April 11, 2012
Update: A small tsunami (17cm) is reported to be heading towards the Aceh coast but the US Geological Survey believes the risk for a large tsunami is small. A tsunami “warning” is in effect in Sri Lanka and the eastern coast of India. Tremors were felt 1500km away across Southern India; in Chennai, Bangalore and Thiruvananthapuram among many other cities.
Breaking!
Indonesia issued a tsunami warning Wednesday after an earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 8.7 hit waters off westernmost Aceh province. tremors were felt in Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia and India. High-rise apartments and offices on Malaysia’s west coast shook for at least a minute.
The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii said a tsunami watch was in effect for Indonesia, India, Sri Lanka, Australia, Myanmar, Thailand, the Maldives and other Indian Ocean islands, Malaysia, Pakistan, Somalia, Oman, Iran, Bangladesh, Kenya, South Africa and Singapore. …
A giant 9.1-magnitude quake off the country on Dec. 26, 2004, triggered a tsunami in the Indian Ocean that killed 230,000 people, nearly three quarter of them in Aceh.
Interestingly the Piers Corbyn’s March forecast for extreme weather (based on solar activity) had identified 8th – 10th April as being especially prone to severe earthquake or volcanic activity.
extract from the Piers Corbyn March Earthquake & Major Volcano Red Warning chart published in March, the period 8th - 10th April was highlighted as a Top Red Warning (R4) period
Tags: Aceh, Earthquake, earthquake forecasting, earthquakes and solar effects, Indonesia, Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, Piers Corbyn
Posted in Natural Disasters | Comments Off on 8.7 magnitude earthquake off Aceh again – tsunami watch
April 8, 2012
Common sense and simple economics are beginning to reassert themselves as the the fundamental weaknesses in the fashionable – but subsidised – expansion of solar and wind power plants are revealed. The expensive, intermittent and unpredictable generation that derives from solar and wind power plants can – at best – be used to augment an existing system. They are actually useful as an auxiliary heat and power source as small decentralised units. But in a large power grid they are more of a nuisance than an asset and can only increase the cost to the consumer.
China has now published a policy document changing direction towards nuclear and hydro power and an accelerated development of shale gas use. Solar and wind power are downgraded.
Electric Light & Power
China will accelerate the use of new-energy sources such as nuclear energy and put an end to blind expansion in industries such as solar energy and wind power in 2012, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao says in a government report published on March 5.
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Tags: China, Energy, Energy development, Hydro Power, Nuclear power, Shale gas, Solar power, wind power
Posted in China, Energy, Nuclear Power, Renewable Energy | Comments Off on China downgrades solar and wind power – pushes for nuclear, hydro and shale gas
April 6, 2012
The Polargate investigation being conducted by the Department of the Interior’s Office of Inspector General “is looking into allegations of scientific misconduct related to a 2006 report by wildlife researchers Charles Monnett and Jeffrey Gleason, who described seeing dead polar bears floating in Arctic waters. The apparently drowned bears raised concerns about the effect of melting ice in the Arctic, and they were mentioned in Al Gore’s movie An Inconvenient Truth.”
Now NPR reports that new witnesses are being questioned in this 3 year old investigation:
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Tags: Al Gore, Charles Monnett, Inconvenient Truth, Inspector General, National Marine Mammal Laboratory, Polar bear, Polar bear numbers, polargate, polargate investigation
Posted in Alarmism, Climate, scientific misconduct, Wildlife | Comments Off on Polargate investigation questions new witnesses
April 6, 2012
Polar bears near Churchill, Manitoba: Ward Kennan photolibrary
DNA studies have shown that polar bears and brown bears have a common ancestry. The genetic split occurred about 150,000 years ago in the late Pleistocene just before the end of the Pleistocene glaciation known as the Ice Age. They evolved to meet the conditions of the Ice Age and they continue to adapt. In their present form as polar bears they have survived previous interglacials with temperatures greater than we have at present. And far from being endangered and under threat of extinction they continue to adapt their behaviour and to prosper.
New surveys have shown that
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Tags: Arctic, Churchill, global warming, Hudson Bay, Nunavut, Polar bear, Polar bear numbers
Posted in Alarmism, Arctic, Canada, Wind power | 2 Comments »
April 4, 2012
Subsidies for renewable energy only distort the market and are counter-productive. The game in renewable energy (wind and solar) has become the extraction of subsidies rather than the production of electricity. The sooner they are dismantled the better.
Two developments in Italy (which is virtually bankrupt) and in India (where growth is slowing) – both driven by economic considerations – are indicators that that some of the artificial gloss around renewable energy may be peeling off. Exorbitant feed-in tariffs for renewable energy are to be curtailed in Italy while very attractive tax-breaks for wind-power in India are to be reduced.
