New Queensland LNP Government acting fast to unwind carbon reduction schemes

Great news – and the sky will not fall in – unproductive people will be freed to get productive work.
On top of recent news from Victoria that they will dump their 20% greenhouse reduction target.
This could get to be catching – cleaning out GreenLabor rubbish. What other candidates are there for shutting down – abolishing – repealing – firing – generally giving taxpayers a break.

Incompetent and left-wing biased BBC

I often check the BBC news website for this or that region – thinking I will at least get a half competent digest of what is going on. Now I am not so sure – perhaps the BBC is just a great waste of time.
Note that you click on Asia to get Australian news – here is a screen shot. For days now the Australian stories have been – Huawei barred in Australia deal – Australia extinction ‘due to man’ – and Australia’s most wanted man held, which is so important to score 2 links. Refers to the capture of a prison escapee in NE NSW 5 days ago early last Thursday 22 March. I have been looking for the BBC take on the Queensland State election (24 Mar 12) which reduced the ruling Labor party to a single digit number of seats – I think the greatest defeat in an Australian election in my lifetime.
The BBC has nothing on this. Yet when you search for Queensland election – you come up with many articles on Queensland elections – including glowing reports of Labor’s 2009 win. If you search for Queensland election 2012 you still get no BBC ref – but you do get an offsite ref to a Murdoch Australian site. I can only conclude that the BBC news service is very odd, slack and biased to the left side of politics.

AGL Energy Ltd to build huge windfarm at Silverton near Broken Hill NSW

AGL Energy Ltd announced “23/03/2012 SILVERTON WIND FARM DEVELOPMENT RIGHTS – a one page summary pdf. The ABC reported on this – and there is a Silverton Wind Farm web site. The two stage project will end up at 1000MW capacity which is about half of all the wind farms listed on this site.
They say there are planned 282 turbines in stage 1 – capacity 300MW – then another 316 turbines in stage 2 = total 1000MW for 598 turbines. The maths do not add up if the turbines are all planned to be of equal size.
I expect all of the claimed performance figures are exaggerated – as proposed wind farms usually are.
I wonder what size gas turbine power generator will be required somewhere nearby to balance this huge load of erratic electricity – similar to the Dalton gas fired proposal. AGL says nothing about this in their material on Silverton. I predict a White Elephant at Silverton – another loss for taxpayers and electricity users.

The newly released CRUT4 shows many warmer tweaks over the Australian region

My attention was caught by the release of the new version of the UK Met Office / Prof Jones global land temperatures – CRUT4. Just quickly pulling up data plotted as 5 degree grid cells from the KNMI Climate Explorer – for the broad Australian region as per these maps. These are anomalies for 2007 relative to the 1961-1990 period.

Checking various Australian grid cells it is clear that on balance CRUT4 finds more warmth than CRUT3.

This chart shows the trends – and CRUT4 warms by 0.67 compared to 0.58 for CRUT3. The chart also shows that from 2006 onwards CRUT4 is jumped up – whereas in early years CRUT4 is always cooler than CRUT3.
There are several puzzling features of the data and here are a few – the Tuvalu grid cell (2 nth of Fiji) gets lost in CRUT4, probably swamped by rising sea levels – the grid cell with Giles Meteorological Office Number: 13017 is blank in both versions – Giles is I think our most remote & purpose built station. No data can be found for 2007 in all the huge island of New Guinea and a large sector of Indonesia. Looking at New Zealand – Dunedin is missing data as is that region east of Wellington.

The Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists in Australia was convened by the WWF in 2003

I had never picked that up. Explains so much. We must remember that the pontificating Wentworth Group academics have been one of The symptoms of erectile dysfunction can be thoroughly erased with the help of viagra samples cerritosmedicalcenter.com this product along with a managed healthy lifestyle. It improves rehabilitation of nerves, bones and generic pill viagra muscles. It is look here order levitra online an inability to get or sustain erection which is strong enough for pleasing sexual intimacy. Some of these are VigRx, VigRx plus and herbal pfizer viagra online. the drivers influencing water prices higher this last decade. I wonder what the WWF has cost the Australian taxpayer – any data out there ?

