Three centuries ago, the world ran on green power. Wood was used for heating and cooking, charcoal for smelting and smithing, wind or water-power for pumps mills and ships, and whale oil or tallow for lamps. People and soldiers walked or rode horses, and millions of horses and oxen pulled ploughs, wagons, coaches and artillery.
But smoke from open fires choked cities, forests were stripped of trees, most of the crops went to feed draft animals, and streets were littered with horse manure. For many people, life was “nasty, brutish and short”.
Then the steam engine was developed, and later the internal combustion engine, electricity and refrigeration came along. Green power was replaced by coal and oil. Carbon energy powered factories, mills, pumps, ships, trains, and smelters; and cars, trucks and tractors replaced the work-horses. The result was a green revolution – forests began to regrow and vast areas of crop-land used for horse feed were released to produce food for humans. Poverty declined and population soared.
But new environmental problems emerged. Smoke pollution from burning cheap dirty coal in millions of open fires, old boilers and smelters produced massive smog problems in cities like London and Pittsburgh.
The solution was improved technology, sensible pollution-control laws and the supply of coal gas and coal-powered electricity to the cities. The air was cleared by “Clean Coal by Wire” at the flick of a switch and “Piped Coal Energy” at the click of a gas-lighter. In some places use of hydro, geothermal and nuclear power also helped.
In recent years, however, affluent urban alarmists have declared war on the carbon dioxide produced by burning coal, oil and gas. They claim it is a pollutant and it causes dangerous global warming. (more…)
A group of leading climate researchers has identified a fatal flaw in the climate models that leads them to produce triple the global warming predicted from doubling the CO2 in the air.
CO2 in the atmosphere has some warming effect on Earth’s climate, but undisputed science shows that each additional CO2 molecule we emit has less warming effect than all its predecessors already in the air.
The direct warming effect of doubling the CO2 in the air is generally agreed to be little more than 1 C°. However climate models produce exaggerated warming forecasts by assuming that strongly positive or amplifying temperature feedbacks, such as the increased capacity of warmer air to carry water vapour, a greenhouse gas. They assume that these positive feedbacks will turn 1 C° of direct warming into 3 C° of imagined catastrophe.
They model this assumed feedback with a feedback system-gain equation which is at the heart of every climate model. The equation, however, is borrowed from electronic circuitry. It is not applicable to dynamical systems such as the Earth’s atmosphere.
However, a growing body of learned papers in the climate-science journals (e.g. Lindzen & Choi, 2009, 2011; Spencer & Braswell, 2010, 2011) consider that climate feedbacks are net-negative, moderating rather than intensifying the 1 C° direct warming from a CO2 doubling. (more…)
Wake Up Australia: we are becoming Green and Defenceless.
As Australia’s industrial capacity declines, Australia is becoming green and defenceless. History holds lessons.
Back in Dec 1941, Japan suddenly attacked the huge US Naval base at Pearl Harbour. Three days later, two “invincible” British warships, “Repulse” and “Prince of Wales” were sunk by Japanese planes off Malaya. Soon Japanese armies were rampaging through Asia towards Australia. By Feb 1942, the “impregnable” British fortress of Singapore surrendered and Japanese bombs were falling on Darwin. By Sept 1942 the Japanese army had slashed their way down the Kokoda Track and could see the lights of Port Moresby. They were looking across Torres Strait to Australia. At that time, most of our trained soldiers were fighting Rommel in North Africa or in Japanese prison camps.
Suddenly Australia was on its own and needed to defend itself with what we had here.
Soldiers volunteered and were conscripted. Australian conscripts formed part of the force that met the Japanese on the Kokoda Track.
Of course Australia had very few engineering tools when war broke out, especially key tools like lathes. F W Hercus Manufacturing started making a copy of the famous American Southbend lathe in the 1940’s. These machines were installed in factories around Australia and used to make small parts for the war effort. Most of the lathe operators were women.
Enfield Rifles, Bren Guns and Vickers Machine Guns were produced in large numbers at the Small Arms Factory at Lithgow supported by feeder factories in the area. Britain lost so many weapons at Dunkirk that Australian factories were sending guns to them. We could not do that now.
Motor oil was produced in limited quantities from oil shale at Glen Davis, but petrol was in serious short supply, and had been rationed since 1940. With the fall of Singapore, this shortage became severe, and charcoal burners suddenly appeared to keep cars and trucks moving. Kerosene was scarce so carbide lights were widely used. The demand for charcoal was so great that firewood became scarce so it was also rationed.
To conserve supplies for soldiers, rationing was introduced for tea, clothing, butter, sugar, meat and cigarettes. Hotels were only allowed to serve alcohol twice a day for one hour at a time of their choosing.
An immediate critical shortage was copper for cartridge cases and communications – Australia had mines producing lead, zinc, silver, gold and iron, but there was a critical shortage of copper. Fortuitously, just before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, an exploration drill hole at Mount Isa had struck rich copper ore.
Mount Isa was called on to avert a calamitous shortage of copper in Australia. With government encouragement, Mount Isa Mines made the brave decision to suspend the profitable silver/lead/zinc operations and convert all mining and treatment facilities to extracting copper.
The lead concentrator could be converted to treat copper ore, but the biggest problem was how to smelt the copper concentrates. Luckily the company had skilled engineers and metallurgists in the lead smelter. In a miracle of improvisation, scrap steel and spare parts were purchased and scavenged from old mines and smelters from Cloncurry, Mt Elliott, Mt Cuthbert and Kuridala and cobbled into a workable copper smelter. In 1943 the first Mount Isa blister copper was produced. Production continued after the war when Mount Isa returned to extracting the then more profitable silver/lead/zinc. Later new plant was built enabling both lead and copper metal to be produced from this fabulous mine.
