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The Climate Scientists got it wrong.


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#51 SGM

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Posted 28 December 2019 - 07:19

Climate change??? The greatest buzz word of the decade. A huge great tax on civilisation with power prices

So much of it is bullshit science, as many scientists will agree with.

BUT we should be limiting what we put into the air, worse rivers and aquifers. But that can be done without killing civilisation with taxes.

At Xmas lunch this came up with some telling me that I should have solar panels and a battery. What they cannot understand is the only reason all of this is viable because the lack of cheap baseload power has made electricity so bloody expensive and the adhoc ugly roof generation is heavily subsidised by us without ugly rooves.

Ugly rooves and ugly skylines [windmills] will not 'save' the planet. Just make it a LOT harder to afford to live.

 

This last few weeks here in Oz we have all the climate change numpties waffling about climate change causing fires. 

Most of the fires are caused by arsonists, or mechanical or human error. More than one fire has been started by failing windmills, more than one by electricity substations failing and a LOT though lack of maintenance around power lines. Including this weeks Adelaide Hills fires. Yet again!!

And over the years lightning has caused more fires than all humans! Fact!

IF potential fire areas were cleared properly, undergrowth burnt off regularly. Like the Aboriginals did for thousands of years before white civilisation.  That is where too many fires take massive hold, year in year out for the last 4 or 5 decades.  Limit fuel mean limiting fires. Quite simple, but the greenie idiots are very simple. 

Bushfires produce a LOT of greenhouse gases, limit the fires = less gases. A bigger problem than efficient coal generation of electricity.

Volcanoes too ofcourse figure greatly in those stats as does methane from bovines,, both with 2 and 4 legs!! Destroy all cattle which will in turn naturally destroy so many humans will save the planet too.

And our self appointed climate expert that 10 years ago was waffling that sea levels would rise metres and the Murray would never flow again. As he is now living in an expensive beach front home and the Murray has flooded yet again as it does nearly every decade. And ofcourse IF the take from the Murray was not huge that would mean more floods but so much is used for irrigation and water for all the towns as well as Adelaide and Melbourne.

Though even those figures are being skewed as currently  our in SA liquid electricity [desal] plant is being run flat out subsidise water use from NSW. VERY expensive water.

And metro temp readings,, the higher the volume per acre of humans and buildings the hotter those cities are getting. But gee the 'experts' do not think of that!

In Australia it is not alternative energy sources that is driving up power prices, it is the privatisation of the power industry and the system of power pricing they use which is the culprit. Above all else a private company must make a profit or it is unviable. The usual modus operandi is to cut expenditure on maintenance, running the infrastructure into the ground, so the CEO's can take home their big fat paychecks at your expense. Then when the power stations have been run into the ground they can't afford to replace them so they look for a cheaper alternative which most likely will be renewable.

 

Whether you believe climate change is driving bushfires or not, the trend in recent years in places like California and Australia is for more fires, more intense fires and longer bushfire seasons. This is not something just "greenie idiots" are saying but the firefighters themselves. South-west Tasmania now receives dry lightning storms, something which scientists say has never happened before. At this stage I think most people will agree it's only going to get worse in these places in coming years and a rational and most likely very expensive plan needs to be implemented to deal with the problem.  To suggest reducing the fuel load will fix the problem is simplistic in the extreme. People seem to be under the misapprehension that aborigines burnt the entire bush from one end of the country to the other which is quite simply not true. They burnt sections between bushland to encourage regrowth for animals to feed on so they could hunt them. They didn't generally burn the forests as there was no point in doing so other than keeping their "roads" clear. 

 

If we were simply to pollute less and we were able to fix the problem, wouldn't that be a sensible thing to do? Even if it didn't fix the problem, wouldn't we all be better off for doing so?



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#52 Greg Locock

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Posted 28 December 2019 - 20:10

Wrong. In Australia, due to insufficient storage, any intermittent power source must have 100% conventional backup (or near enough). Therefore you have twice as much infrastructure as you actually need, which somebody has to pay for.



#53 gruntguru

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Posted 28 December 2019 - 21:39

Greg, whose post are you referring to? If it is the one from SGM please point out the bit that is "Wrong." I can't find it.



#54 gruntguru

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Posted 28 December 2019 - 22:11

Climate change??? The greatest buzz word of the decade. A huge great tax on civilisation with power prices

Do some research. High power prices in Australia have nothing to do with climate change.

 

So much of it is bullshit science, as many scientists will agree with. 

Yes - about 3% of them at last count.

 

This last few weeks here in Oz we have all the climate change numpties waffling about climate change causing fires. 

Most of the fires are caused by arsonists, or mechanical or human error. More than one fire has been started by failing windmills, more than one by electricity substations failing and a LOT though lack of maintenance around power lines. Including this weeks Adelaide Hills fires. Yet again!!

And over the years lightning has caused more fires than all humans! Fact!

You are right. Not a single fire was started by climate change. But then I don't think anyone has made that claim. You are attacking windmills (yet again).

