QE isn't printing money as such, its about banks buying govt bonds and driving down the cost of borrowing further and providing more stimulus to the economy. Its the last resort after interest rates have been driven down to nothing like we are slowly seeing... Next step is another GFC when share markets go bang with all this extra money inflating stocks...
I'm not an expert but I was told it's not "banks" but the central / reserve bank buying government bonds, which is a critical difference to commercial banks buying government bonds, it's the government / central / reserve bank buying it's own bonds to put cash into the system. The money they buy the bonds with was printed yesterday, and if you let the process run wild you can end up like Zimbabwe with 1000% inflation, so the governments walk a tightrope trying to balance the rate they print cash with the rate of GDP and other external sources of income!
A friend I have likes to describe it as "Your backyard pool trying to fill itself with it's own water!"
The US Government writes itself an IOU every time it prints some more cash, one that will never be honored!
Trump statistically has been a very successful president.
He's not respectable, but I have to say he's actually done the job better than anyone is giving him credit for.
Their economy is flourishing. Unemployment is down.
It will be interesting to see the long term effects, while nearly all are happy with the short term some in business I deal with claim he's burning the future and betting that future technology will be able to "fix" whatever is the outcome of his short term dealings. It's quite hard to gauge the short term as his trick is changing how things are measured and represented. The net result is that you get reports like unemployment is down, without being able to verify the figures, will this come about at the expense of wealth, health and lifestyle?
Some say the US Economy still hasn't even regained the ground lost in the government shutdowns, and that the reporting is bogus.
Are they still printing money(Quantitative Easing) faster than you can shuffle it?
Anyway, here's the link to his shattering discoveries... the satellite photo (?) is great news for Namibia, our Gibson Desert, Nullabor... and how Alice Springs has changed... just to name a few who've benefitted from CO2 greening!!
Yeah, I've read so many of these and they all follow the same pattern.
Most common is flipping cause and effect which breaks causality, the laws of thermodynamics or the flow of time. Generalisations of land based effects to global conditions, ignoring that land, ice and ocean behave differently and that the critical effects and influences of climate change on weather patterns is more than 90% contained in the sea and ocean.
They confuse or correlate broad scientific findings from astronomy(in this case the effects of low altitude cloud cover and albedo over land) and localised physics(land observations) with "climate science" which is land(~10%) and sea or ocean(~90%).
Finally, they cherry-pick data often from already disproved and/or non-peer reviewed papers often by non-climate specialists. Quite a good plain language critique of the linked Jyrki Kauppinen(A Finnish Physicist not a Climate Scientist) paper used as evidence in this article is contained here at the website Climate Feedback, there are lots of others floating around.
For the uninitiated, one of the biggest warning signs of a dodgy scientific paper is not being peer reviewed or published before peer review, a lack of declare sources of data and generalised starting conclusions that are unsupported by data or reference sources. The Kauppinen paper is loaded with them, for example Richard Betts found;
Quote from: Richard Betts
This document only cites 6 references, 4 of which are the authors’ own, and of these 2 are not actually published.
That self referencing is Kauppinen basically claiming it's that way because I said so, without providing any data or evidence!
Hilary was liked so much she lost to Donald Trump.
There is not much for voters to choose from in any country.
In the interim the US have us to thank, Tony Abbott is over there praising Trump and accusing those suggesting links between bush fires and climate change as being some new form of religious zealot.
Is there irony in Tony Abbott accusing someone of being a religious zealot?
It's the behavior of people that is the real problem, not the way fire behaves.
For example looking at the current media coverage, that stuff that influences political opinions and determines policy. It's clear the media like to emphasize the extremes, for example, nobody is claiming prescribed burning should happen everywhere to everything, in fact it's been shown widespread prescribed burning would be too frequent as old undergrowth areas are needed for biodiversity, areas where the undergrowth and debris accumulates for 50 to 100 years. But the moment somebody tries to sensibly discuss localised prescribed burning, around towns and properties, the media give some inner city based environmentalist an equal voice to infer that all prescribed burning is pure Armageddon, conveniently ignoring the "localised" part of the prescribed burning proposals. The bureaucratic response as painted by the media seems to be all or none, but is it?
Then just in case everybody hasn't been whipped into a frenzy of hatred, they have an extremist environmentalist telling us that once in a 100 year fire events are fine and natural, and we should just accept our towns and properties will burn to the ground at least once in a lifetime!
The media just hate offering middle ground, they always gravitate to extremism on every issue.
I do not know if this is state wide, but I've been told people living in Victorian alpine regional areas with logging permits are no longer allowed to clear deadwood or fallen timber, they have to cut live green timber only, with the allocation dropped down from 8 tonne to 6 tonne annually.
My CFA contacts tell me the changes in the rules had a profound effect.
Firstly, apparently in alpine regions it can take about 3 yrs for cut timber to fully dry out before it can be used in one of those expensive slow burners like a space heater or a wood burning Auger stove. If you don't dry it out properly it creates havoc with the heater or stove, so everybody dries their timber.
