Tuesday, September 05, 2017

5 September - JoNova

JoNova: Science, carbon, climate and tax
729 followers7 articles per week#climate#science#politics

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62% of Australians don’t want to pay even $10 a month for renewables
The Money Question trumps Three quarters of Australians may believe climate change is real (so the ABC keeps telling us) but only 13% of Australians are willing to pay $1 a day or more to save the world. Anyone can tick the box “Don’t pick on me, I believe in *Climate$%@$#Change*”. But if people believed it was a threat they wouldn’t balk at paying $100 a year, which is what 62% of Australians did
Corals survive 542m years of supervolcano, asteroids, 125m sea level change only to go extinct any year now
Will Corals Survive?, asks a group of international scientists. Corals first appeared 540 million years ago, but having made it through supervolcanoes, mass extinctions, and an asteroid impact equivalent to 10 billion Hiroshima A-bombs, it’s now likely they will be wiped out because a trace gas has risen from 20% up to 25% of levels common for half of the last 300 million years. Source: www.geocra
BOM Scandal: One second records in Australia — how “noise” creates history and a warming trend
Instrument errors, noise, may account for a quarter to one half of our national warming trend in the last century. When the newspapers run a headline with Sydney hits, say, 44.4 degrees and that number gets engraved in history, who realizes that the extreme heat may have only lasted one second? You might think the maximum temperatures were above 44 for at least ten minutes, but the BOM will write

Yesterday

Scientists “thrilled”: fish cope with acidification if tanks mimic normal large daily CO2 swings
The real story here is that past scares claiming that ocean acidification would create reckless fish were most likely an artefact of an inadequate experiment. There are big swings of CO2 and pH in shallow water environments, and the normal day-night cycle turns out to be good for fish. Putting them in a laboratory tank without these daily changes may create fish that behave badly. So ocean acidif

Sep 03

Weekend Unthreaded
For all the other stuff… Rating: 8.8/10 (23 votes cast) Rating: 8.8/ 10 (23 votes cast)

Aug 31

Australians forced to pay $60b for expensive “green” electricity
The cost of Going Green, The Australian, Cover, September 1, 2017. The Australian calculates the total bill will be in the order of $60b for green electricity. It’s not like we could have done something better with that. Read it all (if you can), then write to your MP and Senator. Ask why — if they are serious about helping reduce CO2 — we don’t have a USC coal plant like so many other countries,
Low Fat consensus was wrong: High carb diets increase death rates
How many people have died prematurely because they swapped their fats for carbohydrates? More fat meant less death (left). More carbs (right) meant the opposite (at least above 60%). (Click to see the full table of Figure 1 results). New research published in the Lancet shows that low fat diets could increase your risk of death. Specifically, those who are in the top fifth of carbohydrate-eaters

Aug 30

Ivy league profs warns of the vice of conformism: “Think for yourself”
This is a good sign. Fifteen Ivy league professors have offered advice and a warning to students everywhere –to recapture the spirit of truthseeking and free debate. The message might just catch on, because although the young strive to conform to fashionable norms, approximately none of them want to be seen doing so. Who wants to be a the weak minded conformist? The real bigots are those who fear
The backlash against offshore wind, and the big-money, tax dodging backers of Wind.
It’s a very well written article: Bonackers vs. Big Wind by Robert Bryce. h/t Andrew. The good news is that opponents of wind power are having a lot of success onshore. The bad news is that the renewables industry is pushing offshore instead, but fishermen don’t want them either, and families that have been fishing the same areas for 300 years are up in arms. “The South Fork fishermen are fightin

Aug 29

Professor Peter Ridd facing misconduct charges for not selling peer review as sacred unquestionable testimony
Professor Peter Ridd has made the mistake of putting scientific standards ahead of collegial comfort. What was he thinking? He seems to feel he should serve the people of the Queensland instead of helping the careers of co-workers and admin staff. Ridd is being accused of “Not acting in a collegial way” (or something like that, no one is allowed to say for sure) and is now under investigation for