 

IF potential fire areas were cleared properly, undergrowth burnt off regularly. Like the Aboriginals did for thousands of years before white civilisation.  That is where too many fires take massive hold, year in year out for the last 4 or 5 decades.  Limit fuel mean limiting fires. Quite simple, but the greenie idiots are very simple.

So now Australia's bushfire strategy is controlled by greenies? Funny, I thought the Liberals were in power.

 

Bushfires produce a LOT of greenhouse gases, limit the fires = less gases. A bigger problem than efficient coal generation of electricity.

Utter nonsense. http://theconversati...ning-coal-11543

 

Volcanoes too of course figure greatly in those stats as does methane from bovines,, both with 2 and 4 legs!! Destroy all cattle which will in turn naturally destroy so many humans will save the planet too.

Sorry Lee. We can't plug the volcanos but perhaps you could turn vegan?

 

And our self appointed climate expert that 10 years ago was waffling that sea levels would rise metres . . 

Perhaps you failed to notice the timeline for sea level rise? Sea level rise for the last decade is at the top of the range predicted by the "experts" ie it is on track to be devastating by the end of this century.

 

And metro temp readings,, the higher the volume per acre of humans and buildings the hotter those cities are getting. But gee the 'experts' do not think of that!

They do actually. You could visit the BOM website where they outline the methods they use to correct for city "heat islands".


Edited by gruntguru, 28 December 2019 - 22:12.


#55 Greg Locock

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Posted 29 December 2019 - 02:44

"In Australia it is not alternative energy sources that is driving up power prices"

 

First we can argue from logic:

 

In order to supply power 24/7 you either need renewables+storage, or renewables+less storage+ fossil fuel. Either way you end up fitting equal capacity in backup as you do in renewables. If you install twice as much capital equipment as the grid needs then the cost of servicing that debt and infrastructure gets baked into the electricity price. In my case my off grid installation uses a cheapo generator for a few hours per year (maybe 100), a very large battery bank, say 2 days worth, and solar. I don't know what 2 days of pumped storage or batteries would look like for the eastern seaboard grid, bigness seems likely.

 

Then we can argue from experience.

 

1) Team joker wants to build a solar farm where the sun is hot and the land is cheap. For obvious reasons that is far from the users of electricity, and the couple of bits of bell-wire that form the grid out there won't supply the power to where it needs to go. Team joker have successfully argued that the users should bear the cost of hooking up their facility to the rest of the world. 

 

This is going to change, but installations that have been approved under the old rules socialise the cost of infrastructure while privatising profits https://www.afr.com/...20191011-p52zsx

 

2) Look at the average cost of power in each state , and compare it with the %age renewables

  Financial year Queensland ($ per megawatt hour) New South Wales ($ per megawatt hour) Victoria ($ per megawatt hour) South Australia ($ per megawatt hour) Tasmania ($ per megawatt hour) Snowy ($ per megawatt hour)                                           2015-16 64 54 50 67 97   2016-17 103 88 70 123 76   2017-18 75 85 99 109 88   2018-19 83 92 124 128 88

SA is pretty consistently the highest cost per kWh (we all know why tas screwed up) and is of course the 50% renewable state. QLD is the coal fired state.

 

So, renewables, as currently implemented in the AEMO market, are part of the problem, not the solution.

 

As I have pointed out, a rational mix is not amazingly hard to design on a small scale, and with the amount of data we have available, is probably not hard on the scale of AEMO's responsibilities, but at the moment renewables are adding capital cost to the system and reducing the profitability of reliable generation. It's pretty easy. Stop subsidising preferred solutions. Make energy contracts at a 24 hour supply level - ie force amalgamation of renewables, storage, and FF backup, at the supplier level.


Edited by Greg Locock, 29 December 2019 - 03:05.


#56 V8 Fireworks

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Posted 29 December 2019 - 11:46

Oops, I was reading the red one, i assumed that was the important one. Sorry. Hmm, yes well the scientists certainly are failing to get their message across. Unfortunately, and this applies to both 'sides', if you lie with dogs you will get fleas, and there are so many non scientists throwing up any old blather in support of their position that the public at large are just fed up with the whole thing.

FWIW, I can just support the view that >50% of the warming since 1950 is anthropogenic in origin, which is probably the most analytical phrasing for the question. That comes from considering the amount of FF burnt, the likely residence time of CO2 in the atmosphere, and the gas properties of CO2.

But, it doesn't lead to any particularly worrying warming by 2100, 0.9 to 1.6 +/- 0.6 compared with 1880 depending on your assumptions for CO2 growth in the future. (+2ppm/year to RCP8.5). As of 2018 we were at +1.0 deg C. Various shorter term effects are much stronger than CO2, we happen to be at a high for some of them . This is a statistical model it just calls everything that isn't CO2 noise.

2100 is not the problem.

3000 is the problem.

IF warming continues by 0.8 deg per 100 years until 3000, that's a warming of 8 degrees C which will cause a variety of large scale problems for plant and animal species living on Earth.