Secondly, this means that in his highest fire risk areas people now only cut down green living trees, leaving the highly combustible dry fallen timber and branches in the undergrowth, and around the house they have up to 18 tonne of cut timber drying(The 6 tonne in-use pile, and 2 years in advance with up to another 12 tonnes)!
Finally, the bush is full of dead decaying trees, probably from fires, that fall without notice on camper-vans, tents, rare or endangered wallabies, wombats, CAF volunteers or off-road vehicles. Not one has managed to hit a passing politician or Prahran based environmentalist yet, but in the alpine region outside of Falls Creek they are rarer than a Yowie apparently!
It's tough to blame the residents when you find bureaucracy so hard at work! (Downhill skiing it seems! )
At the top of the list are the premiers and ministers responsible for land management, such as it is, and bushfire policy, and the public servants in their departments with jurisdiction over forests and national parks. State governments in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria have palpably failed to do the most important job they were elected to do: protect the lives and livelihoods of their citizens and the health of their environment. And their public servants have failed to do the job they are being paid to do: serve the public.
I tend to agree with Thry, while I agree about the waste, waste of money, opportunity and initiatives, the Feds wield far more influence than they are willing to admit.
They'll turn up to spruik their contribution when a new freeway, tunnel or bridge opens, but they 'll evaporate the minute something like this happens with comments like it's a state issue. Yet roads, forests, farms, rivers, lakes and bays are all infrastructure.
The truth sits somewhere between State run and Federally financed.
A good example is the sale of the Port of Melb, the State made the decision and cut the deal, which the Feds had to tick off. But the Feds also claimed a big slice of the cake while the State argued it should get it all the funds! As far as I know the state lost the debate!
So much for not burning off, the gift that keeps on giving!
Run off into creeks from the rain is already killing fish by the thousands according to reports coming from East Gippsland this morning.
I must admit I'm very sceptical about the previous conditions preventing burn-off, so is my brother who is CFA and lives near a state forest. He' told me they have been begging the DSE to let them do control burns for three years and they keep getting refused permission with claims it was too dry. But he said the peaks of some areas near him had snow on them, while other peaks had been cleared of all trees for, wait for it, wind turbines!
So we suspect the real reason for missing targets and resorting to "strategic burns" comes courtesy of some bean-counter somewhere who now has a fat bonus for cutting/saving million$ from the spend on forestry management!
I think the correct term to describe the situation is "Cluster of Fork", or something like that!
Nuclear appears to be the most environmentally friendly of all the options available provided there's no meltdown...
Not to mention Japan which is now building modern coal to supplement remaining nuclear, and it's turning nuclear plants back on slowly as are some of the European states as you mention. Two reasons seem to be primary concerns, reliability of energy supply and the unsubsidised ongoing cost of green energy. Green activists make claims that countries like Japan are addicted to nuclear, but that claim doesn't stack up as many of the same countries are actually providing the green energy innovation as well.
In fairness I don't think we can compare Three Mile Island or Chernobyl to a modern plant, and as much as screwushima(Cop this autocorrect mods, some activist is taking the piss!) Daiichi now presents some problems there may have been the odd external influence. Those old plants, the design, construction and location, are relics compared to modern plants. It's like comparing a Model-T Ford to a Tesla. But in fairness, even the situation with coal plants is pretty much the same, we talk about our Latrobe Valley facilities but these are dinosaurs compared to modern plants, the main difference being the old plants lack of ability to ramp production to meet demand, they are too slow to react so they leave them running wasting far too much resource. It's like leaving your car running overnight so it can ready to go at breakfast! In fairness nuclear plants are similar, they leave them idling 24x7, but they don't consume much resource or produce greenhouse gas in that state.
This is partly true, in that micro-grids are a potential solution, but it's unlikely they are any cleaner and greener than bulk energy generation. Also as EB1 points out, the longevity of such systems is questionable with some now finding they didn't last the warranty period and the supplier / manufacturer is long gone!
Abramowitz partly ignores the transmission issue, he fails to mention it when discussing the Northern Territory.
In relation to large scale solar there are also questions to be answered as huge solar farms also have localised and global environmental effects. Something that is now being discovered and studied on the Victorian border around Kerang, Echuca and Swan Hill.
The rule seems to be as always, there is no free lunch!
Need battery storage, typically Lithium Iron variety, highly expensive to begin with and batteries dont last. One of the States in the USA is trying a mass solar storage experiment(forget which one), maybe Elon Musk and his fanboys can come up with some new technology. He is spending money on battery technology and wants to go to parts unknown with his SpaceX program so will need some inventive power systems. Wind farms dont work and are not green either given the cost/resources to build, total waste of money and generate nothing. Both Solar and Wind also have trouble integrating into the grid due to regulation creating quality issues with frequency.
All good points.
