Now they tell us!
Climate warming to weaken wind power in northern hemisphere, increase in Australia: study
After building 341,000 wind turbines, mostly in the Northern Hemisphere, now climate modelers reveal that winds will decrease in the Northern Hemisphere!
Warming temperatures caused by climate change are set to weaken wind energy in the northern hemisphere, a study shows, lessening the amount of wind power produced for wind farms.
However the southern hemisphere would see a boost in wind, which could potentially turn north-eastern Australia into an attractive investment for energy companies.
Rush, invest your money now. The theory called polar amplification has the success rate of a coin toss. Buy a wind farm in NE Australia!
Luckily wind speeds are not also influenced by cloud cover, jet streams, oceans currents, forest growth, atmospheric tides, solar factors, magnetic fields, ozone levels, cosmic rays, or butterflies. Otherwise this study might be inadequate, uninformed guesswork being used to inform investment decisions!
Look out for Polar Amplifiers. Click to enlarge.
Key points:
- Atmosphere instability which creates wind changing in northern hemisphere
- North-east Australia could become an attractive investment for energy companies
- At present there is only one operational wind farm in Queensland
Wind usually derives its energy from an instability in the atmosphere, and in the northern hemisphere a major source of that instability is the equator to pole temperature difference,” he said.
“We all know that the tropics are warmer than the arctic, but because the artic is warming at a much faster rate than the rest of the world — including the tropics and the latitudes — that temperature gradient is lessening.
“That is a well known phenomenon called polar amplification, or artic amplification.”
But wait til you hear why winds are speeding up in the Southern Hemisphere:
It found in the southern hemisphere the difference between the average land and sea temperature was increasing, which would push greater wind production.
“As we know most of the southern hemisphere is dominated by ocean, relative to the northern hemisphere,” Professor Karnauskas said.
So in South America, the southern half of Africa and Australia, greenhouse gas warming was expected to increase the temperature over land faster than over the ocean. “The land-sea temperature difference in the southern hemisphere is actually increasing because the land is warming up so rapidly relative to the ocean,” he said.
“So the winds are able to derive greater energy from that temperature difference or instability.”
US could face drop in wind energy
For Australia, Professor Karnauskas said he expected there would be a boom in wind energy for the north-east of the country.
“This information may prove key in allocating resources and planning, for example where and when to build new farms and how to deal with differed maintenance with older wind farms,” he said.
“And helping to fine-tune the blend of renewables supporting the every growing regional energy consumption.
“It doesn’t mean that wind energy should take the place of any other part of the portfolio that’s in a strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”
Professor Karnauskas’ study reported the central United States could face a 10 per cent drop in available wind energy by 2050.
And by the year 2100, that could be up to 40 per cent.
The idea that the Trump administration could use the report to push for a drop in wind energy investment was something Professor Karnauskas said he was nervous about.
“Wind power is and should remain considered as an important part of the portfolio of renewable investments as part of the broader strategy to reduce carbon emissions,” he said.
Andrew Bray, from the advocacy group Australian Wind Alliance, said he doubted a predicted boost in available wind energy in Queensland would make much of a difference in the level of wind farm investment.
He said there was already enough wind to go around.
“There’s incredible wind resources all across Australia,” he said.
“We recently had some research done which estimated that we could power Australia’s entire energy needs 12 times over just with the wind resources in eastern Australia.
UPDATE: The researchers say there are three problems with GCM’s
Jo says “just three?”
The first… The resolution … is typically on the order of 1–2° or ~100 km.
The second … is that wind turbines integrate momentum from wind across the rotor disk, typically 40–120 m above the surface, whereas… wind information is available only at a height of 10 m and on standard pressure levels (for exmple, 1,000 mbar, 925 mbar, 850 mbar, and so on).
The third potential limitation of GCMs is the provision of monthly mean fields, whereas winds fluctuate at much higher frequencies…
Someone tell the researchers not to worry. The GCM’s other limitations include that they can’t predict the global temperature, historic long term temperatures, nor the regional, local, short term[1] [2] variations, they’re wrong about polar amplification [3], and can’t get the upper tropospheric pattern right either [4] [5]. Being comprehensive, they also fail on humidity[6], rainfall[7], drought[8] and they can’t do clouds[9]. See the references here.
or you could buy some REAL cheap used wind farms in California, slightly rusty, not functioning but a real fixer upper!…..
250
Much better units in Canada, not connected to anything, prop just spins around in a light wind. Still collects guv C$. Best investment I have ever seen. Prop on a stick, collecting money for nothing! Sounds like it needs a riff. How did that go, “money for nothing and the sticks were free”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1ZtpjAcngY
250
Same here. We have a large wind farm nearby, but it is not connected to the grid. They have never been able to get permits to install transmission infrastructure. They are in sight of all the drivers on a main highway, so they can feel good about saving the planet as they actually help saving the planet by driving their ICE vehicles. The
windsubsidy farms have transferred much wealth to already wealthy land owners, though. The Obama legacy.251
The ones in Canada have no genny on the stick. Prop just spins around collecting money. This truly shows what windy farms are all about. Geek sticks with prop on top, trying to clutch money, collected by force, via government corruption of physics, to buy votes, from green activists, who go to conferences to discuss same and figure out how to get more money.
And they all wonder why The Donald got elected.
https://www.google.com.au/search?rlz=1C1LOQA_enAU710AU715&biw=1536&bih=734&tbm=isch&sa=1&ei=h_EyWvmeKMfO8wWOxKGAAg&q=propellerhead+geek&oq=geek+propeller&gs_l=psy-ab.1.0.0i8i30k1.89033.90452.0.93561.16.8.0.0.0.0.369.1115.2-2j2.4.0….0…1c.1.64.psy-ab..14.1.367….0.2tAvcR2uhWo#imgrc=hahc_BOgVyqc3M:
150
So a polar amp is somethingan eskimo rock band plugs its gee-tars into?
Yeeee-haaaaaa!!
211
Knockin’ out a riff on a set of Whale Bones.
70
I love whale bones, they make a great stock
70
Who’s your butcher (or fishmonger???)?
40
“Luckily wind speeds are not also influenced by cloud cover, jet streams, oceans currents, forest growth, atmospheric tides, solar factors, magnetic fields, ozone levels, cosmic rays, or butterflies. Otherwise this study might be inadequate, uninformed guesswork being used to inform investment decisions!”
One of your best Jo, an absolute classic. Love the cartoon.
330
When you consider that they believe that the Northern Hemisphere is the top side of the world, when it so obvious that the Northern Hemisphere is the heavier side, and therefore must be on the bottom, you can’t really be surprised what they come up with!
It is they, not we, who are in danger of falling off!
200
Ted O’Brien.
How true, many believers in AGW are off the planet already.
150
Uh-huh….but what about those who believed David Evans’ idea that global cooling was imminent?
It hasn’t happened 4 years in a row now – and, amusingly, those 4 years are all the 4 hottest years on record.
Surely you’d have to be off the planet to believe in a model that hindcasts negative concentrations of CO2?
20
Just an aside Jo. Shouldn’t that be a Japanese butterfly.
20
With many Hiroshima sized bombs worth of solar raining down every second and the easily harvested energy available from hot rocks added to these new strong winds we will have a surplus of free energy.
121
Like all green models, garbage in garbage out.
141
From where I’m standing, the most garbage model yet was John McLean’s “coldest year since 1956”, which turned out to be the hottest year on record.
Which models have you identified that can match John McLean’s for garbageyness?
