The Carbon Sense Coalition

All about carbon in life, energy and the atmosphere

Innocent Bystander to be Lynched?

What Produces Warmth?

I live in SE Queensland. Yesterday the surface air temperature rose from a frosty 2ºC at sunrise to a balmy 22ºC in mid-afternoon. The enormous heat needed to achieve this 20ºC of warming came via radiation from the sun. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere plays no significant part in this daily heating event – in fact it may intercept a tiny proportion of the incoming solar radiation and re-radiate it in all directions, thus keeping the daytime surface temperature a tiny bit cooler than it would have been otherwise.

At the deep Mount Isa Mine in NW Queensland, the surface temperature may average about 25ºC but it increases by about 1ºC every 50 metres of depth – rock walls are red hot in places. The enormous heat causing this comes via conduction from Earth’s internal geothermal heat plus some oxidation and heating of the sulphide ores as they come in contact with natural air containing oxygen. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere plays no part in this heating.

There are volcanic windows open right now in Hawaii, Japan and the Galapagos revealing the vast resources of volcanic geothermal heat which is always migrating towards the cooler surface, sometimes violently.

Image acknowledgement: www.pixabay.com

Temperatures vary greatly over Earth’s surface, making a mockery of attempts to calculate an “average” for the globe. Air surface temperature may be minus 30ºC at the South Pole, while at the same time it can be plus 30ºC at the Equator. This enormous difference is caused by the varying intensity of solar radiation striking the surface – carbon dioxide in the atmosphere plays no significant part in creating this variance.

Surface air temperatures in big cities can be 5-10ºC hotter than surrounding rural land partly because bitumen roads, roofs, solar panels and runways heat up more than grassy or forested countryside. Mega-cities are also full of heat-producing humans, engines, trains, vehicles, air conditioners, heaters, stoves, fridges, pumps and mowers.
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June 23rd, 2018 | Categories: The Carbon Sense Coalition |

RUNAWAY GREENHOUSE EFFECT ON VENUS? THE EVIDENCE SAYS NO!

By Dr. John Happs

Venus is named after the ancient Roman Goddess of love and beauty, also called Aphrodite by the Ancient Greeks. Presumably, the “love and beauty” term came from the fact that Venus is the brightest of all the planets in the night sky.

The Italian Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) was the first astronomer to observe Venus through a telescope and he observed that the planet had phases like our Moon. This observation supported the revolutionary (and politically dangerous) idea that Venus and other planets orbited the Sun. (more…)

September 14th, 2020 | Categories: CO2 Greenhouse Science, Venus |

A Salute to Engines and Electricity

Earth Day should Celebrate “Engines and Electricity”.

Most chapters of human history are defined by the tools and machines that were used.

In the Stone Age, the first tools were “green tools” – digging sticks, spears, boomerangs, bows and arrows made of wood; and axes, clubs, knives and grinders made of stone. These were all powered by human energy.

Then humans learned how to control fire for warmth, cooking, warfare and hunting.

Image acknowledgement:
Steve Hunter http://stevehunterillustrations.com.au/political-cartoons/

Another clever person invented the wheel and we harnessed animal power using donkeys, horses, mules and oxen, and made better tools like bridles, saddles and yokes from wood, fibre and leather.

All of these tools made hunting, gathering and trade easier and more reliable.

Then wooden ploughs revolutionised the cultivation of wild grasses for food for animals and humans. Farming started.

Image acknowledgement: www.pixabay.com

Trade and exchange was made easier with money using rare commodities like gold, silver, gems and shells.

Image acknowledgement: www.pixabay.com

Tool-making made a huge advance in the Bronze Age with the discovery of how to extract metals like copper, lead, zinc and tin from natural ores using charcoal. Brass, bronze and pewter made many useful tools. These were then replaced with better tools when man discovered how to smelt iron and make steel.

Then along came the game-changers – engines and electricity.

The steam engine, running on wood and then on coal or oil, revolutionised life with steam-driven pumps, traction engines and locomotives releasing millions of draught animals from transport duty.

Image acknowledgement: www.pixabay.com

Then came electricity when steam engines were used to drive generators. All the windmills, coaches, sailing ships, lamps, stoves and dryers powered by green energy (wind, water, wood, animal energy, whale oil and beeswax) became obsolete.