That amount of warming over 10,000 years caused huge problems for the existing species (at the time, mostly extinct now!!!) prehistorically, for it to happen over only 1000 years will make adaption even more difficult.

Edited by V8 Fireworks, 29 December 2019 - 11:48.


#57 V8 Fireworks

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Posted 29 December 2019 - 11:54

The debate comes down to how do you prove or disprove something that is intangible. .


The global average temperature is VERY tangible and measurable though. It's just that we will find out the result of the high carbon footprint experiment 1000 to 10,000 years from now. :)

This timescale (*in case*, *on the off chance* the result is the affirmative) is apparently too far away for some people to care about even though our homo sapiens species has existed for at least 300,000 years, i.e., we have lived for 295,000 years before inventing writing and subsequently science & engineering a mere 5000 years ago. :)



Yet somehow, the future environment of humans only 1000 years from now, let alone 10,000 or 100,000 years still now, seem to be of *so little concern* to so many!?

(IF the result is in the affirmative 1000 years from now, the ability to screw up 299,800 years of harmonious existence with a mere 1200 years of industrial revolution is quite the achievement!)

Edited by V8 Fireworks, 29 December 2019 - 12:01.


#58 V8 Fireworks

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Posted 29 December 2019 - 12:07

Like the Aboriginals did for thousands of years before white civilisation.



Well at least Lee Nicolle has got one thing right about the benefits of an environmentally sympathetic hunter gatherer lifestyle, as opposed to technologically advanced civilisation! :)

#59 Greg Locock

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Posted 29 December 2019 - 20:58

"IF warming continues by 0.8 deg per 100 years until 3000, that's a warming of 8 degrees C"

 

Sorry that is not the way to do it. You can't extrapolate the temperature rise linearly, as at least for the sake of argument it is driven by CO2, and the effect of CO2 has been saturated, so the warming effect is per doubling of CO2, not proportional to it.

 

Just for grins I ran my statistical model out to 3000. If we continue to increase CO2 output by 2ppm per year, where we currently are, the predicted temperature is +1.8 +/-1.5 compared with today. If we go to double that to 4ppm, +2.6+/- 1.5, at 4338 ppm of CO2, which is starting to get a bit Devonian. That is, life as we know it will cope, tho we'd be starting to have to think about controlling CO2 indoors

 

What is the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists (ACGIH®) recommended exposure limit for carbon dioxide?

ACGIH® TLV® - TWA: 5000 ppm

ACGIH® TLV® - STEL [C]: 30000 ppm

Exposure Guideline Comments: TLV® = Threshold Limit Value. TWA = Time-Weighted Average. STEL = Short-term Exposure Limit. C = Ceiling limit.


Edited by Greg Locock, 29 December 2019 - 22:24.


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#60 Greg Locock

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Posted 29 December 2019 - 23:51

Here's the data, average price of electricity on the x axis, kW of renewables per head by state on the Y axis, from https://www.climatec...enewables-2019/

 

jxbuj13fi4yqn7m6g.jpg

 

Data. Doncha love it.Now, straight line fits to clumpy data are dangerous, even though that has an R^2 of .957. So if you've got a better analysis, go for it. But foot stamping and 'received wisdom' isn't going to cut it.



#61 Greg Locock

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Posted 30 December 2019 - 01:53

Interestingly the trend line is unaltered even if you take SA out of the equation ! R^2 drops a lot. There's a technique with stats that looks at how many times you can take samples from the data, in this case i just tried knocking out one state at a time. The trend line maintains the same gradient, pretty much.



#62 Greg Locock

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Posted 30 December 2019 - 03:52

So, here we are on a hot day in VIC. Tas has maxed out the interconnect into Victoria, SA has gone sky high price wise as they bring in the diesels, and Queensland and NSW are as usual sitting at 6 c /kWh burning coal.

jawg1rl3wyi0bzs6g.jpg



#63 gruntguru

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Posted 30 December 2019 - 04:29

2100 is not the problem.

3000 is the problem.

Not so. Major issues with sea levels by 2100 at current rate of warming. Previous predictions were around 1 meter (which itself is a big problem) but recent research suggests 3m or more.

 

https://www.smh.com....106-p537y4.html



#64 V8 Fireworks

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Posted 30 December 2019 - 09:29

Not so. Major issues with sea levels by 2100 at current rate of warming. Previous predictions were around 1 meter (which itself is a big problem) but recent research suggests 3m or more.

https://www.smh.com....106-p537y4.html

Well Greg Locock thinks everything will be fine and hunky-dory for millennia to come so I don't know who to believe.

So, here we are on a hot day in VIC. Tas has maxed out the interconnect into Victoria, SA has gone sky high price wise as they bring in the diesels, and Queensland and NSW are as usual sitting at 6 c /kWh burning coal.
jawg1rl3wyi0bzs6g.jpg


I don't know why economics are brought up, when money is merely a construct of civilisation and immaterial to your average endangered melomys or orangutan!