Loss of the New Zealand fishing boat “Easy Rider” NW coast Stewart Island 14 March 2012 claimed eight lives

Reading some of the earlier press on this tragedy there was mention of worsening weather. Google will find many articles. If anybody can find forecasts for the morning of the 14th – please send them in. Likewise if anybody has weather observations from the NW of Stewart Island – I would be keen to see them. Is there a lighthouse there ?
I was curious as to what the BoM satellite images show – here are 24 frames at 30 minute intervals that day – the time is UTC (Greenwich)and NZ is 13 hours ahead.
So as the images roll through – look for the early morning frames – around Loop Number 7 – that would be when Easy Rider left Bluff that evening. Opinion seems to be that she was lost about midnight – so look for the 11.32 UTC frame – Loop Number 12. The semi-circular patch to the south of NZ is cold air and the cloud band signifying the cold front is blindingly obvious. You could expect elevated winds around a cold front – made worse by shoaling water around the NW capes. I am not saying cold fronts are “ship sinkers” – but negative factors can add up.
These satellite animations are available free on the BoM website. Not hard to check if an unfavourable system is coming your way. The satellite archives are here.

Does Australia really need a foreign minister this diplomatic ?

Amazed as I was at the statements by the new Australian Foreign Minister, Senator Bob Carr – that Australia would have to “…organise the world to condemn and isolate Papua New Guinea…”.
Bob Carr
Carr was referring to reports of some differences of opinion from PNG re the timing of their next election – which I thought was entirely their internal business to discuss.
I have also been surprised there has been no call for Carr’s sacking – I mean how much more harmful could a foreign minister be ? I would have thought – open & shut case – gone – record shortest term as foreign minister. But our MSM is just so ingrained – knee jerk – dyed in the wool – pro GreenLabor – that our Bob is safe.
Picture from Sydney Morning Herald – Photo: Penny Bradfield

Weakening sunspot activity could cause a 1 degree temperature drop 2009-2020

New paper –
“The long sunspot cycle 23 predicts a significant temperature decrease in cycle 24” – Jan-Erik Solheima, Kjell Stordahlb, Ole Humlum. Full paper to read – if only all scientific papers were so easy to access.
A 1 °C or more temperature ED can eat up a lot of mental distress among brand viagra pfizer men. According to the Minnesota Men’s Health Centre (MMHC), the likelihood of erectile dysfunction buying levitra online (ED) increases with age. Having sex is no doubt one of the natural ways to enhance libido in males is by regularly consuming herbal pills like Kamdeepak capsules. A man with cost of viagra canada ED fails to attain an erection. drop is predicted 2009–2020 for certain locations. Solar activity may have contributed 40% or more to the last century temperature increase.
I admire the webpages of Ole Humlum too – so much useful updated information to explore – increase your understanding of our planet.

Daily Kos runs a poll on Dr Michael Mann of hockey stick fame

Dr Michael Mann of Penn State University is the principal author of the famous graph of the 1000 years temperature trend known as “the hockey stick graph”. Recalling the late and great John Daly and his very early take on the hockey stick. Around a decade ago McIntyre and McKitrick began their destruction of the hockey stick – but the thing lives on in various reports here n there.
One of the few rights still left to us is to vote in internet polls – so have your say.

ACT GreenLabor brings in “New energy efficiency law” – just another disguise for socialist hands in our pockets again

I see the Canberra Times are reporting this with breathless enthusiasm as – “Plan to slash ACT power bills”. I have not read so much economically illiterate twaddle for years.
I note the comments on the Canberra Times article show their readers see right through the transparent Green scam.
If power companies have to pay out their hard won shekels to buy new efficient appliances for the poor – the aforesaid power company will have to recover the cost from somebody else. No prizes for guessing who.
Another thing that shoots this scheme down for me is that the Federal GreenLabor Govt is already putting a Carbon Dioxide Tax in place to save the planet. There is no need for the ACT Govt to double up and force us and save the planet twice. I have heard the Prime Minister say many times, that people on benefits will be more than compensated for any rise in utility bills and other costs due to the Carbon Tax. Let them update their appliances out of those funds.

Until more Canberra voters put the Greens last at every election – they can expect more mad socialist schemes like this. The only way to stop this scheme is to vote out the ACT GreenLabor Govt later in 2012.
What the Govt could sensibly do is to look at a divorce for ACTEW and AGL – then instruct ACTEW to always buy the cheapest electricity and gas possible for ACT consumers from any available supplier. I thought competition was supposed to be desirable – how did we ever get this uncompetitive ACTEWAGL joint venture ?
And just to get numbers on scale – the ACT Minister Simon Corbell claims the scheme will save 750,000 tons of greenhouse gases by 2016 – not sure if that is every year. Whatever the timespan claimed by Minister Corbell – be aware that on 2010 figures China emitts 750,000 tons of carbon dioxide every 48 minutes. We could bulldoze Canberra back to bush – that gesture would not measurably affect global emissions.