JoNova
A science presenter, writer, speaker & former TV host; author of The Skeptic's Handbook (over 200,000 copies distributed & available in 15 languages).
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Well, it looks like Scott Pruitt has been so effective at exposing and starting at cleaning up the agenda driven corruption of science at the EPA, that the MSM and the swamp are pushing hard to remove Pruitt as EPA administrator. Even suggesting that he replace Sessions as AG. Or that his condo financing is improper. Or that he is a social misfit. Anything to get him out of the EPA. It is a full on media assault.
This from none other than Naomi O who has been relentlessly campaigning against him:
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The quote is from here:
https://earther.com/there-s-now-a-national-campaign-to-oust-epa-head-scott-1824174531
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And also from that link …
https://earther.com/yet-another-epa-chief-is-probably-a-climate-denier-1821631585
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“Climate denier”. Just how stupid are Pruit’s critics. Does anyone actually deny that there is a climate? Or a “science denier”. Have any of these journalists actually read a single paper with regard to climate science? If they did would they understand any of it? Would they even understand words of more that one syllable?
These journalists would have to be the most uneducated, ill informed and intellectually mundane of all members of society, and they consider themselves to be qualified to speak on the subject.
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” and they consider themselves to be qualified to speak on the subject.” and that is further proof of their stupidity.
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This interview will be a hoot: Kim Hill v Prof Paul Kench, he of the ‘coral atolls & islands adapt/change to sea level’ observations.
Ms Hill is an articulate, experienced, acerbic interviewer; however, she has fallen under the spell of cAGW magic pixie dust. As she closed yesterday morning’s programme, by announcing next weekend’s interview with Paul Kench, her voice sneeringly dripped with caustic, scathing, sardonic, mocking bile. The ‘D’ word was on her lips yet she managed to contain herself.
If anyone misses the live interview, it will be available at the end of the show next Saturday, 14 April.
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/saturday
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The Power of the media.
The bought and paid for media.
Rereke and WXcycles, you are both right but the main issue doesn’t look like being resolved any time soon.
The fact is that the media can tell, and even promote, lies like the CO2 End of Time scam.
The only way this situation, and I only speak about the CO2 End of Time scam, can be fixed is by showing it to be the Big Lie it is and morally condemn it.
Lying is immoral. The science is easily put on the table, but verbiage in the media is used to swamp the truth with so many comments that the truth is hidden.
There are many ways to show this truth; physics, quantitative analysis.
We had a leader who knew this truth but the system canned him. The cash flow was going to be interrupted so he had to go.
A famous, or was it infamous, person once said;
If you are going to tell a lie, tell a big one, nobody would then suspect you of that lie.
And now we have the greatest lie ever told.
Waiting to be cracked.
KK
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Go easy on the journalists, Ted. They have to toe the editorial line, as mandated by the editorial team as dictated by the owners of the mast-head.
The investors in the media outlets look to the media to support their other investments, including the current extortion of government monies, in response to the current hypotheses around climate change. The whole climate change thing is a ponzie scheme, of you scratch my back, then I will scratch his, and he will scratch yours, and thus ad infinitium …
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Rereke Whakkaro
Go easy on the journalists, Ted. They have to toe the editorial line, as mandated by the editorial team as dictated by the owners of the mast-head.
—-
No they don’t. They’ve no excuse at all. They are a standing insult to people who actually do the job not to toe any lie-machine editorial line.
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If there were any journalists, I’d go easy on them.
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OK, So we have at least established, prima facie, that the entity known as WXcycles is not required to produce anything of material value, as a prerequisite for his or her continuing revenue stream.
It would possibly have been more relevant had he or she had bothered to read, digest, and understand, both of my paragraphs, instead of just shooting from the lip, in response to the first.
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Worse, they are completely lacking in curiosity, the sine qua non of any claim to intelligence or intellectual validity.
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Dave
About time to find a copy of
Rupert Darwall (2017) “Green Tyrany: exposing the totalitarian roots of the climate industrial complex”
for some more examples of the EPA in action
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Much the same could be said for the present President – Uncle Bill’s daliance perhaps notwithsranding.
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?
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Ava – a little more info in your messages might let people know just what you are spouting about. If it’s some sort of jab at Trump and all the recent noise about his carrying on affairs 10, 12, 20 years ago, or his tendency to natter on randomly and seemingly unthinkingly on the bird-wire, or his choice of EPA lead, or anything else, almost, anti-Trump, well, that won’t get you too far here. Not even with me, and I am old-school liberal and eco-aware (not this new-age semi-communism and damage the earth and impoverish the multitudes to save the air noise.)
As a rebuttal to what I perceive your intent to be:
US presidents have (almost) always dallied – even Jefferson had a mistress. Dalliance is not something that was (almost) always ignored in the media – but it was usually not considered a key point in the running of the White House, unless it occurred in various parts of the White House (Bill Clinton, maybe JFK) or to the detriment of running the country (none that I know of, although we have had a few presidents who were not very capable – and no, Carter wasn’t one of them, he was just unlucky.)
Spin, bad-mouthing other countries and their leaders, lying to the public and other politicians, and a host of other modern day “sins” are all part and parcel of our presidential (and general political) legacy and reality. It takes a special sort of ignorance, abetted by white-washing the histories taught in school, to think otherwise. The only problem I see with Trump is his inability to shut up – the constant need to share his thoughts, even the fleeting and temporary nonsense we all are prone to (but rarely voice) gives a lot of fodder to the haters and the media. That could be smoke screen, or it could be that he’s just not able to stop sharing. At least we aren’t treated to photos of every meal he eats.
Trump’s choice to lead the EPA – Pruitt – is a man with brains who is seriously trying to reform a government agency that has way over-stepped its bounds. The EPA mandate does not include removing CO2 from the air, preventing its release or mitigation, for any reason, as CO2 is not a toxin or pollutant, except in a very narrow range of definition and quantities not usually seen except in certain rare natural environmental events (the newest and most suspect definition of CO2 as dangerous is the creation and underpinning of the CAGW theory, which does not make a case for it being dangerous to human or other life except by possible association to phenomena that is not understood and may not be happening at all, much less for the reasons being
imaginedput forth.)The long strange road to a better world is not served by those who use any means they can to achieve an agenda that is not agreed upon or even needed by the majority of those they profess to be representing or saving. Recent history points to this fact, as do more ancient tales.
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Mary E:
Well said.
You seem to have an intellectual advantage over Ava. When discussing Presidental personal foibles the Democrats should remember that their side includes JFK, LBJ, and Bill Clinton. And Jimmy Carter who was ‘different’.
The Republic wall of shame George W. Bush (for past life) and Richard Nixon who was ‘different’.
On the other hand the Republicans can show G.H.W. Bush, Reagan, and Ford as positives (or much more discrete?).
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“Oh Dear: Sex, Lies & Democrats”
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2018/04/07/oh-dear-sex-lies-democrats/
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They’re doing their best in a coordinated attack making mountains out of mole hills to try and put him down. Flak is always the worst when your over the target and hitting it and the left just isn’t used to not getting their way. In their view they own the EPA no matter who the POTUS is and so they’ll fight like hell to keep one of their primary weapons. Trump needs to come out in full support of the man to let them know that they’re tactics will not work.
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Its actually a prime moment for Pruitt and Trump to publicly counter the warmists with not just science but exposing the realities of just how much damage CAGW mitigation measures have done, the financial burdens on taxpayers, the damage to the economy, the real pollution of so called Renewables, the thousands of unnecessary deaths of the elderly and poor in winter etc etc..
And then counter the personal attacks by calling them supporters or enablers of poverty, innocent deaths, pollution etc.. and put the onus on THEM to prove these events didn’t or don’t occur, oh yes the outcries will be numerous but this will give the public a broad exposure of whats been happening due to their beliefs and knock that wedge in a bit further.
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And in the camp of
“Nuclear is good and wholesome”….Ummmm…But it cannot afford to dispose of my waste so it just sticks it all in a spent nuclear fuel pool in the back yard to offset the cost of nuclear power electricity generation…the nuclear energy mentality/mentality.
It will only take a single shot fired across the bow in some belligerent trade war etc to set off a chain reaction of ‘spent fuel pools’…..(used/spent nuclear fuel rods because nuclear has not been able to afford the disposal costs of spent nuclear fuel yet)
It will make Fukushima’s spent fuel pools vapourising into the air in a cloud of Cs137/134 look like a walk in the park on a delightful spring day
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Someone Trump should look at and maybe appoint as an advisor….
“CO2 Smokescreen: New Nukes Make Global Warming Worse Presentation”
https://www.fairewinds.org/nuclear-energy-education//smoke-screen-montreal
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Environment Sceptic – try reading this http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/nuclear-wastes/radioactive-wastes-myths-and-realities.aspx and not Rachel Maddow. Follow the links provided for further scientific and proven information, not fearmongeral doggeral.
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ES,
The USA nuclear industry has tried to move to the next planned step of used fuel management, but successive governments have interfered, taken billions of dollars set aside for underground management and halted progress at Yucca Mountain.
It is yet another case of ignorant government action making free enterprise more costly and bad in the eyes of the public.
Rather like the way Australian electricity supply reflects the worst aspects of ignorant government invention and its enforcement of ideas that should never have seen the light of day.
Get rid of the RET, for a major start. Geoff
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Obama EPA administrators spent 8 times more than Pruitt on international travel.
A search for articles on McCarthy’s international travel costs turned up zero results.
http://www.climatedepot.com/2018/04/08/obama-epa-administrators-spent-eight-times-more-than-pruitt-on-international-travel/
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Ah yes! The POTUS responds to the BS:
President Trump Tweets Strong Support for EPA Head Scott Pruitt: “Scott is doing a great job!”…
Posted on April 7, 2018 by sundance
Making left-wing ‘splodey heads one tweet at a time:
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2018/04/07/president-trump-tweets-strong-support-for-epa-head-scott-pruitt-scott-is-doing-a-great-job/#more-147822
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Naomi Oreskes is not a historian. She is a revisionist. She is as insightful and honest about history as todays “journalists” are in their reporting of the “news”. I love history. Always have! One key thing I’ve learned is that to gain a proper perspective on historical figures their conduct and actions must be judged based on the morals, mores, and values of THEIR time and place. The contexts of the past are not the context of the present. What the leftist revisionists have made a business of is judging historical figures in the context of OUR times in order to paint those they wish to defame in the worst light possible in order to further their contemporary social agendas. Thus the destruction and dismantling of the statues and monuments to Confederate Civil war historical figures of note recently. It’s pure BS driven by people smart enough to pull the wool over the eyes and motivate ignorant masses!
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I took a history of science type class at university. You’d think it would have been about Newton, Louis Pasteur, Heinrich Hertz, Einstien …et.. al..
Nope, it was about Rachael Carson and Silent Spring book, Paul Ehrlich’s Population Bomb book, anything by Jeremy Rifkin, Cadillac Desert book, Ralph Nader’s UnSafe at Any Speed book,….and so forth. It was about how mankind is destroying the environment, about pollution (long since cleaned up) in the Great Lakes caused by the auto industry in Detroit, about why we have to get rid of capitalism to save the planet, environmental justice, Three Mile Island, the 70’s energy crisis, CAFE standards mandates…ect… All in glowing terms.
And that was decades ago. That is kind of science history Oreskes teaches, I suspect.
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Dave
But did they mention Nader’s go at the VW Beetle?
And Road and Track’s parsing of that?
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The 1200 beetle was a terrible, dangerous vehicle. I was around at the time and it was commonly called “Hitler’s revenge”. Many a driver was impaled on the solid steering column starting a few inches behind the bumper and aimed at the heart. I nearly had a head-on the first time I drove it. With a heap of clear road it just didn’t have the power to overtake.
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But people loved the 1200 beetle;
Flat four air cooled engine, could consumption, large wheels, spare fuel tank, air tight doors, sparks from the exhaust, and everyone gave a wave.
Oh the nostalgia.
Never mind Adolf he was dead anyway and we won.
GeoffW
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What was different about that one was that R & T actually read the Nader version AND checked the references
There was no mention of it in his list of “accomplishments” for one of his tilts at president – unless you checked one of the anti-Nader sites
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I drove a 1200 VW Beetle for about 8000km with never a problem except the lack of air conditioning. I never tried to overtake a road train on outback roads. They were going fast enough anyway.
My younger cousin rolled it over and wrecked on his second drive. It was down hill and on a curve. Was it him or an inherent problem with the car? As far as I am concerned it was quite safe if driven with some respect for the design (about 1939)
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I had a little old grey beetle in Germany, strictly for local running around. I put large dancing Snoopy stickers on each door. When we sold it we told the buyer it was not suitable for longer journeys. He promptly took it on a trip over to England; it broke down!
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OK, I’m outvoted but unrepentant. 🙂
I do not deny that they were better built than anything else until the Mazda 1500, it’s their poor safety I had issues with. I had a friend selling VWs and he just couldn’t understand why the Mazda was so popular with such high resale.
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A few VW bits cobbled together and you have a great little race car – Formula Vee has been around for 50 years now and still going strong!
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I had a 1964 VW 1200 Beetle. Between us my wife and I put over 200,000 miles on it. At a little over 100,000 it sucked in an exhaust valve and the broken piston rod flying around poked a hole in the crankcase. Since that was the part they needed if they were to save the engine I had to have the newer 1300 engine put in.
It went on as I said with a new lease on life. I finally sold it to a kid who said he wanted to restore it at about 230,000 miles.
But it did have one very serious problem. It tended to understeer, that is, be less responsive to the steering wheel than you would expect, requiring you to turn the wheel a little more to get what you needed. But at some point it would suddenly change to oversteer and leave you with an emergency to handle. That happened to me one time early in my experience with the Beetle and I found myself fighting to keep control of it on a sharp curve. I learned my lesson and from then on slowed down more than I would have in a front engine car. And from then on I had no problem.
That same thing, understeer suddenly changing to oversteer is what I think was responsible for my dad’s wrecking his Corvair.
I miss the elegant simplicity of those VWs. Today’s automobile is so loaded down with stuff that even the 1998 Camry I drove was a nightmare of wires. I removed the drivers side kick panel once and the rat’s nest of wires behind that panel next to my left foot was amazing. And that car was very low tech compared with anything you buy today.
I would welcome the return of the original 1200 VW. But that’s not in the tea leaves, is it?
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Ralph Nader made his name and presumable a lot of money in spite his frugal*** lifestyle by tearing down what others spent their effort to build. I never thought he was worth paying attention to. It’s not worth knowing what someone is against. I want to know what they’re for.
During one of his bids for president I and my wife were confronted by an in-your-face Nader supporter as we left the store with a cart full of groceries. She got right in front of my cart, preventing me from going forward and making it impossible to ignore her. After hearing a few words from her I cut her off and told her what I thought of Ralph Nader and that I would never vote for such a man. She got very angry and cursed me as she stepped aside to let me go on.
Such is the character of the self-righteous who see themselves as qualified to tell the rest of us how to live. Unfortunately too many fall for their dishonest line so here we are in 2018 with an all out campaign to get a president removed from office after he won the electoral college vote, the only vote that has counted for anything since George Washington, by an overwhelming margin. They are very sore losers and worse, they are now malicious.
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*** According to a Google search on, “ralph nader, net worth”,
That was in 2000. One estimate puts his current net worth at $6,000,000.
I wish I had that net worth, don’t you? The lesson appears to be that you can make more money by telling people they’re in danger and only you can save them than you can by honest work.
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Roy
A UK newspaper summation of Nader’s first tour of UK was
“Vehemence and veracity are seldom synonymous”
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Roy, I bought a second hand 1959 Beetle VW after riding a bike to work for a year and upgrading to a powered motor bike for the second year.
The vw reached exactly the maximum speed limit claimed in the manual and once made the trip to the top of mount Kosciuszko when that road was open to the public.
There is only one piece of advice I might offer. If the engine is running a bit rough, it’s best to turn it off before you check that the leads are properly attached to the plugs.
