I’ve come across an interesting court case in the energy area, but first I’ll comment on a change in my circumstances. Now that I’m in an aged care facility I don’t get mailed messages urging me to adopt solar technology on my roof. If I do, I was told, my electricity would be free! But I still see the ads on the television screen. Alan Border, of cricket fame, is still offering me, at $4691 up front, a package from the company he pitches for. At least he doesn’t say that the power thus generated is free. A couple of other companies do, showing smiling couples relieved that from now on their power is free. In my view this is akin to dishonesty. You have to buy something like $5000 worth of plant first. Electricity used to cost me about a thousand dollars a year, and I had gas for hot water. The air conditioning was electric of course. So it would have taken me five years to pay off the up-front cost. Then, and only then, would I have “free” electricity.
And then come the imponderables. How long will the solar panels last? Are you expecting to make money by selling your surplus power, if any, to the grid? Will there be another huge hailstorm? Canberra gets severe hailstorms on average every five years . In South Australia there is a warning that solar arrays and rooftop solar might have to be switched off to prevent blackouts. The future is unknown. So just as you have paid for your up-front system come some possibilities that the advertisers didn’t tell you about.
Back to the court case (summon it up at ACCC v Sumo Power Pty Ltd — Concise Statement.pdf). Sorry for not being able to give you a link. And a caveat: you are reading only one side of the case. I learned long ago that before coming to judgment on anything you should wait to hear both sides. Nonetheless, this set of allegations is clear and accessible to anyone. The ACCC investigated Sumo during what it called Relevant Periods.
ACCC alleges that Sumo misled consumers about prices for its services through an undisclosed predetermined pricing strategy, which involved signing up new customers to electricity plans offering low rates and large discounts and then materially increasing rates a short time later. Sumo also misled consumers with respect to the affiliation of its agents who made unsolicited sales calls to consumers, and the reasons for its rate increases.
Sumo is based in Melbourne, and offers plans of various kinds. It claims to be Australian-owned. On the face of it, it simply packages power (electricity and gas in Victoria, electricity in New South Wales) and offers its plans to consumers. Some twenty other providers do something like this too. The grid of course takes in solar and wind power, though not much of either. But the real link between Sumo and the solar rooftop people is the sheer uncertainty of what might happen in the future.
So here is what might happen, according to the ACCC, if you were a new Sumo customer. You get allocated to a different ‘book’ under the book system, which has a front book (FB), a mid book (MB) and a back book (BB). Customers allocated to FB paid the lowest rates and provided low, nil or negative profit margins to Sumo. Customers allocated to MB and BB paid significantly higher rates and provided greater profit margins to Sumo.
Now what customers did not know was that Sumo had an undisclosed predetermined pricing strategy, called the Acquisition Pricing Strategy. You’re in the market for a plan or want to find the lowest price? You will be offered the FB, and then you will be migrated to MB or BB, once you’re in. Another device was the Cheap Price Offer: pay on time and you get a discount, up to 43 per cent, and that will be the case for the next year. Shortly after you signed on, alas, you would be migrated to MB or BB. At all material times you the new customer knew nothing of this arrangement. It would just happen.
Now, the marketing agents, companies paid to solicit customers for Sumo, announced themselves as energy consultants, and told them of Sumo’s great offers along the lines set out above. The agents at no time mentioned the Acquisition Pricing Strategy or the planned migration scheme. Once you were on board, and before the migration from FB upwards, Sumo sent a letter to customers, with a similar statement on its website, advising them of the reasons for the coming price increases. It attributed price increases to generation costs caused by factors such as climate change, the closing of Hazelwood power station, the cost of upgrading networks and the fees Sumo must pay to distributors. Nowhere was the Acquisition Pricing Strategy or the planned book migration disclosed.
Now what would you think? You’ve been told that the Cheap Price Offer is to last for twelve months. Suddenly you’re told that climate change and other issues have made this offer null and void. You would be angry and upset. ACCC had similar feelings, and it alleges that The Cheap Offer Representation was false, misleading or deceptive or likely to deceive in that, by reason of the undisclosed Acquisition Pricing Strategy and Planned Book Migration, Sumo did in fact plan to and did, during the Relevant Period, materially increase the rates for customers who had accepted the Cheap Price Offer and had received at least 1 to 3 (monthly) bills.
What is more, the ACCC alleges that Sumo is responsible for the behaviour of the Marketing Agents, who it alleges plainly gave false and misleading accounts of themselves to possible customers, because they were not independent at all, and were acting on behalf of Sumo.
So there. To repeat the warning I gave at the beginning, this account is based on the case presented by the ACCC. I do not know Sumo’s response, and will be fascinated to learn what it is. So let me move now to what seems to have happened over the last twenty years. First, State Governments decided that they could make some money to spend on other needed infrastructure projects if they sold off their poles and lines businesses. That was successful for them. Second, we got into rooftop solar, solar arrays and wind turbines on the basis of a forthcoming climate emergency/crisis. Third, Governments did not inspect these claims as thoroughly as they might have, partly because the Greens were pushing them, and partly because the issues were now in part the responsibility of the private sector. Fourth, for all these reasons, and an overarching lack of common sense, we now have a hugely untidy, unreliable and expensive electricity system.
What should we do about it? Whee! We need a single public utility that is responsible for maintaining a reliable, cheap and forward-looking electricity system. I’ll leave gas out of it. We do not need a multitude of competing companies trying to outdo each other in providing the right ‘plan’. I doubt that my dreamed-of future is at all possible, at least until there is a system-wide disaster. I do not look forward to it.
I have been watching the progress of our electrical systems quite closely. To do this I am using the data from the Australian Energy Marketing Operator. The trend I see is that renewable energy is in fact not increasing at all rapidly. 2019 was a high year and it rose 2.1%. When I talk about renewable energy I mean hydro, wind, grid solar and rooftop PV. We are not building any more coal and in fact there are imminent closures. Closing 2 GW of coal is the same as closing all wind stations. My expectation is we are going to see major electrical failures across more than one state soon. In the last 12 months there were at least three events that were narrowly avoided. We just do not have the unused resources. I take this so seriously that I now have a home generator sufficient in capacity to run the whole house with an automatic switchover. I think when I need it there will be a rush to do the same and I will be ready.
http://australianbyte.com/itd/2020/05/27/renewable-energy-progress-in-australia/
There may be another option here. Perhaps ZEN Energy can make RE work for you.
According to AFR ‘s Ben Potter today, Professor Garnaut and “his partner Raymond Spencer have taken back from Sanjeev Gupta’s GFG Alliance in a demerger under which GFG keeps the projects at its Whyalla Steelworks and ZEN Energy takes the third-party retail business and development projects.”
Professor Garnaut and Mr Spencer joined forces with Mr Gupta in 2017 to form SIMEC ZEN Energy. At the time they outlined an ambitious $1 billion slate of solar, battery and pumped hydro projects for the Whyalla steelworks and other steel businesses of the former Arrium steel company which Mr Gupta’s interests bought from administrators earlier that year.
However Professor Garnaut and Mr Spencer also wanted to offer low-cost clean energy to third parties in Australia and they have spent the last eight months disentangling the businesses and combining ZEN Energy with Sunshot Energy, a separate company they formed in 2019.
ZEN’s excursion into the RE sector does not appear to have been a walk in the park, reading between the lines.
“We very much respected what each of us was trying to do but they were not exactly the same things,” Professor Garnaut said.
According to Mr Potter, “Professor Garnaut doesn’t accept that ZEN Energy’s scale appears dwarfed by its ambition, and notes that there are Harvard Business School courses in why incumbent players don’t lead transitions.
“If everyone jumps in and follows us great, we’ll be successful in the energy transition. And if no one else does we’ll have a bigger business ourselves.”
I had moment of satori the other night when I heard the sound of one hand clapping.
For me, the ZEN Buddhist path is more enlightening than the ZEN Energy one.
That said, I haven’t looked at the fine-print yet……..
In the electricity sector, we will fly into the ground at full throttle because people making the decisions, and those advising the decision makers, are self-selected climate catastrophists.
In my past, working in a government agency, our group was part of this renewable energy push, though the energy included thermal, which is a major component of our energy mix. It was quite common to observe experienced and well qualified engineers from the mainstream oil and electrical generation sectors leave their previous employment to take up less well paid positions in the public sector, so that they could “do the right thing” and work towards the renewable future and save the planet. Within major companies like Woodside, and public corporations like Western Power, the same self-selection could also be observed as climate catastrophists moved sideways into the greenwash divisions of their companies. It could also be observed in energy intensive consumer companies such as the aviation industry.
It is all well intentioned behaviour, but there is so much group think entrenched into this issue, especially in Canberra, I think BB’s suggestion that we will need our own little backup gensets is about right.
My numbers are rusty, but back a few years ago a diesel genset produced electricity at about 35 cents per kWh. The gap is narrowing.
The time may come when local communities in the bush will go off grid to maintain reliability and control costs themselves. Especially if they can tap into reticulated natural gas, or strike a competitive rate for road transported LNG – just like the old days, when larger country towns sometimes had their own power stations.
Mine runs on natural gas and the brand is Generac. 13 kVA automatic switchover. As I understand it electricity in South Australia is already over $0.37 per unit.
Don, thanks for your post on so called solar energy or so called RE.
RE like S&W are an environmental disaster and how any so called Greens supporters fail to understand this is a mystery and yet these dummies seem to have no interest in understanding the problems at all.
And S&W can’t make a jot of difference to temp or climate at all whether we are considering the change by 2050 or 2100 or beyond.
Lomborg’s team covered all of this in his 2015 PR study that used the same MAGICC software used by the IPCC etc and he also showed that full compliance with Paris COP 21 would only cover 1% of the task.
Since 2015 co2 levels have increased at an even higher trend than before COP 21. So the entire problem (????) has become a mission impossible and has become even more extreme over the last 5 years. Co2 levels in 2015 were about 400 ppm and today about 415 ppm.
Meanwhile China, India and developing countries’ co2 emissions continue to soar as I’ve shown using data from Wiki, Lomborg’s team, NOAA etc, but silly donkeys ignore the very simple maths involved and STILL tell the people we must close our reliable coal fired plants and replace them with even more of their S&W disaster.
I’ll be following the ACCC/SUMO case, but the really BIG con and fra-d is the claim that the S&W disaster can make a difference to temp or climate and even power a modern economy into the 21st century and beyond. Little wonder that Dr Hansen spat the dummy and called Paris COP 21 “just BS and fra-d”.
Here’s the Lomborg team’s study in 2015 and don’t forget that the trend in co2 levels have actually increased again over the last 5 years. ( see NOAA data)
Just look at their figure/graph of FULL COMPLIANCE with COP 21 and THEN understand what a sick joke the Govt’s of the world are playing on their long suffering taxpayers.
Plus now we have the ongoing problems of CV-19 to contend with and the incredible levels of debt to overcome and probably for many decades into the future.
https://www.lomborg.com/press-release-research-reveals-negligible-impact-of-paris-climate-promises
The practical effect of rooftop solar is to transfer wealth from those who for various reasons (lack of capital, renting, living in multi-storey apartment blocks, living in nursing homes among them) are unable to install them to others, generally already wealthier, who can.