Aug 26

Weekend Unthreaded
Old power stations run and run and run, Regardless of an eclipse of the sun. The warmists should be ridiculed in song, To show them up and show them that they’re wrong. Victoria is really tempting fate, To emulate the South Australia state. Climate records show from red to blue, China’s M.W.P. and Little Ice Age too. — Ruairi Rating: 9.3/10 (57 votes cast) Rating: 9.3/ 10 (57 votes cast)
Who needs solar? Traders burnt during the eclipse: No sun, but lots of cheap electricity
Remember the Electrical Eclipse-Fear? For months, people were coached to use less electricity during the eclipse for fear that the grid might fall over as marvelous new-revolution-solar stopped working. The media were selling the message that we might not cope without solar. I figured this would be as big a threat as a cloudy day (but easier to prepare for.). So after all the spin, what happened?

Aug 24

Modern Astrology in NY Times: Justin Gillis says Eclipses show all Scientists are always right about everything
Verily. Eclipses do weird things to people. Justin Gillis, writer for The New York Times used the recent eclipse to sell something I’d call Sciencemagic. Essentially, if some Scientists™ can calculate orbital mechanics to a fine art, it follows, ipso nonfacto, that all people who use the same job title are also always right. “Should You Trust Climate Science? Maybe the Eclipse Is a Clue” Thanks t

Aug 23

Victoria plans to reduce electricity prices by copying state with most expensive supply in the world
In a genius move, Victoria, which has “soaring” electricity prices, now announces plan to copy South Australia where people pay more for electricity than anywhere: The Andrews government this morning unveiled a new renewable energy target with a commitment to power up to 25 per cent of the state from renewables by 2020 and 40 per cent by 2025. The government has backed the construction of two lar
Chinese scientists find 2,000 years of not-hockey stick
There was no Medieval Warm Period in China. No little ice age either. Not warm in Roman times either. Obviously CO2 controls this climate. (Click to enlarge) Quansheng et al show that weather is lumpy, that modern warming is a lot like past warming. They go so far as to say that there are regular cycles and hint that sun might have something to do with it, and volcanoes. “…centenial variation is

Aug 22

Global Warming (Hallelujah) An Inconvenient Music Video
Elmer and the Bureaucrats. (M4GW) I love these guys! h/t Lance Rating: 9.4/10 (87 votes cast) Rating: 9.4/ 10 (87 votes cast)

Aug 21

Historic Eclipse will test US solar-power grid like … clouds do
Eclipse Map: NASA Feel the panic. Or not. Historic Eclipse Will Test America’s Grid as Solar Waxes, Wanes Grid operators, utilities and electricity generators are bracing for more than 12,000 megawatts of solar power to start falling offline as the moon blocks out the sun across a 70-mile-wide (113-kilometer) corridor stretching from Oregon to South Carolina. This is the first major test of the p

Aug 20

Weekend Unthreaded
We have our own unthreaded poem! Wind-farms and solar thermal plants will prey, On birds of every size who fly their way. The public, to pay less per kilowatt hour, Must vote to drive the zealot Greens from power. Australia’s constitution has a flaw, When politicians wish to change the law, By referendum, have the flaw corrected, That very flaw will rule their wish rejected. Bad-tempered glass ca
The odd case of spontaneously shattering bathroom glass
This used to be black glass, now it’s a sinkless, shattered crazed basin and bench. Who knew tempered glass could suddenly fracture and in some cases explosively? We have a bathroom basin and countertop of moulded thick black glass. For about five years it was happy, then late one night this week, for no reason, it shattered — the sink fractured into 100 pieces and fell into the towels below. The

Aug 19

One day when Al Gore gets some evidence he won’t need to call everyone names
Al Gore creates more skeptics everyday Ross Clark, journalist, met Al Gore to interview him about his favourite topic. But Ross broke the rules; he did some research. Clark even talked to a professor about the scenes of Florida being flooded. The prof explained that it’s not so much that the seas were rising fast, but that the land under Miami is sinking — and by an amazing 16-24cm in the last 80

Aug 18

Handy guide for foreign nation to remove any Australian politican. Give them “entitlements” of dual Citizenship.
For foreign readers, the Australian Parliament is undergoing the most extraordinary spectacle at the moment. Politicians have resigned after discovering that they were dual citizens of Australia and some other country — such as Britain, Canada, or New Zealand — which is a clear breach of the constitution. But this is going far beyond people who held two passports. The constitutional affliction is