This story of the importance of self-reliance has lessons for today. (more…)
Governments are running huge deficits, but still spend billions on “climate research” especially trying to model the effect of the atmosphere and its trace of carbon dioxide on surface temperature. Benefits are hard to find. It may have improved weather forecasts by a day or so, but official long-term predictions have not improved in the last fifty years. This is because carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is not the main driver of weather or climate.
“What is referred to reverently as “climate research” is mainly just grubby advocacy supporting the political war on carbon. Why are we still funding scientists who believe that “the science is settled”? If they believe that they know the answers, what are they are doing with their research funds?”
Around the world there are five official weather data-bases, about 14 weather satellites (some say there are 88 of them!), 73 climate computer models, at least 30 research groups and thousands of academics receiving grants and attending never-ending climate conferences. Much of this torrent of public money is now focussed on trying to torture a climate confession out of one normally un-noticed and totally innocent trace gas in the atmosphere – carbon dioxide.
The major determinants of surface weather are latitude, earth’s rotation, the seasons, the sun with its variable radiations and orbital changes; and nearness to the oceans which maintain the water cycle, moderate temperatures and house massive volcanic chains.
Read more, as well as:
Warmists Watch Wrong Weather Warnings
Let’s Hear How They Will Do It
The Overflow Column
Obama Baloney
US/China Climate Agreement triggers Global Cooling in US
A Lone Australian Farmer Fights back against Kyoto Theft. He needs our help
“… But surely the most surreal episode of the march was Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. saying Morano and I and thousands like us should be jailed for expressing doubts about “dangerous manmade climate change.”
“I think they should be in jail … with all the other war criminals.” Republican politicians too – “those guys are doing the Koch brothers bidding and are against all the evidence, saying global warming does not exist. They are contemptible human beings,” he fumed.
“So RFK the younger wants to punish us for the “crimes” of exercising our First Amendment rights, demanding actual evidence to support alarmist assertions, saying people’s needs for reliable, affordable energy must be part of the conversation – and insisting that those needs take precedence over absurd claims that climate change is “the world’s most fearsome weapon of mass destruction,” posing “greater long-term consequences” than ISIL, terrorism or Ebola, as Secretary of State John Kerry insists.”
The Kyoto Protocol was dreamed up by the Climate Jet-set in Kyoto, Japan in 1997.
One of the first decisions of born-again-green PM, Kevin Rudd, was to commit Australia to Kyoto Phase 1 in 2007. This treaty required signatories to reduce production of carbon dioxide to 5% below 1990 levels by 2012.
As a late joiner, Australia got a lower target, involving no actual cuts. And they achieved that easy target by robbing Australian landowners – they stole carbon credits from landowners by imposing tree clearing bans. That larcenous trick can’t be pulled twice.
Ironically, the death notice for the Kyoto misadventure was posted by Japan, the birthplace of Kyoto, when they announced at Cancun in 2010 that Japan would not agree to any further targets. Japan was shocked at the billions in liabilities they had accumulated by not meeting Kyoto 1 target cuts.
Undeterred by this warning, another ALP/Green government agreed to Kyoto 2 in 2012 – 5% below 2000 levels by 2020.
This target, agreed to without due diligence, is dreamland stuff for Australia. Once the growing population is taken into account, this target would require Australians in 2020 to maintain industries and create new jobs using 30% less hydro-carbon energy per capita than was used in 2000.
Mining and mineral processing, agriculture, manufacturing, transport, tourism, electricity generation, cement, forestry and fishing are the backbone industries of Australia.
Not one of these industries could maintain production while also significantly reducing their production of carbon dioxide, unless Australia embarks on a crash program of building new hydro and/or nuclear power stations. The chance that green regulators or politicians will allow either of these options any time soon is zero.
The use of carbon fuels, more than any other indicator, measures the growth and health of modern economies. The only way to kill carbon is to kill the economy – close industries or send them overseas. The Global Financial Crisis probably did more to reduce the use of hydro-carbon fuels than Kyoto will ever do.
Japan’s exit from Kyoto obligations was soon followed by Canada and Russia. USA never signed, nor did China, India, South Africa or Brazil.
Thus the four biggest economies in our region (USA, China, Japan and India) are not burdened by Kyoto. Nor are our big competitors – Brazil (iron and beef), Indonesia (coal), Chile (copper) and Canada (wheat). We only have the Kiwis and the faraway Europeans sharing the sinking Kyoto ship.
The Kyoto Agreement is a failure. Australia repealed the costly carbon dioxide tax. Next we should get rid of Kyoto liabilities.
Red Faces all round among the profiteers of doom. A wrong equation that falsely triples the tiny direct warming caused by doubling CO2 concentration has been discovered and exposed in a major peer-reviewed paper just published in the Science Bulletin of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, one of the world’s top learned journals.
Or “Droughts and Extreme Weather are Nothing New.” by Dr Bill Johnson
Outpourings of climate bulldust over recent decades have been more alarming than changes in the climate.
Drought and above-average temperatures during recent El Niño-dominated years from 2001 to 2010 were deliberately and relentlessly marketed as global-warming. Driven incestuously by WWF and its Wentworth Group; green groups; Climate Commissioners; and a bunch of pretend-institutes, superlatives flew-up every greasy-pole out through talking-heads into the community’s ear.
Australians endured an endless chatter-based marketing campaign involving the ABC, CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology that intertwined CO2; the hot/critical decade; Murray-Darling Basin (MDB) “health”; and the carbon tax; grinding them into our national psyche. Science was reorganised with rivers of tax-payers cash enticing once-proud universities to lend brand to the cause. Every hot/cold/dry/wet day, clamouring professors popped out of disused broom-cupboards across the land, waving models and “new reports”. It was an overt scientifically-disingenuous beat-up.
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