Another quarter billion dollars down the gurgler

 The struggling Sydney Morning Herald has, I kid you not , a Carbon Economy Editor which probably goes some way to explain why the paper is going down the tubes. With the staff levels now cut to the bone only those vital to the the paper now remain including the above position.It would obviously  be impossible for a newspaper to operate without a Carbon Economy Editor . This must be a board decision - the same board which wants the richest woman in the world before she invests to sign a declaration that she will not change the editorial policies that have sent the paper broke.
Anyway the Carbon Economy Editor has the story of the "clean coal" project  at the old Callide Power station which has racked up close to a  quarter billion dollars trying to capture CO2 and stuff it into a hole in the ground where it is supposed to stay in this looney-tunes plan.
It seems that the main fuel that the trial plant burns is taxpayer dollars !

If there is a future to clean coal, it may well be found in Banana Shire in central Queensland.

There, amid open-cut coalmines and the odd Queensland bottle tree, federal and state governments and the coal industry over the weekend unveiled the Callide Oxyfuel Demonstration Project.

Dubbed a ''vitally important step towards low-emission coal technology'', the 30-megawatt power plant was handed another $27 million to reach 10,000 hours of operations to prove the processes work.

By November 2014, funding for the formerly mothballed 43-year-old plant will exceed $230 million. Governments, federal and state, will supply almost 40 per cent, with about a third coming from a voluntary levy on the coal industry, and the balance from Japanese companies and Tokyo.

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The plant in recent days began trapping about 85 per cent of the carbon dioxide produced from burning coal using a mix of oxygen and flue gases.

Its proponents say that by proving the ''capture'' component of carbon capture and storage (CCS), the Callide plant may serve as a model to retrofit coal and gas-fired power plants around the world.

As typically the ''dirtiest'' fossil fuel source because of the high greenhouse gas it emits when burnt, coal is a key target of environmental groups campaigning to combat climate change.

Meanwhile in the real world even the UK government has scrapped the Longannet CCS plant  and Canada has binned a planned billion dollar CCS plant.
 

IPCC secret draft not so secret!

Delivery of the IPCC report

Claims and counter claims about the draft IPPC report are detailed in the latest Ben Cubby warmist opus in the Sydney  Morning Herald.  Apparently there was a section in the latest draft allocating a large part of warming to solar influences but according to Cubby and Church of the CSIRO that part has now been deleted after a review of peer-reviewed research. Who do they think they are kidding? Are they saying that the solar influence was just whacked into the draft report without any review? That the whole draft report is just some huge document full of un-reviewed science that needs editing? Where I come from a draft is a final document ready for final editing and it seems in this case that the editing that was done on ideological and political grounds removing the solar reference.

EVIDENCE for climate change has grown stronger and it is now ''virtually certain'' that human greenhouse gas emissions trap energy that warms the planet, according to a leaked draft of the next major Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report.

Prepared on behalf of the United Nations every five or six years to summarise climate change research, the panel report draws on hundreds of peer-reviewed papers.

The draft expresses even more confidence than the 2007 report that changes being observed across the planet are historically ''significant, unusual or unprecedented''.

It says that carbon dioxide is the biggest cause of climate change, far outweighing natural causes. The concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide is the highest in 800,000 years.

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The draft document - due to be released next year - was leaked by climate sceptic Alec Rawls, who runs a website called ''Stop Green Suicide'' and volunteered as a report reviewer.

Mr Rawls claimed the report contained an ''admission'' that galactic cosmic rays were having a strong influence on the Earth's climate.

But a lead author of the relevant section of the report, Professor Steve Sherwood of the University of NSW, said the theory had been rejected later in the report after a review of peer-reviewed research.

John Church, a lead author of the report and a senior CSIRO scientist, said: ''The report is still a working draft and these people have had access under conditions of not releasing the draft and not passing it on, and they have broken that agreement.''

Dr Church said the weight of evidence linking human activity and climate change had strengthened since the previous report.

The draft builds on the findings of the previous IPCC report that warming of the climate system is ''unequivocal''.

 

Gillard government in trouble

Successive opinion polls this week have indicated the Gillard government would be wiped out as we enter 2013 which is an election year, Newspoll and Essential Research both have Labor trailing the Coalition by 8 points 56 to 44 two party preferred. This reverses earlier Labor gains and puts Gillard's leadership under pressure.It is probably in the oppositions interest to keep a damaged Gillard in the PM's seat as she is probably unelectable.

VOTER support for Labor and Julia Gillard has fallen after the final week of parliament, ending the government's recent momentum and allowing Tony Abbott to edge closer as the nation's preferred prime minister.

After recovering and holding voter support in recent weeks, Labor's primary vote has slipped back to its level at the start of the year, and the Prime Minister's lead over the Opposition Leader is now the narrowest since September.

