to flicker on Orchard Rd because of clouds in Katherine.
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I watch a Youtube channel called Triggernometry and was listening to Melanie Philips speak about Jewish history (as you do) while cooking up a vindaloo, when they came to their last question, which is what are we not talking about that we should be talking about:
https://youtu.be/Aq4suTStoxE?t=4430
Now we know why Melanie Philips is truly vilified… she be an ebil climate denier!
20
Panic at the UN
If only …
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9 Dec: Deutsche Welle: EU greenlights mega subsidies for electric batteries
The European Commission’s competivitity body has approved billions of euros in state aid to the electric battery industry. The move is aimed at helping the EU catch up in the strategic production sector.
The European Union’s anti-trust authority approved €3.2 billion ($3.5 billion) in subsidies aimed at helping Europe boost its lagging competitiveness in the electric battery sector.
The subsidies from seven members states — Germany, France, Italy, Poland, Belgium, Sweden and Finland — will go to 17 different companies, a statement from the European Commission said. The investment injection will help generate an extra €5 billion in private investment, it added…READ ON
https://www.dw.com/en/eu-greenlights-mega-subsidies-for-electric-batteries/a-51588076
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Delingpole says the UK Conservatives have surrendered to the Green Blob.
Once this election and Brexit are over, we will see. The key is the US election because if Russia, China, India and the US are dramatically increasing CO2 output, it is all quite pointless. This is quite apart from the fact that humans do not control either CO2 levels or the weather.
The expectations are two. Firstly that it starts to get colder quickly, as if that was not already apparent in Europe, the US and Australia. Secondly that Trump administration really attacks the extreme Green socialist construct which is Climate Change.
After thirty one years of widespread indoctrination akin to Scientology, he has to move slowly at present. In a year’s time, there is no such need. The political winds will have shifted and the US science community will dump on man made CO2. Besides, man made Climate Change and Global Warming will not be the problem. Sadly Global Cooling will be.
Maybe then the science community can be directed to nuclear fusion, despite the wasted thirty years.
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How the Chinese administration fixes people who do ‘social crimes’ — crimes like criticizing police actions.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/R1YaA15Rpb8
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tom0mason –
9 Dec: Breitbart: Vatican Bishop: ‘China Trusts Pope Francis’
by Thomas D. Williams, Ph.D.
ROME — A top Vatican bishop has confirmed Pope Francis’ wish to visit Beijing and establish formal diplomatic ties with the country, as reported Monday in China’s state-run Global Times.
“Pope Francis has love and confidence in China and China trusts Pope Francis,” said Argentine Bishop Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo, chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, speaking at an organ donation and transplantation conference this weekend in Kunming, Southwest China.
“In this dynamic, the next step is to reach [an agreement on establishing] diplomatic relations,” said Sanchez, while also underscoring the pope’s wish to visit China and to host China’s leaders in the Vatican…
In describing his trip, Sanchez waxed of how he “found an extraordinary China” with an exceptional work ethic, telling a journalist that “at this moment, the Chinese are the ones implementing Catholic social teaching best.”…READ ALL
https://www.breitbart.com/asia/2019/12/09/vatican-bishop-china-trusts-pope-francis/
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As I’ve said before, I do not consider this Pope to be God’s representative on this planet. He’s a left-wing stooge, installed by a particularly evil coven of bishops.
20
My opinion too tom0mason.
00
There is a battle looming over Prime TV and methinks The Cat will be victorious.
‘Small but strategically significant, Prime Media has become the key media asset in Australia’s regional media war, with billionaire WIN Corporation owner Bruce Gordon and Australian Community Media boss Antony Catalano both announcing they would reject Seven West’s $64m takeover bid for control of Prime, instead staking their own claims for ownership.’ Oz
20
https://www.livescience.com/25293-hawaii-giant-tsunami-landslides.html
10
9 Dec: Dept of Justice: Media release: Statement by Attorney General William P. Barr on the Inspector General’s Report of the Review of Four FISA Applications and Other Aspects of the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane Investigation
“The Inspector General’s report now makes clear that the FBI launched an intrusive investigation of a U.S. presidential campaign on the thinnest of suspicions that, in my view, were insufficient to justify the steps taken. It is also clear that, from its inception, the evidence produced by the investigation was consistently exculpatory. Nevertheless, the investigation and surveillance was pushed forward for the duration of the campaign and deep into President Trump’s administration. In the rush to obtain and maintain FISA surveillance of Trump campaign associates, FBI officials misled the FISA court, omitted critical exculpatory facts from their filings, and suppressed or ignored information negating the reliability of their principal source. The Inspector General found the explanations given for these actions unsatisfactory. While most of the misconduct identified by the Inspector General was committed in 2016 and 2017 by a small group of now-former FBI officials, the malfeasance and misfeasance detailed in the Inspector General’s report reflects a clear abuse of the FISA process…
“The Department of Justice and the FBI are committed to taking whatever steps are necessary to rectify the abuses that occurred and to ensure the integrity of the FISA process going forward…
“With respect to DOJ personnel discussed in the report, the Department will follow all appropriate processes and procedures, including as to any potential disciplinary action.”
