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John Quiggin 
DIW Berlin have this paper on the full costings of nuclear. It’s abundantly clear, from analysis of 674 nuclear power plants, that as a source of cheap clean energy nuclear is not a feasible option.
“too expensive and dangerous”
Click to access dwr-19-30-1.pdf
Jacobson paper on nuclear (a draft book chapter, pdf): ****web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/NuclearVsWWS.pdf
Advert for a blog post on the ad hominem rule and its limitations, following a discussion on a blog post on nuclear contra Kevin Drum: *****samefacts.com/2019/07/woolgathering/is-ad-hominem-a-fallacy
I am not very satisfied with my analysis, but I do think the problem is an important one. Most democratic and scholarly debate takes place between people with strongly held views, not dispassionate neutrals; and much of it between people with a financial, career or emotional stake in the issue. We can’t exclude bias and have to deal with it judiciously.
“DIW Berlin have this paper on the full costings of nuclear. It’s abundantly clear, from analysis of 674 nuclear power plants, that as a source of cheap clean energy nuclear is not a feasible option.”
I think thats all true. I’m not going to contradict any of this. But I would suggest we have forgotten how to do these long-term projects if we ever did them right in the first place. I think we have regressed in many ways. Probably De-Witt Clinton did a better job of his big long-run infrastructure project, than anything Australia has done in a long time.
What I am saying is that this expense and danger is more inherent to our management of long slow projects than it is to the nuclear technology itself.
One nail in the coffin has been loosened just a bit.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/07/11/housing-crisis-single-family-homes-policy-227265
I consider this policy important enought that I made it part of my official platform.
It is nice to see my hometown being the first to adopt the policy.
As the world’s most under ratted real estate agent, I can say with completer expertise that density in real estate as long as it is kept under 4 or 5 stories (etage) is a good thing. Not that other kind of density though.
Graeme Bird,
I too have begun to wonder if “The West” has lost the capacity to do large scale projects. Like you, I don’t disagree that the costings (and other factors) show nuclear power is a bad idea. However, our (Australia’s) ability to run nation-building projects in general (or even to build apartment buildings that don’t crack dangerously) has clearly declined severely.
The NBN is a joke: a huge overpriced mess under-delivering services and taking forever to complete. The new M-D Basin plan is a massive boondoggle being rorted and delivering NO environmental flows back to the system. Victoria has to spend $600 million to fix building flammable-cladding mistakes. I guess the real culprits have got away scot free. Apartment buildings here of maybe just 20 floors crack apart dangerously. In the US, the first tall buildings were built in the 1890s. Their first great age of skyscrapers was 1900-1919. Then there was the inter-war years age. Many skyscrapers of all these eras are still standing. Now, we can’t build buildings that safely last 20 months it seems. China can but apparently Australia can’t.
If we look at the building of real stuff, China has vastly outstripped the rest of the world. It almost gives the picture that the building of real stuff has come to a halt in the West. Take cement production as a proxy for building real infrastructure (other than electronic communications). I can’t find the concrete pour numbers right now.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/267364/world-cement-production-by-country/
I would say from these figures that the West has stalled and is actually going into decay. You can’t even properly fix, maintain and replace existing infrastructure on those numbers. US infrastructure decay is the clear proof of that assertion. Search US infrastructure decay. The West is decaying. Of course, the East won’t be far behind. The globe’s resources can’t sustain even our current structures and populations.
Ikon once we privatised the old State utilities and Telecom and put econocrats and business managers in charge of everything, the nation building stopped in its tracks. The old Telecom would have just built the NBN with minimal fuss and ata reasonable cost.
Doctor Strangelove,
Yes, I agree. See my comment on the thread ” Mesmerised by Messmer” where I mention the evisceration of the state by neoliberalism. That is a big reason why the state is so useless now in the West. It has been deliberately rendered relatively useless by neoliberal policy in all arenas except those law and security (courts, police, prisons and armies). War, external and domestic, always has to be waged against those who resist the concentration of capital in fewer and fewer hands. All other spending gets cut as far as the population will or can tolerate.
@James W Snap! https://johnquiggin.com/2006/02/21/ad-hominem-ad-nauseam/
Ikon said: “All other spending gets cut as far as the population will or can tolerate.”.
You and I Ikon wish it was ‘tolerate’, but it seems to be the status quo “not increased [ing] demands for redistribution.”
“Income Inequality Influences Perceptions of Legitimate Income Differences
“Three experiments show that personal experiences of inequality as well as information regarding national-level income inequality can affect which income differences are thought of as legitimate. A fourth experiment shows that the -! system justification !- motivation is a cause of this effect. These results can provide an empirical basis for future studies to assume that the public reacts to inequality with adapted expectations, not increased demands for redistribution.”