It is a cruel, heartless, imposition on the less well off, by people who claim to care!
Yes BJ, and while collecting their middle-class welfare they convince themselves by closing one eye they are saving the planet.
SD and BJ here’s another way to try and get more moolah from the poor Aussie taxpayers.
It seems that the TS Islanders are suing us for future CC that will adversely impact their way of life.
We’ve spent heaps of money in the TS islands since World war 2 and these people definitely have a much longer life expectancy + healthier and wealthier way of life than 30 years ago or 50 years ago.
Yet the con merchants + media who promote this lunacy tell us that our govt is responsible for the future weather, SLR, etc despite the fact that the SH is a net co2 SINK.
So why don’t they pursue China and the developing world if they really believe that co2 is the major driver of their so called CAGW?
This idiocy is beyond belief.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/08/13/aussie-government-asks-the-un-to-dismiss-an-indigenous-climate-case/
Neville
You are assuming that they care about climate and our future.
The only thing the alarmists really care about is gaining political power over (to borrow some words from a film title) The Lives of Others. Petty fascists in white coats.
Here’s a short video from Shellenberger where he easily proves that S&W are an environmental disaster and definitely can’t save the planet.
IOW why promote dilute S&W when we fully understand this will ruin the environment, will wreck the electricity grid and of course fail to supply base-load power as well.
Hi Don: A quick Control+F shows that in this article the word ‘cheap’ occurs five times; ‘money’ three times, ‘costs’ twice and dollar once, indicating an economic perspective which is quite reasonable. In your final sentence you refer to “a system-wide disaster” but in my view we already had one this year, with the smoke proliferation in Canberra and indeed in other cities. I hope it’s not going to be a regular occurrence each year.
No doubt many contributors to this column would have been appalled at the crude stunts on ABC’s ‘Planet A’ on Tuesday evening, were they able to bear even minimal exposure to the ABC. I know this is beyond the threshold for some. The facts were, however, that Craig Reucassel touched on some of the economic practices around Woodside/Enron etc. A telling, almost cartoonish graphic, was his solar energy, renewables wind, gas, coal percentages piles and his lampoonish behaviour on top the heap of coal, trying to shovel off a few percentages. It may be that we are transitioning to a Nev Power-led gas transitioning and that Angus Taylor and Matt Canavan are losing their gloss.
But even in these Covid-19 days, there is often a crude dichotomy between the ‘economy’ and ‘health’ issues. Australia is somehow at fault if we don’t economically shore up some vaccine options – which the government is trying to do behind the scenes, incidentally. I think of water and then about market trading around water in Australia, the return of Chris Corrigan and big companies’ economics rights, Michael Burry’s transition from ‘The Big Short’ to water trading etc.
Many of the contributors to this column are septuagenarian and octogenarians but the economic viewpoint remains gripping. I do not exclude myself from this category but it seems to me, as we come around the bend, there is scope to lessen the role of economics and indeed accept some of the outlandish values that Craig Reucassel is presenting with such good humour in ‘Planet A’.
Peter D
“accept some of the outlandish values that Craig Reucassel is presenting”
Examples of acceptable “outlandish” values please?
Peter D I’ve heard some of the planet A ads on radio and they don’t seem to be anything about the Earth as we know it.
So could you please inform us how we can mitigate their so called CAGW , how much it will cost and when we can expect an improvement in the climate/weather for every continent?
I’ve repeatedly linked to the co2 data and from the best sources, like NOAA, Lomborg’s IPCC, IEA data, Wiki etc using the latest data from the same sources and it all tells us the same story.
So please be the first to enlighten us by guiding us to some new revelation about their cult. But please use proper data and evidence before you bother.
Boambee John
Example: taking five case studies of variant Australian households: visiting them, looking at their electricity bills etc, and then looking at strategies to reduce the bills. A bit outlandish – the five male housemates and their shower bills/time/shower nozzle.
Hi Neville: It’s great that you are looking for enlightenment. The last thing I want to do is pour over graphs, go into measurement methods, etc. It’s seems clear to me that there is a lot of ideology around this. I don’t even want to use the term ‘climate change’ but the term ‘mother nature’ in the same sense as Thomas Friedman does in his great book, ‘Thank you for being late’. Non-scientists can understand bio-diversity loss, extinction of species, population growth etc. I have a fairly basic approach: if you piss in the river all the time, eventually it will smell if enough people do it. A couple of years ago, I was in Singapore and learned how contaminated the river that flow through the city had been. It took ten years to clean it up. It can be done. I’m not going to bang on about attenuated droughts, floods, cyclones etc and quibble over stats. I’m the sort of person that trusts the CSIRO and many scientists. And even if they’re of a bit, it’s common sense to transition to renewables, possibly with gas etc. But I’m not so preoccupied with money and sacrifice-avoidance as some seem to be. Perhaps it’s worth having a look at the second episode of Planet A this week: maybe a bit of enlightenment may come your way.
PeterD
“, it’s common sense to transition to renewables, possibly with gas etc.”
A Claytons’ transition?
What is included in “etc”? Nuclear might be meaningful, but having enough wind and batteries to cover the regular am and pm slumps in solar, and the also regular low wind periods at those times is, with current technology, fanciful.
Don
The problem is that our private enterprise is not merely profit making (through legitimate growth) but profit maximising (through any sort of trickery).
While you can always make a reasonable profit providing goods and services to everyone – you cannot maximise profit this way. Profit maximisers have to select which customers they engage with or force those they enroll to pay higher prices they never agreed to. This damages family budgets for those in the bottom two quintiles of the household income distribution.
Therefore when it comes to basic goods and services that everyone requires, that can be monoplolised, irrespective of income, then profit maximisers should be excluded.
While “We need a single public utility that is responsible for maintaining a reliable, cheap and forward-looking electricity system. ” is one option, there is also the possibility of cooperatives and other forms of mutual enterprises and not-for-profits.
Chris
“The problem is that our private enterprise is not merely profit making (through legitimate growth) but profit maximising (through any sort of trickery).”
A process that is encouraged by the in built incentives in the renewables system for subsidy harvesting.
Geeezzzzz Peter D the CSIRO has already told us that the entire SH is a net co2 SINK, so what will you do about soaring co2 emissions from China, India and developing countries for decades to come?
Look at the data/evidence and then answer my questions and why would anyone want to destroy the environment using the S&W idiocy? And of course no measurable change to the climate or temp by 2100 and beyond.
Lomborg’s PR study using the same IPCC data proves my point and please look at the Shellenberger video above and tell us where he’s wrong?
And don’t forget he is now an IPCC reviewer for their upcoming AR 6 report, so let’s hope some sanity may be restored to the usual UN nonsense.
Just watched the start of the ABC’s Planet A on i view and even more stupid and delusional than I thought it would be.
Of course none of this would make the slightest difference to climate or temp or SLR or extreme weather events or the HOT spot or polar ice or Polar bears or Penguins, droughts or floods or ….. etc.
And they expect us to ruin the environment using the S&W idiocy and all at a cost/waste of trillions $ flushed down the drain? Oh and also wreck our electricity grid, with regular blackouts every time S&W fails to generate enough power to service our way of life. Please wake up.
Hi Neville
You ask: “so what will you do about soaring co2 emissions from China, India and developing countries for decades to come?”
In terms of ethics, it’s always worthwhile doing what is the right thing and not basing your decisions on comparative ethics, on what China/India may or may not do. Trump propagates false news and conspiracy theories, so perhaps I’ll be vulnerable if I don’t do the same thing. Stand up for the right thing.
And there is no logic or lovely graphs or beautiful set of stats to show you what China or India will do, even in the short term. I understand China is committing to engineering works in Vanuatu to elevate building structure etc Australia is not thinking of vulnerable islands in the South Pacific and our reputation there has some dents in it. Sometimes ethics is about the marginalised, the less powerful.
Hi Neville,
You write of Plant A: “even more stupid and delusional than I thought it would be” Craig’s visit to the Tasmanian site may have fallen on deaf ears; similarly, with the points about Woodside/Enron that are on the public record. And of course his motivation for doing such a program, as he did with his war on waste, is incomprehensible.
I only come into this site about twice a year. Don has many other positive values that appeal to me but I can’t say that the climate change stuff does anything for me. You guys are always poking each other with a graph or some new sets of figures, or appealing to some guru.
When I first came into the site on climate change, I wrote to Don as a distinguished Professor of Politics and a very good VC, that I would have more faith if he headed up a team of 70 climate change researchers plugged into locations around the world. I give far more credence than you do to the CSIRO, to the IPCC, Chief Scientists etc Your analysis, Neville, reminds me of Dads’ Army, lounge-chair ‘experts’ – who may have had impressive careers and are certainly talented. You may be in this category – I haven’t got a clue who you are. But what I find dispiriting is the loss of hope that you pass onto young people – you’re like some crusty old uncle who won’t give up banging on about C02 etc. Pass on some idealism, some hope, some future instead of just miserable preoccupation with questionable science. Scepticism can be positive but there’s a certain point where you need to move on. Better still why not volunteer to go to some remote locations for a year or two – if you haven’t already done this – and get your data first hand instead of it being filtered through so many permutations. You may remember the old refrain “Please get out of the way If you can’t lend your hand For the times they are a- changing.”
PeterD
“In terms of ethics, it’s always worthwhile doing what is the right thing and not basing your decisions on comparative ethics, on what China/India may or may not do.”
It hardly seems ethical to destroy our economy and the livelihoods of the Australian population (less the scamsters and subsidy harvesters of the renewables “industry”) if it will make no measurable difference to the outcome. But feel free to sacrifice your personal and family future, just don’t expect others to follow you over the cliff.
AGAIN just for Peter D, here’s two links to the co2 data from Wiki and from NOAA.
From NOAA, co2 growth rate since 1960 to 2019. https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/gr.html
From Wikipedia showing countries’ co2 emissions graph from 1970 or 1990 to 2018, see top right.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions
Peter here AGAIN is the latest video from Michael Moore and he also blows apart the S&W disaster and the con merchants involved etc.
Sorry for adhering to the data/evidence, but I’m not interested in the delusional ABC type fantasy planet scenarios.
I’m sure, Neville, you could give me a thousand references and an authoritative interpretation on each one. But asking me to do this is like asking me to speak alternatively in Russian and Chinese.
Sometimes when climate alarmists and climate deniers and all shades in between get into disputation, it is not about scientific objectivity or reality: is is about entrenched positions, values ensuing from ideologies. From a background in humanities, I’m interested in other values. It takes one away from science, truly, and invites speculation about all sorts of mysterious happenings. Here’s a quote from some Japanese philosopher:
”Always remember that to argue, and win, is to break down the reality of the person you are arguing against. It is painful to lose your reality, so be kind, even if you are right.” Convincing someone to change their mind is really the process of convincing them to change their tribe. If they abandon their beliefs, they run the risk of losing social ties. You can’t expect someone to change their mind if you take away their community too. You have to give them somewhere to go. Nobody wants their worldview torn apart if loneliness is the outcome.
