The climate change debate continues.

[nomadpete]

Congratulations on your sale, Yenn. How did you find a new abode to compare favorably with that?

[Jerry_Atrick]

12 hours ago, facthunter said:

OLD cold fired power stations can never be reliable but  at their stage they produce the cheapest power they ever can as their capital is completely amortised. It's still higher than  solar and they are dirty. Even their ash is polluting Lake Macquarie.

They are only cheap because they don't have to pay to clean up the mess they create - if they had to, we probably would have had renewables many years ago (and most of us would still be using candles). Yes, they have had to implement more and more tech such as scrubbers, etc, but that stuff doesn't work that well.

[Old Koreelah]

28 minutes ago, Jerry_Atrick said:

They are only cheap because they don't have to pay to clean up the mess they create...

The same is true of nuclear power stations; their dangerous waste will have to be managed for generations!

[Jerry_Atrick]

Yes.. but they generally have to put aside the cash to manage it.. that is one of the reasons nuclear is expensive.

[Marty_d]

On 02/11/2022 at 8:11 AM, nomadpete said:

 

But when a ex mayor of Toowoomba purchased our local pub, and ABC radio interviewed her, she described my home location as "A little pissant town halfway between civilisation and the south pole."

I wear that description as a badge of honor.

With a little restaurant serving the best seafood chowder and Massaman beef curry you'll ever taste.

[onetrack]

Poland has made a major decision to go nuclear to wean itself off Russian oil and gas. Westinghouse is the front runner to build a nuclear power reactor for them, starting in 2026.

 

https://www.politico.eu/article/poland-20-billion-nuclear-power-us-westinghouse/

[kgwilson]

At US$20 billion it better be good. How many GWH will it produce? Once it is running the operating cost is not high but to get an ROI it will still be the most expensive electricity you could buy.

[facthunter]

Agree and as we've seen can easily be vulnerable to attack., or sabotage.. Nev.

[Jerry_Atrick]

Well, Japan again, looks to have come up with some groundbreaking nuclear technology with a lot of the downsides taken care of. Coud be a game changer, but will take some time.

 

 

[Jerry_Atrick]

Oh, Onetrack - The westies are up to some sad tricks by the looks..

 

 

[facthunter]

 Back a bit it was called the "STATE OF EXCITEMENT" Locals removed IT and put R. Clever people in Cactus County..  Nev

[onetrack]

She's got it pretty right - particularly the part where the global oil and gas giants are paying 5/8ths of SFA in taxes, royalties and other forms of revenue to the Australian tax base - and at a time when these global giants are raking in mind-boggling profits. There's a lot to be said for instigating "super-taxes".

 

But substitute "BHP", "Chevron" and "Woodside" with any one of a hundred global corporations who operate within Australia, and you'll find they all pay only a trifling amount of taxes and royalties, and most also have a cosy relationship with more than one important politician.

It's the American way, the best system in the world for ensuring the serfs stay right down there, where they want them, and the super-rich get even richer (and even more powerful).

 

https://stockhead.com.au/energy/got-gas-do-super-profits-call-for-super-taxes/

 

Edited November 7, 2022 by onetrack

[facthunter]

Apart from paying the absolute minimum in taxes they sell off the mess left to some 2$ company and the taxpayer has to eventually pay for the rectification. No MODEL citizens in any of this. Nev

[onetrack]

Here's an interesting blowback from the Ukrainian War. Northvolt, the Danish cutting edge lithium battery manufacturer, was all set to build a battery giga-factory in Germany.

They'd already signed a memorandum of understanding with the Northern German State of Schleswig-Holstein - but the deal is now looking very wobbly, as Germanys energy crisis starts to bite, with their huge dependence on Russian gas for their energy - plus the rapidly increasing costs of manufacturing in Germany.

 

In the meantimes, the U.S. Govt has just legislated for a $7500 tax credit for U.S. consumers who purchase EV's. Despite this tax credit being a little devious - in that you have to owe $7500 in U.S. Federal taxes, which is exchanged as a credit if you buy an EV (meaning U.S. EV purchasers never actually get the money in their hand) - the tax credit, along with other U.S. Govt EV and battery manufacturing incentives in their recent "clean energy" legislation, means that battery manufacturing could be up to 30%-40% cheaper in the U.S., than it will be in Europe.

As a result, Northvolt is saying that unless some equivalent carrot is offered to them by an EU country, then U.S. manufacturing is looking highly attractive to them. Naturally, they will obviously prefer to manufacture in the EU, as Northvolt is aiming primarily at the EU as the major market for their products - and manufacturing in the U.S. puts them at risk of major currency fluctuations and transport costs.