Image acknowledgement: www.pixabay.com

Mankind made another leap forward with the invention of internal combustion engines using petroleum liquids and gases for fuel.

An even bigger leap was the harnessing of nuclear power to produce almost unlimited clean energy from controlled reactions using tiny amounts of fuel.

Image acknowledgement:
Steve Hunter http://stevehunterillustrations.com.au/political-cartoons/

Nothing in life is without risk, and every tool or engine can be misused. On balance, however, tools, engines and electricity have allowed humans to live better from less land and natural resources per person than ever before. Societies with an abundance of capital equipment are richer, have lower population growth and have the leisure and resources to provide far more environmental protection.

Therefore we should spend “Earth Day” celebrating “Engines and Electricity”.

Further Reading:

Earth Day Failed Forecasts of Doom:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/04/21/18-examples-of-the-spectacularly-wrong-predictions-made-around-the-first-earth-day-in-1970/comment-page-1/#comment-2796352

Image acknowledgement:
Steve Hunter http://stevehunterillustrations.com.au/political-cartoons/

George Carlin on Saving the Planet:
https://youtu.be/p5Miv4NHsDo

Viv Forbes

24 May 18
http://www.carbon-sense.com

We welcome comments. If you would like to comment on anything in this newsletter go to:
https://carbon-sense.com/2018/05/23/engines-and-electricity/

PDF version: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/engines-and-electricity.pdf [PDF, 670 kB]

“Carbon Sense” is an independent newsletter produced for the Carbon Sense Coalition, an Australian based organisation which opposes waste of resources, opposes pollution, opposes the baseless war on carbon fuels and promotes the rational un-subsidised use of all energy resources including coal, oil, gas, hydro, nuclear, wind, solar and geo-thermal.

Literary, financial or other contributions to help our cause are welcomed.
We get no government grants and unlike many of our opponents, we do not pose as a charity and in fact pay GST and income tax. We live on subscriptions and human energy alone.

For more information visit our web site at www.carbon-sense.com
If you would like to keep Carbon Sense operating, send subscriptions to
Carbon Sense Pty Ltd, by post to the address below, or direct deposit to:
BSB: 334-113
Acct No: 553 077 331

Please spread “Carbon Sense” around.
Authorised by: Viv Forbes, Chairman, 1907 Ipswich-Boonah Road, Washpool Qld 4306 Australia.

May 23rd, 2018 | Categories: The Carbon Sense Coalition |

Highest Temperature on Record in Perth? Don’t Believe a Word of It

By Dr. John Happs

Channel 7 and Channel 9 news were quick to announce that Perth experienced its highest temperature on record on Saturday, 16^th November 2019.

We were told that the temperature reached 40.8^oC and a record temperature was claimed. Of course we were not told exactly where that particular temperature was taken and why that “record temperature” was not recorded in neighbouring suburbs.

Interestingly, that“record temperature” of 40.8^oC was measured at Perth Airport at 2.00 pm. Also at 2.00 pm, the temperature in Perth City was 38.6^oC. Still hot, but 2.2^oC lower than Perth Airport.

So what about the temperature in suburbs further west of the airport? Hillarys for instance recorded 24.30^oC at 2.00pm on the same day – a whopping 16.5^oC lower than the airport “record temperature.”

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November 25th, 2019 | Categories: Temperature, The Carbon Sense Coalition |

Waves and Tides

Watching Weather Waves, but Missing Climate Tides.

By Viv Forbes, 17 July 2018

The climate alarm media, the bureaucracy and the Green Energy industry follow an agenda which is served by inflating any short-term weather event into a climate calamity. They should take a long-term view.

Earth’s climate is never still – it is always changing, with long-term trends, medium-term reversals and minor oscillations. Humanity is best served by those who use good science to study geology, astronomy and climate history searching for clues to climate drivers and the underlying natural cycles and trends hidden in short-term weather fluctuations.

For the last 10,000 years Earth has basked in the Holocene Interglacial which is the latest of many warm cycles within the Pleistocene Ice Age. There are small warm and cool cycles within the Holocene. Today we enjoy the Modern Warm Cycle (which started about calendar 1900) following the Little Ice Age which bottomed in about 1750.