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2324255
…”system-justifying beliefs serve a psychologically palliative function. It proposes that people have several underlying needs, which vary from individual to individual, that can be satisfied by the defense and justification of the status quo, even when the system may be disadvantageous to certain people.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_justification
I wish it weren’t so Ikon, but I believe system justification as described above to be real.
Perhaps “system justification” needs to be discussed more than economics, neoliberalism and financialisation.
I can’t agree that the defects of some apartment buildings is symptomatic of a systemic malaise permeating the West.
Harking back to buildings built early in the last century (they don’t build em like they used to!) seems a distortion of MAGA proportions.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_structural_failures_and_collapses#Buildings_and_other_fixed_man-made_structures
Generations from now generations will still be part of the zietgiest.
“You are More Than the Sum of What you Consume”: Generation X and Consumer Society
…”Homogeneity of generational experience was always a mirage but we have to start somewhere. ”
…
“I argue that the political and economic realities matter as much as the cultural ones in defining generation cohorts. ”
…
“The problem with identifying generations is the problem with every other kind of social construct: not everyone agrees on a definition. But the reality is that many people identify via their generational cohort, myself included. The most useful lens we can put to such theories is how it shaped modern patterns of consumption and political engagement within the realm of consumerism. Each successive generation since the 1950s were targeted by commercial interests by their generational cohort, which led to more engagement with pop culture, but also greater politicization of pop culture.20 Each generation’s counterculture struggled with that reality, which hints at the difficulties of rebellion through consumerism. Generation X was a single generation in that process, but possibly the hinge point of those historical changes.”
https://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2019/07/you-are-more-than-the-sum-of-what-you-consume-generation-x-and-consumer-society.html#more-164079
Ikonoclast I couldn’t agree more with everything you’ve said here. Its a major obsession of mine, how you go about doing things right.
Funnily enough, just before the Labour party was thrown out last time, Anthony Albanese came up with an industry shipping policy that seemed to conform to my idea of how you go about getting things right over the long haul. I was so impressed I phoned his office.
But basically when it comes to privatisation, exploitation of natural resources, or any of these big schemes, we do things entirely contrary as to how I would want it.
JQ: Thanks! Somebody qualified agrees with me – not proof I was right, but raises the odds, plus nice warm feeling.
I have added a link to your post in mine.
One of the key promoters of political denialism in the USA, the Heartland Institute, is in trouble: attendance a the annual conference down, conference shortened to a day, sponsors tiptoeing away. This is not how people behave when they think they are on the winning side. This is happening with denialists in the White House and the EPA, you would think the ideal situation for the movement. Cato has also dropped its climate denial programme.
***desmogblog.com/2019/07/29/hard-times-climate-denial-heartland-institute
Federal and State governments maintained core staffs of engineers and architects in their construction and public works departments until the late ’90s. All gone, along with the specialists in project delivery and building technology in organisations like Snowy Mountains Engineering Corporation. The former Experimental Building Station was folded into CSIRO. Only State main roads departments and unprivatised electricity agencies retain engineering expertise in the public sector. Big project management now has to be bought from the likes of Bechtel.
g2-a389c… said: “State main roads departments and unprivatised electricity agencies retain engineering expertise in the public sector.”
Nit sure about electricity but as to state main roads depts and nsw in particular…
In 1995 ‘a big engeneering consulatancy” was chosen to sort out expert witnesses 600pg report re a new ppp toll road. The consultant came back with a model, able to be set and scenarios generated by judge. No where to hide.
The big consultant and engeneers engineers gained huge tender consultancy fees from rta nsw. They outsourced tender functions.
Who do you think the consultants then employed?
The “engineering expertise in the public sector”. All bulled back to the taxpayer at high end commercial rates and “forever” variations from both govt and pp partener.
If you might reference “engineering expertise in the public sector” vs govt vs consultancy expansion by both dollar head count and expertise I may change my mind.
Without such evidence, your statement “State main roads departments and . .. retain engineering expertise in the public sector” imho is untrue in nsw roads..
Its getting ridiculous isn’t it. Its bad enough that they cannot do the job themselves, they have to tender the job out. But they cannot even tender the job out, they need to pay consultants to do it. But perhaps they need to employ other consultants, so as to figure out which tender consultants to use. Then they could tender that consultancy job out in an endless loop.
Its really time to streamline this whole thing, with a view to cutting out the banks from any of the loot. When we weren’t looking, the bankers sorted out all our social norms for getting anything done. Which means things don’t get done cheaply and most of the value winds up with the bankers.
“Cato has also dropped its climate denial programme.” Its a replay of the Einstein racket and aether-denialism of over 100 years ago. The oligarchy doesn’t need evidence. They don’t need honest data. They just beat up on everyone until after about 30 years everyone still standing has to believe in fake science.