 

As the old Chinese curse goes, "May you live in interesting times" - because we certainly are living in the most "interesting times" since the early 1980's.

 

https://www.construction-europe.com/news/northvolt-rethinks-plans-for-german-gigafactory/8024468.article?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=world-construction-week-8th-november-2022

 

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/15/the-7500-electric-vehicle-tax-credits-full-value-may-be-hard-to-get.html

 

https://northvolt.com/

[willedoo]

Climate activist Violet Coco has just been given a 15 month sentence, 8 months no parole after she blocked one lane of the Harbour Bridge for 25 mins in April. Eight months minimum jail sounds a bit harsh to me. There are much worse crimes where the perpetrators do less time.

[old man emu]

2 hours ago, willedoo said:

a bit harsh

It's an exemplary sentence. Making an example of a person who pisses off the Establishment.

 

Actually, if you could calculate the economic loss due to disrupting transport, 8 months equates to a decent punishment for fraud.

[facthunter]

Deterrent for DARING to disrupt traffic. Deluges, fogs and storms can do the same.  Nev

[Jerry_Atrick]

I agree it is a bit harsh.. While it may be exemplary, to me, it is an example of suppressing dissent rather than discouragement of what should be valid protests. I know I am in the minority on this thinking as Extinction Rebellion have successfully protested with more adverse effect, yet have avoided (or largely avoided) jail time for it. However, listening the the seething press and the callers to talk back shows, they are prepared to legalise lynching for such "heinous" crimes.

 

Re sentencing, this also concerned me: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-11-30/queensland-police-dismantle-gender-reveal-hoons-car-parliament/101716290

 

Jail time (it doesn't say how long, so let's assume 6 months), a 4 year ban and destruction of car for a big burnout does seem "a little" over the top. I don't condone it, and he definitely should have suffered a consequence. But how life-threatening was it? Quiet street, day time, cars pull over for a few seconds while the smoke clears.  

 

I wonder how many convicted drink-driving drivers get jail time and 4 year suspension and  their car destroyed. Oh, let me see.. there was one Vic LNP who was shadow AG at the time.. Twice over the limit, and smashed into a car. He didn't go to jail, and didn't lose his core job (MP). I think he still has his car, and he may well have been suspended and/ort fined: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/oct/31/victorian-liberal-mp-tim-smith-resigns-as-shadow-attorney-general-after-drink-driving-crash

 

All they have done is make it harder for the family to earn a living and no doubt build up more resentment at the establishment for unfair treatment. 

 

Edited December 2, 2022 by Jerry_Atrick

[pmccarthy]

Climate activism is a serious crime against humanity.

[octave]

Denying the peer reviewed scientific consensus is a serious crime against humanity

[pmccarthy]

My conclusions on the subject are summed up by this climate expert.

 

[Bruce Tuncks]

There is a simple science experiment which could be done in schools...  You measure the absorption of tubes of various gases. This leads to the change in effective albedo and hence to global warming.

How do the deniers argue against this simple proposition?

[Bruce Tuncks]

I hasten to say that I start from the point of view that I would like the deniers to be right, but alas this just doesn't square with the evidence. There are thousands of tonnes of CO2 in the air over this farm, much more than there was a hundred years ago.

[old man emu]

Five times over the time that the Earth has supported living organisms there have been mass extinctions of living things. Earth's 'normal' extinction rate is often thought to be somewhere between 0.1 and 1 species per 10,000 species per 100 years. This is known as the background rate of extinction. A mass extinction event is when species vanish much faster than they are replaced. This is usually defined as about 75% of the world's species being lost in a 'short' amount of geological time - less than 2.8 million years.

 

Why these mass extinctions occur is as yet uncertain, but climate change caused by many factors has been shown to be one of the players in the causative team. Over geological time, climate can be changed by things like continental drift, volcanic activity remodelling the landscape, earthquakes doing the same. The mixture of gases in the atmosphere gets a jersey, too. (At one time, increased levels of oxygen created by photosynthetic bacteria, the aerobic ones, caused the extinction of the bacteria that did not use oxygen, the anaerobic ones.) At present we are concerned about the level of CO2 and its effects on the re-radiation of solar electromagnetic energy.

