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Resisting Climate Hysteria

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basilio said:
When would one decide to abandon a city ? Where would you start rebuilding? Given that this is happening in every part of the country as well as the world what is it doing to our industrial capacity ?
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If you go back a few decades, say half a century, then the basic limit on what we did was technology. We didn't go to the moon in 1964 because we didn't know how to do it yet. We didn't have a computer in every home because a sufficiently powerful, useful and practical computer for home use hadn't been developed yet on account of available technology. And so on.

But if you look at it today then the situation is very different. The reason we don't have either the original or a replacement Space Shuttle flying today is not technical, it is economic. We know exactly how to do it, but the only place you'll see a shuttle now is either on film or on the ground, they don't fly anymore and there's no direct replacement.

Or what about the Concorde? As with the Shuttles they were absolutely a very big symbol of technological progress at one time. But again, the reason we don't travel at that speed today is economic rather than technical. We know exactly how to build a modern version of the Concorde, but it's not viable under current economics to do so.

This comes down to two things really. The underlying economy and the reality that control has shifted from engineers, scientists etc to accountants and non-technical managers. Have a look in the archives and read some old annual reports of any company that was technologically advanced at the time and compare it to today. There's one huge difference. What was the "Chief Engineer" or "Chief Scientist" is now a "CEO" or some other financial type of role.

Back in ye olde days, the gas company had an Engineer in charge. So did the electricity company. So did the railways. So did every other company of a technical, scientific or engineering nature. Now they're run by all sorts of people - most of whom know little about gas, power or trains. And whereas the Cheif Engineer saw the goal as making sure every home had gas and electricity and the trains were running, the goal of the CEO is purely short term financial profit.

Back in the old days, if the previous year's profit was deemed too high then they'd just cut prices, thus benefiting the broader economy and growing the gas / electricity or whatever business in the long term as a result. Everyone wins except those wanting a quick gain. You'll never see such thinking applied today now that the goal is short term profit without regard for the long term.

There's a lot of things that we could easily do but don't, simply due to the shift in thinking away from the pursuit of technical goals in favour of what is commonly known as economic rationalism.

If we were starting from scratch today, we'd never build the Snowy Hydro scheme and Tasmania wouldn't have built it's hydro schemes either. For that matter, we wouldn't even build a statewide electricity grid to supply everyone - it's just not profitable outside the cities and large towns. Nor would we build anywhere near the number of railways or highways that we have today - they're not viable under current thinking. Witness the struggles of Qantas and practically every other airline - their business model works fine if the aim is to transport people and freight but fails miserably if the aim is to match the profits available through the financial industries.

If we still thought the way we thought 50 years ago then this thread would not exist, period. We'd just engineer our way out of the energy problem and spread the cost, with a modest return on investment, over the 25, 40, 60 or 100 year life of the renewable energy systems we built. Problem fixed. The only thing stopping us is the insistence that nothing can be done if it's not the single most profitable option available in purely financial terms.

That's probably not going to be the most popular thing to say on a financial forum, but it's the crux of the problem we have. We can do it, but it doesn't make sense to do so if we're only looking at a short term period and counting every cent. The problem is a financial / accounting issue, not a technical one.
 
Smurf1976 said:
The underlying economy and the reality that control has shifted from engineers, scientists etc to accountants and non-technical managers.

Back in ye olde days, the gas company had an Engineer in charge. So did the electricity company. So did the railways. So did every other company of a technical, scientific or engineering nature. Now they're run by all sorts of people - most of whom know little about gas, power or trains. And whereas the Cheif Engineer saw the goal as making sure every home had gas and electricity and the trains were running, the goal of the CEO is purely short term financial profit.

Back in the old days, if the previous year's profit was deemed too high then they'd just cut prices, thus benefiting the broader economy and growing the gas / electricity or whatever business in the long term as a result. Everyone wins except those wanting a quick gain. You'll never see such thinking applied today now that the goal is short term profit without regard for the long term.

There's a lot of things that we could easily do but don't, simply due to the shift in thinking away from the pursuit of technical goals in favour of what is commonly known as economic rationalism.

not viable under current thinking.
Witness the struggles of .... the aim is to match the profits available through the financial industries.