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/statement-attorney-general-william-p-barr-inspector-generals-report-review-four-fisa
16 Nov: NY Post: Barr accuses liberal ‘resistance’ of trying to ‘sabotage’ Trump
By Jon Levine
Attorney General William Barr called out Democrats forcefully in a fiery speech to the Federalist Society this week, accusing the party of trying to “sabotage” the Trump administration.
“Immediately after President Trump won election, opponents inaugurated what they called ‘The Resistance,’ and they rallied around an explicit strategy of using every tool and maneuver available to sabotage the functioning of his administration,” Barr told the conservative audience.
“The fact of the matter is that, in waging a scorched-earth, no-holds-barred war of ‘resistance’ against this administration, it is the Left that is engaged in the systematic shredding of norms and the undermining of the rule of law,” he added.
In his remarks to the judicial group, Barr said lefty resistance fighters had more in common with agitators under dictatorship than members of a liberal democracy.
“Now, ‘Resistance’ is the language used to describe insurgency against rule imposed by an occupying military power. It obviously connotes that the government is not legitimate,” Barr said. “This is a very dangerous — indeed incendiary — notion to import into the politics of a democratic republic.“
A full transcript (LINK) of Barr’s speech was published by the Justice Department Friday…
In October, Barr opened a criminal investigation into the origins of the Russia probe. Connecticut State Attorney John Durham is conducting the review.
https://nypost.com/2019/11/16/barr-accuses-liberal-resistance-of-trying-to-sabotage-trump/
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9 Dec: Dept of Justice: Media release: Statement of U.S. Attorney John H. Durham
I have the utmost respect for the mission of the Office of Inspector General and the comprehensive work that went into the report prepared by Mr. Horowitz and his staff. However, our investigation is not limited to developing information from within component parts of the Justice Department. Our investigation has included developing information from other persons and entities, both in the U.S. and outside of the U.S. Based on the evidence collected to date, and while our investigation is ongoing, last month we advised the Inspector General that we do not agree with some of the report’s conclusions as to predication and how the FBI case was opened.
https://www.justice.gov/usao-ct/pr/statement-us-attorney-john-h-durham
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essential articles:
9 Dec: John Solomon: The Comey FBI’s 17 worst failures, inaccuracies and omissions flagged in the Russia FISA report
https://johnsolomonreports.com/the-comey-fbis-17-worst-failures-inaccuracies-and-omissions-flagged-in-the-russia-fisa-report/
9 Dec: John Solomon: IG report lays out compelling evidence FBI misled FISA court in Russia case, sources say
https://johnsolomonreports.com/ig-report-provides-compelling-evidence-fbi-misled-fisa-court-in-russia-case-sources-say/
9 Dec: John Solomon: IG excoriates FBI conduct in Russia probe, concludes FISA warrants misled court
https://johnsolomonreports.com/ig-excoriates-fbi-conduct-in-russia-probe-concludes-fisa-warrants-misled-court/
9 Dec: Sara Carter: President Trump Says IG’s Findings ‘Far Worse’ Than Imagined. Read Horowitz’s List Here
President Donald Trump said the results of the Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report was ‘far worse than I would have ever thought possible.’
“It’s an embarrassment to our country,” he added. “It’s dishonest, it’s everything that a lot of people thought it would be, but far worse..it’s a very sad day when I see that… they had nothing it was concocted. It’s probably something that never happened in the history of country.”…
Horowitz listed more than 17 significant inaccuracies and omissions with the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane probe into Trump’s campaign…
Former Utah Congressman and Fox News contributor Jason Chaffetz told SaraACarter.com that Horowitz’s 17 significant findings are stunning…
https://saraacarter.com/president-trump-says-igs-findings-far-worse-than-imagined-read-horowitzs-list-here/
20
Per AEMO, wholesale electricity prices have dropped dramatically in Victoria in the last three months.