🙂
KK
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As a kid I owned a 1966 Corvair with an automatic transmission. The shifter was on the dash. It was a great car though one time I found out what Nader had hyped. The car handled fantastic but one time I tromped the accelerator making a right turn from a dead stop and it became uncontrollable as the differential switched the drive back & forth from one wheel to the other very quickly. I ended up in the ditch. No damage done. My friends and I had no problem getting it out and going on down the road. Lesson learned, and I never had anything like that happen to me again at any speed.
What a blast that car was in the snow if it wasn’t too high. Put it in reverse, turn the wheel all the way one direction and hit the accelerator and it would pivot right around the inside rear wheel of the turn perfectly leaving what we here in the US call a “donut” in the snow but it was unlike any donut left by any other make of car.
That car would eat a VW Bug or Karma Ghia for lunch. They didn’t have a chance. It had them out classed in power and handling. Did 110 mph one night on the interstate with 4 grown boys in it. At the time I owned the Corvair I was taking flying lessons. Then I got bitten by the bug to have a muscle car. Sold the Corvair to Dad who gave it to my sister who had just gotten her license. I bought a Ford Fairlane with a 428 engine in it. And of course I couldn’t afford flying lessons anymore. First of the really dumb moves I made in my life.
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My dad had a Corvair and loved it, yet one day he cracked it up. No one hurt but the car as damaged beyond what his insurance company wanted to pay for. He swore by them until his dying day in spite of the wreck.
I think Ralph Nader was wrong with his, “Unsafe at Any Speed” condemnation of the Corvair. But there definitely was a problem with the engine in the rear that required driver understanding and then taking into account that you had the most massive part of the car behind you and if you turned the wheel too sharply at a high enough speed that massive engine would swing right on around just as physics predicts and you spin out or worse.
I never drove one but I don’t see any reason you couldn’t drive one safely if you understood the difference in handling.
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That same problem exists in aircraft with a tail wheel instead of a nose wheel. The nose wheel — tricycle gear — puts the most massive part of the plane ahead of the main wheels and you have no ground handling problem.
The tail wheel — taildragger — puts the engine behind the main wheels and you have the same problem as the Corvair. If you aren’t sharp you can do a ground loop most commonly on landing, sometimes damaging the airplane and yourself in the process.
Funny thing. even though tricycle configuration is to be prefered for general use, taildraggers are still around because they stand up to rough landings on grass, soft material, weeds and even short brush. All of the planes preferred for aerobatic flying are taildraggers. And no one condemns them.
Where are you, Ralph Nader?
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Roy
I think you’d better check your weight and balance on that tail dragger and its engine behind the main wheels
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I was wondering where this leaves the little Trislander aircraft? Engines at the rear. The tail end of the aircraft is propped up while it is parked on the ground.
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Correction…two engines on wings and one at the rear…
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A reply to Annie and the Trilander.
This unstability on the ground is a common problem. The Canberra bomber had it’s fuel down the spine so it was important to start refuelling from the front. You could sit it on it’s bum starting from the back. The F4 had to leave the furtherest aft tank empty if there was no gun fitted in the nose.
And twin engined tail draggers, like the DC3 had the undercarriage in the engine nacelles. If you couldn’t get the gear down it could still land on the wheels because they poked out a bit. If you switched off the engines and cranked the prop to the inverted “Y” position you could even do it without damaging the props.
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Ian, you caught me.
Lesson number one, proof read what you write with your brain fully engaged. Meant to say that the center mass is behind the main wheels. Weight ok but balance went off into a ground loop that time. 😉
Where I learned to fly they had a beautiful Stearman biplane. It was in perfect condition, looked like new right down to the tires. Someone had sunk a lot of work into bringing it up to current airworthiness standards. But I was flying on a budget and the Stearman went for more than I could see paying for when I could fly all I wanted to in something renting for $6/hour + fuel. Now I regret not getting some time in the Stearman, pricy or not. I think it went for $20/hour also + fuel. Then there was the instructor time on top of that.
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Roy
The problem with both the early VW’s and early Corvairs was the high pivot independent rear axle. In a turn there came a point where the centrifugal force on the bottom of the outside tyre used that axle side to lift the rear of the car with sudden loss of traction from the inside wheel and the oversteer.
Later ones of both adapted to get around this.
One rumour was that Nader did for the Corvair what GM hierarchy actually had in mind as it was not selling very well and they had their Falcon copy the Chevy 2 by then.
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Also see the connection between the Czech Tatra and the VW Beetle
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tatra_(company)
IIRC it was reckoned that Tatra 77’s (rear V8) killed more Germans than did the Czech Army
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As I remember it I think VW had changed that by the 68 model, which I also bought. By then they had beefed up the horsepower but the cooling didn’t go up enough to compensate. Before 100,000 the cylinder head bolts, which went all the way to the crankcase, had pulled the embedded steel anchors right out of the magnesium-aluminum alloy case from the excessive expansion because it ran too hot.
After seeing that I had it fixed and traded it in on a ’72 Mazda with a rotary engine while it was still wort something.
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In those days the US was dead boring with their cars: V8 up front, rear wheel drive, live rear axle, drum brakes. Anything different was always going to be resisted and mishandled.
It took Jimmy Clark in a Lotus at the brickyard to start racers, at the beginning, to think outside the square.
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RAH,
Our 1964 EH Holden was a top car for its time.
Sadly, the great starts that Australia made in car making, aeronautics, integrated circuitry and several other sectors where we were up there with the best in the world, failed largely from government inputs that were ignorant and unwanted.
Today, where is Australia up there with the best? Some medical research and swimming.
Can you think of more?
In my nearly 80 years of memories, the greatest regrets are dominantly about the terrible quality and rapacious acts of an inflated bureaucracy steering some prominent politicians who, truth be known, were mental cases.
Yet we go politically worse to worse. Time to examine some alternative structures, like Switzerland and Venezuela.
Geoff
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🙂
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I think our best export is our peopke. Our top show is bogan-compatible (Chav compatible , for the Brits) and we have an inept bureaocratic class with zero risk appetite.
No wonder our best go elsewhere….
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Someone said, somewhere (age related memory probs :(), “The Past is a different country. They do things differently there.”
Even in my past, we did things differently.
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Prediction: Pruitt is toast.
Successful politics, like successful science, requires honesty, squeaky clean honesty.
Pruitt has a number of ethics questions hanging over him that would have been obvious if anyone bothered to look. So either they didn’t look from their lofty perch in the White House back office or they didn’t care. There is no way I can see how Donald Trump keeping Pruitt and saving his presidency from even more virulent attack.
He would be attacked even without the questionable ethics. But if none of the complaints were true he could survive it and do us a lot of good. But the way it is, there’s no way Trump can keep him.
It’s a shame beyond description because Pruitt is the head the EPA has needed since it began.
I’m lifelong Republican but sadly, I have to add my voice to those who say he can’t stay. Perhaps that’s a surprise to some of you, I don’t know. But honesty counts. And I will not compromise mine even for a very desirable political and scientific gain. If we do that we become what we’re fighting against.
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“Climate skeptics feel empowered to ‘keep pushing’ under Trump”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/04/07/climate-skeptics-feel-empowered-to-keep-pushing-under-trump/
“I don’t know about you, but I feel empowered, especially when Naomi Oreskes starts whining about it.”
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And I see no sign of people like us pushing Marc Morano’s book. I bought and read it and feel it should be essential reading for warmist and sceptic alike. Nothing at all on MSM.
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I feel the same way about Andrew Montford’s ‘The Hockey Stick Illusion: Climategate and the Corruption of Science’ where the incompetence and lies, and the swinish machinations of the IPPC and some of its contributors are laid bare. The same names for year after year after year keep coming up – Mann, Briffa, Jones, Amman, ad nauseum.
I’m on my second reading. I read it first soon after it was published and it has been a big help in understanding the politics of Global Warming ™, and what a putrid, disgusting place it is.
Here in New Zealand our Government have committed $14 billion over 10 years to the Paris Accord – from a population of only 4.6 million. That is ~$830 per household per annum. I, in my retirement, would far rather have that $830 in my hip pocket, thank you very much!
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FijiDave – that’s a very interesting calculation. Can you put some links and a list behind that? If we can verify that figure I will post it.
That’s an awful lot of money per household. If true people need to know…
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Don A
Another recommendation at #1.2
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My problem is that these books get published and die. Is there no politician (Malcolm Roberts like) that can bring them to the political sphere. Has Abbott read them? If not what about his research people? There must be some way – Bolt even!!!
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What is wrong is that politicians utterly ignore the people. All the Democrats hate Donald Trump and half the Republicans. They work together on legislation to frustrate Trump and Hilary’s Deplorables. In the UK, Theresa May voted against Brexit. She is still adamantly against Brexit. What would the people know?
In Australia all of Labour believe coal is evil. The Greens consider it the Devil’s work.
Unfortunately so do half the Liberals. Who really Andy Vestey’s statement that closing Liddell will drop power prices? We are being treated with contempt. Does anyone believe Turnbull is a genius whose $12Bn battery will save us. No one questions a rich genius. Like Rudd.
The strategy is get rid of coal, stop Adani, close the coal power stations and keep oil and gas in the ground and then get rid of petrol. Turnbull protests weakly and proposes a Green party solution where he is at pains to tell us they do not have to build a dam because it is evil to imprison water.
However tax petrol and Australia’s deplorables will revolt at the petrol pumps, so stop coal and exploration and fracking. Legislate to keep coal and gas and oil in the ground. How else can you explain that the Liberals in Victorian Upper House voted with Labor and the Greens to stop gas exploration?
The problem we have is that the Liberal and Labor think we have nowhere to go. It’s an age of politicians vs the people.
Conservative parties have moved hard left, anti coal, pro Republic, pro uncontrolled migration and the hard Left have moved harder left.
Bill Shorten missed being Australian Prime Minister by one seat. Openly anti semitic hardline Communist Jeremy Corbyn nearly became British Prime Minister. The Republicans and Democrats openly conspire on committees to frustrate the President. Schumer gets his tunnel and Trump is refused his wall.
The question is what can the people do? We elected Tony Abbott and the Liberal party removed him. Turnbull lied to the people. Newspolls mean nothing but it was never about Newspolls.
Do we really have to have anarchy before we can get politicians who respect the wishes of the people. No one wants Turnbull. Just the ABC and Fairfax and Labor.
Did anyone question genius Turnbull’s massively wasteful pumped water scheme for windmills? However if Abbott says the government should build a power plant, he is howled down. No one thinks it is a great idea.
Except everyone in Australia.
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The situation will turn around when the blackouts begin and the electricity bills become unaffordable. There will be a mighty revolt then and the politicians had better watch out.
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It’s being done by ‘the death of a thousand cuts’, `the boiling of we the frogs’ how did TS Eliot say that it ends “not with a bang but a whimper” ???
Follow the money … there was no easier way to get their hands on the mountains of available cash in superannuation balances than this `safe, government-subsidised, superbly profitable scheme’. It enriches equally the fund managers as they throw it at the scammers … at the expense of the poorest of the power-consumer masses.
The owners of the cash, those younger ordinary locked-in superannuants will not see a single dollar’s benefit when as occurred by the GFC, our super funds shrivel when the EFT goes and the gaming is called out.
Cheers
60
… the RET goes …
EFT! I can see why the mental slip … I had those piles of dollars in my mind 🙂
40
well when you look at, its is really just a giant EFT system
21
Im reckoning on the heads of power companies get kidnapped and ransomed off, once the general population realize whats happening.
All this mess couldnt get to where it is unless the UN, the govt, greens and companies all collaborating together to completely shift the current reality and how society is functioning. I notice even in my daughters school work in her Science there is this ever present “sustainability” rubbish the govt through the curriculum is holding it under kids noses until they have to inhale it…by makung it part of the landscape and trying to make such manure ” normal”, they slowly try to brainwash a generation by couching it as a given ( part of the Big Lie )….
Back to collaborators….its interesting that in the Last Days as spoken of in Revelation, the Beast is empowered because all the govts of the earth collude to give him power for a short time…..
30
Rev 17:12
The ten horns of the beast are ten kings who have not yet risen to power. They will be appointed to their kingdoms for one brief moment to reign with the beast.
21
Some how when I read that; Rudd, Gillard and Turnbull came to mind!
10
Steve
See #1.2
I’ve finished it – more than the EPA in action
00
If only they had a carbon (sic) tax …
Faced with drought, the Pharaohs tried (and failed) to adapt
More than 3,000 years ago the queen of the Hittites, who lived in what is now Turkey, sent a clay tablet to Ramses II, the Egyptian pharaoh, with an S O S: “I have no grain in my lands.”
Ancient Egyptian leaders increased their empire’s grain production and crossbred cattle for resilience in an early effort to ward off climate disaster, a study shows:
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/03/30/climate/egypt-climate-drought.html
70
Yep. Bronze Age decline came on pretty quick, not helped by cooler and drier conditions. A millennium before that the Old Kingdom collapsed from onset of similar cooler conditions. Seems Europeans cultures copped it cooler but wetter after about 1200 BC, causing different stresses there. Pretty complex stuff, but weather conditions played a big hand everywhere.
Note I’ve spoken of “conditions”. I’d like to use a more accurate term with the initials “CC” – but that’s been taken and trademarked by a nutty modern religious sect which implies all extreme weather is somehow new, as opposed to a “stable” past weather regime. (Adherents of this surprisingly widespread sect are very vague on standards and reference points, so it’s hard to get hold of their actual beliefs. Sort of like strict creationists, but more gas-based.)
70
To Dave, Dennis and Ian who have all commented on the situation with the U.S. EPA.
That the EPA has fallen so low that it’s notional primary mission of dealing with pollution is secondary to promoting the ongoing CO2 scam means that it has totally lost it’s way.
There are only two options; shut it down or bring about a rapid change in focus on the ever present issue of real pollution.
Typical of this religious approach to science was the major pollution event in Newcastle’s river and harbour which was ignored by the local environmentalsts during construction works at the harbour.
I have written about this before but it involved a well known chemical.
CYANIDE.
Apparently our local epa thinks that CO2 is more dangerous than cyanide.
The dead fish and birds don’t agree.
Pruitt has a long battle ahead and hopefully has can refocus the EPA on the many real pollution problems that exist and stop the corruption that goes with having to comply with necessary procedures to limit pollution.
KK
230
Worth remembering the real approach to pollution.
http://joannenova.com.au/2017/12/green-rules-profit-legal-bullying-drove-the-grenfell-disaster/#comment-1964354
70
“Tit For Tat Tariff – Who Wins?”
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2018/04/07/tit-for-tat-tariff-who-wins/
And for variety read up from here
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2018/04/07/oh-dear-sex-lies-democrats/#comment-92916
50
Ian’s first link /tit-for-tat-tariff-who-wins/ is well written and worth a read. Confirms what I have heard elsewhere.
20
The wind is blowing and SA is exporting. Sadly they are getting sweet Fanny Adams for it but when the wind drops they have to pay top dollar for imports. It doesn’t sound like a viable business model to me.
And what’s with NSW? They have been importing over a GW, up to 2, all week.
110
The NEM dispatch page certainly looks weird this morning
SA interconnector maxed out dumping power over the border $18
VIC weekend idling and also has the NSW interconnector maxed out at almost a GW $9
TAS playing on its own due to the broken interconnector $176 !
71
On a cool morning with a wind blowing you can push extra current down the HV lines, that would help a little.
20
And AEMO has been forced to intervene in SA to dictate to gas stations to fire up for system stability with currently 1050 MW of wind they require 390 MW of gas, or about 27%. So despite SA demand being only 940 MW they need to ship 500 MW across the border into Vic. And Vic doesn’t want it so Vic price has dropped to $10/MWhr.
40
It is all just market manipulation to gain income. The companies making money are doing so because they invested in the industry and owe it to their shareholders to do so.To hell with moral obligations – the Govt’s made the sales and the rules for them to work within. So why would they do otherwise?
50
Nothing like a wee drop of “exporting”.
It is almost enough to make everyone forget 5 days of importing!!!
20
That awkward moment you realise you did it wrong all your life …
http://www.guacamoley.com/extra-chunky/2018/04/05/1029IM/this-life-hack-for-threading-a-needle-is-blowing-minds-all-over-twitter?utm_content=inf_10_3742_2&tse_id=INF_1e688570390b11e88b47e9f5a243ec69
41
If that’s real even I can appreciate that , now I wonder if it works with fishing line and a hook .