What does the future hold? The past gives clues to the future.
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July 19th, 2018 | Categories: Sea Levels, The Carbon Sense Coalition |

Shadows over Greentopia

Blackouts Stalk Green Energy Utopia

It is 7pm on a cold still night in the city which boasts “100% Green Energy”.

Thousands of electric cars are in their garages plugged into chargers; electric lights,
heaters and TVs are running; electric stoves are cooking dinner, electric trains and lifts
are moving late commuters and early revellers, and the pubs and clubs are busy.

The hills bristle with turbines, but there is no wind and not one is turning. Every roof is
covered with solar panels, but there is no sunshine and the panels are fast asleep. The
green city is facing peak electricity demand… on batteries.

But for several days, clouds have shaded the solar panels and there has been no wind
to turn the turbines – the battalions of batteries are running out of juice. One by one
they drop out. The street lights fade and the city goes dark.

In this green energy utopia all the wicked coal-powered generators have been closed
or demolished, exploration for gas is forbidden, no one dares to mention nuclear, hydro
schemes have gone (replaced by “Wild Rivers”), new hydro developments are stalled
by green lawyers, and diesel generators and petrol cars are banned.

This cartoon may be used with acknowledgement to www.carbon-sense.com

There is only one problem with this green perfection.

When the city wakes to another cloudy windless day, where will its electricity come
from?

And when all the stoves and fridges, computers and TV’s, lifts and trains, traffic lights
and water pumps, checkouts and ATM’s, heaters and coolers – – – all stop working,
there will soon be an angry mob seeking the nearest politician to punish.

Further Reading:

The Blackout Next Time:
https://townhall.com/columnists/FrankGaffney/2017/09/12/the-blackout-next-time-n2379923

Ecocity madness:
http://www.cfact.org/2017/07/12/al-gore-praised-australian-state-plagued-by-blackouts-for-leading-the-world-in-green-energy/

A Looming Disaster in Energy Security:
http://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2017/06/looming-disaster-energy-security/

Keep a diesel in the Shed:
http://carbon-sense.com/2017/04/20/diesel-in-shed/

Rolling Blackouts Loom in Britain:
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/rolling-blackouts-loom-after-coalition-energy-chaos-9vs7fh3phxk

Green Germany facing power blackouts:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/9609777/Germany-facing-power-blackouts.html

Wind Turbines are neither clean nor green and provide zero global energy:
https://www.spectator.co.uk/2017/05/wind-turbines-are-neither-clean-nor-green-and-they-provide-zero-global-energy/

South Australia (the green energy state) copes by shutting industries:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/08/02/aemo-plant-closures-helping-to-stabilise-south-australias-green-electricity-grid/
http://canadafreepress.com/article/electricity-prices-in-south-australia-skyrocket

Is the Green Energy Story Sustainable?:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/09/03/revisiting-wind-turbine-impacts-erroneous-recent-calculation-highlights-need-to-assess-renewable-energy-sustainability-claims/

While the Babblers Bleat about Global Warming, our Huge Heater in the Heavens gets Weaker:
http://notrickszone.com/2017/08/23/solar-cycle-continues-to-be-the-weakest-in-2-centuries/

Gore’s Latest Alarmist Movie Flops:

Al Gore’s Inconvenient Sequel:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/aug/22/climate-scientist-rebuts-al-gore-film-bad-science/

Phony Sequel Rejected:
http://www.wnd.com/2017/07/10-reasons-to-reject-al-gores-phony-sequel/

Gore Debunked:
http://insider.foxnews.com/2017/09/06/al-gore-inconvenient-sequel-climate-change-debunked-scientist-roy-spencer

Trump on the Paris Agreement:
https://www.thegwpf.com/reminder-what-president-trump-really-said-about-the-paris-agreement/

How They Pulled Off the Great Global Warming Conspiracy (Satire):
http://www.theonion.com/video/climate-change-researcher-describes-challenge-pull-56872

Wind Farms killing Whales now?
https://wcfn.org/2017/05/23/windfarms-whale-beachings/

A Personal Explanation

We received the note below recently, and there have been several others asking similar questions:

