The New Zealand government is proposing to nominate a reduction target for emissions of certain natural gases produced by human activities.

With no mathematics, science, logic or economics to support their target, they propose to nominate that 2050 emissions will be just 50% of 1990 levels.

This submission looks at a few key aspects of this proposal and concludes that it is not feasible, not sustainable and not justified.

The full submission: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/barefoot-in-the-snow.pdf [PDF, 905 KB]

No warming for 13 years, so why are we still listening to the Alarmists.

Lower troposphere temperature from satellites, updated to January 2011.

Global monthly average lower troposphere temperature (thin line) since 1979 according to University of Alabama at Huntsville, USA. The thick line is the simple running 37 month average.

For many more graphs see: http://www.climate4you.com/Text/Climate4you_January_2011.pdf [PDF, 1.3 MB]

Here is the most reliable weather station in the world (Serpent River, Ontario). Beats all the computerised climate models.

Wind power is very dilute, and thus a large area of land is required to gather significant energy. Wind energy needs a wide network of roads, transmission lines and turbines which degrades any area containing wind farms. It has a huge land footprint.

The operating characteristics of turbine and generator mean that only a small part of wind energy can be captured.

Wind power is also intermittent, unreliable and hard to predict. Therefore large backup or storage systems are required. This adds to the capital and operating costs and increases the instability of the network.

Wind farms are uniformly hated by neighbours and will not be willingly accepted without heavy compensation payments. Their noise, flicker, fire risk and disturbing effect on domestic and wild animals are well documented.

The wind is free but wind power is far from it. Its cost is far above all conventional methods of generating electricity. Either taxpayers or consumers will pay this bill.

Wind farms are promoted as a way to decarbonise energy generation. This is supposed to reduce global warming. There is no evidence that there is any need or benefit in chasing this rainbow.

There is no justification for continuing the complex network of subsidies, mandates and tax breaks that currently underpin construction of wind farms in Australia. If wind power is sustainable it will be developed without these financial crutches.

Full report: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/why-wind-wont-work.pdf [PDF, 1.5 MB]

“Over the past 50 years southern Australia has lost about 20 per cent of its rainfall, and one cause is almost certainly global warming. Similar losses have been experienced in eastern Australia, and although the science is less certain it is probable that global warming is behind these losses too. But by far the most dangerous trend is the decline in the flow of Australian rivers: it has fallen by around 70 per cent in recent decades, so dams no longer fill even when it does rain. Growing evidence suggests that hotter soils, caused directly by global warming, have increased evaporation and transpiration and that the change is permanent. I believe the first thing Australians need to do is to stop worrying about ‘the drought’ – which is transient – and start talking about the new climate”.

Tim Flannery

New Scientist, 16 June 2007 Print Edition.
Editorial: Australia – not such a lucky country.
Source: CFACT, 29 Jan 2011.

Ross Garnaut’s 2008 climate report contained egregious errors that could not be easily explained away as simple incompetence.

However, unless Garnaut was misquoted, his recent pronouncement in relation to Cyclone Yasi was so absurdly outrageous that it falls under Clark’s Law: “Sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice”.

Under a headline “You ain’t seen nothing yet”, Garnaut was quoted as saying:

“With strong mitigation, we at least rule out, or reduce to low probabilities, the potential for catastrophe”.

Fair enough, if he was encouraging better building standards or discouraging people from living in cyclone or flood prone areas, but he is advising the government on a carbon price mechanism, and the implication of the article was that putting a price (tax) on carbon will rule out the potential for catastrophes of the sort that have beset mankind since the Great Flood – a big call indeed!

Even were Australia to reduce its CO2 emissions to zero, it would have a negligible effect on global emissions, but according to Garnaut it’s not even necessary to reduce our emissions! To accomplish that, a “carbon price” would have to be so high as to drastically discourage use of fossil energy, but Garnaut claimed that the impact on electricity prices of his “carbon price” would be “not very big”; hence, the reduction in CO2 emissions would also be not very big.

Therefore, Professor Garnaut is selling the modern-day equivalent of Papal Indulgences.

Dub Zivkovic
Canberra Australia

About 20 turbines catch fire and burn each year. The global total number of turbines appears to be around 68,000. These figures from the web provide a rough guide to quantifying the bushfire risk. Applying the global data to the 2,000 or so turbines installed in Australia we would expect a 60% probability of one turbine fire each year.

If there is a known risk of wind generator fire then the generators must be disabled well before conditions reach critical being a Grassland fire danger Index above 50 or a Forest Fire danger Index above 6.

Full report here: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/fire-in-the-sky.pdf [PDF, 37 KB]

David Packham
School of Geography and Environmental Sciences
Monash University

Wind Power – it’s all about trying to extract energy from Free Air.

Wind turbines try to catch the kinetic energy in the moving cylinder of air that is sliced by the turbine blade. Because air is so light, and wind has a generally low speed (compared to a jet engine thrust, say) there is a limited amount of energy to be collected.

And turbines can only catch a limited amount of this energy – to collect it all would require the turbine to catch all of that air and bring it to a dead stop. Naturally this never occurs and wind leaves the turbine will significant speed and energy. For an ideal turbine in an ideal wind speed the power co-efficient may only be in the 30-40% range.

Conversion of the energy collected by the blade to electrical energy is achieved in an electric generator, where more energy is lost. The generator is designed for the optimal blade speed. If the wind blows harder than expected, the excess energy cannot be caught by the generator and electricity generation levels out, until at about 25 m/s wind speed, the turbine cuts out to prevent damage in high winds. A standard power factor is about 35%.

Unfortunately generators are designed to run at high speed but turbines turn at low speeds. Therefore they need huge gearboxes which develop massive forces for which no effective lubricant is available. At high winds, gearboxes may overheat and catch fire.

For specific information of these and many other factors affecting the efficiency and costs of wind power see this document: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/wind-power-hayden.pdf [PDF, 2 MB]

Certain things paint an indelible image in your mind.

One happened to me lately when my mother-in-law told me that whilst doing meals on wheels in winter there was always a place you could find pensioners – in bed.

This was not because of an infirmity but because they could not afford the price of the power to stay warm outside bed.

How completely self indulgent and pathetic we have become that in our zealous desire to single-handedly cool the planet we have pandered to those who can afford the power bill over those less fortunate.

How pathetic we are that South Korea, using our coal, can provide power cheaper to their citizens after an 8,300 km sea voyage than we can with power stations in our own coal fields.

Oh yes, aren’t the solar panels doing a great a job. In Canberra last week it was revealed that they would add $225 to the average electricity bill, and that the Government’s proposed carbon tax would raise them by a further 24%.

You cannot reduce power prices without increasing the supply of cheap power.

Senator Barnaby Joyce
Leader of The Nationals in the Senate, from his column in the Canberra Times.