Hi Neville: I know you mean well seeking to inform me of the true state of emissions, global trends etc by indicating links, highlighting graphs, quoting the great gurus, poking me with a good graph etc. I could pop back into this site in a month or a year and you’ll have discovered a lot more, and so the game goes on. Basically I see your analysis as well intentioned, amateurish and ideologically blinkered compared with the CSIRO and those engaged at the pointy end of contemporary research. If you are working in the field now on location at the cutting edge – and not conducting your analysis from the loungeroom or the armchair – then I’ll take my hat off to you. There are all sorts of capable people – some engineers, some geologists, scientists, some expert researchers – but if you’re retired more than five years, and still think you’ve got the answers, then go and work again in the field. There are no fools like old fools but I’m not assuming this applies to anyone in particular on this site. People all around the world want significant action to reduce emissions, transition to renewable energy etc The sort of analysis I perceive are the blind men trying to work out what type of creature is this elephant from their particular locale rather than a broad, comprehensive system of climate researchers working together around the world – something indeed like the IPCC.
Michael Moore certainly does tell it as it is about renewable energy but there is a big but. He reveals himself as a deep ecologist that is is not about reducing emissions but more to the point about reducing human populations. For many of his ilk the invention of abundant pollution free energy is their nightmare.
The CAGW alarmists have a strong tendency to misanthropy, some openly referring to humans as a “plague”.
People who express such opinions should never, never, be given power. Too many of them would love to do a Pol Pot on the whole world.
boambee john
You write about “no measurable difference to the outcome. But feel free to sacrifice your personal and family future, just don’t expect others to follow you over the cliff.”
The basic flaw in your assumption is that there’s a lot more future/and money in renewables than in coal. Atlassian is looking at solar energy to Singapore. The adoption of renewables has been significant in Australia and will only accelerate. Clearly there is a shortfall, given the almost 60% dominance of coal at the moment, but gas is gathering momentum, and people are following. There is a long way to go, bo, but the best you can do is catch a bit of Craig Reucassel’s positivity and divest yourself of cynicism, loss of hope, churlishness and general all round misery. Take heart from the youth of Australia who want a much better future than you can imagine.
PeterD
There is indeed a lot of money in renewables. Much of it comes from subsidy harvesting. Until renewables can compete in a level playing field (including the costs of connecting distributed generators to the concentrated major power users, and of frequency control) subsidies are their principal benefit to investors.
How much government “investment” will Atlassian “need” to get their Singapore project completed? Will it ever repay that “investment”?
Willis Eschenbach has just experienced the RE disaster first hand and he’s not a happy chappy.
So even California can’t handle a normal heatwave anymore without blackouts and yet we still have donkeys here in OZ that want us to install more of the fra-dulent S&W idiocy?
Unbelievable but true.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/08/15/in-caiso-emergency-break-glass/
Hullo Boambee John,
The Atlassian project[Singapore] is an interesting one: it’s big-thinking, innovative and exploits some of our natural environment. The two guys who run it are not poor; they didn’t even list on the ASX.
Your queries about the project may be well founded: but their approach – very successful to date, even in an economic sense – represents the visionary thinking, tech-savvy, even profitable thinking to date, that is rare. One to watch.
PeterD
I don’t mind “visionaries”, as long as their hands are in their own pockets, not the taxpayers’. What odds are you offering that they will not seek government “co-investment”? After all, it is “profutable” so surely that will not be needed?
Incidentally, I have a bridge for sale. Are you in the bidding?
Energy expert Michael Shellenberger tells us why so called RE or S&W is the reason why millions of Californians have had to suffer from the latest blackouts.
Of course this sort of lunacy makes sense according to their clueless ABC and we should be installing even more S&W ASAP.
Fair dinkum you couldn’t make this stuff up.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2020/08/15/why-californias-climate-policies-are-causing-electricity-black-outs/#7b325bcb1591
Hullo Boamombee John: Rest easy: Mike won’t be asking for your money. Atlassian’s Mike Cannon Brooks’ net worth in June, 2019, was $8.5 billion. He is 40 years old, has kids, went to UNSW. But if you listen to him talk, he’s not gloomy or miserable about the future or challenges facing our world, whether they be around climate, technology. He could buy your bridge for a chook shed but I’m sure he’d conduct due diligence and ensure it’s not a bridge to nowhere. Above all, his thinking is positive, he’s prepared to take risks, and confront big issues. His can-do approach appeals to youth and the future and even though I’m older now, I return to the Dylan anthem: “Please get out of the way If you can’t lend your hand For the times they are a- changing.”
PeterD
OK, fine sentiments and old rockers. Those make a fine foundation for his “dream”.
I hesitate to mention minor technical details like laying a cable thousands of kilometres long across a tectonically active sea floor. I simply ask that you present yourself here to apologise humbly the first time he puts his hand up for some taxpayer “co-investment”.
Will you promise to do that? And if the project is completed with absolutely no taxpayer support (including tax concessions) I will do the same.
So do we want to talk about the real planet Earth or yap about their fantasy planet?
Atmospheric Physicist Dr John Christy used his presentation at the GWPF to discuss all the points about their so called CAGW and then put them to the test.
https://www.thegwpf.com/putting-climate-change-claims-to-the-test/
Boambee John
If it’s tax you’re concerned about, I’d like to see reform around unproductive trusts, confinement of negative gearing to only one other dwelling with a grandfather arrangement for existing gears, and removal of tax losses to the Government around double tax of franked benefits [grandfathered]. Equation of MP super schemes with the norms. I’d like to see a little bit of intergenerational change in financial balance/benefits, from the old to the young[though making arrangements for the homeless and those who are doing it really tough in retirement. The sort of transition – dare I say it – that some young people are clamouring for about climate action.
Your challenge is based on the idea that this is just between me and you. It’s the sort of silly equivalent of drunks who will dare each other to run naked through Garema Place late at night if their horse doesn’t win the next race, or if their football team doesn’t win on Saturday.
Is it possible that my views are far too ‘fanciful’? Of course. Are the technical and financial complexities enormous? Of course. Would the benefits of Atlassian success be good for Australia? Of course. I only have a ‘shy hope’ but I think innovation, big-picture thinking and building up a record of success is far more desirable than misery/sense of being persecuted thinking, what indeed I call Andrew Bolt thinking.
PeterD
I thought the discussion related to renewable energy, and any tax concessions related to that.
Stil, nice to see you walking back your bizarre claims about Atlassian.
In this recent article Dr Lomborg checks out the state of the world in 1970 compared to 2020.
There is a lot to be thankful for and today billions of people have much higher life expectancy and calories intake, higher standard of living, a better environment etc than just 50 years ago. Many more links here.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-earth-day-at-50-a-surprising-success-story/
Earth Day at 50: A surprising success story
BJORN LOMBORG
CONTRIBUTED TO THE GLOBE AND MAIL
PUBLISHED APRIL 22, 2020
UPDATED APRIL 22, 2020
“Bjorn Lomborg is the president of the Copenhagen Consensus, a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and a visiting professor at the Copenhagen Business School. His new book is “False Alarm”.
“As we celebrate the 50th anniversary of Earth Day and the birth of modern environmentalism, we should pause to give each other a virtual high five for the impressive environmental progress society has accomplished during this span. We should also think about the ways we can make the next 50 years far more effective.
Case in point: many people are surprised to hear that the environment is improving. A lot. This surprise grows from the unfortunate flip side of the Earth Day legacy, which too often can focus on doomsaying and alarmism, which can make us despondent and drive poor policies.
Early environmentalism in the 1970s helped focus societies on priorities such as polluted rivers – the Cuyahoga River in the United States famously caught fire in 1969 – and fouled air, with soot and smog killing millions.
Here, we have made great strides. Most bodies of water in rich countries are much cleaner, since we are prosperous enough to clean up our domestic messes. In the U.S., for instance, a recent comprehensive study showed that “water pollution concentrations have fallen substantially” over the past 50 years. And a stunning 3.8 billion people around the world have gained access to clean drinking water since 1970.
Air pollution, the world’s biggest environmental killer, has seen even greater improvements. Outdoor air pollution has declined dramatically in rich countries, due in no small measure to attention from 1970’s Earth Day and subsequent actions such as the landmark U.S. Clean Air Act later that year.
For the world’s poor, the most deadly air pollution is indoors. Almost three billion of the world’s poorest people still cook and keep warm with dirty fuels such as dung, cardboard and wood, and the World Health Organization estimates the effects are equivalent to smoking two packs of cigarettes each day.
But since 1970, the death risk across the world from indoor air pollution has been cut by more than half.
Despite the amazing progress, both indoor and outdoor air pollution still kill seven million people each year. At least two billion people still use drinking water sources contaminated by feces. So, for the next 50 years, we still have our work cut out for us. Things are far better, but they are still not okay.
Curiously, this is not a typical environmental conversation. We don’t emphasize enormous improvements and we don’t focus on our vital, unfinished business in water and air. Instead, the standard story is how the environment is getting ever worse – how we’re hurtling toward catastrophe. This tradition also started with Earth Day.
By 1970, many leading environmentalists were predicting the end of the world. Stanford University ecologist Paul Ehrlich, a frequent guest on Johnny Carson’s popular late-night TV show, was perhaps the leading doomsayer. For Earth Day, he predicted that environmental deterioration would kill 65 million Americans and that four billion people would die around the world before the year 2000. Life magazine also saw impending doom, predicting air pollution would be so bad that Americans would have to wear gas masks in the 1980s, and that pollution would block half the sunlight.
Not only were these predictions spectacularly wrong, they were also outlandish when they were first made. Yet, in a world where alarm leads to attention, these statements started a trend of framing environmental issues as worst-case scenarios. The tone both scares and depresses people – and likely skews our focus and spending.
Today, climate change takes up the vast majority of the environmental conversation. It is definitely a real problem. However, it is also too often framed in an exaggerated fashion, with predictable results: a new survey shows that almost half of humanity believes global warming will likely make humans extinct.
This is entirely unwarranted. The UN Climate Panel, which holds the gold standard for climate research, finds that the overall impact of global warming by the 2070s will be equivalent to a 0.2 to 2-per-cent loss in average income. That is a problem, but it’s not the end of the world.
Fear also makes us prioritize poorly. Climate change mitigation today costs just the European Union more than US$400-billion each year in renewable subsidies and other costly climate policies. Yet we spend much less on making water and air cleaner for the billions of people who still don’t have these basic necessities.
We can rightly look back on Earth Day with pride for the attention it has brought to the environment. But we need to curb the exaggerations, to make sure we actually leave the environment in the best possible state”.
Andrew Bolt takes the CAGW extremists to the woodshed over their misleading alarmism over the last few decades.
Loonies like Flannery, Thunberg, etc and this is about the best short video summing up their ongoing extremism that I’ve watched for a while.
Even fires started by arsonists, too much rain or too little rain or do they really want the Monsoons to fail or not in parts of Asia? Very funny if it wasn’t so serious.
https://www.heraldsun.com.au/blogs/andrew-bolt/coronavirus-kills-greta-thunbergs-big-scare/news-story/79cfa264c99a89a4fa53ec9e37c76165
PeterD I’m glad to see your comments. I think you stopped commenting on a post of Don’s a long time ago – the subject matter I can’t recall, but I felt my direct expression had been taken personally. This is a problem with me and perhaps others – a blog written with the idea of free speech as paramount can then attracts multiple comments from a few commentators who take over and make commenting hackle raising, then pointless.