Hi Viv

Haven’t heard from you for a while.
I hope you have not resigned from the “Cause” out of disgust.
The man-made energy crisis is a disgrace and the political class worse.
If only we could delete all reference to emissions from the Black Board of Climate.
I still have a hope that Trump will do what he promised in election-speak.
Any chance you could be induced to consider a political role?
The money is unbelievably good.
Best Wishes
Howard

The Explanation: After 27 years at “Sherana” at Rosevale, Judy and I decided it was time to downsize. It is 9 months since that decisive decision, but at last we have almost achieved it. We went from 700 acres to 40 acres and sold all of our cattle, 70% of our sheep, had a huge clearing sale of machinery, tools, stock equipment, office furniture and assorted stuff. Prior to that we had to empty 16X4 drawer filing cabinets of a lifetime of work and political agitation as well as a hay shed full of boxes of files and paper. (I even found my letter of resignation from the Liberal Party in 1974. What I said to them then still applies now, only more so.) I threw out files on Workers Party, Progress Party, The Foundation for Economic Education, Tax Payers United, The Council of Resources and Energy, the Grasslands Protection Society, Common Sense and thousands of words in speeches, letters and articles. Also threw out a life- time of working files starting with my first job on the public payroll at the Geological Survey of Queensland to my last job as a non-executive director of Stanmore Coal Ltd. We now have no regular income apart from savings, but we do produce our own lamb, eggs, dairy products and citrus and will work on a garden.

The whole long arduous process felt like I was throwing our life away, but we could store it no longer. Yesterday I got my new office working at the new place, so now am preparing more “Carbon Sense”.

And, if our patient supporters return, we will continue the fight for Carbon Sense, Clexit, and sensible energy policies.

Viv Forbes

September 28th, 2017 | Categories: Solar Power, Wind Power |

Keep a Diesel in the Shed

A Diesel in the Shed.

You can have your solar panels
and your turbines on the hills;
You can use the warmth of sunshine
to reduce your heating bills.

You can dream you’re self-sufficient
as you weed your vegie bed;
As long as you make sure to keep
A diesel in the shed.

When I was a kid on a dairy farm in Queensland, we relied on green energy – horses and human muscles provided motive power; fire-wood and beeswax candles supplied heat and light; windmills pumped water and the sun provided solar energy for growing crops, vegies and pastures.Railway Jobs 2017 There were no refrigerators – things were kept cool by evaporation of water in a Coolgardi safe. Cold water for drinks came from a water bag hanging in the shade near the back steps. We had no hot water systems – we bathed one after another in warm water heated in a kettle on the wood stove. The only “non-green” energy used was a bit of kerosene for the kitchen lamp, and petrol for a small Ford utility. We were almost “sustainable” but there was little surplus for others. Labour was cheap and food was expensive.bluestacks for windows 10

Our life changed dramatically when we put a thumping diesel in the dairy shed. This single-cylinder engine drove the milking machines and an electricity generator which charged 16 lead-acid 2 volt batteries sitting on the veranda. This 32 volt DC system powered a modern marvel – bright light, at any time, in every room, at the touch of a switch. This system could also power Mum’s new electric clothes iron as long as someone started the engine for a bit more power.

There were no electric self-starters for diesels in those days – just a heavy crank handle. Here is the exact model which saved us from a life of dairy drudgery, kerosene lights and Mother Potts irons:

See and listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itxY98A8wHQ

But all that effort, noise and fumes were superseded when every house and dairy got connected to clean silent “coal power by wire”, and coal was used to produce coke for the new slow-combustion stoves. Suddenly the trusty “Southern Cross” diesel engines disappeared from Australian sheds and dairies, AGA coke-burning cookers displaced the old smoky wood-burning stoves in the kitchen, and clean-burning coal gas replaced wood stoves and dirty open fires in the cities.
(more…)

April 20th, 2017 | Categories: Alternate Energy, Newsletters, Solar Power, Subsidies, Wind Power |

Carbon Conquered Famine (but green zealots can let it loose again)

The Long War on Famine
by Viv Forbes, 8^th June 2018

Famine has haunted humans for most of their history.

In the days of the Pharaohs, whenever the Nile River failed to flood, Egypt starved. Joseph was called in and he organised stockpiling of grain for famine relief.