Obviously it's self evident that other species have to come first. :)

Edited by V8 Fireworks, 30 December 2019 - 09:31.


#65 Fat Boy

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Posted 30 December 2019 - 18:26

In Australia it is not alternative energy sources that is driving up power prices, it is the privatisation of the power industry and the system of power pricing they use which is the culprit. Above all else a private company must make a profit or it is unviable. The usual modus operandi is to cut expenditure on maintenance, running the infrastructure into the ground, so the CEO's can take home their big fat paychecks at your expense.

 

 

This is exactly the take which fuels (pardon the pun) climate change push-back. The ultimate goal of Climate Change activists is much less an issue of the future environments and much more the demonization of capitalism and the creation of a proletariat utopia. The strictly environmental approach hasn't whipped up the desired frenzy, so identity politics are being introduced to further the cause. It works great if your audience lacks a scientific background.

 

Your take on Californian wildfires is, at the very least, self-serving, but more accurately, an ideological fantasy.



#66 Fat Boy

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Posted 30 December 2019 - 18:28

...and I see this conversation has become a cesspool.



#67 Greg Locock

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Posted 30 December 2019 - 20:48

Ah the old, if somebody presents a tricky argument, change the goalposts routine. I was challenged as to why I disagreed with the proposal that renewables made electricity cheaper. I presented some data backing up my claim. Now we are talking about sea levels. Riiight. 

 

Sea levels are complicated. There's lots of data here. https://www.psmsl.or...tations/155.php Try and find some scary ones, not Honolulu for a start. Bear in mind that tide gages record two things - the mean sea level, as measured from the centre of the earth, and the movement of the land to which they are bolted, relative to the centre of the earth. So a tide gage needs some interpretation. The other approach is to look at a spatially distributed set of gages, and make the not unreasonable assumption that if the tectonic plates are tilting then it'll average out, and if they are rising or falling holus bolus - which can happen-then that 'counts' as sea level falling or rising, at least so far as the inhabitants are concerned. This map of the USA AND the explanation beneath it are nice and clear.

 

https://tidesandcurr...nds/slrmap.html

 

Anyway there's no sign of 300 mm in 30 years in any of the data I looked at, never mind 3000 mm per century.

 

However  we have built our cities near the sea, when the sea level was low in historical terms. They will flood, or we'll build sea walls. That'll happen CO2 or not.



#68 Greg Locock

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Posted 30 December 2019 - 22:03

The other thing, as yogi berra said 

“It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future.”

 

https://www.theguard...ews.theobserver

 

Is much the same as the SMH article. By 2020 " major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a 'Siberian' climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world."

Sunk europena cities:1 but that has little to do with sea level rises, most is due to dredging and water extraction from aquifers.

UK Siberian climate: Not especially obvious

Nuclear conflict:zero

Greening of the earth :https://www.nasa.gov...asa-study-shows

Reduction in poverty: https://ourworldinda...030-786x550.png



#69 Fat Boy

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Posted 30 December 2019 - 22:10

Ah the old, if somebody presents a tricky argument, change the goalposts routine. I was challenged as to why I disagreed with the proposal that renewables made electricity cheaper. I presented some data backing up my claim. Now we are talking about sea levels. Riiight. 

 

Sea levels are complicated. There's lots of data here. https://www.psmsl.or...tations/155.php Try and find some scary ones, not Honolulu for a start. Bear in mind that tide gages record two things - the mean sea level, as measured from the centre of the earth, and the movement of the land to which they are bolted, relative to the centre of the earth. So a tide gage needs some interpretation. The other approach is to look at a spatially distributed set of gages, and make the not unreasonable assumption that if the tectonic plates are tilting then it'll average out, and if they are rising or falling holus bolus - which can happen-then that 'counts' as sea level falling or rising, at least so far as the inhabitants are concerned. This map of the USA AND the explanation beneath it are nice and clear.

 

https://tidesandcurr...nds/slrmap.html

 

Anyway there's no sign of 300 mm in 30 years in any of the data I looked at, never mind 3000 mm per century.

 

However  we have built our cities near the sea, when the sea level was low in historical terms. They will flood, or we'll build sea walls. That'll happen CO2 or not.

You can disregard that measurement on Guam. One of our members of Congress thinks that if everyone on that particular island collects on one side, it'll capsize. Seems legit.



#70 J2NH

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Posted 31 December 2019 - 09:58

 

Whether you believe climate change is driving bushfires or not, the trend in recent years in places like California and Australia is for more fires, more intense fires and longer bushfire seasons. This is not something just "greenie idiots" are saying but the firefighters themselves. South-west Tasmania now receives dry lightning storms, something which scientists say has never happened before. 

 

From the Firefighters themselves.  In short the firefighters blame bad policy and not climate change for the bushfires.