 

Our thoughts and research about the causes of climate change tend to be planet-centric. But lurking not far away is the two-faced master of our planetary system - the Sun. The sun is getting brighter and hotter over time. As it does, more water evaporates from Earth's surface into the atmosphere, where it traps additional heat from the planet. This water-driven greenhouse effect will keep going long after people have stopped burning fossil fuels that now add CO2 to the atmosphere. Eventually, Earth's greenhouse effect will spin out of control, vaporizing all of our planet's water and ending life as we know it. But don't go booking a flight on one of Elon Musk's interstellar lifeboats this week.

 

One team of researchers found that just 6% more sunlight was enough to send the greenhouse effect into overdrive and vaporize Earth's water. At the current rate of solar brightening—just over 1% every 100 million years—Earth would suffer this "runaway greenhouse" in 600 million to 700 million years. As usual, another team's modelling predicted that Earth has at least 1.5 billion years left to support life.

 

Whichever team is correct, at some point in that distant future, unadaptable lifeforms presently known to us will go extinct. Perhaps not Mankind, because Mankind is the only species that seems to be able to reasonably predict the outcomes of present situations and plan to obtain positive results from counter-measures. Mankind will definitely lose its planet of origin, but it is unlikely to become extinct itself.

[Jerry_Atrick]

7 hours ago, pmccarthy said:

My conclusions on the subject are summed up by this climate expert.

 

OK.. normally, I would stop at quoting this: https://skepticalscience.com/Judith_Curry_arg.htm and tap something like yet another sceptic. But, given her credentials, I thought I would have a listen outside my echo chamber as she once was on the side of climate warming/change and switched sides..

 

Here's my take:

• First, it is generally a lot of opinion, with no evidence cited. I get it is a yootoob video, but a lot of climate change deniers (or more accurately human impact on climate change deniers) proffer some evidence to support their position, rather than vague and often inappropriate analogies. However, there were a few things she said that I do agree with. 
• She puts a lot of emphasis on the "sociology" of climate change.. the reality is the facts don't give a stuff about what people thing. 
• Her statement about there being a lot of disagreement about the causes of global warming are simply not true. The overwhelming position of the science community is that human activity is a major contributor to climate change (warming). A relatively tiny handful of dissent does not equal a lot of disagreement. (See around 2:45 in the video). 
• In the same vane, she is right to point out that warming can be from "solar variability, ocean variations, an so-on".. and the different models attribute different magnitudes of the various factors. particularly to regional areas, but on a global front, science generally accepts these not to be the factors that tip the balance. 
• At 3:27, she claims the whole climate change agenda is manufactured for political purposes and that it is not a scientific consensus that has emerged over a long time.  But she offers no evidence whatsoever. Yet, I can recall GW Bush Senior and Junior talking about it.. on advice from science. Think about it.. apart from the Greens, what political faction would want to manufacture a crisis that cannot be solved by their sponsors... er political donors? It flies in the face of logic. The politics would have come after the science, and as we have seen, real movement to address it has been at best patchy and painfully slow.
• At 4:03 she talks about politically active scientists who exaggerate the truth, but offers no evidence even in a generic sense. Why would a scientist want to fake climate change?
• At 4:45-ish., the "interviewer" asks why has the terminology shifted from global warming to climate change to climate crisis. The answer is to get peoples' attention. And, yeah, I have to admit.. that is the point.. especially "crisis". 
• At 5:16 through 6:12she says the focus is on specific extreme weather events and attributing them to climate change and that a conclusion or correlation can't be drawn. And she is right. And guess what - science talks the same.. They say you can't attribute a specific weather even to climate change, but the science is pointing to patterns. SE England had its big heat wave earlier this year.. yeah, by itself, it is not a direct result climate change.. maybe.. But the pattern of longer, hotter, drier summers, more extremes of temperatures between summer and winter, and a noticeable sustained increase in winds from the NE have climate scientists here worried. In Australian, the SAM, IOD tend to converge more often than not and for longer than it used to which brings all sorts of extremes.. and the recurrence of El Ninas.. No one individual event.. but the patterns are  emerging.. she does not address these.
• Shortly after at about 6:26, she brings into the argument politics again, but at a personal level. their career investments, attraction of grants and professional recognition = alarmist narrative. That I get, but, again, where is the evidence. As this is a US centric video, think about the time Trump was in power. He was an active denier and worked against fixing climate issues. If scientists were so wrapped up in their careers and advancing/funding them rather than the immediate science - wouldn't they have picoted off climate change and onto something else? But, with the risk their funding and their careers could be cut short, they stick at it. .Doesn't sound too vested interest to me. Again no evidence, even flimsy circumstantial evidence offered. But, please remember this point for later.
• At around 7:32, she makes a comment that if people think they can control the climate, they are off their rockers... carries on a bit, and then shar says that even if we went to net 0, it would be hard to detect any change, the system has inertia, the climate is going to do what the climate is going to do... The effects of additional CO2 that we have put in will be with us for a very long time. And stopping now will not change that trajectory. Is this not a contradiction? On the one had she is saying if CO2 is bad, we have already made it a problem... it will warm the planet even if we stop emitting net positive CO2 today (she doesn't believe it is, but again, offers no evidence to contradict the science) . Then she says it will stay on the same trajectory.. which with inertia is true, but only for a short period normally.. Surely that would mean, after things start to settle, the CO2 levels will drop and so too, will heating? Have I missed something?
• At 8:19, her saying thinking we are going to control the climate by going to net zero is not good. Well, yes, can't disagree with that, but negating our effects is not the same as controlling.. She is posting a narrative that the science says we can control the climate, which is false. The science is saying we are having an impact on the climate.. which she does not actually debunk.
• Then at 8:24 she is carrying on about how climate scientists want us to go to the wx pre-industrial revolution.. I have not heard or read that personally - at least not on a scale that one could say it was consensus. Then she yabbers about famines, which may have had something to do with the weather.. but maybe not.
• People being prosperous is definitely a factor of energy, and of course the  resultant reduction in poverty (9:50), but what has that got to do with climate change?  Life expectancy is up unit climate makes food production far less efficient. However, I take the point that renewables alone may not be able to sustain that sort of progress. .However, the transition should ensure a gradual switch so that at the point when renewables can sustain energy requirements, fossil fuels can be switched off. Her comments about land footprint, with the latest developments of reflective solar isn't quite as accurate as it was. Nor the fact, a lot of wind, and now solar farms are at sea.
• Then she babbled on an an on on.. I sort of started losing interest.. 12 minutes in, a lot of mud slung, but no evidence to support it.

