Monday, December 25, 2017

25 December - JoNova ( from Feedly )

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Renewable Australia update: Fear of blackouts means diesel generator sales up 400%
Welcome to a clean green Australia where we gave up coal to move to diesel. Back to the future. Diesel’s prototype engine circa 1892. Channel Ten news tonight discusses the sudden surge in demand for diesel generators Homes and businesses are so afraid of blackouts in Australia that some retailers are selling four times as many generators as normal. Mygenerator.com.au reports a 425% increase year
Green vision protects coal deposits, razes forests instead: Europe goes back to wood power
Green Utopia We’re trying to control the weather by limiting a universal molecule intrinsic to life on Earth. What could possibly go wrong? Loopholes, for starters. Only this isn’t a loophole — it’s an obvious outcome of “carbon neutrality”. The only thing that could have stopped wood from replacing coal is if the tidal-windy-solar idea had been competitive, reliable and batteries were really che
Welcome to renewables world: Australia plans for blackouts, throws billions of dollars, but ABC says it will get “cheaper”
The fear is palpable How much fun can you have living in a global experiment? In Australia, peak summer is about to hit in a post-Hazelwood-electricity-grid. There’s a suite of committee reports as summer ramps up. Everyday there’s another Grid story in the press, and a major effort going on to avoid a meltdown. Minister Josh Frydenberg announced today that “we’ve done everything possible to preve

Dec 23

Weekend Unthreaded
… Rating: 9.2/10 (11 votes cast) Rating: 9.2/ 10 (11 votes cast)
EPA exodus of staff and scientists
This is what winning looks like. The NY Times reports on Droves of Scientists Leaving EPA WASHINGTON — More than 700 people have left the Environmental Protection Agency since President Trump took office, a wave of departures that puts the administration nearly a quarter of the way toward its goal of shrinking the agency to levels last seen during the Reagan administration. This is 700 of 15,000 e

Dec 21

Help. Science blogger needs support…
NEW POSTS ARE APPEARING BELOW Oops, please. The bank balance is trending to zero, and I must pay attention. Can you can spare the equivalent of a beer, a steak, or a month of bandwidth ($100) for 2018? I, we, will be ever so grateful. We can do this thanks to philanthropists like you. It’s a testament to the fantastic readers here that nine years, 2,863 posts and 450,000 comments later, this blog

Dec 19

Please sign this petition to get Australia out of the Paris Climate Accord and back to affordable energy
It only takes a moment and it does help. It’s easy to be cynical. But in the world of psychology and politics, petitions prove there really are a lot of people who feel the same way. Sometimes these are the only numbers a politician will pay attention to (though we may wish it were otherwise). — Jo ___________________ Sign the Petition Demand Affordable Energy Now Government renewable mandates an
Midweek Unthreaded
Tips and ideas… Rating: 6.0/10 (22 votes cast) Rating: 6.0/ 10 (22 votes cast)
Seven reasons why BHP — a giant coal miner — wants to stop lobbying FOR coal
BHP is throwing its weight around to stop the Minerals Council of Australia (MCA) saying what most miners want on climate change. What coal company wants lobbyists not to lobby for coal? The gauntlet is down — Which heavyweight will blink first? In one corner — The MCA — the main lobby group for miners. It’s very effective, and wants to dump the renewables target (“yay” say most miners!). In the o

Dec 18

Everyone cutting coal use except for most of the world and most of the banks
The situation with our most hated energy asset Australia’s big four banks are fighting over themselves to turn down the chance to profit from coal loans and tell the world. Months ago, Westpac went on a low-coal diet, declaring like a kind of vegan-keto-banker that they won’t consider a loan unless the coal mined has at least 6,300 kilocalories per kilogram. Presumably they will lose weight, or at

Dec 16

Weekend Unthreaded
…. Rating: 7.1/10 (30 votes cast) Rating: 7.1/ 10 (30 votes cast)
Forget Megawatts, ABC invents new unit of power — “size of Tasmania”
Outback couple build solar farm to prove fringe-of-grid power generation needs Building a $14 million solar farm is an expensive way to send a message about electricity prices, but Doug and Lyn Scouller said they were left with few options. In Normanton, 500 kilometres north of Mount Isa in north-west Queensland, the Scoullers built a solar farm big enough to power an area almost twice the size of

Dec 15

Laser Boron Fusion — What if it works? (Forget “climate change”)
Here’s another “breakthrough” fusion claim. Thing is, one day, one of these will work. Something like this: Boron Hydrogen, Fusion, click to read about aneutronic fusion. In the meantime, knowing that the future is nuclear, and the only question is when, we should burn all the coal we have while it is still worth something. UPDATE: Everyone knows that fusion is the perennial baby of Hype-n-Hope.

Dec 14

Global warming will weaken winds in the Northern Hemisphere, but speed them up downunder!
Now they tell us! Climate warming to weaken wind power in northern hemisphere, increase in Australia: study After building 341,000 wind turbines, mostly in the Northern Hemisphere, now climate modelers reveal that winds will decrease in the Northern Hemisphere! Warming temperatures caused by climate change are set to weaken wind energy in the northern hemisphere, a study shows, lessening the amoun