 

https://volunteerfir...bushfires-worse

 

Dry lightning has been around since, well, the earth was cooling.  So have pyrocumulus clouds, perhaps you've seen the photos of lightning in a volcano.  Australia experiences severe droughts roughly every 18 years.  The drought of 1826-29 dried up Lake George and the Darling river.  



#71 gruntguru

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Posted 01 January 2020 - 09:33

Miranda Devine eh? Great source.



#72 gruntguru

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Posted 01 January 2020 - 09:43

Here's the data, average price of electricity on the x axis, kW of renewables per head by state on the Y axis, from https://www.climatec...enewables-2019/

 

jxbuj13fi4yqn7m6g.jpg

 

Data. Doncha love it.Now, straight line fits to clumpy data are dangerous, even though that has an R^2 of .957. So if you've got a better analysis, go for it. But foot stamping and 'received wisdom' isn't going to cut it.

Correlation/causation. A more complete analysis. https://arena.gov.au.../energy-prices/

 

Certainly, closure of coal-fired facilities (20% of capacity in the last decade) is a big factor. Lack of certainty/policy and the almost total privatisation of generation assets has left the industry floundering. Private industry has never built a utility scale coal fired power station in Australia. They were all built by governments and subsequently sold off for the remaining asset value to be drained. We are in a new era - uncharted waters.



#73 Kelpiecross

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Posted 01 January 2020 - 10:02

Miranda Devine eh? Great source.

 

 And who would your infallible  source be?   



#74 Kelpiecross

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Posted 01 January 2020 - 10:54

From what I read it would seem that our (Australia)  current drought  (and subsequent  bushfires etc.)  are fairly simply explained by the behaviour of the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD).  When the IOD is in a positive phase (as it is now) the waters to the north west  of Australia are relatively cooler - this leads to the failure of the Indonesian monsoon and the Australian wet season - in turn starving the cold fronts that sweep across  the southern areas of Oz of moisture - leading to drought/bushfires etc.  

  I would think that it is fairly obvious that nothing can be done  to change the cycle of the IOD.  Does a bit of extra CO2 in the atmosphere  affect the behaviour of the IOD?   Probably not you would think. 

 

 It would seem that certain individuals on this forum are totally unaware of the IOD (no names mentioned)  and its effects (or don't want to know) and would much rather rant on about excessive CO2 and pray to the twin Gods (or Goddesses)  of GW and Greta.  

 

 It will rain again - probably soon - so much so that Lefties will soon be raving on about "Global Wetting".  Dorothea Bloody Mackellar was right -  droughts and bloody flooding rains.

 

 All that can be done is better preparation - more water storage/water diversion schemes, back burning etc., etc.  - not big propellers on hilltops.   


Edited by Kelpiecross, 01 January 2020 - 10:56.


#75 Greg Locock

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Posted 01 January 2020 - 20:12

I agree about correlation and causation, but an R^2 of 0.957 and the robusteness of the result needs explanation. That whitewashing article does not analyse anything, it creates a series of talking points.



#76 gruntguru

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Posted 02 January 2020 - 05:09

I agree about correlation and causation, but an R^2 of 0.957 and the robusteness of the result needs explanation. That whitewashing article does not analyse anything, it creates a series of talking points.

Because I know you wouldn't hunt for data to fit an agenda, I will call it a fluke. Firstly the methodology is flawed. Electricity price is averaged over a four (five?) year period while kW of renewables/head must be a snapshot of some point in time. I couldn't find your source for renewables capacity/head. There is plenty of data showing renewable generation per head eg https://www.energy.g..._march_2019.pdf

3oiUBPE.png

 

and the correlation to price is poor.

 

8eIGy8Z.png

 

Secondly, the year by year price data below shows a major improvement for SA - no doubt due to infrastructure recovery since the storms and also to the Big Battery which has been able to supply into price spikes while purchasing energy during oversupply. A big benefit for SA - and this is key to their pricing problem - is the suppression of a gas-generation cartel which withholds supply at critical times to drive prices up.

 

NM95C5Q.png


Edited by gruntguru, 03 January 2020 - 00:12.


#77 Greg Locock

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Posted 02 January 2020 - 07:37

I gave the link for the renewables  in the original post. Although i'd have thought it was obvious that the kW renewables per head was cumulative (nobody is taking them out), I agree that's not ideal. In your graph the yellow line is consistently in the top half of results, and that position hasn't changed as they've installed more renewables. So I guess your point is somewhat mysterious.


Edited by Greg Locock, 02 January 2020 - 07:43.


#78 gruntguru

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Posted 03 January 2020 - 00:34

The position of the yellow line is currently plumbing historical lows. Even the last few years (with increased renewables) are nowhere near SA's historical highs. SA power price has been consistently above the national average. Your graph has identified some feature affecting SA power prices - but its not renewables.

 

UEbHd9X.png



#79 Greg Locock

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Posted 03 January 2020 - 04:46

It's probably worth pointing out that I think that renewables do have a role to play and in a properly designed system will reduce costs. But the current ad hoc approach of AEMO and the governments merely results in big corporations making money out of energy shortages, and grabbing grants and tax breaks. 