Persistence. Persistence. Persistence. If you persist you can have people believing that gravity is space bending, that there is such a thing as waves where nothing is waving, that the universe began all at once a short time ago and so forth. You can make them think that large gravitational bodies are made predominantly of lifting gasses with no evidence at all other than that the lifting gasses naturally float to the top of the outer atmosphere of these stars. This global warming fraud is not science through evidence. Like aether-denial its science through bludgeoning. The main goal is to sponsor energy sources that aren’t going to work, so that we miss out on cheap energy.
Another solar price record
A large auction in Portugal has attracted a bid at the incredible price of €14.8 per Mwh. It is for delivery in three years, so the bid includes a large bet on future price reductions. Still, as I said before about the earlier sub-2c/kwh auctions in Brazil and Los Angeles, these are contractual offers not forecasts. There is no sign of an asymptotic price floor. ****pv-magazine.com/2019/07/31/portuguese-auction-attracts-world-record-bid-of-e14-8-mwh-for-solar/
I may be wrong but the gains may be coming more from single-axis trackers (allowing longer duration) and bifacial modules (capturing reflections from the ground) than from the limited gains in cell efficiency from monocrystalline and PERC. Not that it matters much, the important thing is that the technology is still advancing.
Energy consultants and academics in Australia will need to update their spreadsheets on PV costs. Nuclear power? What was that, Grandpa?
Food shortages in the US showing up. Lengthened structures of production are necessary in manufacturing, but dangerous in agriculture. Libertarian happy-talk is setting us up for a disaster as the weather becomes cold and dry.
Graeme Bird,
“A grand solar minimum would barely make a dent in human-caused global warming”
https://skepticalscience.com/grand-solar-minimum-mini-ice-age.htm
The climate forcing from anthropogenic CO2 emissions is much greater than the drift the other way, to a mini-ice age, induced by changes in solar activity. The sun’s activity would have to drop far more markedly than it did for the Maunder minimum to reverse current global warming. If it dropped so much so quickly, we would rightly be concerned about the new instability of the sun. It could presage anything, almost certainly meaning nothing good for life on earth. This is unless you believe a beneficent deity is in charge of the solar thermostat.
JQ I think you and George M need to write The Story. Ali needs a past and future.
JQ’s …”a positive vision of a socialist society is essential. This calls for a kind of utopian thinking that has been out of favour for a long time. That’s in part because of the failure of so many utopian visions, and even more because of the need to defend the partially realised utopia of the mid-20th century social-democratic welfare state.”
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jan/17/socialist-utopia-2050-what-could-life-in-australia-be-like-after-the-failure-of-capitalism
https://johnquiggin.com/2019/01/19/socialist-utopia-2050/
A fired up George Manboit says: …”Then, in 2008, the neoliberal story fell apart, and its opponents came forward with … nothing. No new restoration story! The best they had to offer was a watered-down neoliberalism or a microwaved Keynesianism. And that is why we’re stuck. Without that new story, we are stuck with the old failed story that keeps on failing. Despair is the state we fall into when our imagination fails. When we have no story that explains the present and describes the future, hope evaporates. Political failure is at heart a failure of imagination. Without a restoration story that can tell us where we need to go, nothing is going to change, but with such a restoration story, almost everything can change. The story we need to tell is a story which will appeal to as wide a range of people as possible, crossing political fault lines. It should resonate with deep needs and desires. It should be simple and intelligible, and it should be grounded in reality.”…
No need to watch video as transcript linked.
I’ve emailed GM a link.
“The climate forcing from anthropogenic CO2 emissions is much greater than the drift the other way, to a mini-ice age, induced by changes in solar activity.”
I know the fellow you are linking to. I was right there in the thick of these debates when he started this blog and he’s a complete moron. There is no such thing as climate FORCING. It does not exist. Its an artifact of a model that has failed. This aggregated model fails on all grounds. Its a fundamentally ignorant model, it fails any conceptual audit, and its been relentlessly proven wrong empirically. Its a flat earth model. To be fair it may relate quite well to arctic summers. But other than that its a dud, and we will be hurting very badly from cold dry weather in the 2030’s.
But that this model is nonsense ought not matter, in terms of public policy, since there is very many reasons Australia ought to slow down its coal exports. For one thing its just good resource husbandry. Secondly too much of the loot from resource exploitation is going into usury which is a deadweight loss. More should be going in royalties, and the whole thing should be achieved at close to debt free. Secondly even with higher royalties there are problems. Royalties now inspire over-spending, public servant welfarism (as opposed to struggling Aussie welfarism which has some legitimacy) deficits and other malinvestment. If royalties were to lead to surpluses, tunnels, canals, ports and other durable infrastructure than I’d be less of a party-pooper when it came to coal.
But its worse than that because even if royalties are slated for infrastructure, the way we do infrastructure leads to monopoly power, loot going into the hands of the bankers, debt everywhere, and poor infrastructure policy.
So to my mind its better to exploit these resources very slowly until major reform has been achieved. I’m quite happy to go along with CO2-bedwetter concerns when it comes to coal exploitation, until we have serious reform in the bag.