If we still thought the way we thought 50 years ago then this thread would not exist, period. We'd just engineer our way out of the energy problem and spread the cost, with a modest return on investment, over the 25, 40, 60 or 100 year life of the renewable energy systems we built. Problem fixed. The only thing stopping us is the insistence that nothing can be done if it's not the single most profitable option available in purely financial terms.

but it's the crux of the problem we have. We can do it, but it doesn't make sense to do so if we're only looking at a short term period and counting every cent. The problem is a financial / accounting issue, not a technical one.
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The subversion distilled in the above post, Staggering.... That moderators allow this blasphemy beggars belief.
Alert yourselves All to this brazen 5th column.

But fear not my friends, tune to the Fox network and News Corpse and know that god is in his plushly appointed boardroom, while the many spend years of their life's stuck in traffic commuting from drudge to a hopefully financially solid domestic dream. Because remember, to question may bring about inconvenient and uncomfortable (for the questioners) answers.
to the Fellows of the republic I say...to get rich is glorious.

To the moderators of this thread, imagine in a jovial kind of way..... pockmarked walls.
Sleep well.
Best regards 'The Dear Leader'
 
orr said:
The subversion distilled in the above post, Staggering.... That moderators allow this blasphemy beggars belief.
Alert yourselves All to this brazen 5th column.

But fear not my friends, tune to the Fox network and News Corpse and know that god is in his plushly appointed boardroom, while the many spend years of their life's stuck in traffic commuting from drudge to a hopefully financially solid domestic dream. Because remember, to question may bring about inconvenient and uncomfortable (for the questioners) answers.
to the Fellows of the republic I say...to get rich is glorious.

To the moderators of this thread, imagine in a jovial kind of way..... pockmarked walls.
Sleep well.
Best regards 'The Dear Leader'
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I don't normally let this go but oh well .... LOL !
 
I could distill it even further....

Current way of thinking = how much money will this make in the short term?

Older way of thinking = what is the long term potential of this in a practical sense, and how can we build a viable long term business based upon it that will be profitable in due course?

The thing about renewable energy is that with very few exceptions it involves virtually all costs being incurred up front, followed by production over the following decades. Quite simply, this business model sits very well with the "old" way of thinking but not with today's.

As an example, this year marks the centenary of the Lake Margaret hydro power station (Tas). A century later it still does exactly what it was built to do, it still generates baseload electricity just as it did the day it opened and it still runs the original machinery. It is quite literally the "working museum" it is often referred to as, very little has changed inside over the years and the power station is officially heritage listed.

A century of production has repaid the original investment many times over and could thus be considered an outstanding success using the "old" way of thinking. Build it today, then get returns on that capital for a century and more. But the prospect of such a long time period would never excite anyone thinking the way we do today and that's why we're sticking to fossil fuels which despite ongoing fuel costs are cheaper to build upfront.
 
Ban-ki-Moon is an out and out Greenie who was convinced back in 2011 that the rise in sea levels would swamp many major cities by 2050.

Kevin Rudd is still a member of the UN Climate Change committee and to top it off Combett committed Australia into a donation of $599,000 and 10 % of all monies collected from Labors carbon tax....This is the tax Keven Rudd said he would scrap.




http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/2011/10/un-secretary-general-ban-ki-moon-warns.html
 
Smurf1976 said:
I could distill it even further....

Current way of thinking = how much money will this make in the short term?

Older way of thinking = what is the long term potential of this in a practical sense, and how can we build a viable long term business based upon it that will be profitable in due course?

The thing about renewable energy is that with very few exceptions it involves virtually all costs being incurred up front, followed by production over the following decades. Quite simply, this business model sits very well with the "old" way of thinking but not with today's.
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This would make a good Alan Jones rant but not sure how it lines up with reality given the amount of Government money that's been spent on renewable energy ideas with middling results.
 
banco said:
This would make a good Alan Jones rant but not sure how it lines up with reality given the amount of Government money that's been spent on renewable energy ideas with middling results.
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Doesn't this comment prove Smurf's point? The payback will come over the decades that the renewable energy generators incur no costs for fuel.
 
The IPCC has released it's latest CC report which interestingly enough focuses on risks and risk management. I thought George Monbiot came up with the most insightful analysis of the choices we face and the situation we have ended up in.

Really worth a read and a think.


So, after the IPCC report, which bit of the world are you prepared to lose?
When people say we should adjust to climate change, do they understand what that actually means?


George Monbiot

‘It’s not only the Stern review that’s been forgotten, but also the floods which have so recently abated.'

