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Starving for any attention, the carbon-haters need to find a reason to get into the inflation debate. CO2 keeps rising but crops are up, forests are greener, tropical islands are growing, mangroves are expanding, and the world is in more danger of being overrun with cheap soy and corn than by rising seas. Whatever. The disaster-bus will find a way to blame fossil fuels for everything that’s bad, as if through some miracle EV’s and windmills will make pork cheaper.
It’s a cult:
Climate crisis is ‘battering our economy’ and driving inflation, new book says
Edward Helmore, The Guardian
Forget Ukraine, coronavirus, corporate greed and “supply chain issues”, when it comes to inflation the climate crisis is the real, lasting, worry, according to a new book, and one that’s only likely to get worse. Climatenomics lays out how ‘supply chain disruptions’ has become a euphemism for the effects of climate change
“I don’t think people have realized that climate change is an economic issue now because it’s always been seen as an environmental, health or social issue,” says Keefe. “The fact of the matter is climate change is battering our economy.”
Any long term […]
And the bonfire continues
As cold fronts sweep across the south east of Australia electricity prices are setting records nobody wants to set. The wholesale prices for electricity –across a whole month — soared past $300 a megawatt hour in three states of Australia. In NSW the cumulative cost of wholesale electricity for May alone worked out at $2.4 billion dollars. It’s enough to build a power plant. Back in 2015, before Hazelwood old brown coal plant closed and Australia installed more renewable energy per capita than anywhere else on the planet, the average price in NSW was $35/MWh. Back then it cost $260 million for the whole month. (And Hazelwood wasn’t even in NSW. ) The point is not about one coal plant, but about how recently the system still worked and how fast it fell apart. Hazelwood coal plant in 2017 was 53 years old and still selling electricity at $30 per megawatt hour when it was shut down. Since then the whole grid has so much more capacity yet so much less ability. There’s no resilience left. A few speed bumps wiped out the whole road train.
Wholesale electricity prices are higher across the […]
The election horse that mysteriously got away
With virtually no public campaign at all, out of the starting gates, 53% of Australians thought nuclear power was good idea. Only 23% were against it. This was a survey done in April. Scott Morrison could have played the brave man-of-action card — (solving the climate wars with a 50 year old tried and true technology!). It would have been an easy sell once Australians found out there were 440 nuclear power plants in the world, and that even Armenia has one. And so does Belarus. Mexico has two, Hungary has four, and the Czech Republic has six. They’re everywhere.
Prime Minister Morrison may have even had these survey results in the lead up to the election? So why didn’t he play that card? Was it really fear of “the anti nuclear” green hippies, or something else…?
The conservative government missed the chance to sell a big vision, and nobble “Climate” witchcraft
Most Australians want nuclear power to reduce emissions from coal-fired plants – but the Greens will never let it happen
Daily Mail
Most Australians want a nuclear power industry to reduce emissions by […]
The Great Realignment in politics has been coming a long time but it is now starkly lined up as a Class War in most of The Western World, just that quite a lot of voters don’t know it yet, and they are ripe for flipping.
In Australia the tables were turned on a hundred years of history. The poorer half of the country voted for the conservatives, the richer half for the Labor Party, and the Richest of the Rich voted for the Teal-High-Fashion-Parade — the Gucci-Prada of Political Parties — the ones offering the Gold Plated Global Bragging Points!
I have a Platinium Frequent Flyer Card and I’m so Rich I Vote To Save The World!
People in Labor seats earned $8,000 a year more than people in Liberal electorates, but the Green-independents earnt $27,000 more. That’s not something they probably want people to hear.
Reversal of fortune: Labor electorates earn more than Coalition seats
Aaron Patrick Senior correspondent, Australian Financial Review
Households in Labor electorates now earn $8580 more a year than those in Coalition seats – a shift that could have profound effects on politics.
Labor […]
Once, when the West could build things, problems got solved
Back in 2007 at least a few people still remembered that golden era. Here’s Dr Ziggy Switkowski, who at the time was head of the Prime Minister’s nuclear task force:
The French in 15 years went from zero reactors to 59 reactors and 80% of their electricity is nuclear. — ABC
Now we don’t even dream of success. If we had started in 2007, Australia could have had ten plants finished already.
Back in the 1970s and 80’s eh? Wow look at that take off…
The first nuclear plant in France was built by the EDF in 1962. Then the 1972 oil crisis put a rocket under the industry. So Prime Minister Pierre Messmer came up with a plan to build an unbelievable 170 nuclear plants by 2000.
