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NYT wisdom:  The Big Melt Accelerates Muir Glacier at Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve in Alaska is among the many worldwide that are disappearing. Muir, left, as seen in August 1941, and photographed in August 2004.



What the NYT didn’t note is that the glacier has been shrinking since at least 1794, which it was mapped by the Vancouver Expedition. That’s according to a 1912 book published by the National Geographic Society, and which is no longer in copyright. A page below: The 1912 book says that Muir Glacier “extended 25 to 40 miles farther to the south in 1794” and that there were “native legends of the greater extension of the glaciers.” Muir Glacier receded 1.5 miles in a single 10-year period between the time John Muir himself documented it in 1879-1800 and H.F. Reid visited in 1890.

If this glacier has been retreating for over 220 years, and likely for centuries before if the native legends are accurate, how much of this is due to current CO2 production?

Weasel words about the Antarctic

by Dr. Tom Sheahen


Greedy Greenie in Britain

'Can't afford NYC I'm afraid mate. Am in a big job but low pay': Councillor slammed after he complained about his salary on Twitter - despite earning £32,000 a year

A local councillor has been slammed after he complained about the 'low pay' he gets for his public duties - despite earning £32,000 a year as an assistant mayor.

Bristol council cabinet member Gus Hoyt, 38, made the controversial remarks in a Twitter conversation with a friend about a trip to New York.

Green Party member Cllr Hoyt, who gave up work after he was elected, told the friend: 'Can't afford NYC I'm afraid mate. Am in a Big job but low pay...local government....'

His online remarks have since been blasted by political opponents, who branded him out of touch with ordinary people.

The council's Lib Dem deputy leader Chris Martin asked him: 'Your combined income is public record and is £32k - the question is how do you consider that low pay?'

And Labour candidate Naomi Rylatt added: 'I'm appalled that Councillor Hoyt is ignorant enough to think £32,000 is low pay.'

The £32,000 Cllr Hoyt gets in allowances for his council work are £5,300 more than the average British worker's annual wage.

Mr Hoyt, who is responsible for neighbourhoods, environment and council housing, later attempted to defend himself against online critics by writing: 'It's quite interesting how some people are only driven by negativity and hatred. Must be horrible.'

University-educated Hoyt receives a basic allowance of £11,530, which is paid to all councillors, on top of which he gets an extra £20,266 for being an assistant mayor.

He is not contracted to work a specific number of hours but said that he regards being a councillor and an assistant mayor as two full-time jobs.

Cllr Hoyt quit his job after being elected and now receives a basic allowance of £11,530 as well as an extra £20,266 for being an assistant mayor

The former labourer has since insisted that for most of his working life he has been on minimum wage and understood what it meant to exist on a low wage.

He said: 'My comments were said in the context of my friend living in New York and earning much more than me.  'I simply could not afford to go for a week's holiday.'

But he has continued to attract disapproving tweets from locals, with one Twitter user, Bristolgirl67, writing: 'If 32k is low pay I'd like to be low paid...I currently earn a quarter approx of that.'

The criticism comes after it was revealed Cllr Hoyt bought an ex-council house for £186,000 in an auction in 2012 - despite it being Green Party policy not to sell off authority homes.

Reacting to criticism over the purchase of the ex-council house, he said he entered into a blind auction for the property and did not know it was owned by the council until he had received official documents. [Disputed]

First elected to serve Bristol's Ashley ward in 2011, Mr Hoyt will have to contest his seat again next year.

The national average wage for a full-time worker is £26,500, and the annual salary for someone in a full time job on the national minimum wage is £13,124.


A celebration of Spring

A fraternal greeting from Dr. Klaus L.E. Kaiser, German-born and now living in Canada

If you live in the northern climes, as I do, spring is an overpowering force. After a long winter and weeks of nature seemingly in an eternal slumber, spring arrives overnight, without warning and drawn-out preludes.

One day it’s cold and dreary and the next day you wonder how life can re-emerge so exuberantly after a long hibernation.

In much of this continent’s environs, spring is almost non-existent, winter gives way directly to summer. Some voices say we have only two seasons - winter and construction season.

In contrast to central Europe, where spring starts in February or March with a slow but steady progression of nature, the continental climate here goes from one extreme to another in no time flat.

Yesterday you froze your buns, today you feel the heat. The trees are budding, the weeds are growing and everything else is forgotten.

Six months of drudgery shovelling snow and scraping the ice off your car’s windshield are all forgotten, swiftly becoming a distant memory. Welcome spring!

Enjoy the season!


The secrecy continues

Warmism cannot stand the light of day

Here is what Slater reported on March 30 2014.

On 10 December 2008 he wrote to Ben Santer;

Mann consistently advances the importance of his work and the threat it confronts. He makes the link in such works as, “Do Global Warming and Climate Change Represent A Serious Threat To Our Welfare and Environment? He pushes the same message in manytelevision appearances. These are hardly the activities of a “reluctant” person.



