SA’s Wind Power Debacle: AEMO Cuts SA’s Access to Victorian Power to Protect the Grid

STOP THESE THINGS

SA’s plan to import electricity from Victoria a threat to stability: AEMO
The Australian
Michael Owen
21 January 2017

A plan for South Australia to import­ more baseload power from Victoria to ease its power crisis has been suspended by the national electricity market operator because of a “potential stabil­ity issue” linked to the state’s wind-reliant grid.

This comes as almost 60,000 homes and businesses were without power in South Australia on Thursday night, with 5000 still disconnected yesterday afternoon, after a storm caused the state’s fourth major blackout in as many months.

The storm was the seventh severe­ weather event since July to smash South Australia’s elect­ricity infrastructure, including the cyclonic system that contributed to a devastating statewide blackout in September.

The Australian Energy Market Operator, which has been investigating the statewide black­out, issued a notice to the electricity market of a “potential stability issue” when high power imports…

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Fake News From The New Yorker

NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

h/t Joe Public

http://www.newyorker.com/culture/photo-booth/a-witness-to-irans-intensifying-struggle-with-climate-change

Fake news from the New Yorker:

Ako Salemi took the first photographs of his career when he was a teen-ager, growing up in northern Iran. His earliest subject, a river near his family’s home, is now mostly dirt. In Salemi’s native country, as in much of the water-scarce Middle East, climate change has led to desiccation. Lake Urmia, once the sixth-largest saline lake in the world, now has just ten per cent of the water that it contained in the nineteen-seventies. (Salemi’s childhood river was one of its tributaries.) The sea level along the country’s southern coastline, meanwhile, where most of its oil and petrochemical infrastructure is located, is projected to rise more than two feet by the end of the century, and by 2070 could flood the homes of more than two hundred thousand people annually. And yet Salemi told me…

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US Scientific Integrity Rules Repudiate the UN Climate Process

Big Picture News, Informed Analysis

The US government says its a violation of scientific integrity for political officials to alter scientific findings. But political revision is a central part of how IPCC reports get produced.

Mere days before he left office, Barack Obama’s Department of Energy (DOE) introduced a sweeping new scientific integrity policy. This matters because the DOE is the largest funder of physical sciences in America, and because climate change is one of its core concerns.

Elsewhere, I’ve explained that the new policy is a startling departure from the one that prevailed while Obama was in charge. It seems designed to unleash mayhem. In both instances, however, the DOE was adamant concerning one issue: Politicians should not tamper with scientific findings.

The 2014 policy declares:

Political officialswill not suppress or alter scientific or technological findings. [italics added]

The 2017 policy says:

Under no circumstance may anyone, including a public affairs officer, ask…

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UK Climate Change Risk Assessment 2017–Part III

NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

The final three categories from the government’s UK Climate Change Risk Assessment 2017.

A rather vague and woolly statement.

It is important to put some of these claims into perspective.

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What do three CET reference weather stations used by the Met Office have in common?

Watts Up With That?

Guest essay by Tom Barr

Central England Temperature stations, long considered a benchmark, have been affected by land use change and urbanisation

During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a cool period which coincided with snowy winters and generally cool summers, the temperatures fluctuated widely but with little trend. From 1910, temperatures increased slightly until about 1950 when they flattened before a sharp rising trend began in about 1975. Temperatures in the most recent decade (years 2001-2010) were slightly higher in all seasons than the long-term average.

The answer is blindingly obvious, from above: they are all subject to considerable modern local urbanisation immediately to the North, including heated greenhouses designed to replicate a Mediterranean climate.

The Met Office relies upon just three weather stations to record the Central England Temperature: Stonyhurst (Lancashire), Pershore (Worcestershire) and Rothamsted (Hertfordshire). http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/about/archives

The Met Office averages these three temperatures and makes a 0.2 degrees…

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How Germany’s Energiewende is splitting the environmental movement | Friends against wind

http://en.friends-against-wind.org/realities/energiewende-is-splitting-the-environmental-movement

This collective act of make-believe is devastating our environment and our budgets

NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/01/28/collective-act-make-believe-devastating-environment-budgets/

Booker has a round up of our energy policy farce this week:

The oddest thing about the political crisis gripping Northern Ireland was what triggered it. In 2012, under an EU ruling that burning wood was “carbon neutral”, the Northern Irish government, led by Arlene Foster and Martin McGuinness, adopted a “green” scheme introduced by the UK the previous year, the Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI), offering lavish subsidies to businesses to use wood chips to heat their premises.

RHI was launched in Belfast without any control over how the money was spent. When businesses discovered that they could be paid £160 for every £100 they spent on wood, so many signed up, even using it to heat empty buildings, that, by 2020, it was estimated, the bill to UK taxpayers could have risen to £1 billion.

But this is only one of the countless unforeseen…

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Four Key Charts for a Climate Change Skeptic

Watts Up With That?

Skeptics often get asked to show why they thinks climate change isn’t a crisis, and why we should not be alarmed about it. These four graphs from Michael David White are handy to use for such a purpose.

By Michael David White

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Australia’s Energy Debacle Unplugged: Liberal Senator Chris Back Slams Wind Power

STOP THESE THINGS

There are very few Australian politicians who have bothered to do the slightest bit of homework on Australia’s energy policy, and even fewer still have taken the time to understand how Australia’s ridiculous renewable energy targets have destroyed once reliable grids and driven power prices through the roof. One who has managed to get to grips with Australia’s energy debacle is Western Australian Liberal Senator, Chris Back.

Here’s Chris being interviewed on 2GB radio just before Christmas last year.

Renewable Energy Costs
2GB
Mike Williams interviews Senator Chris Back
21 December 2016

Transcript

Mike Williams: Now look, I thought we’d return to this issue of renewable energy because when I mentioned it on Tuesday morning, the board went into meltdown. It’s now apparent, governments across Australia are attempting to move towards renewable energy through wind farms and solar panels. But as you heard, many issues remain with both forms…

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Wood burners or diesel vehicles – what’s behind London’s air pollution ?

Tallbloke's Talkshop

Bad air day in London [image credit: BBC]
At one time diesel vehicles were given tax concessions in the UK due to lower emissions of CO2 than petrol equivalents, but that tide is turning now.

London’s pollution problem worsened this week – so much so that it briefly overtook Beijing in the filthy-air department for the first time – an alarming development widely attributed to the rapidly growing use of household wood burners, as iNews reports.

Readings on Monday afternoon showed that the air in parts of London contained 197 micrograms per cubic metre of ‘particulate’ matter, compared to 190 in the Chinese capital.

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