Theanphibian https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Electricity_in_France.svg
By the mid 1980s it was clear that would not happen, but not for the reasons you might think. The problem was not that they weren’t building plants fast enough, but that they were building them too fast. Demand wasn’t rising fast enough to keep up. The plants are most efficient running at 80-90% but by […]
Strategically, this seems like it matters.
The French nuclear power plants are the backbone of the EU grid, but this winter, just when Europe is trying to not-buy-Russian-Gas, the French might need to import power instead of export it.
France runs off 70% nuclear power — it’s highest proportion in the world, and the second largest fleet — after the USA. For some reason, known only to international bankers or Renewable Gods, Early in Macron’s reign, he decided to reduce the carbon-free reliable nukes to just 50% by 2035 and fill the gap with short-lived, unreliable generators that cost a lot, need storage, backup, rare metals from China and slave labor from the Congo. Perhaps he was afraid (or whoever it was that helped him get elected) that France would show up all the schmuck-countries going to renewables?
But then the gas crisis started in Europe last October, and like clockwork, in November President Macron muttered the words “energy independence” and belatedly announced that it wasn’t such a bad idea to build some new nuclear plants. As things got more serious, in late February the French nuclear safety authority decided to extend the life of the 32 oldest reactors for […]
In Australia a Woke tech-billionaire has decided to “keep” the coal assets in AGL in order to destroy them (like that’s the “free market” at work) . But in the rest of the world, coal is $400 a ton and everybody wants it.
Maybe Australians will get so rich selling coal they can afford to use electricity from unreliable generators instead?
Not behaving like a stranded asset. Trading Economics
Britain could keep coal-fired power plants open this winter
LONDON (Reuters) -Some of the British coal-fired power plants slated for closure this year might need to stay open to ensure electricity supply this winter, the government said on Monday.
Countries across Europe are drawing up contingency plans against potential disruption to flows of Russian gas because of the war in Ukraine. Russia typically supplies about 40% of Europe’s gas.
Britain can generate about 50% of its electricity from gas. Although Russia only meets about 4% of Britain’s gas needs, a significant disruption in supply would affect prices in Europe and make it harder for Britain to secure gas from others.
How screwed is that market when they have to “devise” a framework to […]
A radio journalist was at the Jan 6 riots and thought the FBI would want his detailed footage showing men smashing windows and trying to incite others to join in. The odd actors dress strangely, act differently, have radio’s strapped on, and push people into the Capitol Building at times, and Bobby Powell has 29 minutes of high definition video, on the terrace, up close, but the FBI don’t want to find out who those people are. They are not sitting in jail, like others accused of Jan 6 crimes. Their photos are not even posted on the most-wanted lists.
Journalist Bobby Powell has spent 16 months trying to get anyone to pay attention in officialdom. He posted the video on Twitter of the US Capitol Police and within five minutes his Twitter account was permanently suspended. Google demonetized his Youtube account. Facebook took down his live streams, and now Paypal has shut his donation account. He spoke to some of biggest names in broadcast news but no one was interested in “a story about alleged government agents attacking the capitol”. Now he has sold his own home to keep going.
The one person who is interested is Brad Geyer, […]
Last week small electricity retailers were bleeding so badly they doubled their prices and asked their customers to leave.
This week it’s a big gas retailer, as Australia belatedly faces the same pain that hit and wiped out UK energy retailers:
Gas retailer Weston Energy’s collapse stirs call for Labor intervention
Perry Williams, The Australian
Weston Energy, which provides gas to more than 400 companies and government agencies, ceased trading with immediate effect on Monday, creating uncertainty for major manufacturers with 7 per cent of the east coast’s commercial and industrial market forced to find a new supplier.
The company said it could no longer finance cash flow requirements of its trading portfolio “on a timely basis” with prices rising over 180 per cent since April, and almost three times higher than at the start of the year.
These are blistering rises in costs:
With spot gas prices up to four times higher than normal levels and wholesale electricity prices in NSW on track to finish the June quarter twice as high as the previous record, Mr Willox called on the Albanese government to respond.
It’s a cult.
[…]
If the Liberals stop trying to pander to the wealthy Woke electorates and focus on what most Australians want they can reinvent themselves to speak for mainstream Australia by the next election.