10
LOL. Doesn’t work with a sewing machine needle, in or out of the machine.
20
How did a tip become a hack?! I thought hack a. was wielding an axe or somesuch onto something b. going for a horse ride in the country. Every online news ‘paper’ seems to use it now and it is quite annoying.
I must try that TIP for threading sewing threads. 🙂
31
Or even c. breaking into someone’s computer privacy.
31
Great Tip!
I hope it works. I will be trying it.
00
California
”
I have somehow, miraculously SURVIVED 62 years of exposure to gasoline fumes during every self-service pumping of gasoline, spraying of RoundUp, ingesting of barbecued food, two-cycle lawnmower, string trimmer, chainsaw … and now dark roast coffee. Guess I am just “lucky”, what with ALL those Prop. 65 “toxics” out there. Makes one wonder why CA hasn’t just declared itself a toxic-free, cancer-free Zone? And banned ALL substances other than organically-grown kale?
But! As soon as I contract ANY form of cancer in ANY body organ, I will be dialing one of the dozens of toll-free numbers of shyster law firms promising $justice$$$$ for my infimity. Yes … if I just live long enough to contract a cancer somewhere … I will be $$RICH$$$ … filthy $$RICH$$$ (the weepy faced guy on TV told me so).”
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/index.php/2018/04/07/o-sweet-saint-of-san-andreas/#comments
40
Hopefully you dont have to trouble the lwayers anytime soon. Anyway close proximity to a shyster lawyer would also probably give you some nasty disease, so best to stay away I think.
41
yarpos,
That is very unfair.
Have you forgotten that it is only the 99.9% that give the other 0.1% a bad name.
20
I’m working from a clapped out memory but isn’t it in Cal that a kid serving in a milk bar can be fined $1,000 for offering a plastic straw, unsolicited, to a customer?
61
Dont know if it made it to law, but yes some Ca political genius thought that was a good idea.
32
The only toxic thing in CA is its Socialist gummint….
30
I remember once when a drum of a chemical turned up and met an hysterical response from the production team at another site. (It was a multinational so years ahead with regards to safety). The drum was isolated alone in half a warehouse with no-one going near it except in full isolation gear (hood, suit, gloves, boots, breathing apparatus etc. owing to the warning label. This was in the seventies when Health and Safety was just getting going (as distinct from protecting the workers).
The relevant specialist was on leave and was able to decode the various warning phrases, most of which were “precautionary”. As for toxicity (LD50 150gms. per kg.) he pointed out that come the weekend they probably bought stuff with an LD50 of 1.5gms. per Kg at the Hardware for weeding.
One phrase baffled him (and me, until I too got involved in H&S) “Known to cause cancer in the State of California”. It turned out that any claim however unlikely that a chemical caused cancer meant it had to be so labelled as “Known to cause cancer” and the added bit “in the State of California”seemed to have been included by someone in the supplier exasperated by the rule. Indeed even 15 years later very few other places requiring that warning.
20
Now that IS global warming
“Heard a guy say he threw out a cup of hot coffee up there. It froze so fast the ice was still warm. ”
In comments at
http://www.yesterdaystractors.com/cgi-bin/viewit.cgi?bd=ttalk&th=1927266
20
Northern Ca has just been hit by the Pineapple Express, a rain event coming out of Hawaii. Juan Brown, blogger on the blancolirio channel who lives above but close to Oroville Dam measured 5.5 inches of rain in two days. The spillway repairs are not yet complete so they don’t want too much of this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBbZcuLAjJI
40
Just been reading ANOTHER anti coal piece on the ABC news website.
It suggests that conservatives are embracing the dangers of global warming and climate change.
According to this
coal has plunged in use in the UK from 43% to 7%. Drax energy is one of the companies driving this.
Three of the plant’s six generators have been converted to biomass, creating renewable energy by using the offcuts of harvested timber.
The company hopes its plant at Selby will stop burning coal within five years.
However, the burning of biomass still produces the evil CO2. Somehow, the CO2 molecules that are emitted from burning biomass
are less harmfull than those emitted by coal!
Not only has the science gone out the window, so has the logic.
Mick
full article
160
Drax and Enviva harvest wood pellets in the US and ship them to Europe to burn in power stations. Would they be wood or oil burning ships?
90
Good find.
Biomass is much “dirtier” than coal.
70
Yes if you burn local brown coal you’re an environmental vandal, but if you burn saturated woodchips, clear-felled and dragged in from half way around the world you’re a saint. Who would have guessed that wet woodchips wouldn’t combust as cleanly as coal? Not me. Cough.
And I thought local sourcing and carbon miles or whatever they term it was the big new Greenie NO-NO. Food must be grown and sourced locally. You mustn’t truck brussels sprouts from QLD to VIC if you can grow them just outside Melbourne. Personally I’d be shipping them direct to the nearest QLD landfill, but then I’m not a fan of the sprouts.
Does the same principle not apply to woodchips when local coal is available?
90
Draw was built over a (former) coal mine. It was running on imported coal until the penalties threatened bankruptcy. Switching to imported wind
chipspellets with subsidies for ‘reducing’ CO2 emissions has made them very profitable.(The wood burning way only raises CO2 emissions by 32-33%).
50
And the added chemical or real pollutants are appalling.
40
Sorry Graeme, I neglected to say that I was comparing the Hazelwood lignite experience with the DRAX wood experience.
As to the need for DRAX to use imported coal, the question should be why was it using imported coal at all? The UK has locked up its coal fields as we have locked up our gas fields in NSW and VIC. Britain still has coal reserves of 1,000 Mt of black and over 3,100 Mt of brown. The reasons are partly economic but largely ideological. All it needs is government will.
Another development is Britain’s North Sea coal reserves of 23 trillion tonnes which had been put in the too-hard basket, but which advances in technology have begun to make available.
If Britain is going to import steaming coal it might as well also import air to breathe.
50
By that last sentence I was meaning to imply that they are both equally pointless, not that you can’t breathe with coal power stations.
40
If you are infested with brussel sprouts, instead of tossing them, try tossing cooked brussels with butter and bacon bits before serving. Save the world.
40
Best if left out in the garden until Christmas in a Northern climate.
Just dig the snow off them and take the entire stock inside to thaw.
Sweet as a nut.
10
Brussel sprouts are actually quite good baked. Cut in half and chuck a few in the baking tray when doing other vegies, noice! Same for cauliflower, whole garlic, walnuts even.
21
Will try them like that. We usually have a mixture of spuds, carrots, parsnips, pumpkin, sweet potato, onions, cloves of garlic and mushrooms…what’s available. A sprinkle of olive oil, salt and sometimes oregano. Delicious, together with something like a slowly cooked shoulder or leg of lamb, or chicken or beef or pork or turkey. Occasionally we have the roasted vegs with just a sprinkle of grated cheese, preferably parmesan, and a good dollop of butter!
41
I love Brussels Sprouts….delicious! Sometimes I slice them up to put in curries with lots of other veg. Sometimes just standard boiling. We like risotto but also sometimes have ‘spudotto’ (finely sliced spuds instead of rice) or ‘vegotto’ (finely sliced up pumpkin and/or sweet potato instead of rice). My husband is to blame for the name ‘spudotto’!
31
CO2 from diesel is also Green CO2. Just ask Jay Weatherill.
120
All CO2 exists: but not equally.
That which exists by night in the dusty recesses of green minds
wake in the day to find that it was vanity:
but its existence of day is dangerous CO2,
for they may see the existence with open eyes, to make it universal.
Apologies to T.E.Lawrence.
61
Only OT with regard to CO2. Still on topic in the category ‘unbelievable’. Came across this on the Richie Allen site a couple of days ago.
April 5, 2018 – Richie Allen
“Derbyshire Constabulary Male Voice Choir has been forced to change its name by the police because they don’t include women. Members say they have been left “heartbroken” after Chief Constable Peter Goodman told the choir that they had to become a mixed voice group. In response, the men have decided to change the choirs name and distance themselves from the force. Choir chairman Kevin Griffiths said it would be “difficult” to hire the 50 women needed to balance the sound after Goodman told them that the group was “incompatible” with force policies. The choir is made up of about 35 ex-officers and has raised £750,000 for charity since it was founded. Last month their authorisation to use the force name was revoked, despite the fact that no woman had ever asked to join the choir in its 60 year history. Maddening isn’t it? You could maybe (just maybe) understand the intervention if women had asked to be involved but had been rebuffed, but no that wasn’t the case. Derbyshire police said that it’s committed to being “an equal opportunities employer” and to “having an organisation where there are no enclaves where people from different backgrounds cannot go”.
You’d have thought police forces have enough on their plates right? Police stations are closing, funding has been decimated by successive governments but yet they find the time for this progressive-cultural Marxist driven nonsense. Was there any thought given to those who enjoy the sound of male voice choirs? Was any concession given to the notion that if people wanted to, they could form mixed choirs or female voice choirs? Of course not, because silly as this story might be, it is not about gender equality at all. It is part of a broader plan to engineer a new norm. What is that norm? Well it’s a future society where it is standard for the state, or pillars of the state to step in and call a halt to anything that they do not like because it might cause offence to a minority group or a third party of their choosing. This is a war on your freedom to speak, to think and to assemble”.
120
Crazy, to the point of evil, isn’t it?
51
Just evil, full stop.
Marxism is demonic – Marx said he wanted to de-throne God, exactly the same as the Devil wants to.
This makes Marx a rank fool….but strangely Marxists seem to ignore that bit…..
40
Hell of a work week. Snow, wind, and rain and more miles than I’ve done in a week since I did a round trip to Casa Grade, AZ a few months ago. But Friday I drove right through the Jack Daniel’s distillery in Lynchburg, TN and that and the pay check made it all worth it. This morning at 01:30 I departed Huntsville, AL in rain and the temp was 56 degrees F but 4 hours later I was just north of Louisville, KY and it was 28 Deg. F and snowing. I just don’t know how I survived such a temperature change? I mean after all some “scientists” tell us that 2 or 3 degrees of temperature change will kill us.
130
This is the US version of the Australian original:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ov4epAJRPMw
This is the Aussie version
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvBpLbNik_U
10
10 months after I got my Class A CDL (Commercial Drivers License) I had driven a big truck through every one of the lower 48 states. Since then I’ve added Ontario and Quebec Canada. Now days though in this job I don’t get out to the far west much. No more cabbage hill for me it looks like. http://www.dangerousroads.org/north-america/usa/4792-deadman-pass.html
On a map the mountain is labeled immigrant hill but truckers know it as cabbage hill, cabbage patch, or dead mans pass. The steep grade on the west side with lots of hairpin turns have gotten many a trucker.
70
Had a look at the pass on maps. Very tempting to go flat out on that good road.
Until you have to turn.
Mentioned earlier, Lemmings Corner out past Wollombi;
http://joannenova.com.au/2018/01/wet-dream-of-climate-dictators-skeptics-exiled-to-penal-colonies-on-antarctic-islands/#comment-1972648
30
Came down the Gillies from Atherton to Cairns at night, in the rain last week but all was good: I was behind a semi which, it seems, must have a pilot. He maintained a good clip and everyone coming the other way pulled over for us. 🙂
From wiki
40
It’s really about knowing the load and the road and proper use of gearing and the engine brake to save your binders for when you need them. There is a mountain in West Virginia on I-64 near the Virginia border. Plenty of curves but not any hairpins like those on Immigrant hill. But like Immigrant hill it is one of those places where it will be snowing or icing worse than anywhere below. Like several other places in the Appalachian Mountains in the east there is a brake check spot at the top before you begin the decent where one must stop before heading down. One winters night heading to Harrisonburg, VA the snow was really coming down. The right lane had two tracks in it but the left had no tracks and about 6″ of snow on it. I knew the load I had was 19,000 lb. with all of the freight on the floor of the trailer. Perfect for helping maintain traction but not heavy enough to push the rig too hard going down hill. I passed at least a dozen trucks going down that mountain in the right lane at about 15 mph. They were either much heavier or had rookies at the wheel that decided to just creep on down behind the heavily loaded truck. I had no problem using the snow covered left lane and going 30 mph on the straights and slowing well ahead of the turns. Never slipped once. I noticed I had headlights behind me all the way down but was concentrating on driving. When I got to the bottom I saw it was a West Virginia State Trooper that had followed me down. He turned into a crossover in the median to go back up the mountain and continue his patrol.
This trucker honestly appreciates State Police. They’re out there doing their jobs and I appreciate it. Only met one bad apple in my life. In Texas one early morning I had some fool in a 1/4 ton pickup truck screwing with me. He would slow in front of me and when I started to pass he would speed up and when I pulled behind slowed again. A Texas State Trooper must have seen this and pretty soon I had lights behind me. I slowed and he went on by and nailed that guy that was screwing with me and let me go on my way.
Here in Indiana one icy day I was at a light in Decatur waiting to get the green arrow to make a left turn. Coming towards me faster than they should have in such conditions was a car with a load of what were obviously HS age kids. The light changed but I didn’t move and slid right on through the red light. If I had turned the would have probably gone right under the side of my trailer. A local cop sitting at the light that had seen it all gave me a thumbs up before he turned on his lights to go after the kids. I’m sure that driver learned a valuable lesson.
In Ohio on I-70 west bound I saw in my mirror a State Highway patrol with his lights on in pursuit of a vehicle. I was coming up on an exit ramp and I was pretty sure the guy being chased would use me as a block to get off on the exit. Sure enough he did pull in front of me and I was ready. Pulled to the shoulder and slowed so I wasn’t blocking the officer.
Nope, this trucker has no problem with the police even when they are setting speed traps. It is what it is.
40
It’s not so much what they do say it’s what they don’t that make this and most other ABC stories propaganda for the greentard warmists.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-04-08/uk-conservatives-are-abandoning-coal-fired-power-stations/9630936
30
How will change happen? The Christopher Paine’s Black Hand will retire at the election. Bishop will retire when she realises she will never be PM and focus on getting into the UN and those great NY parties, like Gillard and Rudd and Helen Clarke. Their work is done and Shorten’s Labor party will continue their UN/EU anti coal, anti carbon policies, the world’s largest carbon tax and shutting down manufacturing. Agriculture is next and the water wars, blowing up dams the way they blew up power stations.
However when the ordinary MPs realise they will lose not just the election but their careers, they will panic and try to put Abbott back. The Black Hand will have none of it, ruling the party room. They will lose the election and then the resignations will start.
However Turnbull could not even be bothered campaigning the last time. He has no ideas of his own, no policies of his own. Maybe he will retire, rather than face certain defeat. His ego could not handle defeat. Abbott is younger and can hang on for three years while Shorten wrecks the place.
The only short term way out is that Abbott is asked to lead again and does a Trump, defying fake ABC/SBS news and the deep state. Then, like Rudd, he change the rules to stop a cabal ever again taking over the party room, where politicians only pretend to be fiscal and social conservatives who care about low taxation, plentiful cheap power and the defence of Australia and our independence and quality of life.
Abbot’s first move will be to get out of the Paris Accord, that agreement for Western democracies to commit economic hari kari so beloved of the people who hate democracy, Christianity, white people and conservatives. Yes, their ABC/SBS.
210
TdeF:
I think it unlikely that the Liberals will ever win a Federal election again. Their support is evaporating slowly. In the last SA State election when most were desperate to end 16 years of Labor rule their vote dropped. They only got in because of the long overdue change in electoral boundaries, but even then they only captured 3 of the 4 supposed to change hands. Nor could they stop an ex-Liberal and an ex-Labor independent retaining their seats. They blame it on Xenophon, but in reality the “Black Hand” selection had little appeal. Look at Heysen where the primary vote for the Liberals dropped from the usual 53-55% to just over 41%. Yes, there was a strong challenge by a well thought of SABest candidate, who forced the seat to preferences. Or the neighbouring seat of Kavel where there was another strong challenger from SABest where a very strong Liberal new comer** had to work very hard to hold the seat despite a 6% drop. And that was in Rebecke Sharkie land and Downer’s old stronghold.