It may come as a surprise to people that modern science can be so dysfunctional. Actually the rot started with aether-denial on the one hand, and the Einstein psychological operation on the other. Aspects of science have been under totalitarian control since about that time. Since about the time of rabid irrational aether-denial.
”Then, in 2008, the neoliberal story fell apart, and its opponents came forward with … nothing. No new restoration story!”
Its the fractional reserve banking story that fell apart. Agent Monbiot, counter-intelligence spiv, wanted in foreign countries for causing trouble, never consulted me about a restoration story. But there is the possibility of a socialist utopia as some have suggested in these parts. Of course Von Mises showed that 100% true communism is impossible. He showed that very decisively but I don’t think true communism is what is being advocated around these parts.
But that doesn’t mean we couldn’t have a largely socialist utopia. Big business should only come from small business success. A workers paradise should grow out of a sole trader paradise. And government programs should start with a small daily cash allowance, and that cash allowance only to be increased when productivity is as good as we can get it on that small allowance. So a socialist utopia should grow organically out of these cash-flow-allowance programs for communist undertakings.
For example it was known by about 1994 that optical fibres ought to be the backbone of any future information society. Robust, powerful, and if underground durable in wartime, against EMF attacks by solar outburst or nukes overhead. We knew it was the best stuff even back then. If we had started a program to put it everywhere that program could have started out at 5000 dollars a day. Then you wind up hiring one or two guys out of that money, doing a bit of subcontracting, getting experience and training. Then you train the well-trained tradesmen in your team to train others. And you are slowly getting a well-honed machine together.
And then when you can show you’ve tapped out all sources of productivity improvement at that allowance level that allowance could start growing at 1% per week until productivity measures start turning south. Then you stall the cash flow at that level. Or if the lack of productivity is maintained too long then your allowance should start falling until you are leaner and meaner. (Also revenues you spend on subcontractors are not to be taken into account for taxation purposes.)
We ought to be very quick to start new programs under this system. Let the utopia grow out of myriad communist undertakings that successfully justify their cash flow increases.
Anyway, this interesting paper seeks to debunk the notion that raising the minimum wage is economically harmful.
Click to access f127666.pdf
It seems fairly obvious that by now, counter arguments are without evidence.
@birdy
“There is no such thing as climate FORCING”
When it comes to catching up you’re about 120 years too late.
No don’t be an idiot rog. I was on top of this matter from the start. This was way back in about 2005 that I was auditing this failed model. Climate forcing is not a real thing. Its directly a fantasy output of a failed model.
“Anyway, this interesting paper seeks to debunk the notion that raising the minimum wage is economically harmful.”
To the extent that this is true, it just goes to show how far out of balance our business ecology is. Too many mammoths and not enough earth worms.
Oh I get where you are coming from. You are still in aether-denial. Okay then rog. Lets have your explanation of waves where nothing is waving. You are going to have to admit that the oligarchy played you for a real sucker with aether-denial. In what way did Michelson-Morely reinforce the doctrine of aether-denial? You will find that nothing they came up with showed that there could ever be a wave without a medium.
Rog & Graeme. Play nice.
“We can now define climate sensitivity to radiation as the ratio of climate response to climate forcing:
…”where R is climate response (degrees of global average warming in Celsius) and F is climate forcing (in W m− 2 of radiation imbalance at the top of the atmosphere).”
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/earth-and-planetary-sciences/climate-forcing
Discuss…
There is no such thing as climate forcing. Its a misuse of the language in order to lock in a conclusion for which they have no evidence. And you cannot discuss it because you need to have honest data. Whereas there is an international conspiracy to rig the data.
What you need is an honest CO2 record, and honest temperature record, then you need to relate the one to the other to show correlation, then you need to make a rational argument which implies causation. Then you need to work on it to see if you are right and can prove causation. They don’t get as far as step one. If you show them the CO2 record they will make excuses until it goes away.
Also there is no anomaly for greenhouse to explain. It is said that the average temperature ought to be -18 degrees celsius whereas its 15 degrees celsius so they are claiming there is a 33 degrees anomaly to explain. This is ignorant nonsense and we know it cannot work because it doesn’t work for the moon. Quite apart from the fact that this is a leap to be making on a rotating oceanic planet, it is ignoring all the electrical energy coming from the sun in two forms.
We get a solar wind and the solar wind is more strongly related to temperature than any other metric. Electricity is moving electrons or ions, proton wind can be thought of as an ion of hydrogen, so thats direct electricity hitting us. Added to that the electrical resistance of the aether is 377 Ohms. That is to say space (more correctly aether) is quite a strong resistor so the electrical energy built up in the suns corona builds up capacitance all the way between the suns Corona and the ionosphere. That voltage difference then has to work its way from the ionosphere to the deep earth, which is what drives all our weather and creates a lot of ambient heat. We know the 33 degrees story is nonsense because we have the moon as a comparison.