Italy to cut renewable energy subsidies
Italy will move to reduce taxpayer subsidies to its renewable energy sector after last year’s boom in solar power, Industry Minister Corrado Passera says. The official said Saturday in Cernobbio, Italy, that taxpayer subsidies doled out to the wind and solar power industries had generated “excessive” investments in the sector, The Wall Street Journal reported. “Italy has important goals to meet and even surpass,” he said, but added, “we need to do so without over-reliance on taxpayer resources.”
The government, Passera said, will in the coming years “realign” the level of its incentives to those of other European countries. ….
The Hindu Business Line reports on the new budget measures in India. Windmill developers to lose tax breaks
Windmill developers will no longer enjoy lower tax outgo in the first year, for investing in windmills.
Effective April 1, accelerated depreciation – which allows the investing company to fast track the write-off of certain assets for tax purposes – will not be allowed to wind energy developers. The Income Tax department has amended the rules regarding this, through a notification.
Until FY-12, a deduction of up to 80 per cent was allowed if the wind project was commissioned before September of a fiscal. Projects commissioned in the next half of the fiscal got a 40 per cent deduction. Now developers will only be allowed 15 per cent depreciation.
But wind equipments will still enjoy the 20 per cent additional depreciation prescribed for power equipments in the recent Budget. That would make for an effective 35 per cent depreciation. …….
Tags: feed-in tariffs, India, Italy, Renewable energy, subsidies, tax-breaks
Posted in Energy, Renewable Energy | Comments Off on India, Italy to cut renewable energy subsidies
April 4, 2012
The environmental and conservation movements lost their way when they moved to imposing their vision of the world onto others by fashioning people rather than fashioning a world to suit the needs of people. They started – in a formal sense – perhaps 60 – 70 years ago with the best of motives but became heavily politicised through the 80’s and since then have been more concerned about moulding people to fit their world view rather than serving the needs of human development. The environment – in some idealised and pristine form – even without man has been priorotised instead of being the surroundings to meet the needs of humans. Biodiversity has been made into a false god and human development has been condemned as a demon. Alarmism has been used as the vehicle for imposing change.
An article in Breakthrough Journal is causing a few waves. This essay is full of “common sense” but what makes it noteworthy is that its authors – Peter Kareiva, Robert Lalasz and Michelle Marvier – are all senior figures in The Nature Conservancy. Common sense from the environmental and conservations “movements” has been sadly absent in recent times.The essay is posted at the Breakthrough Journal and the Journal’s publicity states:
“By its own measures, conservation is failing. Biodiversity on Earth continues its rapid decline. We continue to lose forests in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. There are so few wild tigers and apes that they will be lost forever if current trends continue. Simply put, we are losing many more special places and species than we’re saving.”
So begins a searing indictment by the unlikeliest of sources: Peter Kareiva, chief scientist of The Nature Conservancy, the world’s largest conservation organization. …. Conservationists need to work with development, not condemn it as leading to the end of nature. In truth, nature’s resilience has been overlooked, its fragility “grossly overstated.” Areas blasted by nuclear radiation are bio-diverse. Forest cover is rising in the Northern Hemisphere even as it declines globally. ….
And it’s time to stop prioritizing being alone over being with others.
The essay itself is well worth reading and selected extracts are reproduced below:
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Tags: Anthropocene, Biodiversity, Conservation movement, Environmentalism, Nature Conservancy, Peter Kareiva
Posted in Alarmism, Biodiversity, Conservation, Development, Environment | Comments Off on Conservation movement’s focus is anachronistic and counterproductive – Peter Kareiva, Chief Scientist of the The Nature Conservancy.
April 3, 2012
How fire came to be discovered and then brought under control by our ancestors will probably always remain a matter for speculation. There is evidence that forest fires were occurring “naturally” at least 350 million years ago when plant life colonised the land. It may have been earlier since volcanoes were active long before this but the combustible matter needed (fuel and oxygen) which volcanic eruptions could have ignited would have been plentiful only around 350 million years ago.
Many animals have learned to take advantage of the benefits of wildfires – mainly after the fire is over. Some birds of prey take advantage of fleeing insects and small animals while the fire is still raging. Carnivores search in the ashes for animals killed by the fire but still with edible remains. Herbivores gather to lick the ashes for tasty “elements” and salts. Our ancestors would have been observers and beneficiaries of the accidental “cooking” and the warmth from forest or bush fires for many millions of years.
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Tags: controlled use of fire, fire, Homo Erectus, South Africa, Wonderwerk Cave
Posted in Anthropology, Archeology, Evolution, Science | Comments Off on Controlled use of fire now dated back to at least 1 million YBP
April 2, 2012
This new paper just reinforces my view that man-made carbon dioxide is insignificant with regard to climate. But I wonder how this finding is somehow going to be attributed to anthropogenic carbon dioxide.
Painting of Challenger by William Frederick Mitchell - Wikipedia
A new study combining data from the HMS Challenger (1872 – 1876) with the the modern data set of the Argo Programme shows that ocean warming 135 years ago was significantly faster than that in the last 50 years.
“… the magnitude of the temperature change since the 1870s is twice that observed over the past 50 years. …. This implies that the time scale for the warming of the ocean is not just the last 50 years but at least the last 100 years.”