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#80 NRoshier

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Posted 03 January 2020 - 10:54

It is a curious thing that were your child diagnosed with cancer, I suspect those on this forum would (most likely) seek professional advice from someone expert in the field and then (again most likely) follow their advice as to the best probable outcome from the range of treatments. In doing so you'd understand that the outcome is not without risk of side effects or failure. This sort of thing happens in all forms of science, including my own very modest practice. Introduce the words 'climate change' and all of a sudden the scientific methodology is bunk and rubbished, usually by people who have 1. not read much of the research, 2. not understood much of the research as they have no qualifications and 3. those with qualifications expressing a professional opinion are seen as somehow tainted or incompetent because of what some **** on Fox news said etc etc. Of course panties would be twisted mightily were the same aspersions to be cast at those making the claims of bias etc as they make against the scientists studying climate change, but then that's just the weaknesses of human nature. For those of that ilk consider inviting the plumber to have a rummage instead of visiting your proctologist next time - it's probably as reasonable as asking an engineer about the geno-morphic effects of increased sea temperature and acidity levels.

As for me, I don't 'believe' in climate change, 'belief' is for religions. Science does not care about belief - I am however prepared to accept a set of professional opinions that indicate that the scientific results overwhelmingly suggest a strong trend and potential outcome - just as I would in medicine.



#81 gruntguru

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Posted 03 January 2020 - 22:58

My sentiments exactly Greg.

 

An excellent summary of the current debate Neil.


Edited by gruntguru, 03 January 2020 - 22:58.


#82 Fat Boy

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Posted 07 January 2020 - 18:25

 

As for me, I don't 'believe' in climate change, 'belief' is for religions. Science does not care about belief - I am however prepared to accept a set of professional opinions that indicate that the scientific results overwhelmingly suggest a strong trend and potential outcome - just as I would in medicine.

I don't necessarily disagree with anything that you've written, but I do think it is an over-simplification. To torture (pun completely intended here) your analogy, if the prescription for a child's cancer diagnosis is to draw-and-quarter the patient, then I think it's reasonable to ask a few more questions prior to proceeding. There are political agendas (all sides) surrounding this topic which are meant to manipulate public sentiment on nearly every issue imaginable using Climate Change as the fulcrum. In that respect, the subject has an uncomfortably similar pathos to religion.



#83 gruntguru

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Posted 07 January 2020 - 21:43

Definitely prefer Neil's analogy. Even cancer treatment (cut it out, burn it out, poison it out) is typically much more harsh than the measured approach that would be sufficient to combat climate change.



#84 Fat Boy

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Posted 08 January 2020 - 16:21

Definitely prefer Neil's analogy. Even cancer treatment (cut it out, burn it out, poison it out) is typically much more harsh than the measured approach that would be sufficient to combat climate change.

1. I'm sure you do.

2. You realize Neil and I were both conveying an idea through analogy, right?



#85 Kelpiecross

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Posted 09 January 2020 - 05:34

  Despite the enormous avalanche of GW propaganda etc.  -  it is highly unlikely that anything at all unusual is happening to the Earth's climate.  

 

 Humans seem to be very prone to these sudden obsessions  about imaginary  or intangible matters - like religion.  



#86 gruntguru

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Posted 09 January 2020 - 06:21

1. I'm sure you do.

2. You realize Neil and I were both conveying an idea through analogy, right?

I do.

However since Neil's analogy already exaggerates the side effects of the "treatment" for climate change, I don't see the point of the draw-and-quarter analogy.



#87 Fat Boy

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Posted 09 January 2020 - 18:58

I do.

However since Neil's analogy already exaggerates the side effects of the "treatment" for climate change, I don't see the point of the draw-and-quarter analogy.

My point is that some of the legislation being thrown around in the US is little more than economic seppuku.



#88 gruntguru

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Posted 09 January 2020 - 22:33

Funny, we have such a similar situation here in Oz. Conservative federal government advocating minimal action on CC with state governments (of both flavours) setting stretch targets for CC action. Obviously a consistent national approach with a clear set of unified rules would achieve a far better bang for buck. 



#89 NRoshier

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Posted 12 January 2020 - 05:32

Many people have 'beliefs' and then act upon them and blithely walk away knowing the consequences. An American Senator John Kennedy is such a person - he is an ardent anti-vaxxer who went on a tour to support his belief and the anti-vax (dare I say anti science) cause in Samoa. The result: 5,600 people got a preventable disease in measles and 83 died, the great majority young children. So a person with NO professional qualifications convinced many that the science of vaccination was wrong, flawed, whatever wording you want. Go and ask the parents of those children about Kennedy now and what they think about the science of vaccination.

In terms of GW the anti-science nature of the anti-GW group, their actions at best is simply slowing the treatment and making it possible that it will be 1: far more expensive when it is put in place 2: potentially less likely to reverse the or halt process, 3. making it someone else's problem as they will likely be dead by the time that someone else has to clean up their mess.