The dismal election result for the Liberals and Nationals in Australia may yet set them free. By shifting to the left on issues like Climate Change the Liberals were hobbled. They tried to be Labor -lite, but then couldn’t point out the sheer stupidity of trying to change the weather. Net Zero was a good goal they said, and so the voters voted for people who would do more of it sooner. By adopting Labor-Green ideas and just trying to be better managers of bad programs they lost their mojo. There were no battles on principles in this election, just personalities.
The Right have been bullied into submission — afraid of being called climate deniers, racists, sexist or anti-vaxxer, they fought for nothing much. And so the voters voted for nothing much — splitting every which way. Astonishingly a new government will be formed that nearly 70% of Australians didn’t vote for. The Labor Party won with the lowest primary vote ever recorded in Australian history.
The […]
It’s the day before the election and all through the house, electricity bills are doubling…
The price rises are so extraordinary one retailer is asking their customers to leave “in the next 24 hours”.
Across Australia small power suppliers are sending emails to customers right now warning them that their rates are going up next week by eye-watering amounts. Wholesale electricity prices were at a record high in April this year, and it hasn’t improved in May. Prices are hitting $200-$300 per megawatt hour, not as a peak, but as a 24 hour average. In South Australia two days ago, the average for the full day was $1,141. Futures contracts are rapidly taking off and these rises are starting to flow through to customers. Already, the small retailers are bleeding cash, just as they did in the UK, and if wholesale prices don’t come back to Earth soon, they will go out of business.
Reader Brett in South Australia shared an email from Discover Energy. As of next week the standard peak rate will rise from 39 cent per kilowatt hour to 70 cents. Off peak rates rise from 27 to 46. He also adds, “My brother lives in NSW […]
Another Project Veritas operation exposes what’s going on behind the lines at Twitter and the most astonishing thing is not the political censorship but how Twitter is run like a Day Care centre for student activists. It’s not a profit making business, so much as a university club with salaries for people who may only work 4 hours a week and brag about being “left left left” and as “commie as f**k”. If they need days off, they just don’t turn up to work. Sometimes they take months off. “Mental health is everything”.
No wonder Twitter employees hate Musk and are stress eating — They have jobs where they get paid to take a month off, and no one cares how efficient they are, or what their sales figures or expenses were. Nice work if you can get it.
Which begs the pointed question of who is paying for all this?
If Twitter isn’t there to make money, who is pouring the dollars in, and is the political censorship the whole point? And if that’s the case, and it sure looks like it is, TWTR is a listed trading stock and the words fraud and fiduciary duty seem apropos. If […]
Bless Craig Kelly for saying the obvious that hardly anyone else will say*
The faster Australia gets to Net Zero the more we surrender to China. | Photo by Christels
China is too poor to rush to Net Zero but it cheers us on. It calls itself a developing nation while it develops a nuclear fusion plant, launches hypersonic weapons, runs a shadow war in space “every day”, and landed a rover on the far side of the moon (which has been cruising around now for a full year).
It’s too poor to do Net Zero, but it’s rich enough to buy off our Pacific neighbors, while we close factories so we can keep the lights on. China buys a belt and road while we buy off the Weather Gods with sacrificial Green electrons and try to to stop storms 100 years from now.
China is digging up more coal than any nation on Earth, but it didn’t even turn up to Glasgow. One year ago China suddenly cut its wind and solar subsidies, and reduced it’s carbon trading scheme back by two thirds. Yet Australia is going double gangbusters to install more renewable watts per capita than […]
The Swamp is not even hiding the corruption, just the exact dollar figure
Anthony Fauci is effectively King of the National Institute of Health. He gets paid $450,000 a year — the highest paid public servant in the United States. In just one year alone the NIH dished out $30 billion to more than 50,000 recipients. And there are royalty payments that flow back the other way, which amounted to $350 million dollars over the decade from 2010-2020. And here’s the weird thing, most of those royalty payments are secret.
Thirty billion dollars is an awfully big carrot, and even though $350 million seems small in comparison, it’s awfully big compared to the salaries of the few key decision-makers. It’s an obvious conflict of interest, and lives are at risk, but it’s not even being disclosed.
If Big Pharma were paying off people to get their drugs approved, it would look a lot like this. And if Big Pharma (or the asset managers that own big pharma) were also paying off the media to silence reporting of NIH corruption would the media ignore this story — exactly like it does?
In a normal world this type of corruption would be […]
Stick with this — step over the cheap shots at Trump and predictable hits on conservatives — Bill Maher is doing a cracker job on a soft left audience. He’s packaged up a dose of medicine about how important free speech is. His is a rare voice on the left pointing out the hypocrisy and stupidity of censorship.