Well how about Venus? Venus is a new planet in its current form and is heated from the inside out. We have all the data for this now. The pristine craters, the temperature profiles tens of kilometres into the air. So its not a question of catching energy from the sun and storing it. Venus is superhot and is releasing three times the energy it is receiving. For the greenhouse story to be true Venus would have to be superhot and releasing just the same amount of energy as its receiving.
The oligarchy made us believe that gravity is space bending, that light is waves devoid of a medium, that all matter was created out of matter a short time ago, and all manner of other nonsense. They can do this because they can apply political pressure. But there is nothing to any of this. Its just abuse of the culture.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
But then again these coal resources are going out in a very inefficient manner. They aren’t creating the local infrastructure you would want. They are part of a system of attaching debt to all things good. To allow all our resources to disappear under a system of orchestrated debt peonage would amount to a Nauru strategy.
For many years if you went to Catallaxy and asked the economists there: Supposing we sell off our mines and our other strategic assets, sell off all the shares to our allegedly “Australian” remaining mining corporations, and let our corporations load up to the hilt on foreign sourced debt. So everything is owned by foreigners and every entity holds debt? On what basis do we then create wealth?
You will get thrown off Catallaxy if you ask the economists this sort of thing in a persistent way. We followed the Japanese into land price inflation which was crazy. And we are clearly following Nauru into poverty by relying on resource exploitation rather than manufacturing power. In both cases we are doing things in worse and more irrational ways than the people we should have learned from.
So I hope you guys manage to slow down the exploitation of the coal until we have a better infrastructure policy in place, a far more focused public service, and a very small and functional financial system that is not allowed to practice fractional reserve money-and-debt creation. Keep at it. You are doing the right thing for the wrong reasons. But focus on improving the soil and reducing coal exports. Too many other measures are likely to be very harmful.
The current Federal Environment Minister changed her name from “Susan Ley” to “Sussan Ley” because she believed in numerology and was therefore convinced that adding an ‘s’ to her name would make her life more interesting.
https://www.news.com.au/finance/work/leaders/why-sussan-ley-has-an-extra-s-in-her-name/news-story/4c2bb14f934012a810d2001682e2cc42
She was appointed to her current position by a Prime Minister who believes in the Biblical Creation story.
Perhaps some protagonists on this thread will be engaged as consultants by Ms Ley to help her develop a national strategy for environmental remediation using quantum vortex therapy.
Some folks believed there was nothing …. and then it exploded into everything only 13.8 billion years. Others think there was God and he created all things just a few thousand years ago. Others have bought into the big bang racket and think that God created all things from nothing 13.8 billion years ago.
These are all young-universe creation myths. The universe is too ancient to hope to prove its age. The universe is too complicated to be a mere 13.8 billion years old. Thats the twinkle of an eye.
But the first of these creation myths is the most stupid, because while growing complexity is plausible, complexity out of nothing is not. So the creationists actually have an edge on current science lies. Nothing could be more faith-based than big bang belief.
IPCC or BP or EU data? I believe this is a controvery not a conspitacy.
GB says: “And you cannot discuss it because you need to have honest data. Whereas there is an international conspiracy to rig the data.”
“There is controversy regarding how wind and solar should be counted in equivalence to fossil fuels. BP data treats the output of wind and solar as if they replace somewhat less than the price of wholesale electricity (worth about 3 to 5 cents per kWh). The International Energy Agency treats wind and solar as if they only replace the fuel that operates power plants (worth about 2 to 3 cents per kWh).* In practice, the IEA gives less than half as much credit for wind and solar as does BP. In exceptionally sunny places, solar auction prices can be low enough to match its value to grids.
“It would make sense to treat wind and solar as replacing electricity, if the systems were set up to include substantial storage capacity. Without at least several days of storage capacity (the situation today), the BP method of counting wind and solar overstates the benefit of wind and solar. Thus, the value of Other Renewables to the EU tends to be overstated by the BP methodology used in Figure 11.”
https://ourfiniteworld.com/2019/04/30/the-climate-change-story-is-half-true/
And no. I am not endorsing above just pointing out that yes, data needs definition agreement and standardisation so we dont go around throwing up consiracy theories.
1x readers not to hand!
“controversy not a conspiracy”
Data. THIS Wednesday sea level risen by 0.028mm. ( any fact checkers out there? ) 4m olympic swimming pools.
“More than 10 billion tonnes of ice was lost to the oceans by surface melting on Wednesday alone”!
Trump had better resubmit his sea wall development application. ““It’s diabolical,” said former South Carolina Republican Rep. Bob Inglis”.
“More than 10 billion tonnes of ice was lost to the oceans by surface melting on Wednesday alone, creating a net mass ice loss of about 197 billion tonnes from Greenland in July, she said.