I would also point out that my previous post did not in any way say anything about 'treatment'. I was indicating that world wide there is a huge, growing body of data indicating the same thing. A significant amount of the research seems to have been replicated and thus it's power 'proven' in scientific terms. The vast consensus of the qualified professionals involved are telling us that there is a problem and that we need to do something about it now.


Edited by NRoshier, 12 January 2020 - 08:08.


#90 GreenMachine

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Posted 12 January 2020 - 07:45

None so blind …  :rolleyes:



#91 NRoshier

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Posted 12 January 2020 - 20:49

I also need to add that no one group is qualified in 'climate science' - that is a furphy peddled mostly by the anti-GW pundits to allow for easy dismissal and reduction. The primary science comes from marine and other biologists, meteorologists, climatologists, geologists, biochemists, ecologists, botanists etc etc. There will be diverse opinions - that's the nature of science (and human nature), but the overwhelming consensus across all the diverse sciences involved is that there is a problem and we are the primary cause. What should convince us of something else is simply an equal or greater amount of better science.



#92 gruntguru

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Posted 13 January 2020 - 00:16

What is the basis for the views held by most climate deniers? When I ask, it is always "common sense" or "the science is not valid" or "there is a conspiracy". Only once did I get a truly technical response. That was Greg Locock who posted a link to a well thought out piece by Burt Rutan. The fact is, there is very little scientific research with findings contrary to the consensus view.

 

This is a few years old but very interesting - a study of publications that disagree with the CC consensus. https://link.springe...0704-015-1597-5

 

A quote by Katharine Hayhoe - one of the authors.

 

"Is there such a strong consensus in the scientific community on climate change simply because anyone proposing alternate explanations is black-balled and suppressed?

 

This is one of the most frequent questions I get here on Facebook.

 

It's a lot easier for someone to claim they've been suppressed than to admit that maybe they can't find the scientific evidence to support their political ideology that requires them to reject climate solutions and, to be consistent, 150 years of solid, peer-reviewed science, too.

 

But over the last 10 years, at least 38 papers were published in peer-reviewed journals, each claiming various reasons why climate wasn't changing, or if it was, it wasn't humans, or it wasn't bad. They weren't suppressed. They're out there, where anyone can find them.

 

So we took those papers and - thanks to the superhuman efforts of my colleague Rasmus Benestad - recalculated all their analyses. From scratch.

 

And you know what we found?

 

Every single one of those analyses had an error - in their assumptions, methodology, or analysis - that, when corrected, brought their results into line with the scientific consensus."



#93 gruntguru

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Posted 13 January 2020 - 00:20

I think the major weakness with that approach is that you've only got 4 independent thirty year periods to analyse - that's a general problem with CC, the lack of long term instrumental records.

 

My suspicion is that there is a very strong (say 0.6 deg C pk-pk) sinewave with a period of 60-70 years superimposed on any other long term trend. This is so powerful that even if CO2 drives temperature, the temperature regularly plateaus as the sine wave goes negative.

 

The most likely cause of that cycle is the Multi Decadal Oscillation in ocean currents. As it happens I did this a long time ago. I no longer think that the climate sensitivity is as high as 1.9965 (that is a separate issue), but that was where this curve fit ended. up. This shows the effect of adding a 71 year cycle to the CO2 driven trend.

f8g2bfqwf8bx3gd6g.jpg

 

 

As to trends- I looked into whether there was a formal approach for breaking a time sequence up into a series of contiguous straight lines, of arbitrary period. It turns out there is, but you have to define the break points yourself. http://www.golovchen...l_fit/index.htm So there is still a judgment call. This is typical of modern machine learning, it looks like there's a solution, but then Bang! you still have to make some decisions yourself.

 

So i wandered off to look at my favorite long term temperature record, HADCET, the instrumental record for central England.

 

The black line is an optimised linear trend fit with breakpoints for the blue data. The circles are 11 year moving averages and the orange line is just a linear regression. The 60-70 year sine wave no longer seems especially prominent

 

golov_f18vms.jpg

 

Greg I don't know if this helps?

https://journals.ame...J_orHgIXra3miBk



#94 Kelpiecross

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Posted 13 January 2020 - 05:26

 gg - well - I am certainly convinced.

 

 But - more seriously -  there seems to be little doubt that the heat/drought/bushfires etc.  is due to the unusual behaviour of the IOD,  causing the monsoon off the  Northern Territory to be missing (or very late in arriving).  

 

 If you can suggest a credible mechanism where a slight increase in atmospheric CO2 or  a (very) slight increase in the World's temperature  can possibly cause the IOD to behave in such a way - I might just possibly start to "believe".

 

 No amount of analysis of graphs etc. is going to convince anyone (unless you are prone to "believing")  - Christ only knows what personal bias the authors of these graphs have.     



#95 Greg Locock

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Posted 13 January 2020 - 05:53

I'm gently working through it. But come on, data since 1950 is not much of a test is it?The results should be robust against the 1910-1940 acceleration in global temperature.