20
You forgot the waves in your little list, Rollo, you forgot the waves!
60
There will indeed be more wind – hot air from so called Professors like “he who has a Lithuanian surname,ie ending in kas, and the likes of Andrew Bray of the Australian Wind Alliance who really takes the cake – delusional beyond belief – so much hot air!!! Will the banana benders believe him? In the short term maybe but in the long term – nah!!
131
You just uncovered the source of global warming, hot air. It seems to spread rapidly, with the help of most media. Definitely why it more apparent in the Northern hemisphere. More universities to source from. I finally know what the BS in Many CVs is an acronym for.
130
Heat rises so there is a physical explanation for the top of the planet being hotter than the bottom. I doubt it has anything to do with more BS in the northern hemisphere. Australia has enough BS to counter everything produced in the northern hemisphere.
80
Rockyredneck says “I finally know what the BS in Many CVs is an acronym for”.
I am worried I have a BSC – does it mean BS Certification?
If I didn’t have a PHD I would be really worried.
I see from the two entries above that the term “BS” is alive and well in the English language – especially wrt the subject of Climate Change/AGW/Catastrophic SL rise predictions/Solar/Wind etc etc.
30
Mr Bray was one of the people that had their asses handed to them by Lord Christopher Monckton at his first talk in Ballarat in 2011, Bray who had a bit of coverage with the local media honestly thought he could trip up Monckton on scientific facts, what happened was the embarrassing exposure of just how little CAGW zealots know when it comes to actual reality.
When Bray started I thought he was someone doing a parody for a joke but realised he was serious, I almost felt sorry for him…..almost.
171
The old Johnie Carson version of the professors study had much better reasoning!
30
Bray isn’t that the noise a donkey makes? Maybe the the two are connected!
40
I’ll be succinct: what rot!
81
Jo does a great job without pay. Let us all make a donation.
Merry Christmas to all.
210
The powers that be (UN elitists) are offering this dual distraction to keep as many sheeple as possible in line.
This distraction tries to keep the windpower nonsense running in Australia, by offing utter unprovable nonsense about wind speed and direction. While at the same time cooks the books on the (slight) Northern hemisphere cooling to try and keep everyone in lockstep over the Paris Accord. Note the Paris accord date is 2020, that is when the real cooling will start, from the change-over from solar cycle 24 to solar cycle 25.
110
Love the cartoon Jo a woman of many talents , I still think it’s an advertisement for windfarms .
80
So if “we could power Australia’s entire energy needs 12 times over just with the wind resources in eastern Australia” is true, does that mean around roughly 8% of eastern Australia must be devoted to wind farms? The ‘eastern Australia’ area is generally defined to comprise Queensland, New South Wales, Australian Capital Territory, Victoria, and Tasmania, around 2.83 million square kilometres, so this would require around 236,000 km² for this massive wind farm, an area roughly the size of the whole of Victoria. Then there is this issue of actual power output versus nameplate output: no information is given as to whether this is ‘best case’ nameplate capacity or the actual average output.
If all of Australia’s energy is supplied by wind farms, then you either have to have adequate fast-supply energy storage or accept that large areas will experience blackouts to shed load that might otherwise take out the whole of Australia’s networked power supply. How much ‘gold plating’ of wind farms do you have to do to provide an adequate reliable supply of power? The more ‘gold plating’ you have in online wind generation, the larger risk you have a power oversupply at times: what do you do with this excess energy if there is insufficient energy storage to capture and release this energy?
130
Once upon a time, some pollies decided to build lots of windmills to provide free power for everyone in Australia. Each windmill has a big turbine on top of the tower with huge blades that spin in the wind.
When the wind blows hard (but not too hard) each turbine can produce 3 megawatts (that’s 3 million watts) of power, enough to light 300,000 globes, or run 3,000 microwaves. That’s enough power for about 3,000 people. Sounds wonderful?
In Australia we use about 21,000 megawatts of power on average, so that means we would need 7,000 windmills. But wait, the wind doesn’t always blow strongly, in fact on average it only blows at less than one third of that strength. So we really need at least 21,000 windmills.
Now just imagine, if we put all those windmills in a line each 300 metres away from the next one, they would stretch for 6,300 kilometres. That’s equal to the distance from Sydney to Perth, plus the distance from Melbourne to Darwin. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have our very own Southern Cross crisscrossing our continent providing free power for all?
What’s that, you have some questions?
– How much would 21,000 windmills cost? Well, about $6 million each, or about $126 billion in total. But don’t you worry about that, our wonderful Australian government collects over $400 billion each year, so over the next 10 years this would just require some small additions to borrowings.
– And what happens when the wind doesn’t blow? Um, I think it’s time to turn the lights out and go to bed.
For brighter children and some pollies, you might have to explain that on windless days you do need to keep in reserve existing coal and gas fired stations, equal to 100% of peak demand. Alternatively, at peak wind there is surplus production, so you could spend even more $ billions to install huge batteries and/or lots of pumped hydro. But that’s another unwritten story.
181
Watchman says: The ‘eastern Australia’ area is generally defined to comprise Queensland, New South Wales, Australian Capital Territory, Victoria, and Tasmania
I’d just like to say that as a West Australian, every other state is “The East”.
140
Good to see the professor is open minded as to where the “evidence” comes from:
/sarc
180
Yes. And how many fall for it?
70
It’s Man Made CO2 and it’s addition to the atmosphere that controls just about everything on the planet. Soon it will be said that CO2 has a deleterious affect on fusion and that Nuclear power will be reduced unless the human race does something to reduce CO2.
71
It is impossible to overstate the importance of CO2 on Earth. CO2 is fundamental to all life on Earth so there would be no life without it. It is the most important molecule on the planet as far as humans are concerned.
CO2 certainly alters the weather over land and water by the impacts of the life it supports.
60
Warming temperatures caused by climate change are set to weaken wind energy in the northern hemisphere, increase in The south.
What about the bit in the midddle?
90
Ve2:
That’s where the concerned ‘environMENTALists’ will set up big sky nets to stop penguins blown off the Antarctic from heading into the dangerous northern hemisphere. Once they have sorted them out from the unicorns and flying pigs those saved penguins will be flown back home in hot air balloons.
Where will they get the necessary hot air without burning fuel and generating CO2? I think I know a source of an almost endless supply of hot air.
101
They are not talking about the middle ATM.
http://www.ospo.noaa.gov/data/sst/anomaly/2017/anomnight.12.14.2017.gif
20
So the short answer is Wind Generated Energy is going to be useless and expensive, so why bother pushing it?
140
With the warmist belief, it’s no wonder,
A professor would make a huge blunder,
With some G.C.M. fooling,
When the whole world is cooling,
In the North and also Down Under.
210
It’s the perfect face-saver. They can tippy-toe away from wind power while blaming the usual suspect. As they euthanise this white elephant they’ll say it’s Bad Bwana’s fault for taking away the wind.
Let’s just pray that Jay doesn’t get to hear about more wind in the southern hemisphere. There’ll soon be hundreds of thousands of used turbines needing a sucker. Dumped in a hundred days or they’re free.
150
He could decide to move S.A. northeast.
40
http://tonyabbott.com.au/2017/10/transcript-hon-tony-abbott-mp-address-global-warming-policy-foundation-westminster-london/
70
Yes. That speech is one for the times, one for the ages, one for the history books.
Now to hope it doesn’t get buried in the next few weeks!
100
Considering all the hype over global temperatures it is very interesting that only a limp nothing temperature had been chosen by the UN backed IPCC.