“It looks like the peak will be today. But the long-term forecast is for continuing warm and sunny weather in Greenland, so that means the amount of the ice loss will continue,” she said on Thursday.
“The scope of Wednesday’s ice melt is a number difficult to grasp. To understand just how much ice is being lost, a mere 1 billion tonnes – or 1 gigaton – of ice loss is equivalent to about 400,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools, the Danish Meteorological Institute said. And 100 billion tonnes corresponds to a 0.28mm rise in global sea levels.
“Mottram said that since June 1 – roughly the start of the ice-loss season – the Greenland ice sheet had lost 240 gigatonnes (240 billion metric tonnes) this year. That compares with 290 gigatonnes lost overall in the 2012 melting season, which usually goes until the end of August.”
https://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/greenland-has-massive-ice-melt-after-european-heatwave-20190802-p52d6g.html
“The zoning application raises further questions about how the billionaire developer would confront a risk he has publicly minimized but that has been identified as a defining challenge of this era by world leaders, global industry and the American military. His public disavowal of climate science at the same time he moves to secure his own holdings against the effects of climate change also illustrates the conflict between his political rhetoric and the realities of running a business with seaside assets in the 21st century”
A permit application for the wall, filed by Trump International Golf Links Ireland and reviewed by POLITICO, explicitly cites global warming and its consequences — increased erosion due to rising sea levels and extreme weather this century — as a chief justification for building the structure.
“The zoning application raises further questions about how the billionaire developer would confront a risk he has publicly minimized but that has been identified as a defining challenge of this era by world leaders, global industry and the American military. His public disavowal of climate science at the same time he moves to secure his own holdings against the effects of climate change also illustrates the conflict between his political rhetoric and the realities of running a business with seaside assets in the 21st century.
“It’s diabolical,” said former South Carolina Republican Rep. Bob Inglis, an advocate of conservative solutions to climate change. “Donald Trump is working to ensure his at-risk properties and his company is trying to figure out how to deal with sea level rise. Meanwhile, he’s saying things to audiences that he must know are not true. … You have a soft place in your heart for people who are honestly ignorant, but people who are deceitful, that’s a different thing.”
https://www.politico.com/story/2016/05/donald-trump-climate-change-golf-course-223436
On a brighter note, Noam Chomsky not mincing words and hope:
…”while the most powerful state in world history is vigorously fanning the flames, led by a narcissistic megalomaniac—and consummate political demagogue—who knows exactly what he is doing. Donald Trump appealed to the government of Ireland for a permit to build a wall (he loves walls) to protect his golf course from the anticipated sea level rise.”
“We have two choices: to abandon hope and help ensure that the worst will happen; or to make use of the opportunities that exist and perhaps contribute to a better world. It is not a very difficult choice. There are, of course, sacrifices; time and energy are finite. But there are also the rewards of participating in struggles for peace and justice and the common good. ”
https://bostonreview.net/politics/noam-chomsky-scott-casleton-choosing-hope
Greenland is not where its supposed to be. Greenland is close to where the former North Pole was. We go to Greenland for 300 000 years of ice data and not to anywhere near the current North Pole. So I’ll pass on Greenland ice because the very long-term trajectory for Greenland has to be ice loss. It may stall during the next few decades, but the long-term trajectory for Greenland is indeed melting. The ice is not supposed to be there. Of course once all that ice gets there, you have albedo effects so the loss of ice is taking a very long time from Greenland, but all that ice doesn’t belong there in a sense.
So taking Greenland out of the picture, the rest is a lot of cherry-picking from our oligarchically controlled media.
“IPCC or BP or EU data? I believe this is a controversy not a conspiracy.”
No its a conspiracy. Its not any sort of collegial disagreement. Its an organised litany of lies by people who paradoxically want us to be dependent on Oil. So they do their best to create a panic and get poor energy sources funded. Now they aren’t God on the throne, and they cannot stop these poor energy sources slowly getting better over time. I am not here denying that solar and wind (not bloody three-blade) cannot get more cost effective over time. The oligarchy don’t need to take this sort of thing into consideration. They can just kick the can down the road. Make us invest in things that are not going to work for a long time, and send their agents around to kill off things that can work pretty quickly.
Its all lies. All of it. And not by accident. Its a total conspiracy. Just like 9/11, team Einstein, Aether denial. The whole lot is oligarchy controlled lies. There is one organisation, pretending to be three organisations, that subset out of three larger institutions. Goddard, the climate lies section of NOAA, and that UK Hadlee outfit all work together to lie to us, as the email dump showed us. Otherwise NOAA does great work. NOAA is otherwise a very important and good organisation. Underfunded in my view. Unlike NASA which is fundamentally a fraudulent outfit from tip to stern. But the wider organisations aren’t the thing. These subset organisations are cuckoo babies.