“Keeping you safe and sorting out the lies is your job” (not Twitters)
We always focus on the producers and never the consumers, as if we’re all helpless dumb blondes ready to believe everything…
People lie, that’s what people do. Every age is the misinformation age, and whenever a new means of communication comes along some reach for the censor button. In 1858 the New York Times thought we couldn’t handle the Transatlantic Telegraph. “It was superficial and too fast for the Truth”…
He also tosses a cold bucket or two on the lefty willingness to believe the Covid stats, and effectively calls all the censors “assholes”.
In America you have the right to say what you think, to be wrong, and to be an asshole.
And if you […]
Ron DeSantis announces that November 7th will be a day to honor the Victims of Communism
A true leader:
“I notice, that people who escape communism for free societies never choose to go back…”
“There are probably more Marxists on college faculties in the United States than there are in all of Eastern Europe combined.”
“The body-count of Mao is something that everybody needs to understand.”
The key parts are from 2:30 – 5:00.
Students will learn what Marxism does:
Beginning in the 2023-2024 academic year, high school students enrolled in US government courses will get at least 45 minutes of instruction each November 7 describing how “victims suffered under these regimes through poverty, starvation, migration, systemic lethal violence, and suppression of speech.” – New York Post:
The legislation means students will learn about Stalin and Mao and Pol Pot 9.5 out of 10 based on 62 ratings […]
Everyone is going to want one of these. And he’d only six lessons!
Record Jet Suit Mountain Ascent
From the Youtube:
We proved you can scale a Lake District Mountain (3100ft Helveylln) in 3mins 30 seconds, despite very poor visibility that would have grounded a HEMS Helicopter. The Mountain Rescue foot response is over 70 minutes typically. The route was 1.2 miles and 2200ft of height gain.
9.8 out of 10 based on 44 ratings […]
China has already announced it will dig up another 300m tons of coal next year, and now India is planning to boost its own production by 500m extra tons in the next two years.
Coal mine in Dhanbad, India. | Flikr
Amazing what a strong market signal can do
TradingEconomics
India increasing domestic coal production, cuts environmental green tape
India needs a billion tons of coal a year, and digs up about 770 million tons. Suddenly the plan is to increase that to 1.2 billion tons “in the next two years” and if that means opening 100 old mines and throwing away the green tape, so be it.
Phys-Org
Soaring temperatures have prompted higher energy demand in recent weeks and left India facing a 25-million-tonne shortfall…
The government hopes to woo private mining giants—like Vedanta and Adani—to revive more than 100 dormant coal mines previously deemed too expensive to operate, using new technology and fresh capital. …the Environment Ministry said it has allowed a “special dispensation” to the Ministry of Coal to relax certain requirements—like public consultations—so mines could operate at increased capacities. Coal mining projects previously cleared to […]
The Wheels Slowly Turn on the Shifting Sands of The Narrative
After years of saying the Little Ice Age was just a European, or Northern Hemisphere event, now apparently it was more global. It’s just that it was caused by volcanoes and white guys.
Climate crisis: what lessons can we learn from the last great cooling-off period?
Michael Marshall, The Guardian
The ‘little ice age’ of the 14th to the 19th centuries brought cold winters to Europe and unusual weather globally. Studying how humans adapted could be valuable.
The story isn’t entirely settled, but researchers are increasingly confident about the initial trigger: volcanoes.
“You have these eruptions that are happening in clusters,” says Degroot. A 2015 study used data from ice cores to identify 25 major eruptions from the past 2,500 years. Between 1200 and 1400, there were huge eruptions of the Samalas volcano in Indonesia, Quilotoa in Ecuador and El Chichón in Mexico.
But the volcanoes reasoning is a bit hand-wavy and vague, so Michael Marshall knows he needs other reasons. He considers the sun as a ball-of-pure-light for a few paragraphs, ignoring that it might have […]
I’ll be discussing the absurdity of Destroying Perfectly good Electricity Grids in Australia with the Friends of Science in Calgary, Canada with a presentation then Q&A. It will be live 7pm MDT Monday evening in Canada/USA and Tuesday 10th morning in Australia (11am EST, 9am WST). It will be available to watch afterwards as the wonderful Ian Plimer’s is now from last week.
“Australia – Crash Test Dummy of Renewable Energy” with Joanne Nova Click here for more information 9.8 out of 10 based on 50 ratings
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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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