Four articles below

Climate Change Research Axed in Australia

The outlook is bleak from the standpoint of scientists and researchers in Australia, many of whom will probably leave the country in order to find work elsewhere. This represents a loss of a skilled workforce for a country that is already seeing a six percent unemployment rate. Despite harping on the jobless rate, the Abbott government has not provided a solution to getting more people working. Cuts to climate change programs and scientific research are only the tip of the unemployment iceberg. Under this budget, unemployment rates are set to rise to 6.25 percent by June next year. This is worrying news for the hundreds of thousands of Australians currently out of work or who are facing the prospect of unemployment in the wake of the new budget plan.

But it is not only highly educated scientists who may lose their employment after climate change research was axed by the government that is currently running things in Australia. There are thousands of jobs connected to renewable resources that will also be lost due to funding cuts. Thousands of jobs exist in rural areas where renewable energy sources like wind and solar power have a great presence. Wind mills and solar energy outposts have to be built in rural areas that have enough space to accommodate them. People who own the land these are built on also see an income from the renting of their property to the operators of this machinery, an income they will most likely lose should funding be cut so drastically. It looks as though funding for climate change programs is not just an issue of ideology, but a problem of real-world economics.

Some have claimed that the cuts are completely ideologically driven and have nothing to do with principles of budget balance or good governance. Greens party leader Christine Milne called out the prime minister’s oppositional stance to climate change science. She referred to the government’s repeated claims to support emissions reduction and called the budget a repudiation of that, a dropping of the curtain on their real designs on the issue. She went a step further, calling the budget an attempt to “shore up the vested interests of coal-fired generators and the old order of Australia.” Her comment points to the role of the mining industry, which provides six percent of the country’s economy.

There is some good news for climate change funding and the scientific research community that is facing down the barrel of the Abbott government’s budget. Until the budget passes the senate, there will be no changes to funding and organization of the sector. For now, climate change research is safe from getting axed and if the senate does not allow the budget to go through, the jobs that could be lost will still exist in Australia’s renewable energy sector.


Qld solar tariffs under threat

QUEENSLAND homeowners who use solar panels could be worse off under laws that will no longer guarantee them a feed-in tariff of eight cents.

Laws due to be passed tonight will mean the responsibility for paying the tariff will switch from government-owned distributors to retailers after June 30.

And consumers will have to negotiate directly with their retailer for the price they are paid.

The Queensland Competition Authority will set a tariff rate for Ergon Energy customers in the immediate future, given the very limited competition outside the southeast corner.

Energy Minister Mark McArdle says the changes will lift the cost burden from the network businesses, making the scheme fairer for all Queensland consumers.

"It will put downward pressure on electricity prices," Mr McArdle told parliament.

"Feed-in tariff payments will not be cross subsidised by consumers, making the arrangement far more sustainable over the long term."

Electrical Trades Union state organiser Stuart Traill says the 40,000 consumers on the eight cents feed-in tariff will have little to no bargaining power with large energy corporations.

"They will be worse off, and a lot of them will be pensioners," he told AAP.

"And there will be job losses in the solar industry because there will be less incentives to move to solar now."

Mr Traill added the plan was ill considered, and the returns would be minuscule compared to how much could have been saved if the 44 cent feed-in tariff had been reformed.

The 44 cent tariff, paid to some 284,000 people who were first to sign up to the scheme, will remain unchanged.

Shadow Treasurer Curtis Pitt said the Opposition would not oppose the bill but said the Newman government had broken an election promise.

"The LNP promised the scheme would be safe and kept at the same rate," Mr Pitt told parliament.


Solar panels ‘are time bombs’

THE Coalition has likened the spate of house fires caused by allegedly faulty rooftop circuit-breakers to the pink batts fiasco, claiming Labor ignored warnings that subsidies for solar power would create a similar honey pot for dodgy operators.

As revealed by The Australian, Advancetech, the Queensland company that imported and sold 27,000 solar power DC isolators, went into receivership last Friday, leaving tens of thousands of homeowners to replace them in their rooftop arrays or risk a ­conflagration.

The Queensland and NSW governments have issued recall notices for the Avanco isolators after 70 of them burnt out, in some cases causing minor house fires.

Also recalled is a PVPower branded isolator imported and sold by Swiss electrotechnical products supplier DKSH, though that began in March at the instigation of the company.

Describing solar panels as “ticking time bombs”, Nationals senator Ron Boswell said there would be “possibly thousands” of other dangerous breakdowns.

The Queensland senator said the Labor government’s subsidy to encourage home owners to install solar panels, the Small-scale Renewable Energy Certificates scheme, led to an overheated market in which shoddy operators and cheap imports thrived.

“The flaws and waste associated with this scheme have been largely under the radar because of the scale of the personal tragedies associated with the pink batts fiasco, but as an exercise in silliness, waste, and maladministration, the solar scheme has been its absolute equal,” Senator Boswell said.

“It has a long way to go before it plays out, as systems installed age.

“Fire-prone isolators in rooftop solar arrays in Queensland and NSW are just the sort of problem Labor was warned about, and ignored, as it ramped up demand for its solar program in 2010.”