Even mighty Rome suffered famines – in 436 BC thousands of starving people threw themselves into the Tiber.

The cold Middle Ages in Europe were haunted by famines. In the 11th and 12th century, famines averaged one in 14 years. Even in England there were 22 recorded famines in the 13th century. In 1235, 20,000 people died in London and people ate horse flesh, bark and grass. There were great famines in India, Bengal, France, China and Russia.

Victims of the Great Famine of 1876–78 in India (British Royal Photography Services)

In more recent times, man-made famines were more common in the Comrade Societies – some wit once remarked that “Soviet agriculture has just suffered its 23^rd consecutive year of unseasonal weather”.
(more…)

June 7th, 2018 | Categories: The Carbon Sense Coalition |

The Wanton Worship of Woody Weeds

Greens worship woody weeds. Their proposed tree-clearing bans in Queensland are the latest salvo in a long war favouring trees and damaging grasslands and pastoralists.

For millennia Australia’s open forests and treeless plains have supported our national emblems – the kangaroo and the emu, which in turn sustained aborigines, eagles and dingos. Australian grasslands also nurtured now-endangered species such as bustards, quail, pigeons, finches and grass parrots.

Nothing stands still in nature. Savannas are forever a battleground between grassland, scrub and desert. Greens gaze in rapture at the trees but ignore the valuable grasses beneath their feet – native plants like Mitchell Grass and Kangaroo Grass and cultivated grasses like wheat, barley, oats, sorghum and sugar cane.

Greens hate grazing animals like cattle and sheep (but not wildebeest!) and, like trained parrots, repeat the hard-hoof fairy-tale about soil compaction and erosion. In reality, hoof action breaks crusty soil.

A short burst of concentrated animal impact with hoof cultivation, seed burial, and application of dung and urine fertilisers does wonders for the long-term health of the pasture. It is not a question of hard hooves or soft paws – it is a grazing management question. A healthy pasture needs grasses, herbs, legumes and periodic grazing animals – shut out the ruminants, or stock heavily and continuously, and you will get weeds and desert.

Greens favour “Do Nothing Pasture Management”. Along with their bans on mechanical or chemical control of tree invasions, they try to prevent bushfires which have for millennia maintained the vigour of the grasslands. To have healthy pasture requires recycling of nutrients from old dead grass before the summer rains. This is best achieved by concentrated short-term hoof impact or by controlled burning (both of which may also kill tree seedlings that are forever trying to invade the grasslands).

Greens are always nibbling away at grasslands and open forests by demanding ever more nationalised parks, conservation zones and other green blockades. Instead of supporting graziers with their productive pastures and grazing animals they create ever-expanding sterilised un-managed areas which become havens for weeds like lantana, prickly pear, cactus and wait-a-while and pests like feral dogs, wild pigs and wild cats.

Proposed new Queensland laws will hinder landowners in harvesting mulga scrub during drought and controlling invasion of grasslands by woody weeds. These destructive green bans plus the unjust Kyoto tree-clearing land seizures are part of the global Green plan to drive farmers and graziers from much of the land.

The great value of ruminants is their efficiency in converting the vegetation of poorer grasslands and open forest into edible proteins and fats. ALP/Green policies will reduce the supply of this truly free-range food and increase our dependence on feedlot food, which is worse for the environment and our health.

And for those who believe the greenhouse warming fable, grassland plants remove the bogey-man (carbon dioxide) from the atmosphere. This carbon collected by grazing animals ends up in long-term storage in human bodies via meat and other animal food products. At the end of their life, most human bodies get sequestered in carbon-based coffins and buried in carbon cemeteries.

Greens should be happy with that, but the plant world will gradually suffer from this relentless loss of the gas of life from the biosphere.

The bureaucracy of our “Brave New Green World” will use drones, spy cameras and computer programs to trap and punish any grazier who dares to defend his grassland from invading trees.

Instead of tree clearing bans we need to free our land managers for a war on woody weeds using controlled burning, better grazing management and reversal of the unjust Kyoto land sterilisation program.

Source: http://www.pickeringpost.com/story/the-wanton-worship-of-woody-weeds/8212