Aug 17

Australia, Denmark, Germany vie to win Highest Global Electricity Cost! (It’s the Nobel Price Prize?)
It’s not even close: If South Australia seceded it would have the highest electricity price of any nation on Earth. Australian Households pay highest power prices in the World, AFR. South Australian households are paying the highest prices in the world at 47.13¢ per kilowatt hour, more than Germany, Denmark and Italy which heavily tax energy, after the huge increases on July 1, Carbon + Energy Ma

Aug 16

SA Solar Thermal plant is a copy of US plant that was out of action for one third of its life so far
Crescent Dunes, Solar Thermal Plant, USA. | Wikimedia Author, Amble. A company called SolarReserve is planning to build the new Aurora 150MW solar thermal plant at Port Augusta, which is apparently a copy of their Crescent Dunes plant in the US. But that project has been offline for most of the time since last October. The whole SA government is meant to be running 24/7 off “solar power”, which a

Aug 15

Antarctica – 91 volcanoes coincidentally found under glaciers warming “due to climate change”
It’s possibly the densest concentration of volcanoes in the world, some as high as 4km and we didn’t even know these existed til recently. Despite that overwhelming ignorance, we’re 97.00% certain that all the warming in Antarctica is due to your car and airconditioner. Robin McKie, The Guardian writer, talks about the recent discovery of so many volcanoes under the ice. Not surprisingly, we have

Aug 14

SA Premier hailed “leader”: govt buys twenty years electricity at twice the price for solar
UPDATE: More details are coming in: The SA govt is effectively covering all its own electricity use with this one plant, which is about 5% of the whole state’s demand. The plant will have 8 hours of battery storage (theoretically). The word I hear is that this is not an outright purchase of $650m, but an offtake agreement for around 70-78/MWh — which means the government will buy nearly all the p

Aug 12

Weekend Unthreaded
… Rating: 9.1/10 (30 votes cast) Rating: 9.1/ 10 (30 votes cast)

Aug 11

UK wind farms paid to not make sausages
… OK, a wind farm isn’t making sausages, but it’s also not a farm. Nothing about this makes sense, unless you follow-the-money. John Constable and Matt Ridley outline the absolute rort that Scottish wind generators are screwing out of British electricity customers. Scotland already has 750 industrial wind plants (the scammers) in their best moments making a total of 5,700 MW which is more than th

Aug 10

Feed your dog sweet potatoes to get nicer weather for the great grandchildren you shouldn’t have
It’s another day in a DroneAge religion English Mastiff, Planet warming dog. It took 12 “researchers” to discover that the best way you, personally, can change the future global climate is to avoid having kids. If you do have kids, you can make up a bit, apparently, by all going vegetarian. If that’s too hard, consider swapping your dog for a hamster. But if you have to have kids, dogs, and eat me

Aug 09

No wind or solar powered aluminium smelter anywhere in the world? Could be a message in that.
Matt Howell, the CEO of Tomago Aluminium Smelter, told a few home truths on ABC radio Monday. To paraphrase in my own words: 1. Aluminium Smelters gobble electrons for breakfast. His smelter uses 10% of the entire electricity supply of the most populous state in Australia (NSW). 2. If power goes out without warning for more than three hours, the smelter pot lines freeze, permanently. The company

Aug 08

South Australia generating electricity from rubbish and diesel powered jets, if they could only burn government regulations instead
A little update on our favourite green state. SA tries to fix a Big-Government mess with a Bigger Government: Man-made regulations created the grid-crisis in South Australia, so the Weatherill government has decided to take what didn’t work and “do more”. Australian rulers subsidized unstable energy, and lo, created an unstable system. The SA state govt thinks it can solve it by running an opposi

Aug 06

Another BOM scandal: Australian climate data is being destroyed as routine practice
Historic climate data is being destroyed The Bureau have a budget of a million dollars a day, but seemingly can’t afford an extra memory stick to save historic scientific data. In the mid 1990s thermometers changed right across Australia — new electronic sensors were installed nearly everywh

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