Dec 12

Midweek Unthreaded
Tips and other stuff…. Rating: 7.9/10 (33 votes cast) Rating: 7.9/ 10 (33 votes cast)
Save the world with internal combustion engines
Who cares about 50% more emissions? China is powered by 65% coal. A new study in China compares cars with internal combustion engines to electric cars. Qiao et al estimate that from cradle-to-gate electric cars use about 50% more energy and produce around 50% more emissions. (Thanks to Kenneth Richards at NoTricksZone.) All Greens should hereby recycle their EV and buy a gas guzzler. This is not e
Matt Ridley on Brexit: Brits should give foreign aid to EU (with strings) as parting gift
Matt Ridley writes the letter Theresa May should send to the EU For 40 years Britain has propped up the EU with nothing in return but complaints and insults. The fifth biggest economy in the world can offer foreign aid to the failing EU but on the same terms as other needy states. BRITAIN SHOULD GIVE THE EU £20 BILLION EXTRA AS AN ACT OF CHARITY Dear Angela, Emmanuel and others (cc Donald, Jean-Cl

Dec 10

Transformation glitch? Biggest issue facing South Australia is electricity say 70%
A Sunday Mail survey (paywalled) shows that despite SA having more “free, cheap and clean” renewable electricity than just about anywhere in the world, the number one biggest issue for most South Australians is … “electricity”. And despite all the renewable jobs created, the second most common concern is “jobs”. Going for the Paradox-Trifecta: most strangely of all, with elected leaders who are l

Dec 09

Weekend Unthreaded
… Rating: 7.4/10 (35 votes cast) Rating: 7.4/ 10 (35 votes cast)

Dec 06

Giant Fans will cool Great Barrier Reef to stop bleaching
”Air-conditioning” of The Great Barrier Reef begins soon To calm a few panicking people, the Australian Government will pay for large fans to circulate water on a minuscule portion of the 2,300 kilometer long Great Barrier Reef. The reef creatures, which have been coping with higher temperatures and bleaching for two hundred million years, will hopefully avoid the moving parts. Marine life adapts
(Let me see.Bleaching is a consequence of reduced sea level. Fans would perhaps make that worse? )
Midweek Unthreaded
I’ve had requests for an extra unthreaded. Sometimes the weekend is too far away… Rating: 7.9/10 (34 votes cast) Rating: 7.9/ 10 (34 votes cast)
Another hidden cost of intermittent renewables (It’s time to talk about FCAS and roaring price spikes!)
The shape of normal AC Electricity: 50Hz (230V) and 60Hz (110V) Nobody says much about FCAS in public — but it’s become a hot topic among Australia’s energy-nerds and electricity traders. It never used to be a big deal, because we got it at very low cost from huge turbines — from coal, hydro, and gas. Suddenly, it is costing a lot more. As I discovered below, in one month FCAS charges in South Au

Dec 05

Burn more oil and feed the world
Climate change causes … more crops. Climate change threatens our food supply, our grain harvests. It causes wars, droughts, sometimes floods, shorter growing seasons. And we all know Climate change is here. We can see it out the window. Plus 2017 is one of the three hottest years ever. Somehow all these bad events happened at once and added up to the world’s largest cereal crop ever. … It’s doom g

Dec 04

Do 40,000 volcanoes matter?
The world is watching one volcano in Bali, but it’s sobering to think there may be hundreds of others going off, and almost certainly ones we don’t even know about. The article Is the Bali volcano making us warmer or cooler? by William F Jasper, reminded me of Ian Plimers words about there being squillions of undersea volcanoes so I found the 2007 paper, by Hillier, that tried to count them. Tryi

Dec 02

Weekend Unthreaded
… Rating: 7.5/10 (37 votes cast) Rating: 7.5/ 10 (37 votes cast)

Nov 30

Green rules, profit, legal bullying drove the Grenfell disaster
Grenfell Tower It takes a lot of effort to set up a situation so dangerous under the guise of “helping the poor and the polar bears”. Grenfell — Britain’s fire safety crisis By Gerard Tubb, Sky News Correspondent and Nick Stylianou, Sky News Producer The UK Dept of Energy and Climate Change wanted help to get insulation onto buildings to save the world in 2011, so it asked the people who sell ins

Nov 29

*Surprise* Great Barrier Reef has 112 tough spots that survive and replenish the rest
… After lasting for thousands of years through wild swings of temperature, scientists could never have guessed that the Great Barrier Reef has evolved to cope with climate change. The reef spans 2,300km and has spawning events so large that they can be viewed from space, but who knew that some parts of the reef appear to be safer and more resilient, and would repopulate the rest of the reef? (App

Nov 27

Last winter 9,000 more British pensioners died than usual — how many were due to high heating costs?
Higher electricity costs mean more people turn off their heaters There’s a big freeze coming to Britain with minus 12C temperatures possible in the next three weeks. Last year in winter in England there was a remarkable 40% rise in winter deaths David Archibald emails that last year was a mild winter for Brits, but the death toll rose from the normal 25,000 excess to 34,000 people. Remembering tha
Electrical appliances force children to marry
Thanks to The Guardian for drawing a link we would never have noticed: Why climate change is creating a new generation of child brides As global warming exacerbates drought and floods, farmers’ incomes plunge – and girls as young as 13 are given away to stave off poverty If only these girls had perfect weather, they wouldn’t have to be married so young. For a million years of human history, every

Nov 25

Your car causes volcanoes (and volcanoes release CO2)
Oh. My. Lord. Keep the car in the garage. … Climate Change Could Increase Volcano Eruptions Dr Graeme Swindles, from the School of Geography at Leeds, said: “Climate change caused by humans is creating rapid ice melt in volcanically active regions. In Iceland, this has put us on a path to more frequent volcanic eruptions.” The study examined Icelandic volcanic ash preserved in peat deposits and l
Weekend Unthreaded
… Rating: 7.1/10 (17 votes cast) Rating: 7.1/ 10 (17 votes cast)

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