Tornadoes are a fact of life in USA, and the recent Moore, Oklahoma tornado is not unique – there have been many of similar strength and causing greater loss of life. For a summary on the statistics, politics and science of the latest American tornado see this report by Geoff Derrick using data from http://wattsupwiththat.com/.

More: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/newcastle-moore-tornado.pdf [PDF, 1.1 MB]

James Hansen, an outspoken world climate alarmist says: “Coal-fired power plants are factories of death”. The Australian Greens want a fast end to coal mining in Australia, and support a swift expansion of wind and solar power. As the Greens are part of the coalition which governs Australia, the electricity industry is now being coerced by carbon taxes and green subsidies and mandates to replace efficient and reliable coal-powered electricity with costly and unreliable wind and solar plants. All of this paranoia is driven by climatist claims that carbon dioxide causes environmental harm by triggering dangerous global warming. Let’s look at whether coal energy or green energy does more harm to the environment.

There is absolutely no proof that carbon dioxide causes any measurable changes to climate. In fact, the evidence indicates that changes in atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide are a result, not a cause, of variations in global temperatures.

Moreover, burning coal in clean modern power stations has definite benefits for the biosphere – it puts food and drink for all life back into the atmosphere. The major coal combustion products are – nitrogen plant food from the air (69%), carbon dioxide plant food from the coal (21%) and water vapour, the liquid for life, from the coal (7%). The other 3% comprises mainly inert atmospheric gases from the air and an ash residue of trace minerals from the coal. The green bogey-man, carbon dioxide, is the gas of life and a free gift from coal combustion to the biosphere. More carbon dioxide has proven benefits in making plants grow faster in good weather and helping them survive better in droughts or frosts. More carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is insurance for the biosphere no matter what climate change is in store for us.

Green energy, however, can affect local climate and does cause environmental damage…

More, as well as:

• The UN, Agenda 21 and the erosion of land ownership rights
• Killing the Earth to Save it
• The Last Word

Read the full report: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/wind-solar-coal.pdf [PDF, 221 KB]

Cartoon Credit: Steve Hunter http://www.stevehunterillustrations.com.au/political-cartoons/

Keywords: Coal, wind, solar, gas, gases of life, wind farms affect the climate, turbine fires, bird kills, UN, Agenda 21.

In June this year the UNEP report announced that Global Renewable Energy investment reached $257 Billion in 2011. It’s so large it rivals the $302 billion invested in fossil fuel power. But how much electricity do we get for all that money? When the details are pulled from the fog, a quarter of a trillion dollars appears to produce only about 3% of all our global electricity, and even less of our global energy. All that money, so few gigawatts.

Source: http://joannenova.com.au/2012/08/renewable-energy-is-a-257-billion-dollar-industry-that-makes-only-3-of-our-electricity/

Cartoon Credit: Steve Hunter http://www.stevehunterillustrations.com.au/political-cartoons/

The Australian government claims that next month’s tax on carbon dioxide cannot be blamed for today’s soaring costs of living.

This tax, however, is just their latest assault in the decades-long war on carbon that is already inflating the cost of everything.

For at least a decade, power companies have been obliged to source 10-15% of their power at inflated prices from costly and unreliable sources like wind and solar. And for every wind or solar plant built, a duplicate backup gas facility is needed, increasing the demand and price for backup gas, hitting other gas consumers. Moreover, the threat of more carbon taxes has deterred the construction of efficient new coal-burning power plants. Rising electricity costs feed into the cost of everything from public transport to building materials.

The climatists are also responsible for numerous policies pushing up the price of food. These include the ethanol/biofuel madness, the restrictions on the fishing industry, the Kyoto scrub clearing bans, the spread of carbon-credit forests over farming and grazing land, the never ending war on irrigators, and the virtual ban on building new water-supply dams.

Then we have all the hidden costs of the climate industry. Thousands of our smartest graduates are lured into well-paid dead-end desk jobs in the overheads industry devoted to climate red tape, while real entrepreneurs are unable to find workers to develop our continent of under-utilised resources. There is an overpaid bureaucracy devoted to climate “research”, alternate energy, international junkets, Kyoto give-aways, and administration, auditing, enforcement, accounting, law and propaganda for their empire of climate taxes and subsidies.

Finally we have income tax implications from all the money being flung around to bribe people to accept their carbon tax? Every Australian will get these bills somewhere, sometime. And who pays for the hundreds of millions poured down subsidy rat-holes like carbon capture, solar panels, pink bats and the IPCC?

Australia’s crippling carbon tax is but the latest symptom of the costly Climate Madness infecting the well-fed elite of the western world.

When the consumers of Australia realise the extent to which they have been conned and needlessly pauperised, the electoral retribution will be swift.