To understand what is happening to the living planet, the great conservationist Aldo Leopold remarked, is to live "in a world of wounds … An ecologist must either harden his shell and make believe that the consequences of science are none of his business, or he must be the doctor who sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise."

The metaphor suggests that he might have seen Henrik Ibsen's play, An Enemy of the People. Thomas Stockmann is a doctor in a small Norwegian town, and medical officer at the public baths whose construction has been overseen by his brother, the mayor. The baths, the mayor boasts, "will become the focus of our municipal life! … Houses and landed property are rising in value every day."

But Stockmann discovers that the pipes have been built in the wrong place, and the water feeding the baths is contaminated. "The source is poisoned … We are making our living by retailing filth and corruption! The whole of our flourishing municipal life derives its sustenance from a lie!" People bathing in the water to improve their health are instead falling ill.

Stockmann expects to be treated as a hero for exposing this deadly threat. After the mayor discovers that re-laying the pipes would cost a fortune and probably sink the whole project, he decides that his brother's report "has not convinced me that the condition of the water at the baths is as bad as you represent it to be".

The mayor proposes to ignore the problem, make some cosmetic adjustments and carry on as before. After all, "the matter in hand is not simply a scientific one. It is a complicated matter, and has its economic as well as its technical side." The local paper, the baths committee and the business people side with the mayor against the doctor's "unreliable and exaggerated accounts".

Astonished and enraged, Stockmann lashes out madly at everyone. He attacks the town as a nest of imbeciles, and finds himself, in turn, denounced as an enemy of the people. His windows are broken, his clothes are torn, he's evicted and ruined.

Today's editorial in the Daily Telegraph, which was by no means the worst of the recent commentary on this issue, follows the first three acts of the play. Marking the new assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the Telegraph sides with the mayor. First it suggests that the panel cannot be trusted, partly because its accounts are unreliable and exaggerated and partly because it uses "model-driven assumptions" to forecast future trends. (What would the Telegraph prefer? Tea leaves? Entrails?). Then it suggests that trying to stop manmade climate change would be too expensive. Then it proposes making some cosmetic adjustments and carrying on as before. ("Perhaps instead of continued doom-mongering, however, greater thought needs to be given to how mankind might adapt to the climatic realities.")

....When our environment secretary, Owen Paterson, assures us that climate change "is something we can adapt to over time" or Simon Jenkins, in the Guardian today, says that we should move towards "thinking intelligently about how the world should adapt to what is already happening", what do they envisage? Cities relocated to higher ground? Roads and railways shifted inland? Rivers diverted? Arable land abandoned? Regions depopulated? Have they any clue about what this would cost? Of what the impacts would be on the people breezily being told to live with it?
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http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/31/ipcc-report-world-lose-habitats-climate-change
 
banco said:
This would make a good Alan Jones rant but not sure how it lines up with reality given the amount of Government money that's been spent on renewable energy ideas with middling results.
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It comes down to how we went about it.

Suppose that you have $10 billion (to pick a random but reasonably large number) of taxpayers' money to spend on renewable energy.

Give it to a politician and they will spend it on whatever they perceive will gain the most votes at the next election without regard to value for money or effectiveness as an energy source.

Give it to an engineer and they will:

1. Do a desktop study to produce a full list of all possible renewable energy sources. They will rank this by cost per unit of renewable energy produced, with additional columns on the spreadsheet for other attributes - what it produces (electricity, liquid fuel, heat etc), how proven the technology is, indicative location (eg possible states or regions where it would be practical to build).

2. For those at the lower end of the cost range, they would then undertake more detailed analysis to verify the costs. This will produce a final cost-based lists of projects to consider further.

3. For those within 20% of the cheapest cost, they will assume the actual cost to be similar given that there is always some uncertainty. These projects would then be ranked in terms of their other attributes. Eg something which produces firm electricity output is more useful than something that's intermittent. Liquid fuels able to be used as a "drop in" replacement for petrol are more useful than electricity. Any practical or environmental downsides need to be considered and some projects may be considered impractical despite being low cost and thus removed from further consideration.

4.Then you have a final list of suitable projects based on their cost effectiveness and non-financial benefits. Then it is a matter of looking at any final practical matters. Eg if you have two comparable projects but can only afford to build one, and if one was near a large town with high unemployment and the other was in the middle of nowhere, any rational engineer would choose the one near the town with workers available. Firstly that will make ongoing operation easier, secondly there's the social aspect of creating work etc. Proximity to other existing infrastructure, eg the power grid, will also be a factor.