Just to say that I did look at Jessica Irvine’s pieces and found them good despite not being particularly interested in economics.
Suddenly and unexpectedly though, I’m a fan of Alan Kohler since his short video on MMT using Norman Lindsay’s character The Magic Pudding.
Thanks to Don for the blog, I do check in to see what the essay and comments are about, but I agree with you PeterD that ‘you can’t live without hope that things will change for the better’ – Next Year People. Especially when you are going to be a grandparent again during a pandemic.
Hi Margaret: many thanks for your comments. In terms of one previous interaction, I concede that I was out of sorts because I had always agreed with many of your views, especially on feminist agendas. It’s impressive that you actually survive in this over-heated male environment. Don was once facing legal action over on an indigenous incident when he has always been such a great supporter; almost as a minimalist comparison, I was taken aback by a previous posting of yours when I thought I had been a supporter of female perspectives. In my view, women are very under-represented in some discussions around climate. It’s churlish, though, to become too offended by what occurs in online discussions, or to hang onto unintended slights because one needs to be resilient and work through the fray.
I have been involved in some horrendous discussions online in big Yahoo forums of 3000 plus around gun violence/control in the US. They make the discussions on this site seem very genteel. You can probably see from my responses to Neville and to Boambee John that I am not a wilting violet and can in fact be quite moralistic and dismissive about what I regard as ‘misery’/old-timer, far-too-negativer thinking. I support someone like Mike Cannon-Brooks/Atlassian thinking which is prepared to take on big challenges but I am not seeking to canonise him. School teachers can’t lie awake and think about the negative comments that some students/parents may make on occasions otherwise they’d never sleep. I hope the Atlassian- Singapore project will succeed and have a vague sense of the enormous technical challenges. I don’t think Atlassian’s primary motivation is to hit up the Australian taxpayer as Boambee John fears but I am realistic enough not to exclude it as a possibility. What matters a great deal to me is hope and positivity about the future – but this is not to be equated with romancing the future, ‘fanciful’ flights, pipe dreams in the sky. Mention of a new grandchild invites the best hopes for the future and positivity is integral to that.
Thanks for that PeterD. I first came to Don’s site because of an everyday interest in higher education sparked by the occupation of a then newly fledged family member. I continued because I thought a voice from the opposite sex was lacking. Mine just wasn’t the right voice. Unlike you I was inexperienced in commenting and not knowledgeable in much of the subject matter but I appreciated that you gave me the ‘time of day’ and I did gain valuable insight into how and when to comment. You’re right, a teacher must psychologically bat off the negative comments in daily interactions from pupils/teachers. Another family member is a high school teacher currently conducting classes remotely because of lockdown.
I’m aware of Atlassian and Mike Cannon-Brookes. I saw his partner Scott Farquhar profiled on a tv program and was impressed by the new approach of these highly successful young men.
I’m also enjoying Craig Reucassel. I’m quite shocked at the size of homes some people live in and then wonder about their electricity bill – (I believe the even Atlassian founders now live in Point Piper, but I guess that’s all part of success).
More on the corruption from the con merchants that seems to be built into their so called Green energy disaster and let’s hope the California Gov falls because of their self induced blackouts.
You can listen to this article or read it and never forget this is our future if we are stupid enough to listen to their clueless ABC and then vote for Labor and the Greens.
https://californiaglobe.com/section-2/recall-deja-vu-ca-rolling-blackouts-are-back/?utm_source=CCNet+Newsletter&utm_campaign=0bf8722d78-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_08_17_01_15_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_fe4b2f45ef-0bf8722d78-36463321&mc_cid=0bf8722d78&mc_eid=dcbe0ef09b
Another very interesting video from Shellenberger trying to educate us about the disaster of S&W and the safety of Nuclear power.
He quotes UN data that looks at the aftermath of Chernobyl and Fukushima and the results or data are truly amazing.
Andrew Bolt covered this years ago and had to endure the typical pig ignorant response from the donkeys who want us to pursue their S&W disaster.
This video is very heartening and everyone will learn a lot and some people could even change their minds about Nuclear energy and quickly understand the stupidity of the S&W disaster.
S&W destroy the environment, provides no base-load power, has a lifespan of about 20 years, has to be supported by fossil fuel back up energy, is very high maintenance and requires a thorough clean up of all the combined toxic materials as well.
Amazing that the Ehrlich fool actually thought that the World would end when he wrote the Population bomb in 1968. In 1970 he also said the end would come by 1985 and even the UK wouldn’t exist in the year 2000.
Even then our clueless ABC had this fool on Robert Moore’s “Monday conference” telling us we were all doomed. And even then my family laughed our heads off listening to this crazy Yank. And yet today the fool hasn’t woken up and neither has their ABC, providing we are stupid enough to listen to their advice on the S&W disaster.
https://reason.com/2015/06/01/doomster-paul-ehrlich-unrepentant-my-lan/
Doomster Paul Ehrlich Unrepentant: “My language would be even more apocalyptic today.”
And still just as wrong
RONALD BAILEY | 6.1.2015 1:03 PM
Paul Ehrlich
telegraph
The New York Times is taking a little walk down memory lane to look at what (did not) happen to the much-prophesied “Population Bomb.” The Times interviews biologist Paul Ehrlich who wrote the book in 1968 which declared: “The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate.”
Ehrlich went on to predict four billion deaths, including 65 million Americans. Didn’t happen. The Times rehearses some of Ehrlich’s failed predictions:
His 1968 book, “The Population Bomb,” sold in the millions with a jeremiad that humankind stood on the brink of apocalypse because there were simply too many of us. Dr. Ehrlich’s opening statement was the verbal equivalent of a punch to the gut: “The battle to feed all of humanity is over.” He later went on to forecast that hundreds of millions would starve to death in the 1970s, that 65 million of them would be Americans, that crowded India was essentially doomed, that odds were fair “England will not exist in the year 2000.” Dr. Ehrlich was so sure of himself that he warned in 1970 that “sometime in the next 15 years, the end will come.” By “the end,” he meant “an utter breakdown of the capacity of the planet to support humanity.”
As you may have noticed, England is still with us. So is India. Hundreds of millions did not die of starvation in the ’70s.
And yet in the Times, Ehrlich, even now continues to insist:
Population Bomb
wikimedia
After the passage of 47 years, Dr. Ehrlich offers little in the way of a mea culpa. Quite the contrary. Timetables for disaster like those he once offered have no significance, he told Retro Report, because to someone in his field they mean something “very, very different” from what they do to the average person. The end is still nigh, he asserted, and he stood unflinchingly by his 1960s insistence that population control was required, preferably through voluntary methods. But if need be, he said, he would endorse “various forms of coercion” like eliminating “tax benefits for having additional children.” Allowing women to have as many babies as they wanted, he said, is akin to letting everyone “throw as much of their garbage into their neighbor’s backyard as they want.” …
Dr. Ehrlich, now 83, is not retreating from his bleak prophesies. He would not echo everything that he once wrote, he says. But his intention back then was to raise awareness of a menacing situation, he says, and he accomplished that. He remains convinced that doom lurks around the corner, not some distant prospect for the year 2525 and beyond. What he wrote in the 1960s was comparatively mild, he suggested, telling Retro Report: “My language would be even more apocalyptic today.”
Neville
But you are the fool….
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53788018
All your graffiti just proves this again and again…
More fake news from our resident donkey 1. Nothing new about Death Valley temps at all as this article from WUWT explains.
And D 1 probably doesn’t understand this, but D V is a very unique and very, very tiny percentage of our world. DUH???
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/08/17/media-hypes-new-130f-death-valley-temperature-but-its-still-short-of-the-134f-record/
Another interesting find by Craig Kelly a few weeks ago that Bourke recorded Australia’s highest temp on 3 JAN 1909. That was 51.7 c.
Also Tassie recorded the coldest temp ever about 2 weeks ago of about minus -14.5 c and Mildura recorded the coldest July day ever this year of 7.2 c. And also this was the MAX temp on that day 8/7/20.
BTW the coldest temp record for Australia was at Charlotte Pass in June 1994 of minus -23 c.
https://jennifermarohasy.com/2020/07/hottest-day-ever-in-australia-confirmed-bourke-51-7c-3rd-january-1909/
From the leading edge of the renewable energy, California.
“(Governor) Newsom says the transition away from fossil fuels has left California with a gap in the reliability of its energy system. He says the state must examine its reliance on solar power and how that fits into its broader energy portfolio.
— Alexei Koseff (@akoseff) August 17, 2020”
Perhaps we should be careful about rushing into renewables before we can be confident of reliable, continuous, supply when the sun is down and the wind isn’t blowing?
See also Don’s post on the ACT’s Impossible Claim.
Hullo to Neville and others on this forum,
You wrote, Neville, that the ABC’s Planet A is “even more stupid and delusional than I thought it would be.” I wonder if this view is generally accepted by those who make postings to this forum?
Peter,
I had a look at the first episode of “Planet A”. With a scientific background, the subject matter is familiar to me, but I would imagine it would be less so to the average viewer. The programme takes the orthodox scientific view of climate change, highlights the some of the worst case predictions “exaggerations”, makes a big issue of Australia’s per-capita emissions, and basically asks what can we do about it?
I found some segments interesting such as the community wind farm, and was astounded by the profligate energy usage of one household. The “chaser” style stunts such as wheeling trees into the Chevron building and black balloons into Parliament were lost on a curmudgeon like me.
I don’t know how many people it would influence, as I would say most viewers of the ABC and television would be over 40 and have fairly fixed views on the subject, the young ones are climate concerned anyway.
No doubt if Neville made a similar style show pushing a sceptical view, the ABC would have nothing to do with it. The premise of the programme was “There is no longer an argument about science, but a case for saving the planet”. I can only answer with Carl Sagan’s “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” Saving the planet to me means ridding the world of nuclear weapons, maintaining biodiversity, avoiding habitat loss, and alleviating disease and poverty. Climate change is down low on my list, though it does need watching in case the doomsters are right.
Chris
While you are here, do you recall this comment by you on the previous thread?
“Green new deal does not cost trillions. It moves trillions from one stream of activity but it reappears elsewhere.
Only special interests, looking out just for themselves, cry “costs”.”
Perhaps you have by now had the time to address the question I asked in response.
“You seem confident. Perhaps you could produce an audited account of how the “Green new deal does not cost trillions. It moves trillions from one stream of activity but it reappears elsewhere.”
PS, I think the correct pronunciation is “Green Nude Eel”. It is a rather slippery concept.”
I look forward to seeing your phased cost/offsets spreadsheet. Over what time period have you planned the transition?
Neville just demonstrates how incompetant our denialists are:
Throwing up stuff from another denialist website is crazy.
Sensible people do proper research.
Once this is done “the best explanation for the record high report(s) in July 1913 is observer error.”
See: https://www.wunderground.com/blog/weatherhistorian/an-investigation-of-death-valleys-134f-world-temperature-record.html
But denialist peddle 1913 just like 1998 because this inveterate cherry-picking suits their dogmas.