According to the last Newspoll survey for the year, conducted exclusively for The Australian at the weekend, Labor's primary vote fell four percentage points to a six-month low of 32 per cent. The Coalition's primary vote rose three points to 46 per cent - its highest level since the end of August.

The intensely personal nature of the politics of the last week of parliament appeared to damage both leaders. The Coalition used the final sitting week to accuse Ms Gillard of breaching the law in relation to the advice she gave on the incorporation of an association she later described as a union "slush fund", while the government accused Mr Abbott of being negative, running out of puff and being "gutless".

Meanwhile Larry Pickering has his say on Labor's handbag mafia and the feminist attacks on Tony Abbott.

UK millions for cow fart study

 
The UK is doing it tough borrowing 2 billion pounds every week to survive and taxpayers will be happy to know that the borrowed money is being spent wisely. Millions of the borrowed money are being spent to reduce cow flatulence in Colombia instead of wasting it on UK schools, hospitals and roads.
Pensioners will get a warm feeling to know of the government largess going to to Turkey to build windmills which the Turks are not silly enough to fund themselves.

Millions of pounds of British taxpayers’ money has been spent on a scheme aimed at reducing the flatulence of Colombian cattle, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

A £15million grant to ranchers and other organisations in the South American country was part of a £2.9billion package of ‘climate aid’ to developing countries which critics called ‘ludicrous’.

The initiative aimed to improve animal diets by cultivating trees and plants on their grazing lands – in doing so reducing the amount of methane escaping through belching and flatulence.

 

Lewandovski: Banned from the Conversation

 
It seems that the universities are no longer the bastion of free speech they should be if the Conversation is an example. I have been banned from commenting on this article by the esteemed Stephen Lewandowski who we have all come to love and admire for his sterling research. The comment which got me into trouble was this:

It is symbolic that this green gabfest is being held in California the poster-child of green policies in action , policies that are sending the state bankrupt , one city at a time.
http://reason.com/archives/2012/07/20/california-goes-bankrupt
Perhaps the 20,000 visitors will compensate for a short time for the exodus of businesses heading for friendlier states.
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/03/13/exodus-california-tax-revenue-plunges-by-22
I wonder if one of the topics for discussion will be the amount of jet fuel emissions caused by transporting 20,000 passengers to California.

Following being called an "idiot denier" which is obviously OK with the moderator's so-called community standards I attempted to reply to defend myself.

. Idiotic deniers? Reduced to name calling again.I am happy to have some august company in the APS who you can also call idiots if you like.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/02/160-physicists-send-letter-to-senate-regarding-aps-climate-position/

It is good to see Hansen at the gathering  wanting to jail those who disagree with him . Is the rumor true he wants the next rally to be at  Nuremberg where they have a great historical site and delegates could wear armbands to identify themselves. Deniers could have identifying labels sewn on their shirts.

Lord Monckton would be the first in the tumbrils for his heretical statement that there has been no warming for the last 15 years - he should get life.

I am not surprised that Lewandovski would have written such an article, but I am surprised that the Conversation would publish a diatribe lauding Hansen with his views on incarcerating non-believers.

We will see which disappears - this comment or Lewandovski's article

Well not only did the article stay and my comment not be published but it seems that I am now a non-person and any comments are summarily banned. I am waiting for the knock on the door!
I would be pleased for any readers to log on to the Conversation and join in the debate as I am now 
silenced.
UPDATE It seems I have been re-instated and a vigorous debate continues .

Where did that Greenland ice come from?

With unprecedented ice melt in Greenland according to  "climate scientists" WW2 planes have been found under a staggering 260 ft or 80 metres of ice. Where did this ice come from and why hasn't it melted?
It is this sort of inconvenient physical evidence which causes scepticism in what we are told is being measured by satellites flying overhead. The ice loss figures quoted for Greenland would seem to be at variance with this buildup of ice.

Six American fighter planes and two bombers that crash-landed in Greenland in World War II have been found 46 years later buried under 260 feet of ice, searchers said today.

A group from Atlanta said it found what became known as the ''lost squad-ron'' last month and plans to tunnel into the ice and lside the eight air-planes to the surface.

Richard Taylor, one of the leaders of the successful expedition, said today that he and another leader, Pat Epps, were ''going to fly two of them off the ice.''

The other planes will be dismantled and returned to the United States for restoration, he said. Some will be sold to pay for the expedition.

''We have a meeting tomorrow with a contractor from Seattle who is accustomed to doing Arctic work,'' Mr. Taylor said.

The saga of the flights began July 15, 1942, as the two B-17 bombers escorted six P-38 fighters from greenland to Reykjavik, Iceland. They ran into bad weather. A German submarine jammed their communications with Reykjavik, and the planes low on fuel and unable to find their destination, returned to Greenland, where they belly-landed on the ice about 10 miles inland.

h/T Steve Goddard