The only temperature they use for the base temp is ‘pre-industrial levels’ – that is not a temperature it is a ‘get out of jail’ card for when everything falls apart.
http://www.thegwpf.com/new-paper-questions-paris-agreements-dubious-temperature-limits/
Of course that raises the big question, how did they manage to fool most of the people for such a long time?
90
They infiltrated the UN seventy years ago, created a treaty system between member nations that could be used to get around the laws of member nations if the elected government agreed to accept, tried a number of scare campaigns to capture the imagination of people and more importantly gullible politicians influenced by participating politicians, ozone layer hole etc and then global warming, manipulated permanent government agencies that had also been infiltrated by like minded leftists, and using the enormous wealth of certain leftist crony capitalists created a developed worldwide media propaganda machine.
In Australia many of the minority who are not apathetic realised during the Whitlam Labor years 1970s that changes were underway that were not necessarily good for the future of our nation. To begin, the signing of the UN Lima Agreement around 1975 that effectively handed low tech manufacturing to developing nations, the start of the redistribution of wealth agenda. The public education system was manipulated in line with social engineering in general aiming to change society and what were the normal customs and beliefs. And much more that has been introduced, “the inevitability of gradualness”.
I do not accept that the situation we are in cannot be overcome and I take note of what is taking place in the US today with business man POTUS Trump leading the reversal of Socialist Democrat governments.
But there is a lot of lost ground to recover.
180
How did they fool so many? By maintaining the lie! Repetition!
After the Abbott government was elected in 2013, the propaganda effort was doubled across the world. To date that effort has been successful.
80
G’day Ivan,
Thanks for this:
” The only temperature they use for the base temp is ‘pre-industrial levels’ – that is not a temperature it is a ‘get out of jail’ card for when everything falls apart. ”
As they continue to ignore the LIA, they’ve allowed themselves to be quoted as preferring to live at temperatures from that Little Ice Age, a period of severe disruption to human life.
Cheers,
Dave B
50
“The land-sea temperature difference in the southern hemisphere is actually increasing because the land is warming up so rapidly relative to the ocean.” Wow, we have some large land temperature increases on a daily basis at this time of year relative to the ocean, and sometimes the wind blows off that hot continent, and sometimes it doesn’t.
Ain’t science wonderful? Some scientists less so.
140
This may cause a problem for alarmists, how can they reconcile this hypothesis (guesswork) that states the land will heat up rapidly relative to the oceans when they have been telling us for years that the missing heat is hiding in those same oceans?
120
Brilliant point William!
50
And the rapid overnight cooling gets ignored.
Cheers,
Dave B
60
You’ve all got it wrong again! The wind in the North has all been used up because here are tooo many windmills. The greedy western white people took all the wind for heir own use, wouldn’t share it with us down here & now they’ve run out of it. They’ll have to build new coal fired power stations now. Mean while we’ll get all their old windmills to use until we run out of wind resources. The price of this precious resource will of course increase & electricity prices will continue to increase. I really wish we could run out of “stupid”. There’s certainly no shortage of that!
111
Not widely publicised but I read about this a couple of months ago, the federal government has been seeking expressions of interest in local and state government areas for sites suitable for construction of small nuclear power stations. I remember during the Howard Coalition Government terms when they commissioned a report into the viability of securing electricity supply into the long term future utilising a large number of small nuclear power stations dotted around the countryside. I think the recommended number was fifty over many decades.
Obviously the wind and solar farm business opportunities and saturation point for those sources of electricity supply are limited and power stations will continue to be needed as the main generating capacity. And at not too distant future time the announcement will be made coupled to propaganda, marketing and sales pitch to convince consumers that a new (nuclear?) future begins. After all, we could not revert to dirty coal and/or lower electricity pricing, the crony capitalists would be furious.
90
Do you know where to find that Dennis?
30
I just did a search Peter but could not find the article I referred to above, but this was found;
https://www.qt.com.au/news/ipswich-ticks-the-boxes-for-nuclear-revolution/3281160/
30
Maybe it was in this (behind a paywall) article in The Australian Peter, I buy printed copies from time to time but do not have access on line;
Nuclear power in Australia: Why are we not considering this?
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/inquirer/nuclear-the-energy-alternative-for-australia-none-dare-name/news-story/34bb25412a576fbb343ae02d4365b0c2
16 Sep 2017 … Alongside this transition there is an increasingly energetic nuclear race led by Microsoft founder Bill Gates and a fleet of small venture capital-backed … The Minerals Council of Australia says nuclear energy is a readily deployable, zero- emissions baseload energy that should not be excluded from …
30
Becasue a crisis requires an artifically created shortage ( by govt ) and creating a dependency ( on govt ). In short, the govt wants to be our parents…which is just rank Socialism……and yes, it stinks…..
80
Dennis:
It was discussed on The Conversation in July and in 2 articles in The Australian in September (the last attracting 235 comments).
https://theconversation.com/small-nuclear-power-reactors-future-or-folly-81252
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/inquirer/nuclear-the-energy-alternative-for-australia-none-dare-name/news-story/34bb25412a576fbb343ae02d4365b0c2
As above
30
I’ve said it before and I say it again. The opposition to nuclear power was never founded in science. It was whipped up by the Communists among us to hinder Western nations in the Cold War nuclear arms race.
10
Build more windmills in North Queensland, where there is a prevailing SE trade wind. Sounds good- what could possibly go wrong? They don’t get many cyclones do they? And North Queensland is VERY close to centres of population that need the electricity.
I’ve noticed the ABC is very short of news recently.
120
I’ve also noticed less climate scare stories at the ABC , used to be an average of about 2 a day and now we get headline fillers like wine glasses have increased in size since the 1700’s .
70
Not just the ABC.
https://www.comedycard.co.uk/products/funny-greeting-card-matt-wine-i-never-have-more-than-one-glass
50
I remember that one. Matt is a wonderful pocket cartoonist and one of the few reasons we still bother with the UK Daily Telegraph.
40
Did you see today’s? “Alexa – make Brexit happen”
40
Yes, love it!
20
Actually they missed a great opportunity here , wine glasses bigger because of climate change .
70
Ken Stewart:
Not only will the wind be stronger but Cyclones will get stronger and more destructive. Both as predicted by climate models.
So the wind turbines will be destroyed almost as fast as they can be installed. It is obviously a cunning plan to sell more wind turbines.
80
Around this area
“Interesting Discussion on Models”
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2017/12/14/interesting-discussion-on-models/
40
So if global warming slows down wind speeds in the northern hemisphere, and wind speeds in the northern hemisphere are speeding up, does that mean the world is cooling…?
Today in the Oz (paywalled):
European cold snap: Jet stream pushes up aeroplane speeds
Sorry that is the best link and quote I can do, since I’m not a subscriber. I can’t find another version of the story. But the idea that the hypothesis is proved by the opposite happening at the same time is gloriously ironic.
60
This is the way I see it Jo, all those wind turbines in the northern hemisphere are blocking off the airflow so the same will happen here if we install more wind farms. However I’ve observed that there appears to be an endless supply of wind and hot air eminating around campuses and government building etc. Maybe we should put all the turbines there
80
You should be able to harvest plenty in the ACT.
60
“The land-sea temperature difference in the southern hemisphere is actually increasing because the land is warming up so rapidly relative to the ocean,” he said.
This is complete nonsense.