… the 100-year timescale of ocean warming implies that Earth’s climate system as a whole has been gaining heat for at least that long.
Dean Roemmich, W. John Gould, John Gilson. 135 years of global ocean warming between the Challenger expedition and the Argo Programme. Nature Climate Change, 2012; DOI: 10.1038/nclimate1461
Summary: The ocean’s dominant role over the atmosphere, land, or cryosphere comes from its high heat capacity and ability to remove heat from the sea surface by currents and mixing. The longest interval over which instrumental records of subsurface global-scale temperature can be compared is the 135 years between the voyage of HMS Challenger (1872–1876) and the modern data set of the Argo Programme(2004–2010). Argo’s unprecedented global coverage permits its comparison with any earlier measurements. This, the first global-scale comparison ofChallenger and modern data, shows spatial mean warming at the surface of 0.59 °C±0.12, consistent with previous estimates of globally averaged sea surface temperature increase. Below the surface the mean warming decreases to 0.39 °C±0.18 at 366 m (200 fathoms) and 0.12 °C±0.07 at 914 m (500 fathoms). The 0.33 °C±0.14 average temperature difference from 0 to 700 m is twice the value observed globally in that depth range over the past 50 years, implying a centennial timescale for the present rate of global warming. Warming in the Atlantic Ocean is stronger than in the Pacific. Systematic errors in the Challenger data mean that these temperature changes are a lower bound on the actual values. This study underlines the scientific significance of the Challenger expedition and the modern Argo Programme and indicates that globally the oceans have been warming at least since the late-nineteenth or early-twentieth century.
And if warming in the last 50 years was just half the rate of warming over the last 100 years it follows that warming in the first 50 years was 3 times greater than the rate in the second 50.
Tags: Argo Programme, climate change, HMS Challenger, Ocean warming
Posted in Climate, Oceans, Science | Comments Off on Ocean warming over last 135 years twice as great as over last 50 years
April 1, 2012
There are many web-sites which are informative and educational. But only some of them are intelligent and a few of these are required reading and a very,very few of them are a just a delight to read.
Dr. Goodwood’s language blog is one of them.
Alphadictionary.com
And the story of paraprosdokians is something I learned today:
Paraprosdokian is not an Armenian writer or football coach but a figure of speech characterized by an abrupt change of direction at the end. It is a phrase that intentionally leads us down the garden path, that misleads us into thinking one way, then suddenly ending on an unexpected twist. Stand-up comedians who like one-liners use lots of them because the setup and punchline are all in a single line.
Here are some examples: …
- There but for the grace of God goes God. —Sir Winston Churchill, a comment on Sir Stafford Cripps, British socialist philosopher
- Two wrongs don’t make a right—but three lefts do.
- Now, you take my wife . . . PLEASE! —Henny Youngman
- Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.
- If I agreed with you we’d both be wrong.
- War does not determine who is right—only who is left.
- The early bird gets the worm but the second mouse gets the cheese.
- ……..
- Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go. —Oscar Wilde
And this one applies perfectly to me: You’re never too old to learn something stupid.
Tags: language, Paraprosdokian
Posted in Language | Comments Off on Paraprosdokians
March 31, 2012
I shall not be trying to switch off today. But I shall not either be trying to maximise my electricity consumption in some futile gesture to protest against the even more idiotic gesture that is Earthhour. I shall be as normal as possible.
The hype around Earthhour on 31st March each year is not just irritating – it demonstrates for me the intellectual bankruptcy that is now enveloping the environmentalists and conservationists and the eco-fascists. It is a tale told by idiots and full of sound and fury and signifying – nothing.
If it was a just a meaningless gesture it would not be as bad as it is. It actually denies all that humankind has achieved and promotes a view of what the future should be which not only do I not share but is one which celebrates the lack of electricity. It condemns humankind to return to a bleak world of hunger and death and misery. That may be a future which the lack of electricity could cause but it is not a future I would choose or glorify.
This post by Ross McKitrick is pretty close to how I see things:
Earth Hour: A Dissent
by Ross McKitrick
Ross McKitrick, Professor of Economics, University of Guelph, Canada. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Ross McKitrick, Professor of Economics, University of Guelph, Canada. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
In 2009 I was asked by a journalist for my thoughts on the importance of Earth Hour.
Here is my response.
I abhor Earth Hour. Abundant, cheap electricity has been the greatest source of human liberation in the 20th century. Every material social advance in the 20th century depended on the proliferation of inexpensive and reliable electricity.
Giving women the freedom to work outside the home depended on the availability of electrical appliances that free up time from domestic chores. Getting children out of menial labour and into schools depended on the same thing, as well as the ability to provide safe indoor lighting for reading.
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Tags: Alarmism, Earth, Earth Hour, Earthhour, Ross McKitrick
Posted in Alarmism, Development, Ethics, Evolution | Comments Off on Earthhour is not for me – It is a tale told by idiots..
The k2p blog 