No, I think a split in the Liberals is inevitable, whether before or immediately after they lose the next election, and possibly even if somehow they win it. The Conservatives will take over as the main right of centre party and the Liberals will be a nuisance wandering around the Left. There will be room for them as after 3 years in power the Labor Party will also be deeply unpopular, and it will be the Conservatives who will have to rescue the country.
** From the conservative wing and possibly assigned to the boondocks in the hope he would lose.
70
I think the only way to derail the Communist globalists is a massivebvote for the mist minor party you can find, snubbing the labor, liberal and greens.
Once the globalists realise were happy to drop a handfull of ball bearings down the air intake if their ( laughably called ) democracy engine, they mught have second thoughts. But they are a brutal bunch, so it may be necessaty to “back burn” and throw out a few good pollies to make sure we remove all the rot in one go and force the globalists to the table….
30
Won’t matter who is the captain the ship will sink Tdef , the rats are getting nervous .
40
‘…. defying fake ABC/SBS news and the deep state.’
Someone in the ginger group must absorb our knowledge of climate change, otherwise the electorate will think they are silly old white men who don’t care about their grandchildren.
Who do you suggest?
80
I repeat it won’t matter who is in charge ,I have no suggestions because there is no one capable in the party who can bring the rest along with them .
It’s a lesson they need to learn at the country’s expense , trying to appease the inner city yuppie vote by out greening the greens is not a liberal value or at least it never used to be .
50
And when the power fails, those same yuppues will die off first. Its kund if a brutal darwin award for being educated but stupid….
50
I nominate Craig Kelly as the sprinter group’s attack dog on AGW alarmism, can you think of anyone else?
31
No I don’t mate but he is probably the pick of the crop .
21
There is also nationals mp George Christensen, he speaks our language and could carry the burden single handedly.
41
One thing I like about Kelly is he is one of their better communicators and although he is in our court I’m sure I seen him with a foot in each camp so that has me concerned .
As for George he would be a poor second to Kelly , when the Libs have a coup it will be interesting to see who gets the top job because none of the current ministers or minister hangers on deserve it .
31
Even though Dutton has fallen behind in the betting market, he may still be the compromise candidate with Tony’s blessing, but its too early for that.
22
The pollies need to nail thier colours to the mast now, not later when it suits them….
00
How do chameleons do that?
01
The doGs above are simply not good enough to everyone with politics to the even slightly to the left of old Genghis to make Tones PM again.
That said would love to see him in the big chair after Newspoll 30. 🙂
11
Talcum has to fall on his sword and be replaced by Dutton if the Coalition want to win the next election.
It would be good to see Tones back in the big seat, but we need a political clean skin if we are to triumph.
10
Seriously, daS UberPotatoFurher the Au Pair Facilitator as PM?? He’ll be luck to hold his own seat this time around and he’s no cleanskin. 🙂
Main reason Turnbull will stay in place is that the Libs have a VERY shallow and somewhat grubby gene pool. they dont actually have much if anything in the way of alternatives to Turnbull in the way of the broad appeal a viable candidate for PM needs. Their only “contenders” appeal to narrow interest groups who are going to vote for them regardless.
20
Dutton is alright, he didn’t put a foot wrong on the Insiders.
On climate change he is an empty vessel and should talk with our Blue Team.
00
At the outset its not important to have someone with broad appeal, they first need a man who can take the party back to its roots and unite.
When the headlines scream Turnbull is more popular with the electorate than any other aspiring Liberal, you know its fake news.
20
The latest claim in the Oakland CA v BP and other oil companies has caused me to revisit some of the IPCC reports as both sides are using IPCC as gospel:
http://blogs2.law.columbia.edu/climate-change-litigation/wp-content/uploads/sites/16/case-documents/2018/20180403_docket-317-cv-06011_complaint.pdf
In my wandering through AR5 WG1 Chapter 2 I found they are still using the linked energy balance chart showing mysterious massive 342W/sq.m of radiated heat coming from cold atmosphere warming the warmer surface:
http://blogs2.law.columbia.edu/climate-change-litigation/wp-content/uploads/sites/16/case-documents/2018/20180403_docket-317-cv-06011_complaint.pdf
I thought back radiation had long been cast into the waste bin as nonsense. Interestingly in AR4 WG1 produced the following energy balance:
https://wg1.ipcc.ch/publications/wg1-ar4/faq/fig/FAQ-1.1_Fig-1.png
So in 3 years this massive amount of back radiation has increased from 324W/sq.m to 345W/sq.m. I figure if you are telling fairy tales the numbers can be whatever you like. However IPCC claim this is “science”. When did “science” stop obeying the second law of thermodynamics.
Anyhow Chevron is aiming for dismissal. On that basis they have used the IPCC as their reference source in Climate Change, albeit highlighting the uncertainty, to avoid getting into lengthy debate on climate science.
If the case is not dismissed then they may regret using the IPCC as a reference source. As clearly the IPCC have no clue.
If they lose the case then they really have no choice but to desist from selling fossil fuel products in California. That would be an interesting dilemma. Some of the wording in the claim is trying to avoid this situation. But if the oil companies are deemed a public nuisance in California then I figure they would be obliged to desist from further nuisance in that State.
10
This is the intended link the first chart:
http://www.ipcc.ch/report/graphics/images/Assessment%20Reports/AR5%20-%20WG1/Chapter%2002/Fig2-11.jpg
20
I spoke of this when they were installing it: To get any return on the capital cost they would have to play the market, the arbitrage, the difference in price between current and projected price. This has the problems of shortening the battery’s life and raising the chance that wind generators would trip just after they have been selling into the market, thus having a reduced charge to keep the grid stable until gas turbines can be spooled up.
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The warmist propaganda is just relentless.
https://theconversation.com/amp/solar-pv-and-wind-are-on-track-to-replace-all-coal-oil-and-gas-within-two-decades-94033
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Two authors who have no idea. Projecting an 8% growth rate for wind and solar does not result in a corresponding reduction in coal generation. That would only be possible if there was infinite storage and there is not. I am surprised and amused by the number of people who do not understand a modern power supply system and the need for load/supply balancing at millisecond level.
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the only thing holding back renewables is reality
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More propaganda.
http://amp.abc.net.au/article/9625726
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Yes, you coukd graze cattle there, so lithium propaganda batteries are consuming good farm land….
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“But, more financial incentives for battery owners should be introduced
The AEMO found the battery provided high-quality back up power and could respond more quickly to a major problem than traditional coal, gas or hydro generators.
But it said market didn’t adequately recognise or reward the agility of batteries.”
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Try this link.
https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/business/the-economy/tesla-claims-it-s-being-shortchanged-for-providing-power-too-quickly-20180321-p4z5hw.html
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Is it any wonder that people are confused?
The Weekend Australian headlines:
Van Onselen
Coal Fools Wont Oust PM
Chris Kenny
Stop This Energy Masochism
Luke Griffiths
Battery Boom ‘only the beginning’
Matt Chambers
AGL Profiteering At Liddell
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At least a bit of balance and reporting both sides of the issue unlike our ABC/SBS.
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7 Apr: Tim Blair Blog: REMINDER: NOTHING GREEN EVER WORKS
https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/blogs/tim-blair/reminder-nothing-green-ever-works/news-story/65d2b36c55676eb5736dcb06841be380
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pathetic Frydenberg with the insufferable Cassidy:
8 Apr: SMH: ‘Monash Forum’ should change its name: Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg
By Eryk Bagshaw
Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg has called for the so-called ‘Monash Forum’ of pro-coal Coalition MPs to change its name, declaring an “intellectually curious” Sir John Monash would have been more likely to explore new technology…
Mr Frydenberg said respecting the wishes of Sir John’s family “would be the right thing to do,” after they said the man responsible for building Victoria’s coal supply would want nothing to do with the group’s “horse-and-buggy era” policies…
“Monash was an engineering and scientific genius,” said Mr Frydenberg.
“He had a great deal of intellectual curiosity and I think he would look at the current energy market and see the opportunities in new technologies.”
VIDEO: 3mins09secs: Frydenberg: Monash Forum should change its name
video caption: “An intellectually curious” Sir John Monash would have been more likely to explore new technology says Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg.
Mr. Frydenberg said comments by former prime minister John Howard calling for stability in the Liberal party were “absolutely right” and there was no threat to Mr Turnbull’s leadership.
“We have a collective responsibility to ensure good Coalition government,” he told the ABC’s Insiders program.
“We have to row together. The leadership is safe with Malcolm Turnbull.”…READ ON
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/monash-forum-should-change-its-name-energy-minister-josh-frydenberg-20180408-p4z8d9.html
VIDEO: 14mins38secs: 8 Apr: ABC Insiders: Josh Frydenberg joins Insiders
Barrie Cassidy interviews the Minister for Environment and Energy, Josh Frydenberg
TRANSCRIPT: … READ ALL IF YOU DON’T WATCH THE VIDEO
http://www.abc.net.au/insiders/josh-frydenberg-joins-insiders/9631174
behind paywall:
Peta Credlin: Monash Forum Abandon coal and the lights go out
Daily Telegraph-11 hours ago
IT’S A sign of how fragile Malcolm Turnbull’s leadership has become that it’s now impossible to debate policy without accusations of conspiracy. This week, the news seeped out that about 20 Coalition MPs had signed a letter setting up the Monash Forum to promote continued coal-fired power generation in…
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do a search on “Environmental Integrity Project”, click “news”, and you will find the many, many thousands of FakeNewsMSM “stories”, beginning January 2017, trying to oust SCOTT PRUITT. WaPo even carries out joint investigatons with them.
latest from WaPo:
Washington Post editorial board calls for Pruitt’s firing in scathing editorial – The Hill – 1h ago
Environmental Integrity Project Calls on Scott Pruitt to Immediately Resign – 3 Apr 2019
Wikipedia: Environmental Integrity Project
The organization was founded in 2002 by former U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) attorneys, Eric V. Schaeffer and Michele Merkel…EIP is headquartered in Washington, DC…
4 Apr: TheLid: Media Campaign Against EPA’s Scott Pruitt Orchestrated By Obama & Clinton Cronies
by J.E. Dyer
My contribution in this post is adding a bit about the source going in. As (Daily Caller’s Michael) Bastasch notes, the source of much of the negative narrative-building on Pruitt is the Environmental Integrity Project (EIP). The EIP is a nonprofit founded in 2002 by Eric Schaeffer, a disgruntled EPA official. Here is how EIP describes it…
EIP has a strong animus against coal, as you can learn from the website…
Regarding funding, prominent sources for EIP, as documented by a congressional report in 2014, are the Wallace Global Foundation and the Energy Foundation, which in turn gets much of its funding from the Sea Change Foundation set up by renewables billionaire Nat Simons, a major beneficiary of Obama’s green-energy cronyism. (And yes, both foundation sources send money to and from the Tides Foundation and others in the standard list of progressive and radical-left money sumps.)…
https://lidblog.com/media-campaign-against-scott-pruitt/
the so-called scandals reported almost always end with a couple of paras about how EPA in the past did the same thing, or even worse, but that doesn’t excuse Pruitt, because he’s pure evil.
5 Apr: The Hill: Trump says he has confidence in Pruitt
By Jordan Fabian and Timothy Cama
President Trump said Thursday he has confidence in embattled Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt
“I do,” Trump said when asked before boarding Air Force One.
Later Thursday, while flying back from a West Virginia trip to talk about the GOP’s tax bill, Trump had more good things to say about Pruitt.
“I think he’s done a fantastic job. I think he’s done an incredible job. He’s been very courageous,” the president told reporters. “It hasn’t been easy, but I think he’s done a fantastic job.”
“You know, I just left coal and energy country. They love Scott Pruitt,” he said, referring to Pruitt’s pro-coal policies and efforts to repeal environmental rules. “They feel very strongly about Scott Pruitt. And they love Scott Pruitt.”…
—
Trump defends Scott Pruitt: ‘Scott is doing a great job!’
CNN· 2h ago
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TWEET: Donald J. Trump: 3h ago: While Security spending was somewhat more than his predecessor, Scott Pruitt has received death threats because of his bold actions at EPA. Record clean Air & Water while saving USA Billions of Dollars. Rent was about market rate, travel expenses OK. Scott is doing a great job!
5:03 PM – 7 Apr 2018
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7 Apr: Fox News: Trump slams DOJ, FBI over missed document deadline: ‘What is going on?’
by Adam Shaw; Fox News’ Jake Gibson and Samuel Chamberlain contributed to this report
President Trump on Saturday slammed the Justice Department for failing to meet a deadline to turn over documents related to the FBI’s decisions in the Hillary Clinton email probe, alleged abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and the recommendation to fire former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.
TWEET: Donald J. Trump: Lawmakers of the House Judiciary Committee are angrily accusing the Department of Justice of missing the Thursday Deadline for turning over UNREDACTED Documents relating to FISA abuse, FBI, Comey, Lynch, McCabe, Clinton Emails and much more. Slow walking – what is going on? BAD!
TWEET: Donald J. Trump: What does the Department of Justice and FBI have to hide? Why aren’t they giving the strongly requested documents (unredacted) to the HOUSE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE? Stalling, but for what reason? Not looking good!
A Republican House Judiciary Committee aide told Fox News on Thursday that the DOJ had “not yet complied” with a March 22 subpoena issued by the committee’s chairman, Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va.
“This is unacceptable–it’s time to stop the games,” Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., said Thursday. “Turn over the documents to Congress and allow us to conduct oversight.”…
The committee aide added that the panel was “working with officials at DOJ to take immediate steps to comply with the subpoena and produce documents to the Committee.”
This coming week, the DOJ will produce another 1,000 pages of documents responsive to the subpoena, department officials told Fox News on Saturday.
Goodlatte had requested documents related to the Clinton email investigation and said that only a “fraction” of those documents had been produced, with “no documents” provided related to the request on potential FISA abuses.
He said he’d received only “a few thousand” of the ***1.2 million documents he had requested in that investigation. However, on “Fox & Friends” last week, Goodlatte noted that Attorney General Jeff Sessions had taken a “hands-on approach” and that FBI Director Christopher Wray doubled the amount of employees working to comply with the subpoena.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/04/07/trump-slams-doj-fbi-over-missed-document-deadline-what-is-going-on.html
two legal minds from opposite sides of politics. a must-watch:
4 Apr: Youtube: 7mins48secs: Fox News Hannity Show: Dershowitz, diGenova on Mueller’s push to interview Trump
Mueller says Trump is not a criminal target in the Russia investigation; Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz and former U.S. attorney for D.C. Joe diGenova provide insight on ‘Hannity.’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRLdQEG4Hr0
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8 Apr: EconomicTimesIndia: IANS: Adani Ports expands Dhamra Port capacity to 100 million tonne
The company deployed more than 3,000 workers – about 88 per cent of which were local residents – for the project at the port, located 215 km from Bhubaneswar, between Haldia in West Bengal and Paradip in Odisha.
Bhubaneswar: Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone Ltd (APSEZ), India’s largest port developer and part of the Adani Group, on Saturday inaugurated the Phase II expansion of Odisha’s Dhamra Port, increasing its cargo handling capacity from 25 million tonne per annum (MPTA) to over 100 mtpa…
“This is a very proud moment for all of us in Odisha as well as the entire country. The phase II expansion of Dhamra Port will not only make Dhamra India’s largest port but will also serve as India’s major gateway for trade with South East Asian nations,” said Gautam Adani.
Karan Adani said: “We are delighted by the speed of execution of our teams that completed this expansion of phase II of Dhamra Port way before schedule. This expansion will help us achieve our vision 2020 of 200 MMT, well ahead of time and we now aim to touch 500 MMT by the year 2025.”
The company deployed more than 3,000 workers – about 88 per cent of which were local residents – for the project at the port, located 215 km from Bhubaneswar, between Haldia in West Bengal and Paradip in Odisha, and serving as a gateway to Nepal, Bangladesh, Myanmar and the entire geopolitical region including the ASEAN region.
With an aim to facilitate quality education in and around the state, Adani Foundation set up Adani DAV Public School at Kumamara in Karanpalli gram panchayat of Bhadrak district in Odisha.