90
Only a few months ago the story was that global average wind speeds were declining :-
https://horizon-magazine.eu/article/what-happens-world-dying-winds_en.html
“Few people have probably noticed, but the world’s winds are getting slower. It is something that cannot be picked up by watching the billowing of dust or listening to the rustle of leaves on nearby trees.
Instead, it is a phenomenon occurring on a different scale, as the average global wind speed close to the surface of the land decreases. And while it is not affecting the whole earth evenly, the average terrestrial wind speed has decreased by 0.5 kilometres per hour (0.3 miles per hour) every decade, according to data starting in the 1960s.”
If only we knew which expert to believe !
90
“If only we knew which expert to believe !”
Isn’t that the ones that suit your point of view?
90
When given the choice of data vs Could, might and may projections I chose the data. “To do this, he and his supervisor, Prof. Deliang Chen, are ‘rescuing’ global wind speed observations dating back to the 1880s.”
vs
“Here, we apply an industry wind turbine power curve to simulations of high and low future emissions scenarios in an ensemble of ten fully coupled global climate models to investigate large-scale changes in wind power across the globe.”
60
Ever noticed that the discussion on Climate has moved from arguing the warmists stance and their interpretation of “facts”, altered or otherwise to ridicule and derision at their ever increasingly ridiculous theories.
90
Meanwhile a huge turd has entered the solar system, could this be a portend or evidence of extraterrestrial life?
60
Proves you can polish a turd.
10
I have sent Jo’s diagram off to experts for peer review and they tell me that India is drawn incorrectly. They also point out that it is obvious that The Warming will happen on the top of the planet – the Arctic – because heat always rises. (Except when it hides deep in the ocean.)
They also note that an analysis of tree rings clearly shows a recent and dramatic increase windiness in the Northern Hemisphere, after 10,000 years of stable breezes.
They also strongly disagree with Jo’s comment about the prediction failure of the models, pointing out that they can predict anything they want them to.
70
Anyone here read the original research which this is based on? Did the ABC report it accurately? I am skeptical that one can use an ABC report as the basis of critique of science or assessing the significance of same.
42
The Science is Settled, you should know that. The ABC can only be reporting The Truth, The Facts. It can’t be wrong. Are you a Denier, or something?
90
so, no you are relying on Jo as an authority to interpret the using the ABC report.
32
How’s this for an answer sound familiar .
“I have had so many requests from my legions of fans to post more blogs. No really, there are a surprising number of people out there that read and re read my pastes… I mean posts … and check in to see if I have added anything new.
So today’s, and possibly this year’s, new post should satisfy those fans. Basically it is this link about scientific theories.
Yep, this is another placeholder in case I need to move someone on from their argument by distraction. You know the one where they write, “it is only a theory”. Amazingly, people still try to slip that one into an argument. They are often the same people who distract with, “it is only a model”, without understanding that their lives would soon come to an end without models.”
21
see 29.1.1
31
Here is the abstract.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-017-0029-9
Polar amplification is supposedly going to leave the mid latitude in the northern hemisphere short of wind, but in reality under the approaching global cooling that won’t happen. Huge wind storms can be expected.
‘Did the ABC report it accurately?’
No, there is no balance, global warming is not a fait accompli.
51
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHxS3H4rspg
—x Many green rotors
soon about to fall. —x
40
good for you el Gordo. I can get the full article if you want.
41
go here https://sci-hub.hk/
and paste this into the search box
10.1038/s41561-017-0029-9
51
Moving right along, the author has a linear view of climate history and is out of his depth. He should have stayed at Woods Hole.
22
you’ve lost me el gordo in your reply. Too many references and specifics to back your argument for me to keep up with
30
Its important to see who we are dealing with, check out his bio he is a man on a mission, albeit misguided.
Polar amplification is the subject, is it happening and where are the signs?
The ABC journalist who cobbled the story together has no idea that there has been no global warming in two decades.
https://au.linkedin.com/in/angus-randall-47255752
31
This is why polar amplification cannot happen under a global cooling regime, which is upon us.
http://jo.nova.s3.amazonaws.com/guest/uk/wilde/inactive-sun-stephen-wilde-sm.jpg
What is your opinion?
31
you don’t have to critique the science. How you dismiss it is up to you.
22
There is a controversial theory going the rounds that jet stream amplification is a global warming signal, do you think the hypothesis has merit?
30
It puts the wind up some people, because the jet stream is not all hot air.
And as a hint for Gee Aye: Think of planetary rotation …
30
A bit off the wind topic but on the crazy science topic, this morning we read that Air Pollution is responsible for turning poor inner city children into violent criminals, perhaps by changing their brain structure. Whether it’s our mastery of wind or climate or pollution, the new environmental scientists are now blaming violent criminal behaviour on air. As with earlier this year that Americans were also waging war on Syrians with the poisonous gas CO2 and yesterday that Climate was the major reason for the refugee problem. Not Obama’s Arab Spring.
So the 21st century is about new social sciences and scientists say, from wind patterns to coral reefs and terrible angry summers in previously cool Australia, we are getting the most amazing understanding of how tiny CO2 is changing our world and mankind is killing the planet. No one seems to mention the fact that the Chinese have invested $650Billion on new coal power plants because they, like diesel are clean.
Also yesterday the Committee which controls the information on Jay Weatherill’s $500Million + diesel plan are going to release figures because of a boycott by the opposition. They are even suggesting that Jay’s habit of keeping everything secret because ‘he had such a good deal’ might not be right.
Now back to why the North and South poles are different and why CO2 is the problem.
70
CO2 IS to blame for it all. If there was no CO2 there would be no life and nothing that could complain.
80
TdeF said:
That was the excuse used to remove lead from petrol over twenty years ago. If they’re still going insane then the (expensive) removal of tetra-ethyl-lead from petrol/gasoline was all for nothing, and we’ve been ripped off yet again.
There was/is an american economist who claimed to be keeping annual rates of crimes, violence and violent crime across American cities and that each year was seeing a trend of reduction as each source of lead in the environment was removed.
Nothing was said about CO2.
It must be CFCs, PCBs, and PVCs after all.
40
That lead was added to gasoline. We pay more for the tetra-ethyl-lead to not be added.
Nice little tale of why here
Letting people think the expense in unleaded gas was the removal of the lead was a good business move, perhaps – and another in a long list of things some people would prefer the majority of us don’t know.
10
Lead is a toxic substance and although I don’t see why we should be quite as afraid of it as we’re told we should be, it makes no sense to keep dumping it into the atmosphere from where it can be inhaled and can settle all over nearly everything that’s not completely enclosed.
I don’t like the price of gas, even though it has come down a lot here. But business will always charge all the traffic will bear because if they don’t they risk going out of business. It’s only having competitors that keeps the price from going on up like a rocket headed for Mars. Monopolies have been recognized as a problem for a very long time and here in the states there are antitrust laws that allow the government to break up anyone who gets too big. Unfortunately they have not seen fit to do that with Google, Facebook and more than a few others. The stumbling block is apparently the fact that though they are monopolies they charge you nothing for their service so the antitrust law may not apply.
Anyway, good to be rid of the tetraethyl lead.
10
because their new coal power plants, like diesel, are clean. No CO2 then?
50
TdeF:
Yes, but the CO2 is released as a colourless, odourless gas. Being invisible it is hard to see what happens to it, but recent evidence is that it is used as a fertilzer by plants and trees.
80
Jo says
And the surplus power from all those windfarms will supply the ABC’s transmitters with such cheap electricity and so reliably, they will really be profitable like they never have been before!
WIN WIN!
80
… with a bit of luck, they’ll never be heard again :-).