5. Then it is just a matter of delivering the projects, and at that point the market comes in. Eg it has been determined to install 1000 MW of wind generation in SA - now let anyone who wants to built and operate it compete on an open tender basis with tenderers having full access to all data and the ability to choose how to go about it (eg build 10 small ones or 2 large ones?). The market can sort that bit out.

What would this have actually resulted in?

Solar on house roofs would be considered uneconomic for supply to the main grid but attractive in locations dependent on diesel generators. There would thus be a loan or subsidy scheme to encourage the installation of solar in such locations. Anyone on the main grid wishing to install solar would be free to do so of course - but at their own expense.

Solar hot water is attractive in some regions (especially those otherwise relying on diesel) and would be pursued in the same manner with any subsidies limited to locations where solar hot water is a low cost technology relative to grid power.

Centralised wind generation is attractive primarily in certain states and also in small diesel systems elsewhere and would be pursued in those areas.

Untapped hydro resources in Tas, Vic, NSW and Qld which can be developed without major environmental controversy would not have escaped attention and some projects would have been built. They'd have steered well clear of anything highly contentious, putting it in the "impractical at present" category given the uncertainty that it could actually be built in practice.

They would have insisted that a small but significant (say, 30MW) hot dry rock geothermal plant be built as a research project, noting the enormous potential of the technology but that much uncertainty exists about costs and real world operations. Properly determining the realities of this technology would be considered a high priority.

Biomass, particularly agricultural waste etc, suitable for conversion to liquid fuels is viable in some areas and would be developed via subsidy to private operators. An engineer would see the production of liquid fuels as having a higher inherent value than producing electricity or heat from a broader resource perspective, thus favouring such projects where economic and practical.

Cloud seeding is a proven technology and Tasmania is a world leader in its' application, having actually done it for 50 years to increase hydro-electric output. Given the incredibly low cost, an engineer would want to know where else it actually works and a trial would be conducted in potentially suitable locations both for hydro power and in water catchments as an alternative to energy-intensive desalination.

They would also have changed the definition of the overall scheme from "renewable energy" to "energy supplied without the additional use of non-renewable resources", thus enabling economically attractive (compared to renewables) projects such as heat capture from metal smelters to produce electricity to be funded.

The end result is that we'd have developed whichever renewable energy sources deliver the most "bang for buck" with a particular emphasis on reducing the consumption of, or increasing the supply of, liquid fuels where this can be done in an economical and practical manner. We would also have removed the uncertainty surrounding technologies such as geothermal and the broader application of cloud seeding.

In short, an engineering approach would have given us a much greater increase in renewable energy production, and additional side benefits, when compared to the political approach. It would also have given us a very clear path to follow should additional funding be available at a later time.

It's perhaps worth noting that if we'd done this 30 years ago then the above is how we'd have done it since that was the thinking back then. Political involvement would have been limited to final "sign off" before projects went ahead, with the overall direction being driven by those who understand such things rather than those who have never set foot inside a power station unless to cut a ribbon and declare the place open.

PS - it's worth noting that the energy industry itself has tried to pursue rational logic so far as practical. Eg AGL built a new hydro plant in Victoria and numerous companies have developed wind in SA which is a good place for it. Meanwhile Hydro Tas has what it internally refers to as "the 1000 GWh project" which is aimed at pushing the existing power stations harder on a sustainable basis. Hydro also has the King Island Renewable Energy Integration Project as a technology demonstration too. Unfortunately however, most of the actual taxpayer funds have ended up doing things that are relatively ineffective like putting panels on house roofs in the suburbs (mine included by the way).
 
ghotib said:
Doesn't this comment prove Smurf's point? The payback will come over the decades that the renewable energy generators incur no costs for fuel.
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Sort of, although the problem is that in short, we've spent a lot of money building renewable energy generation that is more expensive (eg rooftop solar) than other things we could a have built instead.

In short, we were pretty good at spending the money but we didn't get good value from it in many cases. More power could have been generated at the same cost (or the same power at lower cost) so it was a missed opportunity really.
 
This wasn't written by me, and it's on a different subject, but it sums up my thoughts pretty well.