If you look at the analysis, it is clear that:
” Based on the surrounding station data, the atmosphere above the Death Valley region was not warm enough to allow authentic maximums near and above 130°F at Greenland Ranch during the second week of July 1913. ”
Why didn’t denialsts at WUWT mention this ???????
IN fact the recent valid data is matched by a current heat wave sweeping north America.
But the real point is that if CO2 continues to accumulate even this shocking record will be broken, and it is likely that other sites around the world will soon record similar events.
Chris
“Throwing up stuff from another denialist website is crazy.”
Almost as crazy as the stuff found on alarmist websites?
BJ as I’ve said many times D1 just isn’t worth our time. He’ll BELIEVE anything even though I’ve provided him with the simple sums and data for a very long time.
Now he’s AGAIN into his denialist phase and literally BELIEVES we can make a difference by wrecking our environment, our electricity grid, our health and our way of life by changing to the S&W disaster.
He also doesn’t care about the poorest adults and the poorest kids dying every year in the Congo for a few dollars a week, so long as the loonies can promote their EV + S&W mania etc.
The EV and S&W lunacy are clueless and when the turnover of batteries + other toxic ingredients are taken into account these products are an environmental nightmare.
The SH is already a co2 NET SINK according to the CSIRO, because the SH is mostly ocean and less than 1 billion people live here. Seven billion now live in the NH and emit about 93% of the world’s co2 and many more hundreds of coal power stns to be built in the coming decades.
Yet these crazy people want to follow the ABC’s madness and try to convince weak minds that we can make a difference.
Di Natale + Bandt + Brown etc have even told Aussies that Abbott, Morrison etc are to blame for our droughts, bushfires, cyclones etc, but the data proves they are wrong.
Dr Christy covers this data in his talk to the GWPF that I’ve linked to AGAIN, yet these fools never learn and our stupid media even seem to enjoy confusing the average punter all around the world, while they promote any idiocy they care to dream up.
These stupid yappers can yap forever, but the co2 data from the best sources since 1970 and 1990 proves they are wrong. If they were genuine at all they would be hounding China, India and the developing world and insist that they drop fossil fuels and only use the S&W lunacy.
But this still wouldn’t make any measurable difference anyway, although it would prove these loonies really did believe that their arguments were sound.
BTW their Labor party now seems to be fracturing between the realists and the far left loonies and this should be entertaining as we move towards the next election.
Post CV-19 I don’t think the electorate will have much patience with any party who wants to increase taxation and insist that we waste trillions $ on their so called NET zero emissions.
Why don’t dumb denialists read material that is placed under their noses?
They would then know that:
“A higher reading of 134F, or 56.6C a century earlier, also in Death Valley, is disputed. It is believed by some modern weather experts to have been erroneous, along with several other searing temperatures recorded that summer. ”
Only the dregs of denialists still peddle the fake data to run their fake agendas.
Well you can believe looney ABC comedians or the real deal on the ground in California where the Caisio chief fights to avoid further meltdown of their super expensive and so called renewable, clean (?????) electricity grid. What a super sick joke now playing on the poor long suffering taxpayers.
This ongoing disaster grid is TWICE as expensive as the rest of the US electricity prices and they’re now fighting among themselves trying to best guess their next move.
And this is what we will have in Australia if we follow their ABC idiocy of more S&W.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/08/18/operators-fighting-with-politicians-to-keep-grid-from-collapse/
Further comment about the Californian disaster from energy expert Steve Goreham and we also learn about the Californian electricity outages over the years under the GOV Brown fiasco.
This is what happens when you deliberately choose the unreliable S&W lunacy instead of using reliable base-load power plants like Nuclear, Gas or Coal.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/08/18/green-california-has-the-nations-worst-power-grid/
Hi Neville,
“Looney ABC comedians”. I must say I found it amusing with the drag race between Australian’s greatest gas guzzler and the Tesla – both cars costing $170,000 plus, not quite the common car. Do you have any constructive ideas about reducing vehicle emissions and perhaps extend some support for electric cars in terms of government incentives or other approaches? Or are EV just full of ‘toxic ingredients’ promoting an environmental nightmare? On the Barrier Reef – did you give any credence to the 40 year+ scientist who laments the present situation of the reef. What about the five households and the various strategies Craig proposes to reduce electricity costs? Is it all just ‘super sick’ or can you find it within yourself to acknowledge something positive in this ABC program.
I’ve just had a look at several of your postings and they seem unrelentingly self-righteous, bitter and dismissive in terms of your views. In a world of con merchants is Lomborg etc the only guiding lights? Often the beginning of progress is to concede some possible chinks of light on the opposing side and come up with recommendations. China, India and developing countries’ co2 emissions continue to soar: ok, how should this be changed. Clearly this takes one beyond the science of climate change into the realm of politics, the UN, the coal war, foreign policy etc.
Peter,
I have made a comment above about the ABC programme you refer to.
Regarding the climate sceptics that post here, I have come to the conclusion that not too many are genuine sceptics. Most would seem to be people with a libertarian view of the world where the economy and personal freedoms trump everything else. Similarly those who are climate concerned tend to have a “progressive”, Left mindset on other issues. I highly doubt these lefties have critically looked at the science or some of the exaggerated claims made by environmentalists.
Almost the same people who dismiss anthropogenic climate change also downplay the covid 19 pandemic. Jo-Nova being the one libertarian exception that take the pandemic seriously.
Hi Neville
You mentioned the increase in co2 by 15 pp million over the past 5 years.
Is this due to increase in sun heat, volcanic activity.
Re renewables, help me out here, is the measure of output or mass for renewables .0067 to .0075, fossil fuels 1.65 to 1.75 while Nuclear is 20,000.
Renewable do not have the grunt to keep a smelter/ foundry operating.
Further solar panels have a diminishing return if the temperature is out of the range between 15c to 22c.
Finally solar panels have been around since the industrial revolution, rejected by the industrialists.
Please clarify.
Don says “We need a single public utility that is responsible for maintaining a reliable, cheap and forward-looking electricity system. We do not need a multitude of competing companies trying to outdo each other in providing the right ‘plan’.”
Hear! Hear!
I wasted an hour today trying to sort an issue with my electricity meter without resolution. Flat out finding anyone to talk to on the phone, they want you to converse by text on the computer! After 10 minutes on hold, the supplier tells me one thing, the retailer ( represented by a lady in the Phillipines) saying another, and in the mix another private contractor who reads the meter.
Bloody privatisation!
I had read your earlier posting with interest and agreed with the comments about the ABC program, finding the priorities you referred to at the end to be particularly pertinent. It’s true, too, what you write about the stunts: Michael Moore in ‘Bowling for Columbine’ uses similar antics. I was amused by Michael’s stunt after the GFC when he cordoned off the New York Stock Exchange with police tape and, using a megaphone, called out to all the stock brokers and financiers to come out with their hands up because he was conducting a citizen’s arrest.
You refer to a “libertarian view of the world where the economy and personal freedoms trump everything else.” This is a recurring theme amongst some News Ltd columnists, particularly Andrew Bolt and Janet Albretchsen and the IPA generally. Laws that protect civil liberties are sometimes regarded as a threat to society. The power of the state is not a new theme but one senses in the US that Trump would like to enjoy some of the benefits of rule that Putin and Xi Jinping possess. Both Janet and Andrew can write very cogently on such topics but occasionally they display a persecuted, aggrieved sense of righteousness around free speech, university environments, Professor Peter Kidd , indigenous people etc. You see it, too, in the Bunnings sequence, where there is resistance to police intrusion into citizen rights re masks and the right to remain silent against the power of the state.
G’day dlb, I’ll try and answer you quickly. Yes I’m definitely a sceptic, always have been always will be.
I’m partly conservative and a tiny bit libertarian although within fenced off boundaries.
No I don’t BELIEVE that we have much of a problem from their CAGW but I think co2 could cause some extra warming in the future.
Dr Curry, Nic Lewis, Spencer, Christy, Lindzen, Ridd, etc are about right in my view and we could see about 1 to 1.5 c increase for a doubling of co2 if they’re correct. And this could be a good thing.
I agree that the left couldn’t care less about the science but enjoy their BS and nonsense too much and ignore nearly everything else.
Just look at the ongoing Bruce Pascoe fiasco at their ABC to try and understand this on another level. All the data, evidence, history proves they are wrong but they just don’t care. Once again Bolt is correct and I’m sure he’ll see it through. Prof Blainey was very good last night and of course agreed with the forensic Bolter.
I’m definitely not one of the MOB and like Bolt I dislike the donkeys and can never trust or understand them. Whether left or right totalitarians are scum and even Hitler and Stalin had a very similar mindset. Indeed Stalin even hated Jews and was very cruel towards them and other groups towards the end. Khrushchev’s son has written about this in fairly recent times.
California’s problems are now coming home to roost and I’ll continue to fight the S&W idiocy as long as I can, but there’s a lot of money to be made from this monster Ponzi scheme and as Moore showed the left and right con merchants are up to their necks in it.
Perhaps I should link to the recent cooling of the Antarctic peninsula AGAIN.
There’s been a stat significant peninsula cooling since about 1998 and this seems at odds with the ongoing CAGW narrative.
Also a record low temp was recorded about 3 years ago in Antarctica and that also doesn’t agree with the popular story either. I’ll try and track it down.
Here’s the Turner et al BAS study for the Ant pen.
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature18645
Here’s that record low temp record set recently in Antarctica. This is 2018 Scambos et al study and is even lower than the Vostok record low temp set in 1983.
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2018GL078133
Yes Neville, when we know from evidence – not proxies or assumptions – that there is nothing happening climate-wise today that has not happened in spades in the recent past it is difficult to credit people who choose to be alarmed rather than sceptical about any possible future climate problem as other than illogical or pushing another agenda which they don’t choose to disclose.
Just like Atlassian. when you are setting yourself up for some very generous funding and prize money, and/or if your future depends on your belief, facts have very little to do with the discussion.
Hi spangled drongo,
This has all happened before – no problems, the past guides the future, nothing changes; Atlassian are just after generous funding re the Singapore project – they’re gold-diggers, it’s all just a joke and Singapore is stupid enough to be taken in. Mike Cannon-Brookes will invest part of his personal wealth in an audacious $25 billion project to create the world’s biggest solar farm, its biggest power storage system, and a 3000-kilometre cable to export energy to Asia – which he even admits is ‘insane batshit’. Feel the pain and do it anyway.
There is a comment that the upcoming US election is a choice between the ‘politics of hope’ and ‘the politics of cynicism’. Cynics are hard to live with on a personal basis; their negativity affects the people they’re close to; they are out of contact with the youth who have some innocence and positive expectations of the future; they call themselves realists but their spirit is always to look for the worst in others. There is evidence in some of your postings, and in other forums where people have responded to your posts, that you embrace cynicism, as distinct from intelligent scepticism.
You’re the sort of person who – if Don has to retire from moderating this forum – that could easily take over the the e-moderation and promote a discussion atmosphere where all points of view could b. e intelligently critiqued in a respectful way.
You might even consider a name change. I see Urban Dictionary’s attempt to explain ‘spangled’: A term used when a person has over-indulged, be it with drink or with drugs 🙂 ” Go and talk to the chocolate elephants, what am i saying, i must be spangled!”.