50
Better still, let the ABC be powered by wind. So when the wind doesn’t blow their blowhards will not be heard.
50
The reasoning of the Road Runner was fine. It was the Coyote whose reasoning got him in trouble.
30
I don’t know about the effects of CO2/global Warming/Climate Change, but there has been a lot of wind around Canberra recently, especially in the vicinity of Parliament House.
40
Thankyou Professor Karnauskas, I will corner the market on butterflies to transport wind energy from SH to the NH. Look out Gore I’ll make more money than you using your investment strategies. No I will not influence the butterfly fly market, honest.
20
Sarcasm might be the lowest form of humour, Jo, but I love it so.
40
fabulous cartoon, jo. lol.
however, when the NYT is willing to publish junk such as the following, how is the public to understand anything about the climate?
14 Dec: NYT: How Global Warming Fueled Five Extreme Weather Events
By BRAD PLUMER and NADJA POPOVICH
Extreme weather left its mark across the planet in 2016, the hottest year in recorded history. Record heat baked Asia and the Arctic. Droughts gripped Brazil and southern Africa. The Great Barrier Reef suffered its worst bleaching event in memory, killing large swaths of coral.
Now climate scientists are starting to tease out which of last year’s calamities can, and can’t, be linked to global warming.
In a new collection of papers (LINK) published Wednesday in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, researchers around the world analyzed 27 extreme weather events from 2016 and found that human-caused climate change was a “significant driver” for 21 of them. The effort is part of the growing field of climate change attribution, which explores connections between warming and weather events that have already happened.
To judge whether global warming made a particular extreme weather event more likely to occur, scientists typically compare data from the real world, where rising greenhouse gases have heated the planet over the past century, against a modeled counterfactual world without those rising emissions. This technique has gained broader acceptance among climate scientists in the last decade.
Here are five extreme weather events from 2016 that scientists now think were made more likely by global warming…READ ON
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/14/climate/climate-extreme-weather-attribution.html
20
One of the aims of the Communist Party was to gain control of all media….
Communism – mediocre, genocidal and anti-human….have I missed anything?
40
more wind from Kris Karnauskas:
4 Oct: UK Telegraph: Gavin Haines: More turbulence and longer runways – seven ways climate change will affect air travel
3. Longer flights
Climate change is not just making turbulence more common; according to 2015 study, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, rising temperatures are also increasing flight times.
Scientists linked a small increase in return journey times of long-haul flights with an increase in the variation of the jet stream, the high altitude air that flows from west to east.
Just one minute’s extra flight time would mean jets spend approximately 300,000 hours longer per year burning roughly a billion additional gallons of jet fuel, they said, thus adding to the problem.
“Upper level wind circulation patterns are the major factor in influencing flight times,” said Kris Karnauskas, associate scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. “Longer flight times mean increased fuel consumption by airliners. The consequent additional input of CO2 into the atmosphere can feed back and amplify emerging changes in atmospheric circulation…
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/news/ways-climate-change-could-affect-flying/
plus more precision at BBC:
14 Dec: BBC: Hurricane Harvey rainfall ‘weighed 127bn tonnes’
By Jonathan Amos and Victoria Gill
Scientists have weighed the water that fell on Texas during the record-breaking Hurricane Harvey in August.
They calculate, by measuring how much the Earth was compressed, that the Category 4 storm dropped 127 billion tonnes, or 34 trillion US gallons.
“One person asked me how many stadia is that. It’s 26,000 New Orleans Superdomes,” said Adrian Borsa from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography…
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-42347510
40
Oh I see. Thanks he’s that guy. I put the planes in the pic as the “obvious” next step in the cartoon-world-of-reasoning.
60
you are always ahead of the game, jo.
50
I don’t know who Gavin Hines is. But clearly he isn’t a pilot. If he was he might not make such a big deal of the Phoenix, Arizona airport closure. For one thing, Phoenix regularly reaches 120° F. I was there in 1993 and it got that hot both days I was there. The problem is density altitude. And airplanes fly by density altitude. It’s the real altitude at which the airplane is operating. At the same Mean Sea Level Altitude altitude the density altitude can change a lot. But the airplane only knows about air density or density altitude. On a comfortable day at Flagstaff, Arizona, altitude 7,000 feet, an airplane can be operating as though it was over 9,000 feet above sea level just because temperature at ground level is usually so much higher than it would be at 7,000 above Los Angeles, for instance.
Here’s the FAA treatise on density altitude. You may not realize it sitting back in the cabin but up front they’re always making sure the plane will fly before the end of the runway and climb satisfacorily once off the ground. Otherwise they don’t go. The same thing applies on landing.
The rest of this sounds like it was invented by a computer model. Oh! Wait! It was generated by a computer model
50
Gavin Haines is certainly creative, I will give him that.
But he has no idea what the Jet Stream is. I presume it has been explained to him, by using the metaphor of being like a freeway in the sky.
Notice that the scientists he has talked to, have correctly said the jet stream flows from west to east. In that direction it offers less resistance to the aircraft, and in fact pushes it along, somewhat.
But on the return trip, east to west, it slows the aircraft, requiring it to burn more fuel.
Net result, in terms of the fuel used, for a return trip? Much the same as if there were no jet stream at all.
It is the north/south and south/north routes that require slightly more power, to not be pushed off-course, by the westerly jet stream.
And lets not forget that the Earth is spinning underneath the aircraft, which also affects flight times.
Can nobody think in four dimensions, anymore?
30
The jet stream and also the trade winds that sailing ships relied on are the atmospheric equivalent of ocean currents. And they all change with time. So it’s not so useful to try to make such a big deal out of the jet stream. It’s position and velocity are constantly being monitored. Otherwise we wouldn’t know where it is or how fast it’s moving.
The Santa Ana winds we just had are caused by the jet stream. Something changes conditions and bingo, 70 and 80 MPH wind sweeping down on an unsuspecting Southern California. But we don’t have that condition all that often.
Did anyone know that? I didn’t until a weather forecaster explained it last week.
10
Did they calculate how much the earth expanded in the area the rain came from?
10
That must be why we’ve had more than a week of “unprecedented” Santa Ana Winds blowing at up to 80 MPH, huh?
The only way there will be any decrease in the wind strength is if all these global warming pushers shut their mouths simultaneously — hopefully permanently.
70
From what I’ve seen Victoriastan and SA could do with a bit more wind at the moment .
30
again…how will the Australian public ever know that facts?
AUDIO: 7mins25secs: 15 Dec: ABC Breakfast: China ‘deadly serious’ about getting out of ‘the coal trap’: Charles Bedford
Presented by Hamish Macdonald
The development of solar and wind power in China is a well known story, but the boom looks set to continue with China already exceeding its 2020 renewables targets.
Coal consumption has been falling for the past three years and the country is determined to clean up its massive air pollution problems.
China watcher Charles Bedford saying that the country is “deadly serious” about finding a way out of what he calls “the coal trap'”, with plans to commit one third of a trillion dollars in annual subsidies and investment into renewables from 2020.
He told RN Summer Breakfast that climate policy was also being driven by concerns over future food security with rising climate instability.