See more:
http://us2.campaign-archive2.com/?u=d9f51dd317ac24a90c904906c&id=fe9a5fd1c6&e=8391ec2f7c

And more in this newsletter:

• Carbon Price Propaganda Taxes the Truth
• Sawmills to Save the Planet?
• Species Extinction is Nothing New
• Rallies to “Smash the Carbon Tax”
• It’s the Sun, Stupid
• More Green Jobs Created – in China
• Rio – 50,000 People Flock to another UN Flop
• Ian Plimer comes to Brisbane
• The Carbon Tax Explained
• Turn up the Heat on The Liberals too

See: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/war-on-carbon.pdf [PDF, 88KB]

Keywords: Australia, carbon tax, electricity, food, costs, propaganda, sawmills, species extinctions, solar cycles, protests, green jobs, Rio flop.

When I was a kid, Mum did the washing in a copper of boiling water over an open fire in the back yard. We collected the wood from the back paddock with a horse and dray. It was all very “green” (but we thought it was just hard yakka).

Greens want us to return to this primitive method for generating heat, and even electricity.

It is sensible for industrial plants such as sugar mills to burn readily available organic waste such as bagasse to generate power. But to deliberately build power stations to run on wood chips is a step back to the BC (before coal) era when forests were clear-felled to produce fuel and charcoal to feed boilers and furnaces.

Coal is an energy-dense fuel, and often has huge deposits in a concentrated area. Long-life power stations can be built close to the coal deposits, thus minimising transport costs and land disturbance.

Wood, however, has very low energy density and biomass energy is always spread over large areas of land. The fuel gathering operation must move every day, with enormous waste of transport energy and displacement of plants and animals.

Burning coal or burning biomass produces exactly the same harmless combustion gases, and a switch of fuels will have no measurable effect on climate.

Even more stupid than wood power are Green dreams to feed power stations with low grade fuels such as wheat stubble or fowl manure. The collection and transport costs for such inferior fuels will exceed the value of electricity produced. It also robs the bio-sphere of valuable mulch, fertiliser and humus.

Burning biomass to generate electricity is Green madness. Speculators should be free to fritter their own funds on such nonsense but public subsidies, carbon credits and market mandates should not be used to support them.

Here is a new slogan for true environmentalists: “Don’t Burn the Bio-sphere”.

Read how one foolish island nation plans to burn its food (coconuts) in diesel generators:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/08/09/of-coconuts-the-sun-and-small-isolated-islands/

More:

• Why Bury the Essentials of Life in Carbon Cemeteries?
• Abolish the Two Big Climate Taxes
• The Real Agenda: Agenda 21
• Nothing New about Extreme Weather
• Has the LNP forgotten the battlers?

See: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/burning-the-biosphere.pdf [PDF, 219 KB]

Keywords: Green Energy, biomass, wood power, biofuel, CCS (carbon capture & sequestration), climate taxes, electricity costs, carbon tax, renewable energy targets, Agenda 21, extreme weather.

Green Energy is Part of the Past, not Fuel for the Future

The growing failure of green energy in Europe should warn Australia to abandon bi-partisan policies dictating targets, mandates and subsidies for “green” energy.

I grew up at the end of the last green energy era – solar energy powered our growing crops and dried the washing, but it was weak in winter and ceased under clouds and at night; wind energy pumped water, but only when the wind blew; draft horses powered farm machinery, but they had to be fed whether they were working or not; wood gave us home heating and cooking, but it consumed energy to collect and chop it up; kids walked to school or rode bikes or ponies and ladies took the horse and sulky.

Our only help from carbon energy was kerosene for the kitchen lamp and coke used to smelt and forge the metals for farm tools and machinery.

We also practiced “sustainability” – we purchased little, and most of the farm produce was consumed on the farm by family, farm labourers and draft horses.

We were rescued from this life of sustained labour by carbon energy – a kerosene-powered tractor, a petrol-powered truck, and coal-powered electricity for lighting, heating, cooking, refrigeration, milking machines and pumps. The horses and farm labour were no longer needed and, for once, the farm produced a decent surplus of food for the growing cities.

Wind, solar, wood and muscle power are tools of the past and they work no better now than they did then. Forcing people to use these ancient technologies will just return us to laborious poverty on the farms and hunger in the cities.

Green energy should not be forced on consumers – those who want it should pay for it.

Green energy will eventually be abandoned, but the cost rises for each day’s delay.

For those who would like to read more about the green energy disaster in Europe:

http://us4.campaign-archive2.com/?u=c920274f2a364603849bbb505&id=4a8f8201ec&e=e1638e04a2
http://www.cfact.org/2013/08/13/europeans-learning-the-hard-truth-about-wind-and-solar-energy/

More, as well as:

• Green Energy Twins are Parasitic Power Producers
• Abolish Renewable Energy Targets
• “The Oceans Ate my Global Warming”
• Election Day – “Put every Labor/Green candidate last”

Read the full report: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/green-energy-folly.pdf [PDF, 48kB]

Keywords: Green energy, wind power, solar power, renewable energy targets, global warming, computer model failures, oceans warming, election advice, how-to-vote, Labor, Greens, LNP, no-carbon-tax-party.

By Daniel Fitzhenry

The seas and oceans to the east of Australia forms the largest body of water on Earth. This broadly connected vast body of water presents a genuine sea level. The Sydney Fort Denison Recording Station provides stable, accurate and genuine mean sea level data. The following table shows mean sea levels at 10 year intervals and these levels are related to Chart Datum which is at the lowest spring tide level.