PeterD,
Do you know one solar or wind power source that is not connected to any grid that is actually functional?
The ones I know are total failures, not just 100% failures, but with on-going maintenance and repairs possibly 200% failures. But the govt owners never do a cost/benefits report on them. I wonder why?
And they don’t have to cross any oceans.
Without huge govt subsidy this Atlassian proposal will be even worse but Cannon-Brookes and Twiggy are well aware that if/when these Asians are forced into going down that path and they are ahead of the rest there is a fortune to be made.
PeterD
“Mike Cannon-Brookes will invest part of his personal wealth in an audacious $25 billion project to create the world’s biggest solar farm, its biggest power storage system, and a 3000-kilometre cable to export energy to Asia – which he even admits is ‘insane batshit’. Feel the pain and do it anyway.”
You mentioned earlier that his personal wealth is some $8.5 billion. You also stated pretty clearly that you did not expect him to seek taxpayer “co-investment”. From whom do you expect him to raise the rest of the money? How much of your super are you willing to throw in the pot?
I suspect that PeterD and dlb [ and Margaret] would be supporting Biden and the 100 trillion Green New Deal:
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2020/08/18/dnc-panelist-admits-the-green-new-deal-is-about-destroying-capitalism-n2574526
Hi spangled drongo
You asked: “Do you know one solar or wind power source that is not connected to any grid that is actually functional?”
No I don’t: you clearly see the costs, the stats, the graphs, the realities and failures of the present – which I certainly don’t deny – but I tend to look at the way things might become. It was difficult to imagine the advances in telecommunications and computer technologies, or even in the costs and take-up of renewables, not all that long ago. Battery storage and overcoming supply issues when there is no sun or wind elude us at present but this need not always be the case.
Atlassian: maybe they’ll try and fail – it’s ‘insane batshit’ according to the project developers but success, big thinking and imagination help change paradigms. Same with efforts to develop a Covid-19 vaccine: hugely challenging but let’s say ‘bon voyage’.
Thomas Friedman identifies “three major forces shaping the world: technology, globalization, and climate change.
These three forces all interact, and growth in one drives growth in the other. Rather than use the term ‘climate change’ perhaps just think of mother nature: is warming occurring and if it is, does it matter? Is our biodiversity collapsing? What are the effects of deforestation? Are biochemical flows [overuse of fertilisers/pesticides] of concern ? Are changes in the ocean [acidification/warming coral] taking place? Are there issues around freshwater use in the Murray-Darling basin? What of atmospheric aerosol loading levels[pollution]? What about chemical pollution[plastics/nuclear waste in the ocean]? Is the state of the ozone layer healthy?
Consider these very rough figures about Australia’s present energy mix: coal[73%], gas[13%], renewables 14%[ with hydropower 7%, and then wind, rooftop solar, bioenergy etc]. Do we always want to retain this present mix or can a transition occur/will inevitably occur/is occurring?
If you live in the Hunter region and get asthma, or at Mt Isa and get a lungful of lead, have a house by the sea that is sliding down, or are a tourist operator on the Barrier Reef and find a dwindling market, then change of present practice is worth pursuing. Alan Jones, for instance, though strong on climate issues, presents arguments against fracking.
Basically there are a range of perspectives: present realities and improving present practice. Change is occurring, the new rhetoric around ‘gas’ transitioning is a sign of Government/Ned Power’s small retreat from coal. So the way energy realities are now and what they may become is of the essence.
PeterD
“Do we always want to retain this present mix or can a transition occur/will inevitably occur/is occurring?”
Is there a reason you don’t mention nuclear?
As for the future, hope for a breakthrough, but don’t destroy a working system (which is occurring now, here as well as in California and Germany) until you are certain that what is to replace it works consistently and reliably, and is affordable.
SD I wouldn’t be supporting Biden because:
A. I have heard the Democrats and Republicans are economically to the right of our Libs. I don’t support unrestrained free market capitalism.
B. I have heard the Democrats are culturally to the Left of Labor i.e. “Woke” – I’m culturally conservative.
C. Biden looks to old and frail.
D. I have heard of the “New Green Deal” but that’s all.
E. I don’t live in the USA and luckily don’t have Trump to vote for.
dlb, if you don’t know about the potential disaster of the 100 trillion Green New Deal on western culture then your own culture is not very conservative.
Even if it’s warming up as much as NOAA and NASA say [which it isn’t], what’s the problem?
Get serious:
https://climatechangedispatch.com/get-serious-more-c02-isnt-making-earth-uninhabitable/
Boambee John
As a non-scientist etc I have for a long time thought nuclear energy options are worth pursuing. I understand that Russian and Japanese people have had sad incidents but in Europe and elsewhere the benefits have been significant. In the design of plants, risk management is obviously a critical factor and engineer, designers etc are aware of this. Disposal of nuclear waste needs to be built into the design and exporting it abroad should not be an option. Australia needs to look after its own waste.
But is the climate actually changing? Or is all this political garbage for nothing?
Study Of Prior Global Temperature Estimates Suggests ‘No Change’ In 100 Years:
“In the early 1900s, the globally-averaged distribution of calculated surface temperature estimates ranged between 14°C (57.2F) and 15°C (59F).
For 1991-2018, HadCRUT, Berkeley, and NASA GISS also estimate today’s global temperature is about 14.5°C (58.1°F).
Scientists estimating Earth’s surface temperature has been an ongoing pursuit since the early 19th century.
A new study (Kramm et al., 2020) suggests the generally agreed-upon global temperature from 1877 to 1913 from dozens of calculated results was about 14.4°C (57.9°F).
Problematically, HadCRUT, Berkley, and NASA GISS also indicate 1991-2018 had a global surface temperature of about 14.5°C (58.1°F).
This would suggest there has been “no change in the globally averaged near-surface temperature over the past 100 years.”
https://notrickszone.com/2020/08/13/extensively-referenced-study-of-past-scientists-global-temperature-estimates-suggests-no-change-in-100-years/
As a conservative as well as a conservationist who spends half his waking life data logging wildlife I find the free market often works better than the Green Deals that would destroy it:
https://fee.org/articles/the-free-market-approach-to-environmental-conservation/
SD I suppose we have to try and school the donkeys, but they continue to cling to their fantasy planet and it’s very hard for them to get a grip on reality.
Here economist Prof Ross McKitrick AGAIN tries to get these fools to look at a proper cost benefit analysis before they flush more money down the drain on idiocy like S&W. What a waste, what a CON
I think he’s wasting his time because “blackface Trudeau” is a clueless fool , but I suppose he has to try. So let’s quickly describe the S&W fra-d and con AGAIN.
It is an environmental disaster and the eventual clean up will only add to that disaster.
It can never replace BASE-LOAD coal, gas , nuclear or hydro. Just look at the present Californian blackouts disaster after wasting 100s of billions $ on this stupid PONZI scheme.
It requires about 100,000 miners ( ????) in Congo working in cesspit conditions and includes many kids and the loss of life every year is horrendous. But I’m sure the above billionaires etc don’t lose any sleep at night.
Of course the moment you introduce S&W to the mix you end up with an explosion in electricity prices because S&W are hopelessly unreliable and must be backed up by RELIABLE BASE-LOAD power forever.
And at the moment Nuclear France has very CHEAP power while California and Germany and south OZ etc have very expensive power from the fra_dulent S&W disaster.
And of course this will have ZERO impact on temp or co2 levels now or by 2100 or way beyond. And Paris COP 21 doesn’t add up, just ask the father of their so called CAGW Dr Hansen. He tells us that renewables like S&W are just BS and fra-d. Here’s McKitrick’s recent article.
https://financialpost.com/opinion/ross-mckitrick-ditch-the-fashionable-green-recovery-plans?utm_source=CCNet+Newsletter&utm_campaign=7443e977be-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_08_20_11_10_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_fe4b2f45ef-7443e977be-36463321&mc_cid=7443e977be&mc_eid=dcbe0ef09b
Meanwhile the clueless DEM’s Green new deal promises to introduce the Californian renewables S&W disaster to every state in the US.
So the promise of rolling blackouts across the US in the near future should be a big vote winner I’m sure. SARC.
If the Republicans fail to exploit this properly they only have themselves to blame and the US economy will drop through the gurgler at an increasing rate of knots, if creepy Joe Biden and Harris are elected in NOV.
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/democrats-promise-to-bring-california-style-blackouts-to-everyone/?utm_source=CCNet+Newsletter&utm_campaign=7443e977be-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_08_20_11_10_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_fe4b2f45ef-7443e977be-36463321&mc_cid=7443e977be&mc_eid=dcbe0ef09b
Here again is Prof Ole Humlum’s latest State of the Climate report. It covers the time to 2019 year.
SLR measured at the gauges is still 1 to 1.5 mm a year or about 100 to 150 mm or 4 to 6 inches by 2120.
This fits well with Dr Christy’s report to the GWPF last year.
https://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2020/05/State-of-the-climate-2019.pdf
I hope you’re OK Don. It’s now ten days since your last posting.
Whyisitso I was thinking the same thing and I also hope Don is okay. All the best Don.
Another interesting post from Jo Nova and this has been crossing my mind over the last few years.
So have the Marxists won the day in the institutions and are they now turning on the Libertarians + more normal Liberals? Who knows, but if the polls are correct the US taxpayers are about to find out in a very big way.
Wasting endless trillions $ on the corrupt and fra-dulent S&W PONZI scheme will achieve nothing except further,faster ruination of the US economy. California here we come.
http://joannenova.com.au/2020/08/the-marxists-have-forced-out-the-conservatives-now-theyre-coming-for-the-liberals/
BTW Jo also has an update on the vitamin D deficiency in elderly people and I’ve linked to this a few times earlier this year.
I’ve been taking extra vit D for the last few months, just to give me a bit more of a chance if I get the Wu flu. But the normal flu numbers are very low in OZ this year and could be a record low. See govt flu tracker weekly updates for OZ and states online.
http://joannenova.com.au/2020/08/wow-vitamin-d-deficiency-may-cause-40-of-respiratory-deaths-in-older-people/
Brrr! It’s cold in Qld this morning.
Don, how are you surviving in Canberra?
But guess what? The “ëxperts” are having 2 bob each way:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/08/22/carbon-emissions-are-chilling-the-atmosphere-90km-above-antarctica-at-the-edge-of-space/
SD it’s interesting to look at the corrupt US DEM’S GND and their claim that they aim for NET ZERO emissions by 2050 or about 30 years.
The NZ govt and Lomborg’s team agree that NET zero E would cost NZ about 5 trillion $ over the same period, but NZ emits about 0.1% of global co2 emissions and the US about 14%.
So the cost for the US would be horrendous by 2050 or about 140 times the cost of the NZ corrupt fra-d and con trick. That’s about 700 trillion $ for the US or about 23.3 trillion $ a year until 2050.
IOW they would have to spend their entire budget every year on the renewables disaster and wreck their E grid, completely stuff up their environment, have ongoing blackouts FOREVER right across the US and have no measurable change for temp and climate at all.