Guest: Charles Bedford, Managing Director, Asia Pacific,The Nature Conservancy
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/china-deadly-serious-about-getting-out-of-the-coal-trap/9261120
note: The Nature Conservancy is a charitable environmental organization, headquartered in Arlington, Virginia, United States…The Nature Conservancy is led by President and CEO Mark Tercek, a former managing director at Goldman Sachs…The Nature Conservancy’s Chief Scientist is Australian Hugh Possingham, who was named to this position in 2016. (Wikipedia)
(Hugh Possingham) is currently Director of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions (Wikipedia)
2 Jun: Forbes: Global Collaboration More Crucial Than Ever As U.S. Abandons Climate Change Pact
by Charles Bedford, Regional Managing Director, Asia Pacific, The Nature Conservancy
Keeping promises
China’s adherence to the Paris Agreement has generated both real on-ground impact and a symbolic effect…
When confronted with such issues, China’s one-party system has the advantage of being able to act more nimbly and plan further forward. China is set to implement the world’s largest mandatory national cap-and-trade emissions trading scheme in July this year. With an estimated quota of between three and five billion metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions, it will be twice the size of the EU’s and larger than all existing carbon markets combined…
For example, in accordance with China’s clean energy development goals, The Nature Conservancy has been collaborating with government agencies, communities and businesses such as the Three Gorges Corporation and the Goldman Sachs Group to identify realistic development pathways that will keep intact thousands of kilometers of free-flowing rivers, while providing clean energy sources to people around the world…
https://www.forbes.com/sites/insideasia/2017/06/02/global-collaboration-more-crucial-than-ever-as-u-s-abandons-climate-change-pact/#1c3f9aa41bef
30
“The Nature Conservancy is led by President and CEO Mark Tercek, a former managing director at Goldman Sachs…”
And formerly headed by Hank Paulson, CEO of Goldman Sachs. You may remember him from the 2008 financial collapse when the Banksters got a trillion or so taxpayer dollars to save them from themselves.
Once upon a time I naively donated to the Nature Conservancy. Silly me. It is a big Green Blob real estate holding company.
40
ABC thinks they really care about CAGW:
April 2014: Greenbiz: Why TNC (The Nature Conservancy) and JPMorgan Chase are investing $1 billion in nature
by Elsa Wenzel
These power brokers in conservation and finance seek nothing less than to create a mainstream market for investment in ecological conservation…
“The number is intentionally big because we think the marketplace is big,” said Bill Ginn, chief conservation officer at The Nature Conservancy. “We want investors to say, ‘I have an environmental component in my portfolio because that’s a smart place to invest these days.’ … That means they have to make money in order to be willing to put their capital at risk here. It’s one thing to ask for a contribution. … It’s another thing to ask someone to invest with you in the future of the world.”…
As the founding sponsor of NatureVest, JPMorgan Chase is providing an initial $5 million, with ongoing support in building up the financial infrastructure…
Conservation work, of course, is not new for The Nature Conservancy, which holds $6 billion in conservation assets. Its Conservation Notes impact investment programs are sold out; NatureVest would provide the next offering for this kind of funding at TNC…
Ginn agreed that accelerating and scaling TNC’s goals is only possible through partnering with the private sector. “Our mission is to conserve the land and water upon which life depends,” he said. “We don’t see how we can possibly do that if the only source of capital is philanthropic contributions.”
The “bipartisan, science-based, practical and transaction-focused” character of TNC is a great fit for the culture of JPMorgan Chase, said Arnold…
The two organizations have worked behind the scenes on the NatureVest effort for three years (and individuals on each team have relationships dating back to the 1990s). TNC counts about 15 people on its NatureVest team, is seeking a managing director for the effort in the coming months. JPMorgan Chase has just less than 10 staffers involved.
The two partners share a rough geographical reach. TNC is in all 50 states, with a presence in 38 countries, while JPMorgan operates in 30 states and even more nations.
EKO Asset Management Partners, an advisory firm, helped to design NatureVest. Additional support for NatureVest comes from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation…
***In the video below, TNC president and CEO Mark Tercek, a former Goldman Sachs investment banker, speaks of “nature’s fortune” at the GreenBiz Forum in February…
https://www.greenbiz.com/blog/2014/04/29/nature-conservancy-and-jpmorgan-chase
***video is missing in above, but here it is:
Youtube: 13mins37secs: 2014: Greenbiz Forum: Keynote Conversation with Mark Tercek: Nature’s Fortune
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DfwMWbrfy4
20
I cannot find it now but I recall reading something to the effect that increasing winds, by stirring the surface layer and thus bringing water up from deeper levels, would theoretically cause a lowering of the surface temperature.
Anyone else recall this?
If that was the case, with so much of the Southern Hemisphere covered by ocean, wouldn’t these alleged wind increases bring Global Cooling to that half of the Globe?
30
Upwelling from wiki
‘Large-scale upwelling is also found in the Southern Ocean. Here, strong westerly (eastward) winds blow around Antarctica, driving a significant flow of water northwards. This is actually a type of coastal upwelling. Since there are no continents in a band of open latitudes between South America and the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, some of this water is drawn up from great depths. In many numerical models and observational syntheses, the Southern Ocean upwelling represents the primary means by which deep dense water is brought to the surface ‘
30
Solution to all the problems raised here
“Clean Energy Researchers Recommend More Research Money”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/12/14/clean-energy-researchers-recommend-more-research-money/
50
Shirley Knott?
30
another mention of Clinton insider, Terry McAuliffe:
15 Dec: AP: Michael Casey: No Paris climate accord? No problem, bloc of states says
“The clear signal from the Trump administration that they were going to pull back on environmental policy throws it back at the states and says, ‘OK, it’s your game,'” said William Shobe, a professor of public policy at the University of Virginia. “A number of states are responding, saying, ‘OK, we’re up to that and we’re going to go ahead and implement policy.'”…
“Young consumers don’t have any patience for companies that are not consciously involved in reducing their footprint and their impact on the planet. I think that runs pretty deep,” said Peter Egelston, as he led a tour of his Smuttynose Brewing Co. in Hampton, whose facility includes solar tubes that allow more natural light into the brewery and a high-tech milling system that gets more yield out of the malted barley.
Since the November elections, Virginia announced it is taking steps to become the first Southern state to join the regional cap-and-trade program, while New Jersey has promised to rejoin the pact. If they get on board, member states would represent a combined gross domestic product of $3.9 trillion, which if they were a country would displace Germany as the fourth-largest economy, according to the Acadia Center, a nonprofit that promotes clean energy…
Virginia’s climate strategy, approved last month, would limit emissions from most power plants starting in 2020, followed by a 30 percent reduction over a decade. Eligible carbon emitters would have to participate in the regional greenhouse gas program.
“We do not have the luxury of waiting for Washington to wake up to this threat — we must act now,” Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe said in a statement.
New Jersey is set to rejoin the regional program when Democratic Gov.-elect Phil Murphy takes office Jan. 16, succeeding GOP Gov. Chris Christie, who pulled the state out of the regional agreement, arguing it drove up electricity costs…
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/no-paris-climate-accord-no-152754971.html
30
Trump’s withdrawal involved stopping US taxpayers providing money to a lot of the world’s scoundrels. It had little to do with science or emission reductions.
Any entity or person in the US can go about reducing emissions, or not, as they see fit.
The State of Washington has made a big deal of not wanting coal power. That plant is in Montana and for complex reasons (gas, regulations, multiple owners) is about to close unless someone rescues it. Maybe the State of Washington because replacing that power is not easy. Neither the Paris accord nor Trump has anything to do with this.
50
Thanks for that analysis, John.
40
***the dash for pension fund cash:
14 Dec: World Bank invests $4.5 bln to arm cities against climate change
by Sophie Hares; editing by Megan Rowling
TEPIC, Mexico (Thomson Reuters Foundation): Cash-short cities with big ambitions to protect themselves from climate change will be able to tap into $4.5 billion in loans and technical support from the World Bank, working with a global alliance of cities and local governments.