He quoted several experts who had given evidence to a Senate committee on the topic that year, including the chief executive of environmental credits trader Greenbank Environmental, Fiona O’Hehir, who said the subsidy gave rise to possible dodgy and dangerous installations.

“You would actually have DC generation on your roof, which can be as high as 120V DC. A flood of cheap imports into Australia could mean that we have significant risk,” she said at the time.

“If it continues at this rate, we will soon end up with a situation along the lines of the insulation program, which would be a disaster for the renewable energy industry.’’

The SREC scheme is still in place, though at a much reduced rate of subsidy, and is under review pending the outcome of the inquiry into renewable energy by businessman Dick Warburton.


Subsidies for clean energy to hit $21bn

SUBSIDIES for renewable energy schemes such as rooftop solar panels and wind farms will cost electricity consumers up to $21.6 billion by 2020, a new analysis has found.

A submission by the Minerals Council of Australia also warns that more gas- and coal-fired power stations could be mothballed or permanently closed as the renewable energy target puts pressure on the electricity market and slashes their revenues.

If this happens, retail electricity prices “can be expected to increase”, according to an economic analysis commissioned by the council which represents mining giants including BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto and Glencore Xstrata.

The analysis also hits back at fresh claims by the clean energy sector that the RET will create up to 18,400 jobs by 2020, declaring “the most immediate effects” from subsidising the renewable sector are job losses as cheaper forms of energy are crowded out.

“Additional job losses can be expected to arise from the drain on economic activity as a result of higher electricity prices,” it finds.

Former Queensland treasurer Keith De Lacy — now one of the nation’s best-known company ­directors — declared it was “plain crazy” to have schemes such as the RET, solar feed-in tariffs and carbon tax that were driving up power bills.

“The Australian public keep complaining about the increases in the costs of living and this has become even more so since the budget,” Mr De Lacy told The Australian yesterday.

“But one of the biggest increases in cost has been the price of electricity ... It’s the most fundamental of services to the Aus­tralian public … These kind of things just make some people feel good but don’t achieve anything.

“They’ve got no place, I believe, in a modern economy.”

The comments add to pressure on the Coalition, given it is split over what to do about the RET.

According to the Principal Economics review commissioned by the Minerals Council, the RET scheme has an opportunity cost (money that could have been invested elsewhere) of more than $36bn by 2020-21.

The analysis finds that subsidies that are recovered through the sale of renewable ­energy certificates, which are ­directly passed on to consumers, could reach between $19.3bn and $21.6bn by 2020-21, covering part of the cost to build the ­infrastructure.

The miners are wielding the figures in a bid to convince the government-appointed RET review panel that the scheme is ­excessively costly for households and industry, and cannot continue the way it is.

“These are the additional costs paid by energy consumers: households, domestic firms and exporters such as the mining sector,” the council’s submission says.

The submission also warns that the RET will encumber business with “uncapped and high costs for subsidies”, particularly for the scheme for rooftop solar PV panels, “because of poor ­design and a series of inchoate policy shifts”.

In 2010, then federal minister Martin Ferguson said the RET was a “bonus to the renewable sector of the order of another $20bn to $30bn in commonwealth government support”.

The Australian Industry Group has called for the RET to be maintained, despite demands by some businesses that it be scrapped because it is expensive.

The AiGroup says that while the cost of building wind farms and solar panels is passed on to customers, extra energy from wind farms and solar panels has pushed down wholesale prices.

This has also been a key pillar of arguments by the Clean Energy Council, which is wielding its own research by ROAM Consulting that finds household energy prices would be $50 a year lower by 2020 with the RET, and that leaving it alone would create 18,400 jobs.

The Minerals Council has told the panel lower wholesale prices are not a “function of competitive forces but of government intervention”, are likely to be short-lived and undermine investments in coal- and gas-fired power stations needed for reliable electricity supplies.

The analysis points to power station retirements including the permanent shutdown of the Munmorah black coal power ­station in NSW and temporary closure of South Australia’s Playford.

“Overall retail price rises have therefore been lower than they otherwise would have been,’’ the analysis says.

Wholesale electricity prices are “likely to increase” if power generators that become unprofitable close. Minerals Council chief executive Brendan Pearson said access to cheap, reliable energy had been a “source of economic strength” for Australia. “This is no longer the case,” he said.

The analysis draws on previous modelling. It quotes estimates by SKM MMA for the Climate Change Authority in December 2012 that put the cost for buying certificates for large-scale renewables at $15.9bn by 2020-21 and for small-scale renewables at $3.4bn — totalling $19.3bn.

Like most of the figures cited in the new analysis, these are based on an assumption of no carbon price — which the analysis says is appropriate as the Abbott government has announced its plans to repeal it.

To get to the $21.6bn figure, the analysis cites modelling by ACIL Tasman for TRUenergy (now EnergyAustralia) — which wants the RET scaled back — that puts the subsidy for the small-scale scheme at $5.7bn.




Posted by JR at 9:11 PM