And Aussies (1.1% ) would need to spend 55 trillion $ by 2050 or about 1.83 T $ a year for 30 years and have nothing left over to run our country, for the next 30 years.
Don’t forget that Labor and the Greens also want NET ZERO emissions by 2050 as well and we have plenty of donkeys out there who will still vote for them in 2022.
GEEEZZZZZ what could possibly go wrong????
Here’s Lomborg’s article about the 5 trillion $ cost for NZ to become NET ZERO by 2050 and this is the NZ govt calculation, but Lomborg’s expert team agrees with their calculations.
And an expected reduction in temp of 0.004 c or just 4 thousandths of 1 c.
https://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2019/12/5_trillion_for_0004_degree_cooling.html
Yes Neville, you can only hope the madness of the democrats is being loudly called out:
https://townhall.com/columnists/pauldriessen/2020/08/20/mthe-green-new-deal-means-monumental-disruption-n2574689
A small step in the right direction:
Uranium mining is set be allowed in New South Wales – creating a wave of new jobs – after the government struck a deal with One Nation to lift a ban on the industry.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8645135/Uranium-mining-New-South-Wales-create-thousands-jobs.html
A small step in the wrong direction:
Figure 6 is from Oxford academic Karsten Haustein’s website. It is updated daily. It shows that the temperature of the southern hemisphere (the blue line) has plunged 0.6°C in the last couple of weeks and is continuing to plunge. Could it be that the new lows for some solar parameters is having an instant response? The Antarctic plateau is the Earth’s refrigerator.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/08/23/solar-plasma-temperature-is-plunging-should-we-worry/
Their so called sustainable, renewable S&W disaster seems to be corrupt and unsustainable from start to finish.
Most solar panels will only have an average useful life of about 20 years and are mostly toxic junk and very little value as recyclable materials.
Fairly soon we’ll have millions of tonnes of this toxic junk to dump as these panels fail to produce enough power to serve any useful purpose.
http://joannenova.com.au/2020/08/megatons-of-solar-panel-trash-coming-to-a-town-near-you-soon/
GEEEZZZ, there are some very sick people out there and weepy Bill McKibben must be good leadership material.
This silly donkey spent years trying to attach himself to every lefty lunacy that he always yearned for and at last he found his feet through CAGW.
Their ABC and others now call this lunacy “Climate grief” and we should now understand where most of our blog donkeys are coming from. Stuff the data, stuff the evidence, just give us more of our fantasy planet and more climate grief.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/08/24/abc-failure-to-acknowledge-the-climate-change-grief-of-others-causes-serious-health-problems/
Here’s even more of the DEMs lefty lunacy and promoted by their so called vice Presidential candidate Harris and the AOC loony.
I think these donkeys are definitely giving McKibben a run for his money in the leadership of the Climate grief stakes.
These people are seriously ill and yet they could be running the USA (13.8% of global emissions) after the November election. Super emitter China ( 29% of global emissions) must be laughing their heads off.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/08/25/kamala-harris-and-aoc-craft-crazy-climate-law/
Yes Neville, the difference between CAGW stupidity and the real world:
New paper: Fossil fuel dependent technologies help feed the world and save global biodiversity
Indur Goklany
“I have a paper, Reduction in global habitat loss from fossil?fuel?dependent increases in cropland productivity, that has been accepted for publication in Conservation Biology, a peer-reviewed journal of the Society for Conservation Biology.
It focuses on habitat lost to agricultural uses, which is generally considered to be the major cause for global biodiversity loss. Currently, 37% of global land area is in agricultural uses.
It shows that:
At least 62.5% of global food production is due to increased agricultural productivity from fossil-fuel-dependent technologies.
Absent fossil fuels, at least another 20% of global land area would have to be converted to cropland to maintain global food production, further threatening global biodiversity.
This exceeds the total amount of land currently set aside globally for conservation in one form or another (15%), which some have called the world’s greatest conservation success story (or words to that effect).
Global food supplies would also drop, at least temporarily, to levels about a quarter below those experienced by the Chinese people during their last Great Famine of 1959-61. Food prices would skyrocket to balance supply and demand.
It also implies that estimates of the Social Cost of Carbon that do not, among other things, the consequences of CO2 related emissions on global hunger and habitat loss, are not fit for purpose.”
SD, Dr Goklany is a very accurate scientist and has worked for the US govt, IPCC etc over the last 30 years. He is always up to date and is now an expert working for the GWPF.
BTW the US media are telling lies about US hurricanes AGAIN and Trump etc should call them out and demand that they apologise immediately.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/08/26/fail-despite-media-alarm-back-to-back-gulf-hurricanes-have-happened-before/
There’s a joke about the GOVT creation of Green jobs, that for every “Green job created by GOVT you lose 2 REAL jobs in the private sector”.
Spain came to this conclusion as well and much has been written about their experience with so called renewables.
It looks like the Biden donkey could be running into problems trying to con union members about clueless S&W energy. Let’s hope they wake up before November, because they’ll cop it in the neck soon after.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/08/26/building-trades-unions-warn-members-not-to-believe-joe-bidens-green-jobs-climate-promise/
Here is the Aussie BOM cyclone trend since 1970 or last half century.
The trend for severe and non severe cyclones is down and this is unknown among a percentage of lefty donkeys and especially Labor & Green voters. Just mention this at any barbie and just watch the left wing donkeys start to sizzle and become very hostile.
You’ll note the absence of any severe cyclones at all about 3 years ago. This is the first time since 1970.
http://www.bom.gov.au/cyclone/climatology/trends.shtml
Here’s Dr Roy Spencer’s latest accurate post on US hurricanes since 1851 and the trend. He links to NOAA data to try and educate the donkeys.
Most likely we’ll hear plenty of BS and stupidity from the clueless left wing media if Laura causes some damage this time.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2020/08/even-with-laura-louisiana-hurricanes-have-not-increased-since-1851/#comments
Good stuff Neville. And not only that, but we now have the capacity to track many more than we could in the past which would make the reduction even greater.
SD here are 2 new studies that show that models are showing far to much warming, yet the IPCC seem to be ignoring the data and observations AGAIN as they proceed to their new report.
The Christy, McKitrick study and Mitchell study are independent ,but both draw the same conclusions. And trillions $ will be wasted on these exaggerated modeled illusions, like the stupid DEMS GND and the recent NZ attempts of Net Zero emissions etc.
Meanwhile China, India and the developing world will build hundreds of new coal power stns for decades into the future.
https://judithcurry.com/2020/08/25/new-confirmation-that-climate-models-overstate-atmospheric-warming/
Neville, talking of people ignoring the data and wasting our lives, land, time and money, the last thing these bureaucrats want to know about is the real world facts:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/08/27/no-fuel-no-fire/
Where would we be without climate modelling. The groupthink developed from them is what our future economy is based on:
“WARNING! This model predicts atmospheric warming roughly 7 times larger than observed trends. Use of this model for anything other than entertainment purposes is not recommended.”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/08/27/new-confirmation-that-climate-models-overstate-atmospheric-warming/
This is so typical of the whole cli-sci debacle yet these “experts” are still too stupid to get it:
“In Africa and the Middle East, where it is usually at least 2-3°C hotter than in Europe, the number of children has been rising unabated for 40 years. Shouldn’t the problem of damage caused by heat have long since become apparent there?”
https://notrickszone.com/2020/08/25/guys-be-very-worried-german-urologists-global-warming-could-adversely-impact-male-fertility-reduce-sperm-quality/
The sheer incompetence of Neville is astounding. It does not think but just regurgitates crap from denialists such as Roy Spencer.
His latest effort was to cite Roy Spencer’s mischief w.r.t. cyclone Louisiana.
But if you actually look at the full set of data – using 30 year averages you find nothing but a few cycles and a clear rising trend in frequency over time.
Data (30 year averages) is – comma separated fields:
Period,30 Year A.
30yr to 1880,13.1
30yr to 1881,13.1
30yr to 1882,13.1
30yr to 1883,13.0
30yr to 1884,13.0
30yr to 1885,13.1
30yr to 1886,13.6
30yr to 1887,14.4
30yr to 1888,14.6
30yr to 1889,14.5
30yr to 1890,14.3
30yr to 1891,14.4
30yr to 1892,14.6
30yr to 1893,15.0
30yr to 1894,15.3
30yr to 1895,15.2
30yr to 1896,15.3
30yr to 1897,15.0
30yr to 1898,15.3
30yr to 1899,15.3
30yr to 1900,14.9
30yr to 1901,15.0
30yr to 1902,15.0
30yr to 1903,15.3
30yr to 1904,15.2
30yr to 1905,15.1
30yr to 1906,15.4
30yr to 1907,15.1
30yr to 1908,14.9
30yr to 1909,15.1
30yr to 1910,14.7
30yr to 1911,14.6
30yr to 1912,14.6
30yr to 1913,14.6
30yr to 1914,14.4
30yr to 1915,14.4
30yr to 1916,14.5
30yr to 1917,13.7
30yr to 1918,13.5
30yr to 1919,13.3
30yr to 1920,13.3
30yr to 1921,13.2
30yr to 1922,13.0
30yr to 1923,12.6
30yr to 1924,12.7
30yr to 1925,12.6
30yr to 1926,12.9
30yr to 1927,13.0
30yr to 1928,12.8
30yr to 1929,12.6
30yr to 1930,12.4
30yr to 1931,12.3
30yr to 1932,12.9
30yr to 1933,13.5
30yr to 1934,13.9
30yr to 1935,14.2
30yr to 1936,14.4
30yr to 1937,14.7
30yr to 1938,14.7
30yr to 1939,14.3
30yr to 1940,14.5
30yr to 1941,14.6
30yr to 1942,14.7
30yr to 1943,15.0
30yr to 1944,15.8
30yr to 1945,15.9
30yr to 1946,15.2
30yr to 1947,15.5
30yr to 1948,15.8
30yr to 1949,16.4
30yr to 1950,17.2
30yr to 1951,17.5
30yr to 1952,17.8
30yr to 1953,18.1
30yr to 1954,18.4
30yr to 1955,19.1
30yr to 1956,18.7
30yr to 1957,18.7
30yr to 1958,19.1
30yr to 1959,19.5
30yr to 1960,19.7
30yr to 1961,20.0
30yr to 1962,19.4
30yr to 1963,18.8
30yr to 1964,18.9
30yr to 1965,18.7
30yr to 1966,18.6
30yr to 1967,18.6
30yr to 1968,18.5
30yr to 1969,19.3
30yr to 1970,19.4
30yr to 1971,19.6
30yr to 1972,19.4
30yr to 1973,19.3
30yr to 1974,19.0
30yr to 1975,19.0
30yr to 1976,19.3
30yr to 1977,19.1
30yr to 1978,19.1
30yr to 1979,18.8
30yr to 1980,18.5
30yr to 1981,18.4
30yr to 1982,18.1
30yr to 1983,17.6
30yr to 1984,17.4
30yr to 1985,17.2
30yr to 1986,17.1
30yr to 1987,17.0
30yr to 1988,16.9
30yr to 1989,16.9
30yr to 1990,17.3
30yr to 1991,16.9
30yr to 1992,17.0
30yr to 1993,16.8
30yr to 1994,16.3
30yr to 1995,17.1
30yr to 1996,17.4
30yr to 1997,17.3
30yr to 1998,17.7
30yr to 1999,17.4
30yr to 2000,17.7
30yr to 2001,18.0
30yr to 2002,18.2
30yr to 2003,18.7
30yr to 2004,19.1
30yr to 2005,20.2
30yr to 2006,20.1
30yr to 2007,20.5
30yr to 2008,20.8
30yr to 2009,20.7
30yr to 2010,21.2
30yr to 2011,21.5
30yr to 2012,22.2
30yr to 2013,22.5
30yr to 2014,22.4
Data source: http://www.tinyurl.com/us-h-data-pdf
This trend will continue.