The Adani Dhamra Port has also partnered with the International Union for Conservation of Nature to guarantee the safe nesting for Olive Ridley turtles. The Olive Ridley turtles nesting figure increased to 6,84,000 as of March 2018…
https://energy.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/coal/adani-ports-expands-dhamra-port-capacity-to-100-million-tonne/63663734
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This article is a must read for Australians …
https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2018/04/ego-landed-crashed-actually/
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That is a great find – why don’t we see more articles like this. (Note to remember Peter O’Brien)
It must be obvious to so many now that intermittent generation should have never been permitted anywhere near the electricity grid.
I figure the RET is so well disguised that the majority of consumers do not appreciate that it is such a substantial subsidy. Even with it, the wind generators are not making windfall gains because they do not produce often and when they are producing they are a large enough slice of the market to cause prices to tumble. Plus the high cost of maintenance of course.
The best way forward for the Libs would be for Malcolm Turnbull to announce he is stepping down at the end of this term and then open the door for Abbott to announce a policy for the immediate reduction in electricity prices by ending all the wind and solar subsidies along with the requirement that the grid scale can only offer into the market on a scheduled basis on the grounds that they are inflicting economic armageddon on the Australian economy.
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Agreed. My sentiments exactly. Abbott did so much that was promised, so much that was good and necessary. Stopped the boats, removed the carbon tax, the mining tax. There was little he could so about Conroy’s mad NBN and much that still causes suffering. The thing he did not do was remove the Howard government’s appalling RET (Renewable Energy(Electricity) Act 2001). This is causing so much suffering for no good at all. Windmills need electricity prices to double again before they can live without subsidies.
The other is that someone who stops the RET and restores the existing coal stations to profitability will kill off the mad wind and solar industries would romp home at any election. Labor voters are suffering. Factories are suffering. Everyone is suffering and all the hidden subsidies to keep factories going, Portland Alcoa, Port Pirie, Whyalla, endless rivers of our cash to pretend wind is doing a great job. It isn’t. It cannot even cover its own costs. The profits come from punitive taxes on the poor.
So stop the water uphill madness. You would think Turnbull was Rudd. Perhaps he is? Super rich, doesn’t care, thinks talking a lot is being a great communicator. Can we please have the man back we elected, the one who thinks before he speaks, ridiculed though that has been by Malcolm’s ABC/SBS.
Even now it is clearly only Abbott who can save the Liberals. Clearly only Abbott who evern has a platform. Malcolm stands for only one thing, Malcolm. He hasn’t a clue. Even Barnaby now realises that the man he supported so faithfully was like the windmills, powered by hot air and it’s time to stop pushing water uphill.
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Malcolm’s two stand out weakness are that he is lazy and hates Abbott with a passion.
Of course he is lazy, Trump never misses a chance to get on the hustings, revisiting friendly electorates, not so MT.
His hatred for all things Abbott means that he simply refuses to embrace ANY of Tony’s good policies, many were still work in progress. Anyone remember the Trade Union RC? No? Can’t blame you. A woman with adverse findings from that commission is now a Senator, unchallenged. Once he abandoned everything with Tony’s finger prints, he had no conservative policies to run on. The party now has none they can nail to the mast, they were abandoned, thrown to the wolves.
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JUDITH SLOAN
I don’t really care if Malcolm Turnbull loses 30 Newspolls in a row. His hollow promises are another story.
The Australian
00
“The one thing that is clear about our current situation is the trajectory. We have lost 30 Newspolls in a row. It is clear that the people have made up their mind about Mr Abbott’s leadership…
The alternative if we were to wait and this issue, these problems were to roll on and on and on is we will get no clear air.
The fact is we are maybe 10 months, 11 months away from the next election. Every month lost is a month of lost opportunities. We have to make a change for our country’s sake, for the Government’s sake, for the party’s sake.”
Daily Telegraph
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Abbott should not challenge for the leadership. If he were to do so and get up with less than a convincing majority his Lazarus rising moment would be a poisoned chalice.
Do what Rudd did, vow not to challenge unless the party comes to him. OK we know Rudd lied but Tony is generally considered to be honest.
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He did that. He said he would have to be recruited.
10
how big is the Swamp behind the attacks on Scott Pruitt?
only the threat to the CAGW mob’s trillion-dollar plans can explain the absolute hostility to the Trump presidency:
6 Apr: CafeMom: Environmental radicals go all out against Scott Pruitt
By Printus LeBlanc
One of the critical groups leading the charge against Mr. Pruitt is the Environmental Integrity Project (EIP). The radical group was founded in 2002 by Eric Schaeffer, a former disgruntled EPA employee. EIP is dedicated to ending the fossil fuel economy. Seems like a typical radical environmental group, until the funding comes to light.
EIP has received over $700,000 from a group known as the Energy Foundation. A 2014 Senate report called the Energy Foundation a “pass through.” It is an organization that receives tens of millions from other charities and foundations to dole out to groups that can do the activist work the donors are not allowed to do. It is one of these main funders of the Energy Foundation that raises eyebrows.
The Sea Change Foundation is a San Francisco based group that has given tens of millions to the Energy Foundation…
Wikipedia: Nat Simons
Nathaniel Simons is a US businessman and philanthropist. He started Meritage Group, an investment management firm, and co-founded Prelude Ventures, a cleantech investment fund. Simons is the co-founder and a director of the Sea Change Foundation, a foundation focused on climate change and clean energy policy…
In 2009, Simons co-founded Prelude Ventures, a cleantech venture fund…
In 2015, Simons and his wife, Laura Baxter-Simons, joined the Breakthrough Energy Coalition. The coalition is a partnership of individuals who have pledged to invest in new energy technologies…
Wikipedia: Breakthrough Energy Coalition
Breakthrough Energy Coalition is a global group of 28 high net worth investors from 10 countries committed to funding clean energy companies emerging from the initiatives of Mission Innovation, which was also announced at the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference.
In November 2015, the group announced that it would aim to bolster governmental assistance in renewable energy such as solar energy and wind power to $20 billion.
In December 2016, a group of investor’s collectively with personal worth of US$170 billion announced more personal commitment to funding the efforts of a US$1 billion fund to “focused on fighting climate change by investing in clean energy innovation.” The fund is named Breakthrough Energy Ventures fund.
The group is spearheaded by Bill Gates, who previously announced a personal $2 billion investment, and includes:
Jeff Bezos (Amazon & Washington Post)
Marc Benioff
Richard Branson
Reid Hoffman
Jack Ma
George Soros
Tom Steyer
Meg Whitman
Mark Zuckerberg
University of California was the sole institutional investor at launch.
Nat Simons
There has been criticism that the coalition was announced too early, before crucial details has been confirmed. At launch, a Gates Foundation spokesman confirmed that investment professionals had yet to be appointed, named investors – other than Gates – hadn’t publicly stated their level of investment and a financial structure hadn’t been confirmed.
The scale, at US$20bn of public cash over five years and the initial US$2bn of private cash, has also been criticised as inadequate: the World Bank suggests that US$100bn would be needed annually.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakthrough_Energy_Coalition
more to come…
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Nov 2016: American Energy Alliance: Podesta Emails Reveal Clinton Campaign’s Close Ties to the Environmental Left
Unsurprisingly, given Podesta’s longstanding relationships with progressive donors and leaders in the national environmental lobby, many of the exchanges involve the likes of Tom Steyer and Nat Simons. It also includes leaders of the national environmental lobby like Gene Karpinski of the League of Conservation Voters (LCV)…
4. Podesta was the banker in Tom Steyer’s “pay to play” relationship with Clinton…
5. Podesta was also cozy with hedge fund billionaire Nat Simons
Another donor that Steyer often corresponded with is Nat Simons, a hedge fund billionaire and founder of the Sea Change Foundation—a secretive foundation that funnels hundreds of millions of dollars to climate groups and the Democratic Party. Sea Change has come under fire for taking millions from a Bermuda shell-company based out of a law firm with ties to Russian oil interests…
In one email, the two set up a time to discuss an upcoming climate funders dinner with Christiana Figueres, the Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change…
In a later email to Podesta and Figueres, Simons outlines the purpose of the dinner and states that this isn’t a fundraising event, but admits that funding and politics “will almost certainly form part of the backdrop for your presentations and discussions.”…
6. The Center for American Progress sought to silence academics
For example, in 2014 Judd Legum of the Center for American progress went into full attack mode because Nate Silver of fivethirtyeight.com hired Roger Pielke Jr. to write on climate change. What Pielke Jr. wrote for fivethirtyeight.com was factually correct and supported by the consensus science from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Regardless, the Center for American Progress wanted to silence Pielke Jr.
In an email to Tom Steyer, Legum brags that the Center for American Progress is the reason that Pielke had been silenced…READ ON
http://americanenergyalliance.org/2016/11/04/podesta-emails-reveal-clinton-campaigns-close-ties-environmental-left/
Inside Philanthropy: The Billionaires vs. Donald J. Trump
by David Callahan
Michael Bloomberg; Warren Buffet
Herb Sandler: He’s also given tens of millions to fight climate change and advance environmental goals…
James Simons. The billionaire hedge funder gave millions to elect Hillary Clinton, but his philanthropy is decidedly non-ideological, focused on advancing basic science. However, some of Simons’ vast fortune—which now stands at $16.5 billion—is being passed down to the foundations of his three children, all of which engage in grantmaking to support progressive causes. Nat Simons’ Sea Change Foundation is among the top backers of groups fighting climate change, while the foundation that Liz Simons runs with her husband Mark Heising is also involved with this work, and has specifically given to advance Obama’s Clean Power Plan. We’d expect that with Trump in power, the flow of Jim Simons’ money to bankroll his kids’ activist philanthropy will only increase—maybe dramatically.
George Soros; Tom Steyer
Hans Wyss: He sits on the board of the Center for American Progressive and heavily funds environmental work.
https://www.insidephilanthropy.com/home/2016/12/9/the-billionaires-vs-donald-j-trump
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Environmental Integrity Project homespage (Pruitt, Pruitt, Pruitt)
(at bottom of page): Who We Are
(from Our Board)
Wesley P. Warren, Treasurer, President, Win with Green Consulting
Wesley Warren is the President of Win with Green Consulting, LLC, which provides strategic advice to organizations advancing clean energy and environmental policies. He was formerly the Director of Programs for the NRDC Action Fund. Before joining NRDC, Mr. Warren served in the Clinton White House as Associate Director for Natural Resources, Energy and Science in the Office of Management and Budget. During his seven-year tenure in the White House, Mr. Warren also held positions as the chief-of-staff for the Council on Environmental Quality and the executive director of the White House Task Force on Livable Communities established by Vice-President Al Gore.
Larry Shapiro, Associate Director of Program Development, Rockefeller Family Fund
Larry joined the Rockefeller Family Fund in 2000. Prior to this, he directed the New York Public Interest Research Group’s (NYPIRG) environmental programs from 1988 through 1999…
Joanne Fox-Przeworski
Her career includes senior management positions at the United Nations, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, and Bard College…
***Al Armendariz, Senior Campaign Representative, Sierra Club
Former U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regional administrator Dr. Alfredo “Al” Armendariz joined the staff of the Sierra Club effective in 2012 as Senior Campaign Representative for the organization’s Beyond Coal campaign.
http://www.environmentalintegrity.org/
***Al Armendariz:
Youtube: 1min48secs: EPA Official: EPAs “philosophy” is to “crucify” and “make examples” of US energy producers
posted by Senator Jim Inhofe; Published on Apr 25, 2012
In a Senate speech, Senator Inhofe will draw attention to a little known video from 2010, which shows a top EPA official, Region VI Administrator ***Al Armendariz, using the vivid metaphor of crucifixion to explain EPA’s enforcement tactics for oil and gas producers. In this video Administrator Armendariz says:
“But as I said, oil and gas is an enforcement priority, it’s one of seven, so we are going to spend a fair amount of time looking at oil and gas production. And I gave, I was in a meeting once and I gave an analogy to my staff about my philosophy of enforcement, and I think it was probably a little crude and maybe not appropriate for the meeting but I’ll go ahead and tell you what I said. It was kind of like how the Romans used to conquer little villages in the Mediterranean. They’d go into a little Turkish town somewhere, they’d find the first five guys they saw and they would crucify them. And then you know that town was really easy to manage for the next few years. And so you make examples out of people who are in this case not compliant with the law. Find people who are not compliant with the law, and you hit them as hard as you can and you make examples out of them, and there is a deterrent effect there. And, companies that are smart see that, they don’t want to play that game, and they decide at that point that it’s time to clean up. And, that won’t happen unless you have somebody out there making examples of people. So you go out, you look at an industry, you find people violating the law, you go aggressively after them. And we do have some pretty effective enforcement tools. Compliance can get very high, very, very quickly. That’s what these companies respond to is both their public image but also financial pressure. So you put some financial pressure on a company, you get other people in that industry to clean up very quickly. So, that’s our general philosophy.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ze3GB_b7Nuo
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amazing Politico ever mentioned this:
Oct 2016: Politico: Clinton’s innermost green money donors
By ANTHONY ADRAGNA
Hillary Clinton’s campaign set up a call with nine major green donors in August 2015 to “discuss how climate and energy issues are playing out within the context of the race,” according to a hacked email from campaign chair John Podesta’s email account newly released by WikiLeaks.
Those who made the cut: Prelude Ventures co-founder Nat Simons; green building pioneer Daniel Tishman; Centerbridge Partners co-founder Mark Gallogly; Antha N. Williams, leader of the environment program at Bloomberg Philanthropies; Linden Trust for Conservation founder Larry Linden; billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer; Berkshire Partners co-founder Carl Ferenbach; and Corridor Partners principals Kathleen Welch and Bill Roberts…
Chelsea Clinton on Tom Steyer: Other messages reveal Steyer’s interest in collaborating with the Clinton Foundation, and Chelsea Clinton asked aides to “let me know how I can help.” Podesta replied to the thread that a successful pitch to Steyer would have to be “in the climate/clean energy space.”
War threat against Murdoch: Liberal public relations guru David Fenton proposed a $2 million campaign last year to target Rupert Murdoch personally over climate science criticism by Fox News and The Wall Street Journal editorial board, though the push does not appear to have ultimately occurred, Pro’s Elana Schor reports. Fenton added that Australian businessman and environmentalist Graeme Wood had committed $500,000 to the campaign “if I can raise another million.”…
https://www.politico.com/tipsheets/morning-energy/2016/10/clintons-innermost-green-money-donors-217042
Oct 2016: Townhall: Billionaire Crony Corporatist Schemes
by Paul Driessen
At the epicenter are hedge fund millionaire Nathaniel Simons, his wife Laura and their secretive Sea Change Foundation.
“Investors” become even wealthier, as billions of dollars are transferred annually to environmentalists, scientists, politicians, bureaucrats and crony-corporatists in Renewable Energy & Climate Crisis, Inc. The alleged “urgency” of replacing fossil fuels with “eco-friendly renewable energy” (to prevent catastrophic manmade climate change) drives and excuses operations that define or barely skirt “corrupt practices.”…
Here we are talking about radically and fundamentally dismantling the energy system that powers the American free enterprise, transportation, communication and healthcare systems … replacing it with expensive, subsidized, unreliable, land-hungry wind, solar and biofuel energy – and using vindictive government power to bankrupt and impoverish disfavored factions, while enriching favored allies…
Imagine the trillions of dollars required for the USA to accept the wind industry’s “vision” of 4,000,000 megawatts of electricity from 500,000 to 1,250,000 mega turbines in our Great Lakes and along our Atlantic, Pacific and Gulf of Mexico coasts. Picture the multi trillions required to achieve 50% renewable energy by 2027 and a “100% carbon-free economy” by 2050. Envision the potential billionaire profits!…
As the investigators reveal, the billionaires’ green network transfers millions of dollars from individual, corporate and “charitable foundation” donors … through tax-exempt “educational” nonprofits that do not have to disclose donor names … to activist and pressure groups that work to influence elections, legislation, regulations, legal actions and public perceptions on energy and environmental issues…
https://townhall.com/columnists/pauldriessen/2016/10/29/billionaire-crony-corporatist-schemes-n2237950
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ECNS = English-language China News Service:
27 Mar: ECNS: Carbon market to curb pollution
Eric Heitz, CEO of the ***Energy Foundation, said China’s launch of a carbon market is a milestone that will help tackle pollution and climate change and suggested that in the future, more sectors should be covered in addition to power generation.