Over the next three years, the scheme aims to help 150 developing-world cities pull in more capital from the private sector, to cover the costs of keeping their infrastructure and communities safe from wilder weather and rising seas…
Predicted to be home to two-thirds of the world’s population by 2050, many cities are struggling to pay for measures needed to guard residents and property from threats such as floods, storms and heatwaves, while improving housing and reducing inequality…
***The goal is to attract capital from heavyweight investors like pension funds, and to form partnerships with international and local companies…
“What we see is an issue on the supply side of investments rather than the demand side,” (Marc Forni, lead disaster risk management specialist at the World Bank) told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
The first set of cities to take part includes Manaus in Brazil, Chittagong in Bangladesh, Accra and Istanbul…
“The fight against climate change is being led by cities and communities and it’s essential they have the funds to continue it,” Michael Bloomberg, former New York City mayor and co-chair of the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy, said in a statement…
https://in.reuters.com/article/worldbank-climatechange-cities/world-bank-invests-4-5-bln-to-arm-cities-against-climate-change-idINL8N1OE2YU
20
lengthy, multiple links:
14 Dec: Greenbiz: Why the U.S. must show up for global climate finance
by Leonardo Martin, Joe Thwaites and Gwynne Taraska
So far, these initiatives rightly have focused their efforts on reducing U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. Less attention has been paid to international climate finance. And yet, developing a substantive work stream in this area is vital for these efforts to succeed. Mobilizing finance for low-income and highly vulnerable countries to pursue low-carbon development and to prepare for the effects of climate change is central to the grand bargain at the heart of the Paris Agreement.
Multilateral climate funds such as the Adaptation Fund, the Least Developed Countries Fund (LDCF) and the Green Climate Fund (GCF) hold particular significance internationally due to their inclusive participation, concessional resources and focus on the implementation of the Agreement…
A recent discussion paper (LINK) by the Center for American Progress and World Resources Institute proposed creating a finance vehicle, which it referred to as America’s Climate Fund, that could accept contributions from a variety of U.S. sources — including via a crowd-funding campaign — and channel these contributions to support low-carbon development and climate-resilience in developing countries.
The discussion paper considered the goals and design possibilities for such a fund, including its institutional form and disbursal options. After consultation with stakeholders — including representatives from city and state governments, multilateral climate funds, nongovernmental groups, the private sector and the faith community — and with the help of legal experts who generously volunteered their time, the goals and design possibilities of America’s Climate Fund have come into sharper focus…
Key actors for America’s Climate Fund
The fund’s success will require the help of several actors playing different roles:
•Host. If a nonprofit organization, rather than a city or state government, housed the fund and channeled contributions, it would protect the effort from the political cycle and make contributions tax-deductible in the United States. A nonprofit organization with experience accepting and disbursing contributions to support international climate efforts could be ideal for the role…
•Co-financing. The fund also could support individual projects that promote low-carbon and climate-resilient development. For example, it could co-finance projects from the pipelines of existing multilateral climate funds. This would allow the nonfederal climate movement to support projects that satisfy its priorities, which could include food and water security in the poorest nations or the phase-out of coal-fired power plants. However, this approach would entail higher costs for staffing, administration, governance and monitoring and evaluation than direct contributions to existing funds…
https://www.greenbiz.com/article/why-us-must-show-global-climate-finance
20
13 Dec: UK Telegraph: Jillian Ambrose: From global leader to crisis: how did the UK lose its grip on gas?
In less than a decade Britain has lost its lead in the global gas market and now risks plunging into a gas cost crisis.
In 2010 the UK was one of the top ten gas producers in the world. The UK’s domestic reserves were enough to heat Britain’s 30 million homes and run a fleet of gas-fired power plants while remaining a net exporter of gas until 2005.
But this week, an explosion almost 1,000 miles away caused gas prices to rocket, exposing the growing reliance on other nations to power the energy system.
In an Austrian town of fewer than 200 people a fatal blast ripped through the European gas markets driving UK prices to highs not seen since early 2013…
For years experts have warned that the stark reversal of Britain’s energy fortunes has left the country vulnerable to the eye-watering price shocks which have now emerged…
This critical piece of national infrastructure was shut down on Monday after a hairline tear along a section of onshore piping outside of Aberdeen forced an emergency closure of the entire Forties network…
The twin-blows hit the UK at the same time as freezing conditions and technical difficulties in the Norwegian gas fields…
Critics of the Government’s energy policy have seized the opportunity to point out the myriad choices made to clean up the energy system has contributed to the gas supply crunch…
Gas industry supporters blame the Government’s zeal for cutting carbon emissions for distracting officials from the need to support investment in new gas storage projects…
Even the closure of the UK’s coal-fired power plants – which once generated the lion’s share of electricity – has been blamed for increasing the UK’s reliance on gas-fired power in the absence of much-needed investment in renewables and nuclear power.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2017/12/13/global-leader-crisis-did-uk-lose-grip-gas/
behind paywall:
13 Dec: UK Times: Ofgem powerless as foreign utility owners such as Li Ka-shing fuel the fires of profit
by Robin Pagnamenta
When you turn on your gas cooker or switch on the kettle, there is a very good chance that you are using energy brought to you via a network owned by Hong Kong’s richest man. Li Ka-shing may not be a household name for most Brits. But the empire of gas pipes and power cables he has assembled in Britain in the past decade connects more than ten million homes.
It is also highly profitable, regularly doling out juicy dividends for Mr Li, 89, who controls a fortune worth more than $33 billion
Pumping gas around northern England and Wales may not be glamorous, but it is good business for Cheung Kong Infrastructure (CKI), his holding company.
Two of his companies — Northern Gas Networks and Wales & West Utilities, whose pipes stretch from Cumbria to Cornwall – earned returns of 11.2 per cent and 11.3 per cent respectively in 2015-16. That’s not bad when compared with the margins British Gas, Scottish Power and EDF. Ofgem data shows average pre-tax margins at these retail energy suppliers, who pay CKI and other network operators to deliver gas and power to your home, were 4.48 per cent in 2016 and 4.15 per cent in 2015…
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/ofgem-powerless-as-foreign-utility-owners-such-as-li-ka-shing-fuel-the-fires-of-profit-lv3lvcqxl
20
as the authors at The Conversaton below received funding from the Austraian Research Council, thought i should clear up earlier Wikipedia entry re Hugh Possingham – see comment #41:
from Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions (CEED) website:
(Hugh Possingham) is a Chief Scientist at The Nature Conservancy, and WAS the Director of CEED from 2011-2016.
61 comments, almost entirely “warmists” picking a fight with one another over “Surveys published in June that year estimated that 93% of coral on the vast northern section of the reef was bleached, and 22% had already been killed.”:
14 Dec: The Conversation: It’s official: 2016’s Great Barrier Reef bleaching was unlike anything that went before
by Sophie Lewis, Research fellow, Australian National University
and Jennie Mallela, Research Fellow in Coral Reef Monitoring and Reef Health Appraisal, Australian National University
Disclosure:
Sophie Lewis receives funding from the Australian Research Council.
Jennie Mallela receives funding from The Australian Research Council and the Australian National University.
In early 2016, we heard that the reef had suffered the worst bleaching ever recorded.
***Surveys published in June that year estimated that 93% of coral on the vast northern section of the reef was bleached, and 22% had already been killed.