Let us have no more cherry-picking rubbish from Neville or Spencer.
“This trend will continue.”
A courageous forecast, as Sir Humphrey might say.
Wise people understand that forecasts are difficult, particularly about the future. Fools do not comprehend this simple message.
So here are just 4 “cherry picked” peer reviewed papers refuting your claims, blith. Lots more available too:
https://notrickszone.com/2018/07/03/alarmist-climate-myths-exposed-new-scientific-studies-demolish-claim-warming-leads-to-more-cyclones/
Here’s all hurricane’s and listed by states and territories for the USA since 1851.
And we can see Louisiana is listed as well and I’m sure Dr Spencer is correct. And Laura has been added to the list as a CAT 4 and the last CAT 4 was 55 years ago and also a CAT 5 in 1969.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_hurricanes#Louisiana
Dr Pielke jnr and Dr Maue published this article about hurricane trends from 1970 to 2019.
Some graphs and a lot of data, but countries have very few deaths today and response can only improve in the future.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/rogerpielke/2020/01/09/tropical-cyclone-landfalls-around-the-world-over-the-past-50-years/#3bead2ac3b00
Here AGAIN is Dr Christy’s talk at the GWPF last year and he puts all of their so called CAGW to the test.
All his data is referenced from the best studies and he looks at Hurricanes and tornadoes as well. He finds that there is no increase in hurricanes and tornado trends are down since 1954. In the fact the lowest year (numbers of tornadoes ) has been observed recently.
So we have to observe that there has been no increase in tornado energy although co2 levels have increased by about 100 ppm over the last 66 years.
If co2 is their driver of so called CAGW we would expect an increase in tornadoes since 1954, but instead we see a lower trend. Check it out and his data is from NOAA and 2017, 2018 are the two lowest years since 1954.
https://www.thegwpf.com/putting-climate-change-claims-to-the-test/
The BOM has a La nina alert at the moment, but will be updated soon.
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/outlook/
The BOM data shows a neutral IOD at this time but most modeling shows a negative IOD starting in Sept. Who knows?
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/#tabs=Indian-Ocean
Neville, as long as we don’t get that positive IOD c/w a negative SAM back.
Even so, in SEQ we are currently very dry and combustible with huge amounts of fuel and I am checking my fire trails daily.
We had a small fire here a month or so ago and I suggested to the local fireys to let it burn as it would get rid of a lot of dangerous fuel and the weather was perfect for a cool burn, but no, they made me ring triple zero to call out all the troops for something I could have put out with a beater.
They don’t have much of an idea when it comes to real solutions.
We don’t need an enquiry into bushfires, we need one into climate alarmism:
“When it comes to our bushfires climate change is so close to being irrelevant, it should hardly warrant a passing reference — we have always faced disastrous bushfire conditions and always will. If climate change makes the worst conditions either marginally more or less common, it matters not; we still need to do the same things to protect ourselves.”
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/we-need-an-inquiry-into-climate-alarmism/news-story/267936651355b005b92d89e9d6371640
Yes SD we most urgently need an inquiry into their CAGW alarmism ASAP, but I’m sure it won’t happen. What a pity. I’m sorry about your dry SEQ area, lets hope you get some rain soon.
Thanks Neville, you must have worked something. We just got a shower.
Another good interview by Lomborg and Ridley trying to unwrap the extremist nonsense about so called CAGW. If only the kids understood more about the real data/evidence a lot of this silly extremism would evaporate overnight.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/podcast/don-t-panic-how-to-talk-about-climate-change
I know this is not the place for this comment but here goes.
The death of George Floyd was caused by a fatal does of fentanyl and meth combination according to the latest report. This is known as a deadly combination according to the defense attorney.
And this has led to months of rioting by the fascist left wing mobs in numerous DEM cities and the death of 15 people.
And the knee on the neck to restrain violent offenders is standard procedure and taught to cops according to the reports. Who knows, but certainly more light to be focused on this tragedy in the coming months.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/officer-charged-george-floyds-death-argues-drug-overdose/story?id=72711824
Sorry above should read “fatal dose”above, not does.
More idiocy about Australia’s co2 emissions according to their ABC, Labor, the Greens ,Flannery’s Climate Council and various other left wing loonies.
These loons always forget to mention that the entire SH is a net co2 sink and Aussies emit just 1.1% of global emissions and NZ just 0.1%. Look up the latest data for yourselves. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-08-30/emissions-drop-but-year-long-trend-on-the-rise/11464816
According to Dr Christy the models retain too much energy in the system and this is why they’ve failed so badly. Here’s a quote from Christy’s talk at the GWPF.
IOW 2.6 W/m2 does escape in the REAL world, but they claim only 1.4 Wm2 escapes and of course they then conclude that there has to be more future warming in the system. But observations prove that they’re wrong and what’s more they’ve known about this problem for at least 20 years.
So how much longer can this PONZI CON TRICK continue to fool scientists, GOVTs, taxpayers etc and at a future cost of endless TRILLIONs of $ ? All because of their PONZI trick. Here’s Christy’s quote and don’t forget that Harry Markopolas easily exposed the Bernie Madoff PONZI scheme and then had to work for a further 9 years before they would believe him. Unbelievable but true, look it up for yourselves.
“If you think about an air column in the atmosphere, this is where the energy is escaping from – the deep atmosphere. What we found is that in the climate models, when they warm up a degree, they only send out 1.4 W/m2. In the real world, when the Earth warms up a degree it sends out 2.6W/m2, so these models are trapping too much heat, and not letting enough escape during warmer periods. So you can imagine over time that every time there’s a warming event and the models don’t let that heat escape, it just stays in the atmosphere. It’s joules of energy you can’t destroy, they just stay there and accumulate and accumulate over time”.
https://www.thegwpf.com/putting-climate-change-claims-to-the-test/
You can check out the demographics of Africa at the link here. Anyone not see a problem with their so called CAGW? Yes Africa is the poorest continent but look at how much better off they are today, even after that increase of nearly a billion people since 1970 and a much higher percentage live in urban towns or cities today than was the case in 1970 and 1950. AND YET THEY FEED and CLOTHE and HOUSE and EDUCATE etc nearly 1,000 million more people and in just 50 years. Please wake up.
So what is so terrible about the climate over the last 50 years? Can anybody tell us using proper data and evidence? The data completely demolishes all of their CAGW nonsense and yet we have clueless donkeys who still believe the left’s alarmism.
In 1950 pop 227.7 mil, life expectancy 37.5
In 1970 pop 363.4 mil LExp 47
In 2020 pop 1340 mil LExp 64
I
https://www.worldometers.info/demographics/demographics-of-africa/
Today the world suffers no great famines and the improvements have been startling after the 1960s.
And of course the increase in population has been increasing greatly over the last half century and much higher life expectancy as well.
The OWI Data graph FIG 3.3 at this link shows POP since 1900 increase versus death tolls from famines and these are at very low levels over the last 50 years.
Think about it.
https://www.ifpri.org/sites/default/files/ghi/2015/feature_3710.html#fig33
We’re supposed to be in a climate crisis if you listen to their clueless ABC, other left wing media, Labor + Greens etc but the data tells a different story.
All around the world people are rapidly moving to urban living and in the OECD countries that is over 80% of its citizens. Aussies and NZ are about 86% and now only a few farmers actually grow our food and fibre, although the world’s population has increased to 7.8 bn.
This wouldn’t have been possible until very recent times and of course famine deaths have dropped to very low levels over the last 50+ years.
I suppose I could link to the terrible droughts and famines across the world in the last 2,000 years to further prove my point. Of course the pop of the world only reached one bn people in 1800 and before that time the pop varied greatly because of natural disasters like droughts, famines, disease etc.
https://ourworldindata.org/urbanization
India is hoping for big crops after the arrival of the Monsoon. In fact the best rainfall since 1901.
https://www.thegwpf.com/best-indian-rainfall-since-1901-raises-hopes-for-record-harvest/
A number of recent videos of Prof Will Happer, including the role of co2 in the atmosphere and some of the nonsense reported by the MSM and some other so called scientists. Among other interesting facts to think about.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/09/04/interview-series-of-will-happer/
Smaller, safe nuclear power stns will be be built and installed in the USA following agreement by the US DOE.
But will this reliable base load power source continue if the Biden and Harris loons win the NOV election?
Or will it be all the way with the Californian disaster of unreliable , super expensive S&W and ongoing blackouts on a regular basis?
https://www.thegwpf.com/us-gives-first-ever-ok-for-small-commercial-nuclear-reactor/
Perhaps the UK govt is starting to wake up to the fascist thugs and anarchists of the Ex Reb extremists?
Why are these delusional idiots able to stop traffic for hours and stop people from working normally for weeks at a time?
Their pig ignorance is mind boggling in the extreme and yet many so called leaders still treat them with respect.
https://www.thegwpf.com/extinction-rebellion-facing-organised-crime-curbs/
Another good summary of the delusional Ex Reb loonies from Jo Nova.
http://joannenova.com.au/2020/09/ran-out-of-arguments-extinction-rebellion-ban-newspapers-instead/#comments
Here’s the latest GWPF report about how the world could reach net zero co2 emissions by 2050.
Obviously this is impossible and will never happen and Nic Lewis and the Royal Society NAS report also tells us this wouldn’t change co2 levels for many centuries or perhaps thousands of years. See Zickfeld study.
Our best course is to continue with more energy R&D, more clever innovation and ongoing adaptation to whatever climate changes occur in the coming decades or by 2100 and beyond.
And Aussies should build new HELE coal and Gas power stns ASAP and this will ensure we have secure, reliable cheap energy for the rest of the century.
https://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2020/09/Global-CO2-Emissions.pdf?utm_source=CCNet+Newsletter&utm_campaign=0a68c80d64-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_09_08_09_09_COPY_02&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_fe4b2f45ef-0a68c80d64-36463321&mc_cid=0a68c80d64&mc_eid=dcbe0ef09b
It seems that the UK public have turned against EVs in a big way.
And if the govt subsidy was cancelled it would be even worse. Hopefully another mitigation fra-d and con trick has bitten the dust in the UK at least.
http://joannenova.com.au/2020/09/a-quarter-of-the-uk-wont-even-buy-an-electric-car-in-their-lifetimes/#comments
More on the impossibility of wind power via Ken Stewart. Just more of the S&W so called mitigation fra-d and con tricks. Yet the leftie loonies continue to lap it up.
https://kenskingdom.wordpress.com/2020/09/09/an-impossibility-of-windmills/