The fact that “the largest power producer in the world has a carbon trading system itself is very important,” he said…
Heitz said the carbon system will make a big difference in cutting carbon pollution despite only applying to power generation in the first phase, and there is plenty room for future development.
“The launch of China’s carbon market three months ago is just the beginning … when more areas are covered, that can make the carbon market stronger and cover 40-50 percent of China’s emissions.”
In addition, expanding the carbon market to other sectors will also drive innovation in those sectors, he added…
According to Heitz, California has collected about $7 billion in revenues from its carbon market since the program was established in 2013, and all of that revenue has been invested into innovation and clean energy development.
Heitz said China should also draw from Europe’s lessons and avoid setting up a cap that is too weak.
“China is good at learning from other countries and we believe lessons from Europe and California will be of value to China,” he said…
http://www.ecns.cn/business/2018/03-27/297226.shtml
Energy Foundation Board
includes:
Mark Burget, Executive Vice President and North American Regional Director, The Nature Conservancy, former president and chief operating officer of the ClimateWorks Foundation;
Stephen Harper, Global Director of Environmental Policy, Intel Corporation; served in senior positions at Amoco Oil Company, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), ICF Consulting, and the California State Coastal Conservancy;
William Ruckelshaus, ex-EPA head, ETC
https://www.ef.org/board/
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You could bet that all that money is deductible. Toughen up on tax-free status and the money would dry up a little, or more than a little. 🙂
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7 Apr: Breitbart: Germany’s Die Welt Proclaims Donald Trump ‘Most Successful Climate Protector in the World’
by Thomas D. Williams, Ph.D.
In a bizarre irony, the German daily newspaper Die Welt has proclaimed U.S. President Donald Trump “the most successful climate protector in the world” after a new global climate report revealed that U.S. carbon dioxide emissions dropped dramatically during Trump’s first year in office.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) released its “Global Energy and CO2 Status Report, 2017” on March 22, which contained the bombshell news that the “biggest drop in emissions came from the United States,” which made folks at Die Welt sit up and take notice…
The United States led the small pack of countries that managed to lower greenhouse gas emissions, accompanied by UK, Japan, and Mexico. According to IEA figures, the United States managed to reduce CO2 emissions in 2017 by 0.5 percent, or 25 million tons, to 4810 million tons…
President Trump has been in the climate-change doghouse ever since he announced the withdrawal of the United States from the Paris Climate Accord…
Enter Daniel Wetzel, energy journalist for Die Welt, a self-described “liberal cosmopolitan” German newspaper.
Mr. Wetzel doffed his hat to President Trump, saying that despite being stigmatized as an enemy of the environment, he has shown himself to be quite the contrary. Wetzel contrasted the positive U.S. results with those of China, which signed on to the Paris Climate Accord. While U.S. emissions dropped, China’s grew by nearly a full percentage point in 2017.
Curiously, some of the countries that chastised the United States for dropping out of the Paris Accord performed far worse than the U.S. during 2017, with the European Union (EU) emissions rising by a stunning 46 million tons. Germany itself has not reduced its emissions for nine years in a row…
In WHO’s 2017 report on air pollution, the United States was listed as one of the countries with the cleanest air in the world, significantly cleaner than the air in Germany, Italy, Switzerland, the UK, Japan, Austria, and France.
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2018/04/07/germanys-die-welt-proclaims-trump-successful-climate-protector-world/
7 Apr: UK Sun: BLAIR SCARE Tony Blair calls on Merkel to BLOCK Brexit in bid to ‘do everything possible to keep Britain in EU’
Arch-remainer Blair urged the German Chancellor to act and said that it would be a “mistake of historic proportions if the United Kingdom leaves the European Union”
by Alex Matthews
The former PM told Business Insider: “Even Europe – especially Germany – has a lot to lose.
“It is in all our interests to maintain barrier-free trade across the continent and to hold liberal democracies together in times when authoritarian structures are resurgent.”…
Blair, who led a Labour government from 1997-2007, said Berlin should push for a reversal of Brexit by joining forces with France and push for reform in Brussels…
“Germany can also help to promote a British return to the EU by showing that the EU can change itself.”…
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/5996199/tony-blair-merkel-block-brexit-germany-britain-eu/
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Blair was the first and possibly only, national leader I’ve heard admit that he favoured unlimited immigration because it strengthens the labour vote. With that track record I would ignore him if I were a Brit. Maybe they already do which is why he is talking to the enemy for two wars which still has delusions of grandeur. An orrible leader who, like Rudd and Obama should ride off into the sunset, never to be heard of again.
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The things ya finds on the inter-webs! Searching to see if it had snowed recently in Vietnam – its northern, mountainous region often receives snowfall in winter – I discovered this article about a Vietnamese fashion boutique owner, and mother of two, who had entered this month’s North Pole Marathon.
https://tuoitrenews.vn/news/features/20180401/vietnams-first-woman-to-join-north-pole-marathon/44888.html
“The Vietnamese daredevil, Minh, who has never been to the North Pole… has been training regularly, alternating between swimming, yoga, jogging, cycling, and weekly trips to the gym.” Good luck, darling.
http://www.npmarathon.com/
Gotta love the homepage of the “running experience of a lifetime” – pics of previous entrants swaddled in layers of thermals, jackets, hoods, beanies, face masks, goggles, gloves… not a bikini nor pair of boardshorts in sight! Entrance fee for a single ‘new breed of Arctic adventurer’ is €15,000 or just shy of US$20,000. This includes ‘return flights from Svalbard (Norway) to the North Pole camp… helicopter flights in the polar region… t-shirts, medals, certificates and souvenirs…’ Also, there will be armed guards provided (in case of polar bear threat). Yet that’s kosher because –
http://www.npmarathon.com/html/news/195
“North Pole Marathon was recently awarded ‘Carbon Free’ status from CarbonFund.org.” The “CO2 impact of the 2½ hour flights to the North Pole camp – and related helicopter flights in the polar region – was scientifically calculated”. Is that different to being mathematically calculated? Anyway, some trees are being planted in the Amazon somewhere.
The race was supposed to commence Monday, 9 April, however it’s been postponed until the 16th. One wonders why: possibly the 20˚ below zero temp? The even colder wind chill? The growing volume of sea ice? Polar bears? Yet the intrepid runner from the tropics “says she has already overcome her biggest challenge – laziness! ‘Getting out of the house and training every day are [sic] already 50 percent of the way,’ she shared.” It’s almost worth a Josh cartoon in WUWT?
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MULTIPLE PICS: 6 Apr: Daily Mail: The real-life Atlantis: Jakarta is sinking by up to 25cm a YEAR as experts warn there is just a decade left to save it
Jakarta is sinking faster than any other city in the world, with parts dropping by up to 25cm per year
Hydrologists say northern Jakarta, which is home to four million people, will be underwater in a decade
Sinking is caused by wells, which residents rely on for drinking water, draining the land underneath the city
Government is building sea walls in an attempt to keep the waters at bay, but progress has been slow
By Chris Pleasance
Ministers are currently building sea walls to shield the residents from disaster, but that does little more than delay the inevitable, since it is not the ocean rising but the ground dropping that is causing the problem…
As the aquifers drain they deflate, like removing stuffing from a cushion, causing the land above to sink.
While the aquifers would refill under normal circumstances, with Jakarta receiving an average of 60 inches of rain per year, around 97 per cent of the city is covered with concrete and asphalt, meaning it cannot drain through.
Instead, that water runs off into the 13 rivers which feed into the city, or the ocean, compounding the problem. Heavy concrete also weighs the land down, speeding up the descent…READ ON
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5581499/Jakarta-sinking-25cm-year-experts-warn-just-decade-left-save-it.html
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That is really sad.
Maybe they should stop pumping the aquifers.
Not due to CO2!
00
In the wet season Jakarta’s roads are often flooded including main arterial roads.
It’s not unusual to discover that a taxi has wet seats.
00
I have watched a few YouTube videos of repairing Tesla cars. Apparently a non-Tesla mechanic or DIY guy can’t just swap components, say from a crashed car from an automotive junk yard. The electrical and electronics components all have electronic serial numbers and without the factory software and service tools you can’t just swap seemingly identical components. Also, the cars report back to base on a daily basis where they send software upgrades and receive performance statistics from the car. They are designed so that you are basically obliged to attend official Tesla service centres, except in some US states such as Massachusetts with “right to repair” laws where the manufacturer is obliged to provide service manuals and software and hardware tools but even then it is made very difficult or costly for non-Tesla operatives. Typical Green control freak arrangement. Apparently because of this they have fairly low resale value.
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Is it possible to strip out all the computer items and regain control of a tesla car (especially a crashed one?)
20
The computer would need to be able to find all the peripheral items with their programmed serial numbers so if it couldn’t find all of them the car wouldn’t start. So you could only use the computer if you bought across all the components with serial numbers it was programmed for.
30
Im sure there is a way to fudge serial numbers.
Toner cartridge manufacturers do it – as the printer pribta, there is often a chip on the toner cartridge that increases in number. When ut gets to a certain value even uf there is still toner in the cartrudge, the chip says ” no good” and the printer stops.
I had to buy toner and a new chip to put on existing cartridge to get it to run again. Its basically predatory, and its often cheaper to buy a new printer with cartridge than a new cartridge. The greenies have toner cartridge recycling, but thats nonsense, as often the cartridges are good for another 10 gos befire you recycle them.
Clearly the greenies dont understand how toner cartridges work, or they turn a blind eye to it. Id suggest you could cut toner cartridge recyling by 90% if you openly published how to recharge a toner cartridge.
For our printer, new cartridge is $70. Buy new toner and new chip, its $15 plus cartridge good fir another 9 refills….
21
I refuse to buy an electric car until they solve the problem of the slow recharging time. Can you imagine what would happen if one particular car maker produced cars the required at least an hour or two to refill with petrol/gas? The car maker would go bankrupt overnight.
40
Even when I’m low on fuel I can pump the 200 gallons or so of diesel, clean my mirrors and windows, top off the DEF, and do a walk around of the rig checking tires and lights and be on my way in less than 15 minutes. I wonder how long it takes to recharge one of Tesla’s big electric trucks?
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Tesla has gone with proprietary everything, to tie its customers (or really their cash flows) tightly with Tesla. Its a repeat of the 1980 IT world where all the vendors had unique ways of doing things and interoperability was grestly limited.
If sanity prevails all the other vendors will get together and agree on standards where they are relevant, chargers woud be the classic example. You can gaurantee the standards they run with probably wont be Teslas 🙂
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Doesnt a phone manufacturer with a fruit logo do a similar thing?
My mother in law got a forced OS upgrade that basically bricked her phone…. in what other industry do you pay $1000 for a linux distro, have the manufacturer kniw most of what you do, where you go, and have you tied back to the company forever?
If you tried that with a car youd have a riit on your hands…unless if course owners are gid socialist who love being told what to do while looking “cool” and virtue signalling….
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Little bit more involved than a Linux distro I think, but yes Apple is another great example.
You just need enough consumer sheep more intersted in appearances than function/price/performance. They seem happy to be lead by the nose from purchase to purchase within the Apple universe.
00
What actually happened at Easter Island?
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/04/07/easter-islands-ecological-suicide-myths-and-realities/
I have read Jared Diamonds book; “Collapse”. His argument seemed persuasive at the time. I also watch David Attenborough: Lost Gods of Easter Island by David Attenborough,
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/xsynkz
Both of them seemed correct at the time. But all it needs is an alternative narrative to turn everything on its head.
Diamond and Attenborough; probably wrong.
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Have you seen any of Graham Hancock’s videos on YouTube?
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No,l not yet
00
Have you seen any of Graham Hancock’s videos on YouTube?
02
When asked how they moved the statues the locals reply that “they walked”. I was fascinated by a doco where they studied the shape of the base and with such a base managed to “walk” a mock statue with ropes in a manner similar to how we move heavy furniture, rocking it moving alternate corners forward.
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Easter Island, an alternative version that’ssupported by evidence,
to that fear and guilt Jared Diamond, Tim Flannery future eater
scenario.
https://townhall.com/columnists/dennisavery/2018/03/31/does-easter-islands-tragedy-predict-our-societys-collapse-n2466021
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beththeserf Apr8,18:22:43 pm
Kitten Shadow crawled back in with broken tail! She could not display ‘bestus Cat’s ass! to all! She is getting better; now jumping everwar! She can destroy whole roll of john paper in milliseconds; while still smiling her convincing frown of “Wars my food”!
All the best!-will-
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Resilient Kitten Shadow! 🙂
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Gift Kitten, much more resilient than perch-aced ‘My Pillow’. I love her so!
All the best!-will-
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Kitten Shadow! Is interested in my spouting of whatever! Eventually she lifts hind leg then licks her*ss. This is signal that I have lost audience!
I love her so! 🙂
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I begin to despise loudmouth arrogant ignorant Earthlings. Kitten never ignores anything! She cleverly fools enemies! I love her so!
All the best!-will-
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April 8th in North Central Indiana. It’s 20 deg. F with frost on the ground. The furnace is running. This colder and wetter than average weather is now to the point where it’s delaying farmers from getting into the fields for those in the Corn belt and others. If it keeps this up much longer yields this year are liable to be significantly effected. Usually by this time I have started seeing Robins that have migrated up from the south. Haven’t seen nor heard a single Robin nor any of the several species of migratory transients that start passing through at my feeders on the way north at this time of year.
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This year is actually the most late season snow cover and the most snow since 1978 in N. America.
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Just watched Joe Bastardi’s Saturday Summary. He says this April is now the 3rd coldest in the satellite record and with more cold coming will probably end up #1. If this turns out to be correct the yield of crops in the corn belt, upper Midwest and plains states will all be down compared to last year.
He and others are saying that it looks like we’ll have an El Nino this year. Joe believes it will most likely be a Modoki El Nino which usually indicates the following winter in the US will be colder and snowier than average. Where the hell is my Global Warming!
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Here in Northern Ohio in the US on April 8, 6PM EST it is 35F. Yesterday we had some light Global Warming fall from the sky but not enough to turned the grass white. The farmers around here are also starting to worry about when they will be able to start working their fields. I did see a few Robins around here a couple of days ago, but they are gone now; they probably decided to head back south for a while.
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We had enough last night to turn the grass white here. I would guess somewhere around an inch of global warming on the ground this morning. Currently 30 deg. F. Covered the grass and my deck but my gravel drive is clear.
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Alan Kendall says: 08 Apr 18 at 9:10 am
“Will you use George Bernard Shaw’s 1903 quote about those who teach to trash academia. This ignores the fact that in most western universities employment is based almost entirely upon research ability and prospects….”
I use it to emphasize your stated fact. Consider:
1. Conceit is unfounded overestimation of one’s personal standing.
2. Hubris is well founded confidence that is over relied upon.
3. Arrogance is unfounded overestimation of one’s personal talents.
For me ‘arrogance’ is but ‘hubris’ converted into religious belief; (dogma)!
The so called climatologists knowingly remain ignorant of any concept of the generation and propagation of spontaneous thermal EMR flux! This religious ignorance remains the basis for the entire CO2 CAGW fraud!
All the best!-will-
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Never took hubris to mean anything about being well founded. To me arrogance and hubris are different aspects of the same thing. Arrogance being more about attitude, hubris being more about the need to tell everyone about it. But that’s just me.
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Alan Kendall says: 07 Apr 18 at 9:05
CHEAPER depends on one personal values! I prefer those of Beththeserf! 🙂
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Alan Kendall says: 08 Apr 18 at 2:30 pm
Alan I have made no such attack! I only criticize the conflation, union, intersection, of academia and arrogance! Do you deny such intersection?
BTW I claim no expertise, only consistent failure! I have failed to observe\measure\demonstrate any spontaneous thermal EMR flux in any waveband or in any direction of higher radiance or temperature!