Further reports from this year show that bleaching again occurred. The back-to-back bleaching hit more than two-thirds of the Great Barrier Reef and may threaten its UNESCO World Heritage listing…
Our new research (LINK), published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society’s special report on climate extremes (LINK), shows the news isn’t good for the Great Barrier Reef’s future…
Our study took a new and comprehensive approach to examine these multiple climatic and environmental influences.
We set out to answer the crucial question: could anything else have bleached the Great Barrier Reef, besides human-induced climate change?
Clear fingerprint
The results were clear. Using a suite of climate models, we found that the significant warming of the Coral Sea region was ***likely caused by greenhouse gases from human activities. This warming was the primary cause of the extreme 2016 bleaching episode…
Our study showed that although the 2016 El Niño probably also contributed to the bleaching, this was a secondary contributor to the corals’ thermal stress. The major factor was the increase in temperatures because of climate change…ETC
Our study showed that although the 2016 El Niño probably also contributed to the bleaching, this was a secondary contributor to the corals’ thermal stress. The major factor was the increase in temperatures because of climate change.
https://theconversation.com/its-official-2016s-great-barrier-reef-bleaching-was-unlike-anything-that-went-before-88078
30
“significant warming of the Coral Sea region ” was caused by .. greenhouse gases caused by human activities”. CO2.
That’s terrifying. CO2 has not caused Global Warming for 20 years but causes local warming?
You would think therefore that localized warming would occur where there was the most CO2 and as 80% of the world lives above the equator, the top half would be much warmer.
Also almost no one lives in the great body of water which is the Pacific Ocean, half the planet. So you would think the CO2 effect would be much lower over the Pacific, including the Coral sea.
So CO2 does not warm places where it is generated, but selectively warms places where it is not. Some scientist said.
Believe it or not!
61
more FakeNewsNYT space for a CAGW activist who makes wild, unsubstantiated claims:
13 Dec: NYT: Jeff Nesbit: When Climate Change Becomes a Credit Problem
(Jeff Nesbit is the executive director of Climate Nexus, a nonprofit communications group focused on climate change and clean energy, and former director of legislative and public affairs at the National Science Foundation in the Obama and Bush administrations)
In a welcome but long overdue development, one of the world’s leading credit-rating agencies, Moody’s Investors Service, announced recently that it would give more weight to climate change risks in evaluating the creditworthiness of state and local governments.
Coming in the aftermath of hurricanes that severely damaged parts of Houston and much of the United States Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico this year, the message from Moody’s was clear. Governments must prepare for heat waves, droughts, flooding and coastal storm surges or face credit downgrades that will make it more expensive for them to borrow money for public services and for improvements in roads, bridges and other infrastructure…
That could mean higher taxes for the people who live in those communities. Even for governments that act to reduce their exposure to climate risks, the costs of doing so “could also become an ongoing credit challenge,” Michael Wertz, a Moody’s vice president, said…
Perhaps Moody’s decision might also strengthen the hand of activist shareholder groups that maintain fossil fuel-related industries may see their oil, coal and natural gas assets stranded below ground as efforts to combat climate change ramp up…
Moody’s is trying to get ahead of the curve. The company and the other major credit-rating firms ***badly missed the subprime housing bubble that helped push the economy into recession and were widely criticized for it.
Now the agency is warning, “Long-term climate changes, including rising global temperatures and sea levels, are forecast to drive increased extreme weather patterns and other vulnerabilities like flooding that might put negative credit pressure” on municipalities and states.
Moody’s warnings go beyond the risks of coastal storm damage, more frequent and severe droughts, wildfires and heat waves.
The company put it this way: “In addition to loss of life and threats to public health and safety, these events present a multitude of challenges in the form of compromised crop yields, economic disruption, damage to physical infrastructure, increased energy demand, recovery and restoration costs, and the cost of adaptive strategies for prevention or impact mitigation. These challenges can result in lower revenue, increased expense, impaired assets, higher liabilities and increased debt, among other effects.”…
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/13/opinion/climate-change-credit.html?mtrref=feedly.com&assetType=opinion
***badly missed the subprime housing bubble that helped push the economy into recession…but we should believe them now!
20
I could have been a Professor of Climate Worrying. But I didn’t have the esoteric mathematics, for it. So I went down the mine instead.
You don’t get much climate to worry about, down the mine. It is always hot.
Mind you, you do get a bit of falling coal from time to time, which is a bit like lumpy climate, I suppose.
So I could have been a Professor of Climate Worrying, when it came to the lumpy bits. Not much esoteric mathematics required there, apart from measuring the amount of fallen coal.
The trouble is, that they stop you working down the mine, when you get old, and senile, and unable to dodge the falling coal fast enough.
But the exact opposite applies to Professors of Climate Worrying.
[With acknowledgements to Peter Cook]
61
New study hints that global warming could make Kiwis more upbeat
https://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/well-good/teach-me/99276712/happiness-is-growing-up-in-an-area-with-an-average-temperature-of-22-degrees
20
problems with GCM aplenty.
A talk by Dr Christopher Essex Believing in Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast, and Climate Models (video)
20
My Imagination?
CH9 Weather Guy admitting Summer weather is normal?
50
I am really tired of so called scientists promoting hypotheses as concrete conclusions on which decisions can be made. How is the real scientific community letting them get away with it?
60
Separation of disciplines – it is an aeons-old principle.
It is also a crock of what will make your roses grow.
40
‘Living in a virtual world like the Lady of Shalott,
the tenured tower versus naychur’s challenges requiring
trial and error response to problem situations …
Think I’ll read Taleb’s ‘Black Swan’ again … after
the conclusion of ‘The Ashes.’
30
“Global warming will weaken winds in the Northern Hemisphere, but speed them up downunder!”
. . . .
2008: “The winds drive everything,” says study author Lorenzo Polvani, an atmospheric scientist at Columbia University, “locations of storms, dry zones and deserts, the ice and the ocean circulation as well as the carbon uptake of the oceans.
For decades, these winds have been speeding up near Antarctica; repairing the ozone would weaken the winds, he says, and shift them back toward the equator, affecting weather in the entire Southern Hemisphere, including Antarctica as well as Australia, parts of Africa and South America.
The new research shows that mending the ozone may reverse warming in Antarctica and, potentially, the globe.”
.
Kerry thinks he repaired the ozone hole:
Speaking at the Palace Hotel in New York City Thursday, Kerry praised the 1987 Montreal Protocol agreement, which he said he personally helped steer through the Senate.
As a result, the hole in the ozone layer is shrinking and on its way to full repair.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/kerry-one-of-most-successful-environmental-agreements-in-history-is-actually-driving-climate-change/article/2004512
.
Verdict
Malcolm Turnbull was essentially correct on both points.
It’s true that scientists predict more frequent and intense storms for some parts of Australia as the climate changes.
The evidence appears to be strong that extreme rainfall will increase. Some increases in extreme wind speeds are possible – but not in all regions or all seasons.
Turnbull was right to say you cannot attribute any particular storm to global warming. –
https://theconversation.com/election-factcheck-are-larger-more-frequent-storms-predicted-due-to-climate-change-60866
10
oops. Missing link:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/mending-ozone-good-for-global-warming/
10
Meanwhile,
Video – As Gore trudges through the snow to his over-sized Chevy Suburban SUV, an inconvenient question is asked of him. Hubris and hypocrisy, we gotta keep working!
20
If this is the case, why is wind turbine dependent SA such a basket case?
10