The three centres never stop rejigging the data to show an upward trend, even as people outside the main cities are experiencing colder conditions. This is somewhat an urban-country disagreement. Because as more concrete goes up in the cities, people are still able to take this rigged data seriously. But upwind from the cities thats not the experience of folks on the ground.
“There is controversy regarding how wind and solar should be counted in equivalence to fossil fuels. BP data treats the output of wind and solar as if they replace somewhat less than the price of wholesale electricity (worth about 3 to 5 cents per kWh).”
If and only if; This controversy will go away if we have permanently glutted peaking power. Then and only then will we get the price reductions from energy that cannot be predicted well in advance. So from now on these schemes should be coming out of loans made from budget surpluses. They can be zero interest thats okay. But they should be basically all for peaking power…. at least until peaking power is permanently glutted.
Part of the blame probably has to be sheeted off to John Howard. I like Howard but the thing is he locked up billions of dollars of our gas into what he called “Energy Diplomacy.” All those exports have got to hurt our peaking power. So it made the renewables addition to the grid more clunky then it had to be. Or at least thats what I would assume ahead of someone looking into things in detail. He had good reasons to do this I suppose, but it was an example of his growing extravagance of his later term. It surely means we are paying something like a monopoly price for peaking power. So its not just renewables that have caused the problems. Its the way that they have dovetailed with the auctioning system and the artificial scarcity of gas peaking power. Once we have all these intermittent methods that go into energy storage, particularly pumping water uphill in preparation for peak time …. then the energy prices should start coming down again.
@KT2 – I am a fan of that Chomsky ‘two choices’ quote.
Tim. Thanks as that was the point.
GB… “These subset organisations are cuckoo babies.”
As Dad used to say: stop playing with matches.
“Conspiracy theories a security threat, FBI warns “https://www.smh.com.au/world/north-america/conspiracy-theories-a-security-threat-fbi-warns-20190803-p52did.html
I’d like to know how this statement “”so the richer the people, the safer the biodiversity” stands up to scrutiny in Australia. Any links or suggestions anyone? Kenny koala has doubts.
“Economic growth benefits wildlife but growing human populations do not
“Do the UN’s sustainable development goals promote or limit conservation?
…”wanted to understand whether progress towards socio-economic targets might limit the likelihood of meeting conservation ones.
“To explore these links, researchers cross-referenced data from the Living Planet Index on 298 bird and mammal populations — recorded outside protected reserves — with indicators of social, economic and political progress towards the SDGs [ UN’s Sustainable Developmmemt Goals ] in 33 low- and lower-middle income countries obtained from the World Bank. Their analysis, published today in the journal People and Nature, found consistently positive relationships between economic growth and wildlife abundance — so the richer the people, the safer the biodiversity. Similar relationships were found for more gender-equal societies, lower levels of government corruption and longer human lifespans too.”
“Lead author Judith Ament, PhD researcher at ZSL and UCL, said: “Our study suggests that at a national level, it is possible to work towards conservation and economic development at the same time and underlines the need for further integration of sustainable development strategies. We think this might be because as standards of living rise, people become less dependent on local natural resources for income and food, and environmental regulation becomes tighter. We are concerned that this could lead to more importing however, the impact of which would fall on wildlife elsewhere. This certainly merits further research.”
“Researchers also found that denser and faster-growing human populations reduced wildlife numbers and that there is evidence for national-level environmental benefits of urbanisation.”
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/08/190802092427.htm
“We are concerned that this could lead to more importing however, the impact of which would fall on wildlife elsewhere. This certainly merits further research.”
I wonder which planet Judith and her coauthors live on.
They worry that “This could lead to more importing”? That is giving their paper a significance that it does not have.
It is likely the more importing that is responsible for the cleaner environment.
“As Dad used to say: stop playing with matches.” Thats not an argument dopey. You cannot have three outfits putting out rigged figures for decades and it be some sort of gigantic mistake. Besides, you are incapable of explaining things like 9/11 (six buildings gutted and only two planes) without postulating a ruling oligarchy. I had to face up to this in 2008 when I found that I had been a neocon in total ,embarrassing and nauseating error for 7 years, when it became clear who really did 9/11. And I think the rest of you ought to face up to the reality of the ruling elite as well.
I may fall into snark, yet you Graeme Bird are exhibiting all the traits of an insulting troll…
– “Everything is foggy for you. You don’t know what you are driving at. Its argument dementia. Brain mist. You were never all that bright in the first place.”
– “so we could all laugh at you.”
– “Its not rambling. Thats you being a moron. Thats all it is.
and he’s a complete moron. ”
– “No you are just being an idiot rog.”
And thanks GB. I assume you mean dopey as in…
“something cute, or adorable. like snow white and the seven dwarfs, one of the dwarfs were named Dopey, and he was the cute one”
“Aw, that puppy is so dopey!”
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Dopey
“Commenters with a repeated history of provocation (trolls) will be banned. ”
https://johnquiggin.com/discussion-policy/
Make dialigue not derision.