OPEN LETTER TO THE PRIME MINISTER, AND TO THE LEADER OF THE OPPOSITION.

We are a group of retired scientists and engineers in Queensland, and we are alarmed at the direction our country is being taken through your respective policies, which are virtually identical, on renewable energy. Our names are listed here. We have studied this issue for years now, and we have here outlined the serious defects in your energy policy, and asked some questions which have thus far remained unanswered.

Energy Policy. By far the greatest risk to Australia’s electricity supply is the false belief that renewables (wind and solar) can be a like-for-like replacement for dispatchable fossil fuelled generators. They are not, and can never be. A one-MW wind or solar plant does not replace a one-MW coal plant. Not even close. Solar plants will produce electricity on average at 20% of their installed capacity. They produce power for little more than eight hours per day and none at all at night or on rainy days. Wind plants can be expected to produce electricity on average 25% to 30% of installed capacity, but output can be as little as 2% or as much as 70% with little warning.

Media reports in June this year referred to a “wind drought” across Southern Australia resulting in wind production being “40% below the previous corresponding period”. This is a problem but masks an even more intractable false belief; that an energy grid can run on averages. It can’t, because energy consumed has to be generated in real time. Just one example of that wind drought: at 2.20 PM on 5 th May this year, all the wind farms in Australia (4400 MW installed capacity in WA, SA, Vic, Tas and NSW) were producing just 121MW. (That’s 4400 MW capacity generating only 121MW). In fact for May and June this year this was not uncommon. Large high pressure systems over southern Australia meant little or no wind for weeks at a time.

The grid has to meet demand every minute of every day. AEMO can and does order fossil fuelled plants to produce electricity. Clearly it cannot do so for wind or solar. Just imagine Australia with a largely renewable energy system — it is night time so no solar power is being generated, and the whole of Southern Australia is dominated by high pressure systems (this is not unusual) and wind is producing at only 2% of installed capacity! To date dispatchable fossil fuelled generators have been able to shoulder the load but as dispatchable capacity is retired this may no longer be possible, with disastrous consequences.

On the face of it the answer is storage, either battery, pumped hydro or molten salt. This brings us to the next false belief; that storage is some sort of magic pudding. The capacity of current storage technologies is miniscule compared with daily demand. Australian grid demand varies between 18,000 MW minimum and 30,000 MW maximum. Over 24 hours this works out to about 600,000 MWh per day. The Tesla battery being installed in South Australia is said to be the world’s largest and to hold 129 MWh fully charged. This may be enough to support the local grid for a short time until dispatchable capacity can be started, but an unimaginable number of Tesla batteries would be necessary to maintain grid supply for a day or a week, or even longer in the worst case.
(more…)

Personally I look at the stupid notion of Blackout Night, in honour of the planet.

We left our caves, our sod houses of the past to enjoy modern homes. I enjoy the thought that if I’m sick and require an operation the hospital has electricity 24 hours per day, seven days per week so that the surgeon and his team can fix me or my loved ones. I enjoy the thought that at 7pm at night I can turn on a television and watch it, in the comfort of my single family dwelling home. I enjoy the thought that if I want a beverage I can go to my frost free fridge and grab a beer. I enjoy the thought that my employer has electricity and indoor plumbing so that I can defecate in the safety of my closed off cubicle.

These modern fools of Mother Earth and modern Environmentalism want to return to the yesteryears of cave dwelling pre-human existence. All I’ve ever read about pre-modern living, and that’s not all too long ago, just 100 years ago. Most men died before the age of 50 years. Children died by the thousands because of infections, and poor health quality. You were considered old when you were over 40!

Turning out the Lights glorifies stupidity, and glamorizes the progressive liberal mentality about the so called “global village”. You know what, its one village I don’t want to belong too. I’ll take living in a single dwelling home, with electricity, and my beer fridge powered by coal fired plants with modern precipitators and scrubbers installed in the gas path cleaning up the grime.

Today’s environmentalist aren’t cleaning up the stacks – they’re socialists who can’t get elected at the ballot box but are hell bent to destroy our western society so that we fit into their social activist world of stupidity and failure.

Less1leg
Niagara, Canada

Published originally at:
http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/site/comments/blackout-night/

The Carbon Sense Coalition today called for an end to the colossal waste of community resources and energy on research and development for “Carbon Capture and Burial”.

The Chairman of “Carbon Sense”, Mr Viv Forbes, said that billions of dollars are being wasted on sacrifices to the global warming god – endless bureaucracy, politicised research, piddling wind and solar schemes, roof insulation disasters, ethanol subsidies, carbon credit forests, carbon trading frauds and huge compliance costs.

“But perhaps the biggest waste of all is the futile quest to capture carbon dioxide from power stations, separate it, compress it, pump it long distances and force it down specially drilled bore holes, hoping it will never escape.”

The full document: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/carbon-capture.pdf [PDF, 85 KB]