THIS remains the claim of all that allude to Earth’s surface having higher temperature that the S-B equation predicts! This while ‘temperature’ itself is never a scientifically defined, property of anything physical! Why can this scientific atrocity not be corrected\abandoned\giggled out of existence ? 🙂
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Will,
Spot on!
In addition to your points I would add something about the so called “academics” who continually quote absolute values derived from inputs to the S-B equation.
They are showing their ignorance of the meaning of that equation.
You cannot get a meaningful result from the S-B equation by plugging in measured values: it doesn’t work like that.
Using S-B it is only possible to estimate variations from well observed and recorded existing data for a system.
They do not have these observations or previous data.
SUPERFICIAL SCIENCE at its best with just enough sciencyness to con the tax payers and voters.
KK
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KinkyKeith April 10,18:9:12
For small temperature difference the correct form of the S-B equation is:
Maximim EMR Power flux, from mass Horespower normalized by L²; W/m²
flux = 4 · ε · σ T³ · ΔT. The integral of such remains the proper S-B equation! Notice the proper subtraction between temperature limits in parenthesis! Those required parenthesis demand full evaluation before any other mathematical operation in that equation!
Indeed the complete (S-B) equation is but the integral form (with respect to fixed temperatures) a theoretical maximum spontaneous EMR power flux from the surface of some mass(vector), in the direction of lower ‘radiance temperature’.
Indeed Keith, intentional deliberate FR$AUD for profit!
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I love and hate this blog at the same time , it’s the go to site on global warming , because you all understand how to use critical thinking skills to denounce suedo science and yet when it comes to your religion , you fall back on faith , consensus , it’s so frustrating
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Which religion? Also note that all religions are faith based but not all faith based ideas are religions.
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How dare you knock my belief in the church of the flying spaghetti monsters!
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Ah! but which sect are you?
Ever since Cardinal Garganelli was denounced as a practicing penne-phile the church has been split into the Traditionalists, who think the sauce should be on the outside and the Lasagnas who favour internal sauce.
The traditionalists are split themselves into the Vermicellis, with the Bucatinis as an off-shoot, and the Linguinis or flats. The Linguinis have recently split with the New Age Spiralizer types claiming that zucchinis can be pasta if converted.
The Lasagnas are also split into the Cannellonis (although subject to rumours of Penne-philia) and the Orecchiettes.
The Cannellonis have in turn split into the Macaronis, the Manicottis and the Rigatonis among others.
The Orecchiettes have also split Faralles and Campanellis.
Then there are the sects which have further split the Church while claiming to be trying to mend the schisms e.g. the Raviolis and the Tortellinis etc.
Of course NONE of the sects will have anything to do with Gnocchis.
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Arrrrrrr!!! where is my colander?
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That’s a big generalisation dd.
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“For proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.”
Also Gnocchi is NOT REAL PASTA!!! Shun! Shun the thick, small, soft dough dumplings! Shun!
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With US P45 please notice: “In short…Pruitt is doing a great job!” HOWEVER If not the better replacement will thank him for his services. MAGA!! There exist so many fine US folk that could replace any and all Congress-varments! These fine citizens need your support, not that of DNC, RNC, nor Global Banksters! Those folk willing to attempt to serve\represent, need support from every member of the USA ‘well regulated Militia’, known as USens! No time to stop practice or reloading! 🙂
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I have trouble understanding exactly what you mean. But at a guess you’re saying Pruitt should stay. If I’m wrong I’m sure you’ll let me know.
Pruitt’s problems are too many and too easily found as I said earlier in this thread and I cannot see how Trump can keep him. Ability counts but so does honesty and accountability to the people for being and remaining honest. If Trump doesn’t dump him I’ll not only be disappointed in Trump but I’ll be a lot less likely to vote for him again if he has a serious republican challenger in 2020.
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Pruitt will stay until P45 finds a replacement that is more skilled. Then Pruitt will be formally thanked for his effort. Capiche! P45 never discards those loyal\useful!
All the best!-will-
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Pruitt is good and Kelly is bad.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/09/climate/pruitt-red-team-climate-debate-kelly.html
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‘If Trump doesn’t dump him …’
What did he do wrong?
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Gordo, it is hard to say he has done anything WRONG but he didn’t do himself any favours in a Fox interview.
This is the long interview:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYE2dYT13wo
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So he behaves in juvenile fashion, so does Donald, read the NY Times article above and its plain to see why Pruitt is being ousted.
If Donald sacks Pruitt then clearly the President is empty headed.
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thou shall not speak against dear leader. You shall have no thoughts of your own.
00
No one is perfect, but cleaning up the EPA so its non predatory is a good thing….
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Politicians and trolls are like Diapers, they need to be changed often and for the same reason !
10
We bag our politicians and force a coup.
‘Barnaby Joyce says the Prime Minister should consider relinquishing the leadership if he doesn’t lift the Coalition’s poll numbers by Christmas.’
ABC
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Ethics violations like renting a condo for $50 a month from a Republican in a federal position is enough all by itself.
As head of the EPA I don’t think anyone accuses him of something wrong, just politically unacceptable. But ethics and honesty count.
I wish Hillary’s ethics and honesty could be hung around her neck. It would sink her 20 feet into the ground from the dead weight of it all.
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“– as long as the government serves the people again…”
There has never been such intent! The only intent in any ‘government’ is to reduce ‘people’ to serfs, slaves, FOOD!; for luxurious enjoyment by the self appointed ELITE of said government. There has never been any other reason for ‘government’! 🙂
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‘China was by far the world’s largest investing country in renewables, at a record 126.6 billion dollars, up 31 percent on 2016. There were also sharp increases in investment in Australia, Mexico and Sweden.’
China Daily
10
I think China as a manufacturer of “renewables” sold to gullible and incompetently lead countries such as Australia only installs them to “showcase” them to the gullible world and to prove they use their own technology. I don’t think anyone in China seriously believes in them. They know the future is in fossil fuels, nuclear and hydro which they are developing in Tibet.
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David Maddison:
As I have said before there is also their desire to get electricity out into the areas remote from the grid, which rely, at best, on diesel. An improved service (backed by diesel) makes the locals happier and the construction times are far quicker and suited to low demand areas. It also ‘subsidizes’ the manufacturers who get volume orders to lower their cost to make and thus boost export sales. That strategy also gains them admiration among the gullibles who cannot do arithmetic and realise that China has no intention of going above 10% renewables and destabilising their reliable conventionals. (Their target is around 8.5% by 2025 or less than Australia is now).
20
here we go –2 articles for the roo http://balance10.blo gspot.com/2018/04/thanks-to-kremlin-again.html http://balance10.blogspot.com/2018/04/to-hold-back-humanity-from-higher.html
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“Nuclear energy has faced serious challenges in recent years because of several factors: competition from low gas prices, subsidised renewables and slow growth in electricity demand in certain markets. But because of several powerful forces we are seeing signs that this year nuclear energy will come roaring back, writes Jarret Adams.”
Five reasons nuclear energy will rebound in 2018
We shall see. One thing is for sure. Australia is bucking the word-wide trend to use a mixed bag of power generation solutions (gas, coal, nuclear and renewables) for the foreseeable future, perhaps even as far as to the end of the century. Why are we allowing Australia to go out of its way to crash its economy for no benefit at all to the environment or anyone except for the greedy businesses that are making billions out of renewables through massive incentives? I try not to accept the idea that Australians are that stupid but it’s getting harder to ignore that possibility.
30
Interesting piece on our ABC how the UK is going coal free under a conservative government and how apparently we could learn so much from them.
No mention of :
Inter-connectors to coal and nuclear powered EU
Teetering on the brink through winter (with coal generators running)
15 Nuclear power plants and more under construction
Bio mass fuel being shipped in from the US
Wholesale destruction of rural Scotland
Unbelievable slanted propaganda
31
7 Apr: DailyStarUK: Hayley Coyle: 48,000 Brits dead after worst winter in 42 years
THE UK is being hit by its worst winter death toll in 42 years, a new search says.
After a brief mild spell, temperatures are set to dip again in April after the chilliest March in 21 years.
It is estimated that 20,275 Brits more than average died between December 1 and March
An additional 2,000 deaths more than average were expected due to cold conditions between March 23 and 31, this winter’s average death rates show.
According to the Office of National Statistics, one in 10 cold weather deaths are among under-65s, one in 10 among 65-75s and eight in 10 among over-75s.
It means this winter is set to total at least 48,000 deaths due to cold weather – which works out at an average of one death every three and a half minutes…
Department of Health chief medical officer Professor Dame Sally Davies, said: “Cold-related deaths represent the biggest weather-related source of mortality…
https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/694368/flu-winter-death-cold-fatalities
10
8 Apr: GWPF: John Constable: Coal and Oil Prevented US Blackouts this Winter
New data and analysis from the US government shows that during the recent Bomb Cyclone storm of late December 2017 and early January this year, the electricity system of the eastern half of the country avoided blackouts only because of increased output from conventional sources, particularly coal and, incredibly enough, oil. The performance of renewables was disappointing. The warning for Europe is loud and clear…READ ALL
http://www.thegwpf.com/coal-and-oil-prevented-us-blackouts-this-winter/
all the boring spin on Monash Group/coal-fired power plants.
ideologically, Coalition can’t subsidise coal – ignores “renewables” subsidies, & so on:
AUDIO: 5mins41secs: 9 Apr: ABC Breakfast: Fran Kelly: Politics with Michelle Grattan
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/politics-with-michelle-grattan/9632680
10
Paul Homewood has a few keen points to make regarding unreliables in the UK.
Reference: https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2018/04/08/wind-power-a-few-facts/
UK Annual subsidy cost per household: AUD 500
UK Cost of backup power payments by 2020: AUD 2.39 Billion
As the UK has more households (56 M) as compared to AU ( 20 M) , the cost per AU household would be proportionately higher for the same level of wind energy penetration into the generation market.
Something like:
AU Subsidy cost per household (2020) : AUD 1400
Cost of backup power subsidy payments: AUD 6.7 Billion
Sooner or later, one might actually be talking about some significant money, eh?
40
***de-industrialisation will be easy, according to Gupta, as the next generation sees industry as a “‘sunset’-sector”:
7 Apr: ABC: Renewables ‘cheaper and easier’ than nuclear, Whyalla steelworks boss Sanjeev Gupta says
By Daniel Keane
The SA Liberals are opposed to a high-level nuclear waste dump but remain open to the idea of a lower level federal facility, as well as nuclear energy generation.
“We’ve never ruled out the nuclear opportunity for energy,” the now premier Steven Marshall said while opposition leader in 2017.
Before winning government, the Liberals also flagged moves to reduce reliance on renewables by investing $200 million in a new interconnector to New South Wales.
Mr Gupta, who has just met with Prince Charles in Brisbane and will meet with Mr Marshall in the coming days, is positioning himself to become a major player in South Australia’s energy market by investing in renewable projects.
In October, his company GFG Alliance revealed it had approved a plan worth up to $700 million for solar, battery storage and pumped hydro in Australia.
“All of these will be delivered within the next couple of years,” Mr Gupta said.
While the British billionaire businessman said he did not have a “clear view” on nuclear energy, he pointed to renewables as a more affordable source of electricity in the long term.
“As far as energy is concerned, to our knowledge or to my knowledge anyway, there are cheaper and easier ways of [producing] energy, many of which are already underway,” Mr Gupta said.
“Things like pumped hydro and solar and batteries and so on.”…
Mr Gupta’s comments follow the release of an Australian Energy Market Operator report into Elon Musk’s Jamestown battery, which found the battery was outperforming coal and gas generators on key measures.
The British billionaire businessman said he would meet with Mr Marshall next week to discuss a “wide agenda of items” surrounding Whyalla’s future.
Mr Gupta said Mr Marshall had provided “great support” to Whyalla during the turmoil of 2016 when previous owner Arrium entered administration.
“I have zero doubt that support for Whyalla will only continue, or actually even strengthen under his leadership,” he said…
Mr Gupta met with Prince Charles on Friday night in Brisbane, where the Prince of Wales launched an initiative aimed at securing the long-term future of the Whyalla workforce.
The industrial cadets program has a long association with Prince Charles, and will now be rolled out in Australia for the first time.
The Whyalla steelworks will partner with local schools to provide students with accredited work experience in a bid to encourage more to consider careers at the plant…
Mr Gupta said the aim was to prevent future skills shortages and provide long-term security for the steelworks.
“What’s happened over the last generation worldwide, especially in developed countries like the UK and Australia — there has been a move away from industry,” Mr Gupta said.
***”Children don’t want to go into industry. They see that as a declining or ‘sunset’ sector.
“It’s not a future problem, it’s today’s problem. We have a serious crisis … we have an ageing population among our workforce.”
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-04-07/renewables-cheaper-and-easier-than-nuclear-sanjeev-gupta-says/9629680
10
“Mr Gupta’s comments follow the release of an Australian Energy Market Operator report into Elon Musk’s Jamestown battery, which found the battery was outperforming coal and gas generators on key measures”
WTF!? its not a generator, its a user of power
31
I think he means that it can collect lots of money when shortages send the market bidding to the limit.
10
The fact he met with Big Ears meand hes very likely “connected” to the Establushment.
Still, it will all end in tears once the carpet baggers and other Collaborators strip the economy bare and run off and hide in their bunkers once the food shortages and riots start…
Thinking about global cooling, do you reckon that UN funded seed vault in the Arctic mught be very heavily guarded once crops start failing and GM seeds wont gernibate?
Now – why build a seed vault?
Why do many wealthy people have bunkers?
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9 Apr: AustralianMining: Coal wagon delivery bolsters Aurizon in the Hunter Valley
Rail operator Aurizon has received a newly-built batch of coal wagons at the Port of Newcastle in New South Wales.
Aurizon has described the development as a clear symbol of the continuing growth in coal exports and Hunter Valley’s coal industry employment.
Catherine Baxter, Aurizon’s general manager in NSW, said the 32 wagons in the consignment were only one part of a 284-wagon order, with each wagon having capacity to carry up to 97.8t of coal.
“These wagons will enter service for our newest customers, AGL Macquarie and MACH Energy, demonstrating the strong growth we have seen in our New South Wales Coal haulage operations since we started in 2005,” Baxter said…
“Our coal haulage has increased from 180,000t in 2005 to 48Mt in 2017, underlining the broader opportunities in the coal sector for regional employment and income generated in, and for the local community.”
The Minerals Council of NSW revealed last month that stronger coal prices have added more than 1000 mining jobs in the Hunter Valley over the past year…
Australian coal exports have also continued to grow in value, with 2017 exports valued at $56.5 billion or 35 per cent higher than in 2016, according to Department of Trade and Foreign Affairs’ data.
https://www.australianmining.com.au/news/coal-wagon-delivery-bolsters-aurizon-hunter-valley/
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9 Apr: Bloomberg: Ben Sharples: Australia Sees Miners Winning Highest Japan Coal Deal Since 2012
Coal miners are set to win the highest supply contract in six years from Japanese utilities after demand drove spot prices higher, according to Australia’s commodity forecaster.
Japan’s utilities will probably pay $100 a metric ton for annual supplies during the period from April to March, the Department of Industry, Innovation and Science said in a quarterly report. That’s 18 percent higher than the deal in 2017 and the most since 2012. Spot prices climbed earlier in the year on strong demand as buyers snapped up cargoes amid supply concerns, the forecaster said.
“Going forward, strong growth in demand in emerging Asia will largely offset softer demand in the OECD,” the department said. “Western nations appear likely to continue to push to phase down their thermal coal use in favor of renewables and gas, the latter both for heating and power generation.”
Spot Newcastle coal capped its best quarter in six years after a winter freeze across Asia boosted heating demand and sapped supplies. The agreed April-March deal between Japan’s utilities and miners will establish a benchmark for the region that other buyers and sellers will follow…
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-08/australia-sees-miners-winning-highest-japan-coal-deal-since-2012
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8 Apr: Herald-Dispatch: Terry M. Jarrett: Coal emerges as power champion of winter
(Terry M. Jarrett is an energy attorney and consultant who served on the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners and the Missouri Public Service Commission)
According to a new report from the DOE’s National Energy Technology Laboratory, in January 2018 “U.S. electricity market experience demonstrated that without the resilience of coal plants the eastern United States would have suffered severe electricity shortages, likely leading to widespread blackouts.”