 

So, after this, some comments about how the real climate change risk is the transition. I still can't quite get he logic as she doesn't really offer anything, other than fossil fuels will still be burning during this period, but at a decreasing rate. Well, that seems to be to me another contradiction, as if the transition is going to be a climate nightmare, than surely when more fossil fuel is burning before the transition, it has to be climate catastrophe. And no mention of how it wil be a catastrophe after the transition.

 

Then, the supply chains for renewables will be a climate catastrophe. No modelling or evidence offered, but I guess, if we need to send a set of blades to a solar farm once/year, that is bad.. And lubricants twice a year makes it a scorched earth policy, I guess. But, how does each day's barrels of oil or the metric tonnes of coal, or mmbtus of gas get delivered to their point of consumption. I take heating oil (kero), and it comes by truck, as I recall.. .Diesel powered.

 

The remark about Africa would be better off if it had control of its resources should be absolutely true.. but WTF does this have to do climate change? The fact that European (and US.. she forgot that little doozy) interests own the majority of Africa's energy reserves has nothing to do with climate change.. it is geopolitical, and also fuelled by local corruption.

 

Then there was something about the Bangladesh charitable concerts of the 70s and 80s.. Yes.. they did result in Bangladesh' economy and society  improving markedly.. no one said fossil fuels could not do that. So, too, could renewables. Again, the Bangladesh story has nothing to do with climate change per se.. it is about investing to stop poverty in a country - and yes, they used resources available to the country. Now, the country has quite an enviable record on renewables: https://energytracker.asia/renewable-energy-in-bangladesh-current-trends-and-future-opportunities/, "Fossil fuels, like natural gas still make up over 65% of power generation. However, this number is slowly decreasing due to renewable energy sources in Bangladesh like solar PV, wind and hydropower.". This is an emerging economy.. in transition.

 

 

I turned off, I don't know when, but when she said she had a company that... provides flood forecasting to fossil fuel companies.. Hang on.. remember where she was carrying on about the conflict of interests where academics were seeking funding and recognition? She has basically admitted she has a huge conflict of interest.. her company's (and her) success with fossil fuel companies. 

 

Maybe I should have stopped at https://skepticalscience.com/Judith_Curry_arg.htm 

 

@pmccarthy- you have presented yet another of the minority, but this time, not presenting any real evidence (well, to the point I got bored with the rhetoric minus evidence). Pardon me if I do not yet change my mind and hope the Sydney Harbour Bridge lady is released from prison imminently.