Average wholesale prices:
Jul-Dec $90/MWhr
Oct $101/MWhr
Nov $68/Mwhr
Dec $38/MWhr
Did everyone turnoff their heaters and not yet turn on their air conditioners?
OpenNEM shows early August weekly generation 4,093 GWhr, or average 24,400 MW.
1st week of Oct 3,636 GWhr, or 21,640 MW.
1st week of Nov 3,653 GWhr, or 21,740 MW.
1st week of Dec 3935 GWhr, or 23,400 MW
Most of the reduced generation has come from black coal.
00
How long does it take for WHOLESALE PRICES to be reflected in actual CONSUMER CHARGES in the form of lower bills?
00
Those wholesale prices you see each and every day, and shown at five minute intervals bear absolutely ZERO relationship to retail prices for electricity.
As far as I am aware, those retail prices are set long long before what you see, and I think, (don’t hold me to it) that they are set once year to the amount you pay.
What you see at the AEMO is the wholesale price Each retailer who purchases electricity pays the going rate set at every half hour, the average cost of the previous half hour of five minute intervals.
What a retailer makes on the swings when the wholesale cost is low, he loses on the roundabouts when the cost is high, and more often than not, they (the retailers) make a handsome profit each year.
Where you see those huge spikes, no one ever pays that much for electricity. It’s just an instantaneous spike and the cost then settles down to the new average.
This meme that consumer charges will go down is just that, a meme, and if (big big if) they do go down, it will be by a fraction of a cent per KWH.
Tony.
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9 Dec: Judicial Watch: Judicial Watch Statement on FISA Application Report
Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton made the following statement regarding today’s Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General report:
Today’s IG report on the Russiagate FISA abuse provides abundant evidence that the FBI and DOJ massively violated the law in order to obtain the Carter Page spy warrants targeting President Trump…
President Trump should directly appoint a special counsel from outside of the DOJ and FBI to investigate the Obama/Clinton/Deep State Spygate scandal and other crimes that are in plain sight. In the meantime, Judicial Watch will continue its dozens of Freedom of Information Act lawsuits and investigations, which have already revealed much of what is known about Spygate – the biggest corruption scandal of all time.
https://www.judicialwatch.org/press-releases/judicial-watch-statement-on-fisa-application-report/
9 Dec: The Hill: Trump: Watchdog report shows FBI ‘attempted overthrow’ of government
by Morgan Chalfant
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/473731-trump-watchdog-report-shows-fbi-attempted-overthrow-of-government
9 Dec: TheFederalist: Brennan Lied About Not Including Steele Dossier In Intelligence Community Assessment On 2016 Russian Election Interference
By Madeline Osburn
The new report from Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz confirmed former CIA Director John Brennan lied to Congress about whether the dossier authored by Christopher Steele was used in the Obama administration’s Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA)…
https://thefederalist.com/2019/12/09/brennan-lied-about-not-including-steele-dossier-in-intelligence-community-assessment-on-2016-russian-election-interference/
9 Dec: TheFederalist: IG Report: FBI Doctored Evidence To Falsely Paint Carter Page As Russian Spy
The Department of Justice’s inspector general found that a top FBI lawyer blatantly doctored evidence to falsely smear Carter Page as a Russian spy.
By Sean Davis and Mollie Hemingway
(Carter) Page, who had previously been an informant and witness for the United States in a federal espionage case against a Russian intelligence official, was targeted by the Obama FBI as a Russian spy helping Putin to steal the election from Hillary Clinton in 2016…
https://thefederalist.com/2019/12/09/ig-report-fbi-doctored-evidence-to-falsely-paint-carter-page-as-russian-spy/
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Youtube: 43m24s: 9 Dec: Fox News: Tucker Carlson Show
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xun2SdEdZ0Q
Youtube: 44m28s: 9 Dec: Fox News: Sean Hannity Show
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gls8AdWLa2M
Youtube: 40m27s: 9 Dec: Fox News: (Laura) Ingraham Angle
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJvRziNhB30
00
hard to believe this was on NBC:
10 Dec: Youtube: 24m18s: Full Interview: Barr Criticizes Inspector General Report On The Russia Investigation | NBC News
In an exclusive interview, Attorney General William Barr spoke to NBC News’ Pete Williams about the findings on the Justice Department Inspector General’s report on the Russia investigation and his criticisms of the FBI.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRKFo0JmuBc
00