ANDREW GLIKSON.
$trillion space games and false prophecies
“Whereas scientific exploration of space is an exciting project, messianic ideas of colonization of planets raise critical questions, including:”…
…”Ultimately the $trillion resources come out from the mouths of hungry children, who can hardly gain from space rocket games.
Prophecies of space colonization divert attention from the extreme urgency of resisting the calamity of global warming and its disastrous consequences and mass extinction of species.
Prophecies of space colonization give people a mistaken impression as if alternatives exist to environmental repair of the terrestrial atmosphere, oceans and biosphere.
Space prophets include mainly physicists, but very few biologists, and do not understand that the human body and psychology are inexorably connected with the Earth.
We are Earthlings, our bodies evolved on Earth and are attuned to the gravity, atmosphere and radiation environment on the surface of this planet as well as the multitude of micro-organisms on whom we depend.
Exploration of the planets best belongs to mobile robotic micro-laboratories designed to monitor the wave spectrum..
According to Oxfam eight billionaires now own as much wealth as half the human race.In an ethics-free age false prophecies of planetary colonization—of the rich, by the rich, for the rich— can only be described as a diversion from the need to save life on Earth. The parallels between religious beliefs of heaven and hell are evident, the virtuous (i.e. the super-rich) will be salvaged, whereas the other (poor and/or colored skin) will burn in hell, as Earth is warming.
One cannot argue with insanity.”
https://countercurrents.org/2019/07/space-lunacy
Or see the trillion $’s as a great investment…
Space market and futures are already sliced diced and numerically evaluated.
See interactive graph down page of…
The Global Space Economy ($t)
https://www.morganstanley.com/ideas/investing-in-space
Try Science KT-2. It works for me. On another matter have we really thought through our city layouts? On the news in Sydney this week we had a survey on travelling times in Sydney. 71 minutes a day was the average commute for civilians who work in one place. But tradesmen were stuck in their gas guzzling van/truck for (from memory) 2 hours and 40 minutes per day or something close to it. Now this is a disaster as far as productivity is concerned.
You have people who make things and people who build things, and then there are many people who seldom do anything very useful for us over the longest run. In the second category its usually tradesmen. The skill set for building things is primarily in the minds of our tradesmen. So here they are wasting time every day in traffic. Now supposing they want to employ an offsider to teach and ride in the truck as well? How is a tradesman going to afford a young offsider to teach and help him, if he’s running into overtime most days, simply because everyone is stuck in the vehicle?
What would a city look like that cut down on these travel times? Maybe it would take up one tenth the ground area, have one million people and not four million people, with as many of the roads underground as you could possibly manage and first class public transport. Plus the roads financed by congestion taxes but only at peak times. Free travel the rest of the time so that we can manufacture goods and build things more cheaply than the people in other cities.
I don’t know if the answer looks like this, but it bears thinking about because this time spent in the vehicle by tradesman is a major break on economic performance. I want to close down maybe twenty or thirty government departments to make finance available for a communist department of tunnelling. The M4 opened days ago and its amazing how much time this humble tunnel can save people if they are criss-crossing the city.
We really need a communist department of tunnelling and a communist department for the development of canals. Some of these outfits need a 5000 year time horizon if we want to produce glorious outcomes.
Chairman Mao said: “Dig tunnels deep, store grain everywhere, and never seek hegemony.” This needs an update but its pretty good advice right there I would have thought.
Another step in the decadbonising of our energy system, the decision on Gloucester Coal is having effects elsewhere.
https://www.newcastleherald.com.au/story/6308928/hunter-coal-mine-linked-with-australias-climate-change-paris-agreement-commitments-in-nsw-first/?cs=305
“The emphasis in the condition is on the destination of exports and really doesn’t require anything meaningful. The condition is a poor response to the obligation of the panel to consider emissions (in other countries using Australian coal) and the public interest, including intergenerational equality.”
This point about intergenerational equality is surely a winner. And what about strategic matters? What about the role of Joseph in Genesis? A tonne of coal we export is a tonne of coal we don’t have for later. Or its coal we cannot burn at home. “Winter Is Coming” as they say on the television series. And it surely is in the 2030’s. Why the dilly-dallying around with these arbitrary requirements? If we want less coal burnt we should export less coal. And if we want to export less coal we just increase the royalties on each tonne exported.
We need to get ready for the cold and dry climate crisis of the 2030’s. Adapt to less coal exports. Get all budgets, federal state and local, into surplus. Ban our banks borrowing from foreign banks or if not establish a low monopsony interest rate for them. Let the AUD be super-cheap.
If we are running a really tight act now, we can loosen things a bit to help ourselves and others, when the situation has become difficult to cope with.
Is this blog now an outpost of Stormfront? The anti-racist Desipis (check his commenting history) has been banned while the Jew-hating Graeme Bird (Visigoithkhan) is now the most prolific poster.