#96 Zoe

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Posted 13 January 2020 - 06:32

 gg - well - I am certainly convinced.

 

 But - more seriously -  there seems to be little doubt that the heat/drought/bushfires etc.  is due to the unusual behaviour of the IOD,  causing the monsoon off the  Northern Territory to be missing (or very late in arriving).  

 

 If you can suggest a credible mechanism where a slight increase in atmospheric CO2 or  a (very) slight increase in the World's temperature  can possibly cause the IOD to behave in such a way - I might just possibly start to "believe".

 

 No amount of analysis of graphs etc. is going to convince anyone (unless you are prone to "believing")  - Christ only knows what personal bias the authors of these graphs have.     

 

Do you also have such a nice explanation on why (for example) the glaciers in the Alps (that is a mountain range in (for you) far away Europe) are vanishing?
 



#97 NRoshier

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Posted 13 January 2020 - 08:42

  - Christ only knows what personal bias the authors of these graphs have.     

You assume then that all of the scientists from all of the different sciences involved, from all of the different countries, universities, funding schemes etc etc have the same bias?

My what a grand suspicion.

Perhaps this is proof of the success of the anti-GW 'forces'? the non-science based anti-science rhetoric so predominant in social media. In truth I understand why - we've had the same reticence over the 'new' for ever and some people are very easy to manipulate. For thousands of years we knew the sun orbited the earth, for hundreds of years we knew the earth was flat, heck in the 1800's everyone knew that the cholera that killed 14,000 people in London was caused by miasma's in the air. Even when physician John Snow's did the science and proved it was the bacteria in the water there were people who doubted it for a long time. Can you also not recall the introduction of the HPV immunisation program for young women there was opposition from Christian groups and still is in the USA, even though the science is solid. In each case, and in many more the science was the determining factor for change, good science. I am more than happy to change my mind, but you don't disprove science with rambling rhetoric, you disprove it with better science. Better science that forms the basis of our GW topic in this discussion is happening all the time, but it is only confirming the issues we face.


Edited by NRoshier, 13 January 2020 - 08:43.


#98 Kelpiecross

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Posted 13 January 2020 - 12:19

 I'm afraid Neil-Old-Mate - you are committing the same crime as those who KNEW the sun orbited etc. etc.:   You (and your like-minded Warmist mates)   KNOW  that the dreaded CO2  from burning the unmentionable COAL  is causing all the problems.   

 

 But we are debating a possible less than  1 degree rise in the global temperature  (which, I have always said, may or may not be happening - I don't know)  - the current heat wave (drought, bushfires etc.) we have been getting  temps  10, 15 or more degrees over this.  By what mechanism does a <1 degree  rise in the  general temperature cause such huge  rises as we have had lately?   I will answer for you -  "I have no idea - I just KNOW that that evil CO2 is responsible".   

 

 Of course the sane answer is that the IOD and the lack of shading from the monsoonal  rainclouds has allowed superheating of the interior of the country.   So I come back to my original  question above -  by what possible mechanism could a bit of excess CO2  affect the IOD/monsoon etc.   If you can think up an even vaguely credible  mechanism - I will be forever impressed by your intelligence.  

  ("I  just KNOW that that bloody CO2 is the culprit - everybody KNOWS that"  is not an admissable answer).    

 

 On a general note about human psychology  -   I have been hearing the same reasoned argument  "Everybody KNOWS that"  ever since I was in primary school  (- usually speculation about female anatomy- turned to be wrong invariably).   Essentially the argument is still the same - but from adults (allegedly)  now.   And the other odd thing is that the people who believe these strange things insist  that other people believe the same - just as they did in the 16th century about the sun etc.    Back then, you were burned at the stake if you didn't "believe"  - similar things are happening  now with people losing their jobs etc. if they don't believe in GW etc.   

 

 Still got a problem with those bloody apostrophes Neil?  


Edited by Kelpiecross, 13 January 2020 - 12:53.


#99 Kelpiecross

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Posted 13 January 2020 - 12:22

Do you also have such a nice explanation on why (for example) the glaciers in the Alps (that is a mountain range in (for you) far away Europe) are vanishing?
 

 

Are they?  Yes - everybody KNOWS that.   



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#100 Zoe

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Posted 13 January 2020 - 16:34

I give you one example (of many):

 

In the Swiss alps, there is a tiny hamlet, called "Gletsch", named because around the turn of the century (1899 - 1900) it was right at the foot of the Rhône glacier. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gletsch). Today, there is nothing but rocks.

 

If you compare the pictures of then and now (look here for the pictures: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gletsch) you can see a very clear difference. Same for the Marmolata, same for the Pasterze at the Grossglockner pass, same at my (nearly) local Zugspitzplatt.

 

You might also wonder why the northwest passage in the arctic can now easily be navigated by normal ships when in 1850 Sir John Franklins expedition completely perished in the ice after being stuck in the ice for three winters. You might of course believe that this is simply not the case.