The other major issue with large centralized systems is energy transmission, at the moment moving power around the grid is very inefficient and there are no real world viable solutions to this problem at the moment. I read somewhere that using current technologies if we had to transmit power from Perth to Sydney we might lose as much as 40% in heat due to the resistance of the transmission lines and losses at joins. Some countries including Australia are experimenting with Ultra High Voltage(UHV) or Energy(UHE) transmission lines, but it looks to be both very expensive and very unreliable.
With current transmission systems the more energy you have to move the more inefficient they become.
With UHV it's the reverse, the higher the voltage you use the more efficient it becomes. Just don't go anywhere near the transmission lines as the current systems fails with lightning like results!
This is a real problem, because all major economies are invested in long term in fusion energy research, and fusion is a process that improves in efficiency with increasing size. So you need a large centralised system to be very efficient at generating fusion energy, but then you have to distribute it a long way to make use of the massive facility!
Totally stupid to bankrupt the country on new technologies that simply DO NOT work.
We should have had nuclear 40 years ago. Why in the hell should we impoverish ourselves when we are so rich in resources and then end up paying more for power than any other country. Because we are dead dumb. No other country would tolerate it. 1.3 % of the world's emissions. BFD !!!
Yes, the whole per capita vs total emissions debate bends to political will and is primarily bogus. Per capita doesn't mean much if you are a postage stamp economy with a with low density population like Australia, so it's really just used by extremists to name and shame.
The real unequivocal issue is total emissions. Everybody knows the major polluters in this regard, having a massive under-resourced low economic status population gets all your per capita emissions average down across the board.
But those realities cannot be used as an excuse for a lack of action by any country.
I'd bet London to a brick that it's doable. Between the various forms of clean(er) energy, we can do way better than the current situation.
That is surely correct, once the political leverage from the old world is broken, in this regard the energy debate is very reminiscent of the electric car debate.
I do take issue with alarmist calls banning modern nuclear energy, it's clearly Australia's cleanest greenest fastest solution to both greenhouse emissions and base-load energy. Musk's batteries are probably filthy, just that they are manufactured NIMBY, and manufacturing wind turbines and solar cells full of rare earth elements is not that much better, but again they are made NIMBY. All three industries hang their hat on being cleaner and sustainable in the future without having a ready-made solution!
Lucky for us China's and India's pollution hasn't yet applied for a travel visa so it's stuck inside their borders, so we can keep importing our solar cells, wind turbines and storage batteries. All we have to do is dig everything up and ship it to them first to be converted and returned in a convenient to use package. Scotty from Marketing calls that "a trade deal", we can even have the stuff shipped in tightly packed parts to save on freight called "good economic management", then assemble the lot here called "Creating jobs!"
Nuclear is an almost perfect fit with desalination plants whose salty emissions, somewhat ironically for the protesters, now seem to be doing localized good for the oceans. Given it's highly likely pure fresh water will become, if it is not already, one of the world's most precious commodities, we better quickly get good at making it!
There is some irony when the coal industry claim nuclear pollutes the globe with a few kilograms of waste, but deny that billions or trillions of tonnes of greenhouse emissions have a discernible effect. Of course we now suspect that in micro-doses those old world coal fired power stations issue more radiation in total than many of the major events of the past, allegedly even far exceeding atmospheric nuclear testing.
Time to stop f@#%ing around and move away from old technologies. Climate change or no climate change. Other countries have shown the way.
Yes, sensible actions in the face of a potential risk. The key words being "action", which means do something, and "potential risk", which means something bad might happen!
The trouble is in Australia we have ScoMo in charge, who seems credulous regarding climate change denialism. ScoMo "Wants to Believe" the conspiracies, the real question is perhaps why?
Other Liberals like Turnbull and Abbott had motives that were relatively clear, be they hard right economics or the Small "L" conservatism.
Scotty from Marketing is a weather-vane, and not a very good one it seems because he can't definitively find his way-point! His lack of commitment perhaps presents the highest risk to Australia of all political positions, because we could lose on both fronts, the economy and the environment!
Some countries have chosen Filthy Rich while others choose Clean Broke, Scotty from Marketing seems to have found the secret 3rd path Filthy Broke!
Observers now probably suspect with Scotty from Marketing it's all about Scotty from Marketing, no wonder he idolizes Trump!
Concerns about Mann’s research included: . . . I'll stick to footy hereonin. You're in the cult. No facts, or even reality, will sway you.
Reality does sway me fiction doesn't!
Your Mann accusations are old news, dredged up and re-played ad infinitum in the remote hope it influences some general public. It's pointless raising them in this debate because the accusations have long been disproved by multiple investigations, some even chaired or sponsored by climate change skeptics. In some cases the skeptical protagonists were even forced to publish very public apologies!
Repeating false accusations won't make them suddenly become true, it's not Kansas, you're not Dorothy, no matter how often you speak or write the fantasy it will remain fake, fiction will not become reality, even News Ltd accepts that now!
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