Looking overall at Australia, our engineers, architects, scientists, teachers, planners, police, firemen, defence forces, inventors, farmers, fishermen and environmentalists have done a fantastic job over the past 100 years or more, just look at what they have achieved. At the same time, looking at the results achieved, our politicians, judges, lawyers and accountants have done an appalling job, they have created an absolute shambles while feathering their own nests to the extreme. We really need to make some radical changes in the way these sectors operate
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Original is here: http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/...e-of-gst-revenue/story-fnihsrf2-1226875116928

There are exceptions of course, but in general it is largely true (possible exception of judges - I accept that they do have a difficult job and that they know more than joe average about the issues involved).

So far as climate and clean energy is concerned, it's the financial system and politics which holds us back and nothing more. Engineers know how to make it happen, the materials and resources required are available, and we have plenty of people from draftsmen to electricians to truck drivers who could collectively turn it into reality.

Thinking the way we do today, we'd never have built the brown coal industry in Victoria. Nor would we have built the Hydro in Tasmania. Nor would we have built the Snowy. We wouldn't have even built the Leigh Creek mine and Port Augusta power stations in SA. We'd have stuck with black coal and gas, nothing else satisfying the demands of today's financial system which demands top returns on an artificial construct whilst completely ignoring other costs - environment etc. And going forward, this is why we're not doing far more with geothermal, solar etc than we are - it's an accounting and political limitation, not a technical or resource one. :2twocents
 
wayneL said:
An alarming abuse of scientific method by climate alarmists.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/04/...-access-to-lewandowsky-poll-data/#more-106903
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Thats so interesting... and apposite.

The IPCC releases its latest report on the progress of global warming and its effects on the earth. The report is effectively signed off by all significant countries representatives who tacitly agree with its findings. And as George Monbiot points out we are left with deciding just which parts of the world we are prepared to sacrifice.

Meanwhile the real "scientists" (Monckton, Carter, Watt and co :eek:) are arguing about a paper which identifies how far denialists have buried their heads in the sand or up their collective bums.

And that is their contribution to the debate.:confused::banghead:

.
 
basilio said:
Thats so interesting... and apposite.

The IPCC releases its latest report on the progress of global warming and its effects on the earth. The report is effectively signed off by all significant countries representatives who tacitly agree with its findings. And as George Monbiot points out we are left with deciding just which parts of the world we are prepared to sacrifice.

Meanwhile the real "scientists" (Monckton, Carter, Watt and co :eek:) are arguing about a paper which identifies how far denialists have buried their heads in the sand or up their collective bums.

And that is their contribution to the debate.:confused::banghead:

.
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Moonbat is an idiot, and the IPCC report id nothing but a collection of weasel words, incidentally, at odds with the original long version report.

So this is the new way to do science basilio? We make some obnoxious untenable hypothesis and then hide all the purported data?

Come on, not even you could fail to be embarrassed by such tosh.
 
wayneL said:
Moonbat is an idiot, and the IPCC report id nothing but a collection of weasel words, incidentally, at odds with the original long version report.

So this is the new way to do science basilio? We make some obnoxious untenable hypothesis and then hide all the purported data?

Come on, not even you could fail to be embarrassed by such tosh.
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GLOBAL WARMING???????????WHAT GLOBAL WARMING ARE THEY TALKING ABOUT?

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/04/05/no-global-warming-for-17-years-8-months/
 
Actually a good article noco.

The most important paragraph is the following.

“The reasons for the discrepancy between the predicted and observed warming rate are currently under investigation by a number of research groups. Possible reasons include increased oceanic circulation leading to increased subduction of heat into the ocean, higher than normal levels of stratospheric aerosols due to volcanoes during the past decade, incorrect ozone levels used as input to the models, lower than expected solar output during the last few years, or poorly modelled cloud feedback effects. It is possible (or even likely) that a combination of these candidate causes is responsible.”

There was a very good article in New Scientist regarding the subduction of heat into the ocean. The test will be when the next El Niño forms which is quite likely at present as this will reverse the effect if it is as powerful as some believe.

The Sun has had lower activity, so there may be something in that but I don't believe the effect is large enough to state that it has stopped the warming.

We really don't understand the cloud feedback mechanisms. The more clouds we have, the more heat that will be reflected back into space. This effect may be a quite strong feedback mechanism.
 
I cannot believe the amount of convoluted garbage.

Blind freddy can tell you that with increased heat we are, and we have, increased cloud. This in turn cools things down.

But it will only temper things for awhile.

Forget the conjuxtamongalationtedness of the science,tists, just look around, judge and think for yourselves.
 

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