How is this possible – that coal shouldered most of the burden of keeping America’s lights on? After all, we hear increasing talk about the benefits of wind and solar power, along with more abundant natural gas. The suggestion has been that coal is no longer necessary.
The DOE report found that far from being unnecessary, coal is essential. Coal power plants have the unique ability to store fuel on-site, and they provided 55 percent of incremental daily U.S. power generation this winter. For the largest grid operators, coal provided the “most resilient form of generation due to available reserve capacity and on-site fuel availability, far exceeding all other sources.” Specifically, the data showed that coal provided three times the incremental power generation of natural gas and 12 times that of nuclear units.
The report also noted some interesting limits to nuclear power, natural gas and wind turbines. For example, most nuclear plants were already running at maximum output, and could only provide “negligible additional capacity” during peak conditions. Conversely, a surge in heating demand and pipeline congestion meant that natural gas was limited in adding “resilient capacity” for power plants. Renewable fuels performed even worse. Available wind energy was 12 percent lower during the “bomb cyclone” than for a typical winter day, resulting in a need for “dispatchable” fossil fuel generation to make up the difference.
The bottom line, according to the DOE study, is that coal provided a majority of the daily power generation needed to meet emergency winter conditions. But coal has been on the chopping block for the better part of a decade – which begs the question: What happens if more coal plants are retired? One NETL analyst cautions that “removing coal from the energy mix would worsen threats to the electrical grid’s dependability during future severe weather events.”…
http://www.herald-dispatch.com/opinion/terry-m-jarrett-coal-emerges-as-power-champion-of-the/article_550bbc25-18b2-5f73-b251-e625ebcdcffb.html
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It’s hard to keep up with all your posts Pat but this one is a good read. Recommended.
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like Fran Kelly & Michelle Grattan on ABC Breakfast, Malcolm Farr tries to downplay the consequences of shutting down Hazelwood. ***Farr doesn’t provide his “evidence” to prove Abbott wrong:
9 Apr: news.com.au: Malcolm Farr: Tony Abbott and Kevin Andrews use charity bike ride to push coal-fired power message
TONY Abbott took time off from his charity bike ride to post a bizarre video to Facebook to coincide with the PM’s latest loss in the polls.
Mr Abbott said it was a tragedy the facility had been shut and implied, ***contrary to other evidence, this was the cause of a big jump in Victoria’s wholesale power bills…
24th November 2017: Australian Energy Council: Looming increases in Victorian household electricity prices: What are the drivers?
by Ben Skinner
What has happened to wholesale prices?…
Below are the prices at which one could buy a 2018 dated electricity contract since October 2016, when the closure of Hazelwood power station was announced…CHART
As can be seen, the price at which a retailer could buy wholesale electricity in order to satisfy a customer’s 2018 needs almost doubled between October 2016 and April 2017, but has remained fairly stable since that time.
The dominant cause was the closure of Hazelwood power station, which meant that a major source of dispatchable Victorian supply was no longer part of the market. The power station didn’t physically close until March 2017, however by then the effect of the looming closure was well understood…
https://www.energycouncil.com.au/analysis/looming-increases-in-victorian-household-electricity-prices-what-are-the-drivers/
March 2017: AFR: Manufacturers slugged by power price hikes
by Angela Macdonald-Smith, Ben Potter, Mark Ludlow
Shell-shocked businesses are reassessing investments and jobs after being slugged by huge increases in their electricity bills driven by the imminent closure of the giant Hazelwood power station combined with hot weather and rising “green” power costs…
The Hazelwood closure, set for the end of March, has also heightened worries about the risk of blackouts on a grid with reduced access to baseload power…
Hardware manufacturer Alchin Long Group in Sydney’s west has had to agree to a near-doubling of its electricity price and may rethink plans to shift work back to Australia from China as a result, said Graham Lee, national operations manager. The price of the new two-year contract from Origin Energy has surged from $55.30 per megawatt-hour to $109.70…
Prices offered by rival suppliers ranged up to $129.96/MWh…
Aluminium scrap processor Weston Aluminium, which uses about $600,000 of electricity a month, pays $57/MWh on its existing contract coming up to expiry and is hearing prices of $150 in the market, said managing director Garbis Simonian…
Suppliers quoting such huge increases are reacting to Hazelwood’s closure at the end of the month and the likelihood of shortages and price spikes similar to those already seen in South Australia being repeated in NSW and Victoria, Mr Simonian said…
Business power retailer ERM Power has reported a 170 per cent hike in electricity contract prices for commercial customers in Victoria and South Australia from two years ago as wholesale prices surge…
Average spot power prices in February across the states were between 98 per cent and 360 per cent higher than a year earlier, with prices in Queensland averaging $239.60/MWh, according to Citigroup…
Tomago Aluminium’s Matt Howell said while they had most of their energy needs secured by long-term contracts with AGL Energy, the 50 megawatts of power needed from the spot market left them still exposed.
“We have to grow to be competitive and to be ahead of the curve, but when the spot price went to $14,000 [per megawatt hour] we had to take that load off. It’s just not sustainable. You can’t smelt at that price. We have had to curtail or modulate the load [on occasions] or we get hammered by the price,” Mr Howell said.
“We cannot continue to keep paying those prices. We have to find a solution. The prices are crippling.”…
BlueScope Steel and Incitec Pivot have both been hit by soaring power prices, while Rio Tinto’s Boyne Smelters has cut back output and about 100 jobs. Big hikes in gas prices are compounding the energy woes for some manufacturers. Smaller businesses without the bargaining power to negotiate a cut-price deal are often worse hit.
Packaging group Orora has seen a doubling in electricity and gas prices in the past 12-18 months forcing it to review where it does business, said chief executive Nigel Garrard…
Business leaders fear that the removal of Hazelwood’s 1600 MW of capacity in Victoria’s Latrobe Valley will endanger supply security long before any results emerge from the review into energy security being led by Chief Scientist Alan Finkel.
“That’s 1600 megawatts that is not going to be immediately replaced. Had that occurred this summer it’s fair to say it would have been disastrous,” Mr Howell said…
The Energy Users Association of Australia said its members had faced unprecedented increases in power prices over the past five years.
In its submission to the Finkel review, the EUAA included confidential member data that showed electricity and gas prices increases of between 80 per cent and 120 per cent had become the norm, with some companies facing increases of over 150 per cent…
“One member has seen a $15 million price increase for gas in the last two years for the same supply. Another had received a bill this year with a $20 million increase in electricity costs from the previous contract,” EUAA chief executive Andrew Richards said.
“Unless these issues are addressed we do not believe Australia will regain its comparative advantage in energy, putting the medium to long-term survival of many of our members at risk.”
http://www.afr.com/business/energy/electricity/manufacturers-slugged-by-power-price-hikes-20170306-gurflw
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Who said high market share of wind and solar was impossible. Australia is doing it quite easily. The formula is simple.
1. Provide massive subsidies to build wind and solar generators.
2. Give them priority access to the market.
That is all that needs to be done. The consequence is the destruction of base load, which makes low cost slow response dispatchable generation uneconomic. It gets replaced with high cost, fast response dispatchable generation. That forces prices up; energy intensive consumers shut shop: that forces prices up AGAIN; low energy intensive consumers make their own and, you guessed it, that forces prices up AGAIN. That leaves a much diminished market supplied from 30 to 40% wind and solar that is supported by government handouts to keep the dream of so-called “renewable” energy alive.
To get beyond 30% requires massive investment in energy storage. Do you have any idea what that causes; yes prices do go up yet again but this time they are on full boost. The only way the happens is funding from government general revenue as any private enterprise recognises the inability to ever recover the costs from consumers who are already installing their own storage in droves.
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Rick,
Can I send that in my email to selected politicians?
Short and to the point!
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Reading that retrospective on the effect of the closure of Hazelwood on power costs to business and manufacturing is not unexpected news, but still tragic.
That was a year ago and things are only getting worse.
Anyone with just a little insight into the real world knows that many of these businesses will be forced to shutdown with the only alternative being to move operations to a country with cheaper electricity costs.
Politicians are destroying our businesses and deliberately exporting jobs.
Crunch time soon.
KK
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Sitting on mountains of coal and uranium, and a sea of natural gas, and this is what we create. We are indeed the stupid country.
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links to report:
9 Apr: AustralianMining: Ewen Hosie: Resource exports will hit $1 trillion within five years, says gov’t
The Australian Government has released its latest quarterly report for the national resources and energy sector, the Resources and Energy Quarterly, which projects the Office of the Chief Economist’s outlook until 2022–23.
While the report predicts export earnings to decline somewhat from current levels (with iron ore and coking coal prices expected to fall in particular), it expects the next five years to deliver over $1 trillion in income from resources and energy exports, which is about 60 per cent of Australia’s 2017 gross domestic product (GDP)…
Annual export levels are expected to increase to a record $230 billion for 2017–18, buoyed by LNG prices, then sit around $213–216 billion from 2019–20, compared with annual earnings of $72 billion in the previous decade, which, according to Mark Cully, chief economist of the Department of Industry, Innovation and Science, validated a “long-held view that the mining boom would continue to reap dividends long after the price peak in 2011”…
For further information on these and other resources exports, including predictions for gold, zinc, nickel and copper, the full report can be downloaded here (LINK).
https://www.australianmining.com.au/news/resource-exports-will-hit-1-trillion-within-five-years-says-govt/
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AFR seems almost disappointed, emphasises a negative!
9 Apr: AFR: Resources exports to hit record $1 trillion as investment winds up
by Angela Macdonald-Smith, Jacob Greber
The dramatic upswing in resources and energy sales will help soften the blow from the sputtering investment phase of the boom, which is set to be exhausted this year and flatline for the next five, according to the the latest Industry Department outlook…
Exporters will bring home a record $230 billion in earnings for 2017-18, which represents a 10.6 per cent jump from last year, thanks primarily to surging LNG shipments and higher prices, as well as continuing robust coal and iron ore prices.
It is also a 7.5 per cent upgrade from January’s forecast, when the Office of the Chief Economist expected some prices to weaken (LINK)…
Fears of a larger collapse in commodity prices have not been born out, despite ongoing volatility, while the government has also been relatively conservative in its key forecasts for iron ore and coal prices…
http://www.afr.com/business/mining/resources-exports-to-hit-record-this-year-as-boom-to-wind-up-20180406-h0yg4n
***links to their own piece – subscription required:
7 Jan: AFR: Resources export earnings to dip after $214b record in 2017-18
Chief economist Mark Cully said commodity export earnings would likely dip about 6.7 per cent to $200 billion in 2018-19 as declines in iron ore, coal and gold outweigh gains from LNG. As recently as last June the figure was expected to rise or at least remain roughly on a par with 2017-18…
***more alleged “disdain” for industry from FT.
***”so-last-century business of mining”!
behind paywall.
A clean energy world needs a thriving mining sector
Financial Times-6 Apr. 2018
Mining companies and their financiers cannot be sure whether what they are doing is compulsory or forbidden. Or both. Governments, investors and lenders in the developed world have a growing disdain for the ***so-last-century business of mining. That attitude should be reconsidered if we want a clean-energy economy.
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8 Apr: ExponentTelegramWestVirginia: NETL exploring new clean coal tech
by Conor Griffith
MORGANTOWN — The U.S. Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory is pioneering new tools and methods to make the nation’s coal-fired power plants cleaner and more efficient.
George “Geo” Richards, energy conversion engineering senior fellow at the laboratory, said today’s coal-fired plants are operating in a different way than they did 10 or 15 years ago.
***“The issue is we’re seeing a growth in renewable energy to the grid,” Richards explained.
“Coal plants sometimes need to reduce their output, and that can make it hard to operate existing plants,” he said.
He gave the example of a coal plant designed years ago to operate at 500 megawatts, but then that requirement dropped to 300 megawatts because of a wind farm. If the wind isn’t blowing, however, the demand could return to 500 megawatts.
Richards said such fluctuations create wear and tear on the power plant in a manner similar to the pressure exerted on car brakes during stop-and-go traffic; the more it’s done, the faster parts begin to break down.
“It’s not true that every plant faces that challenge, but we know many of them do, and it’s really affecting the durability and efficiency of those plants,” Richards said.
To address these problems, he said the National Energy Technology Laboratory, or NETL, is developing new fiber-optic sensors made from flexible glass fiber. Although the fiber is not much larger than sewing thread, a laser can be run through it to monitor what comes back, which allows for the creation of a temperature profile, Richards said…READ ALL
https://www.wvnews.com/theet/news/netl-exploring-new-clean-coal-tech/article_c77079b3-ac59-5073-b2b4-121a0321fd74.html
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lot of detail:
9 Apr: The Wire: Four Years on, Piyush Goyal is Struggling to Wean India off Imported Coal
After he took charge of the coal ministry in 2014, Goyal had promised to step up coal production and end India’s dependence on imported coal by 2016.
by Noor Mohammad
India’s coal imports stood at 217 million tonnes in 2017-18, higher than 212 million tonnes in 2014-15, setting back his plan to end India’s dependence on overseas reserves of the dry fuel to fire its power plants.
The average coal stocks of power plants fell to ten days in 2017-18 from 27 days in 2015-16 while the number of generating stations with critically depleted fuel inventory shot up from two to 56.
After he took charge of the coal ministry in 2014, Goyal had promised to step up coal production and end India’s dependence on imported coal by 2016.
While coal imports have risen by nearly 14% in 2017-18 after dropping by 5.6% and 4.5% respectively in 2015-16 and 2016-17, Coal India (CIL) is struggling to step up production…READ ALL
https://thewire.in/energy/four-years-in-piyush-goyal-has-struggled-to-wean-india-off-imported-coal
9 Apr: EconomicTimesIndia: Coal India talks with union leaders on private mining fail
By Debjoy Sengupta
“We had a round of talks with the unions and told them that Coal India will remain a dominant public sector player in the Indian coal scene and it would also offer an opportunity to employees to get absorbed in other private companies after retirement in case they want to opt for it,” Coal India chairman Gopal Singh said.
Union leaders, who held talks in Delhi last week, do not want private competition.
“Although, at the meeting, the government assured that it will not allow Coal India to be affected negatively when commercial mining starts, the assurance could not convince the union leaders who met coal secretary and the coal minister Piyush Goyal last week,” said DD Ramanandan, general secretary of All India Coal Workers Federation (AICWF), affiliated to CITU.
INTUC, which had so far kept away, has also joined the strike called by CITU, BMS, HMS and AITUC. These five represent almost the entire workforce of the company…
“We feel, allowing private commercial mining would affect the interests of coal workers who would be paid a fraction of what CIL employees receive just like in the pre-nationalisation era,” Ramanandan said.
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/indl-goods/svs/metals-mining/coal-india-talks-with-union-leaders-on-private-mining-fail/articleshow/63675066.cms
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it’s a hot day in SA. The temperature on West Terrace in the City of Adelaide touched 36.1 degrees at 2:42 pm; eight minutes later it had fallen a bit to 35.6. It implies a record for April, the previous highest recorded temperature for the same address (is it?) was 35.8 on 5 April 1938. I suppose some will make much of it but, given the critiques on these pages and elsewhere of the BOM’s systems of measuring, it seems unremarkable—however unpleasant.
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34C on the NSW mid north coast at 2.00 pm according to my vehicle computer.
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That would help explain the picture on NEM dispatch atm.
SA $323
NSW $291
VIC $274 madly exporting in both directions
and just for laughs TAS -$0.76c
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Priceless!
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Nothing could explain that but “Enron lives“.
I just looked and Qld which has been chugging along with 143 MW of hydro for weeks has opened the taps to 309 MW. I didn’t know they had that much.
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Cut and paste from a satirical article over at Quandrant. Made me smile 🙂
Q: What is the definition of an optimist?
A: A Tesla owner in South Australia.
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awwwww, I upset our little red thumber with the typing disability
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