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Looks like a system wide failure
For years the average wholesale price was somewhere between $30 and $60 per megawatt hour for electricity on the Australian national grid. But for the entire 2,184 hours of quarter two this year, we were paying an average price of $264 per megawatt hour. It wasn’t just due to a couple of freakish spikes, instead it was a relentless burning average, like a lava flow arrived at your wallet.
At an average operational demand of 22GW, that’s a hefty $12.7 billion dollar price tag for 91 days of electricity. Last year the same period it cost $4b. Years ago, before we added all the unreliable generators, it would have cost $2 billion.
It would have been cheaper just to build a whole new power plant last year.
The graph below covers the century so far. It is that bad.
It wasn’t that there was a particular time of the day when prices were higher, instead every hour was a bloodbath. It was a phase change. There was no happy hour at this hotel.
And it didn’t matter whether a state was renewable-heaven or a den of black-coal. Prices were shocking in every […]
Normally in a prewar situation a country might be increasing industrial production
h/t Rafe Champion
Russia has cut gas supply again, arguing over the German paperwork, after Canada dithered on sending the last turbine back, and Poland reneged on some dividends. Everyone is playing poker with energy, even if some of them didn’t count their cards before they started — and gas is predictably, hitting new record prices. But even before the ante was upped in the latest round, 15% of German industry were already cutting production. Many others are planning to or were considering moving. People are starting to wonder if this might be a permanent loss for the famous German industrial power.
In other news, rather frantic landlords in Germany want to be able to legally restrict temperatures of their tenants units. Someone has got to pay that gas bill, and just asking tenants to take shorter showers doesn’t seem to be working.
Now they tell us:
“Gas is now not only part of Russia’s foreign policy, but possibly also part of the Russian war strategy,” said [Klaus Müller, the president of Germany’s Federal Network Agency, Bundesnetzagentur]
If only someone saw that coming, like say, in […]
If we measure the vibrancy of an economy by its energy use, the EU peaked in 2006 and is down 10%. The UK, alas has fallen even further and faster and is down 30%.
John Constable at the GWPF has produced a damning report on Europe’s Green Experiment and remarked that there hasn’t been a fall in energy this large “since the end of the late middle ages”.
Effectively, the EU paid €770 billion to export it’s carbon emissions and jobs to China and import nearly everything else.
The study shows that up until 2005 the EU’s energy consumption was on a rising trend, but it has now fallen by over 10% on the 2006 peak, and is now back at levels last seen in the 1990s. The UK is even more severely affected, with consumption falling by about 30% on its peak in the early 2000s and is now at levels last seen in the 1950s. Further analysis reveals that electricity generation productivity has collapsed, with system load factor falling from an adequate 56% in 1990 to a worryingly inefficient and expensive 37% in 2020. A trillion dollars in subsidies to renewables — mostly paid by the EU
It […]
All hail the clean green energy reset — where people are being warned to get ready to live in colder, darker houses, and big energy users will be offered money to stop work. Make plans to turn that factory off! Buy candles!
The UK sits on a giant gas storage site they could have tapped 10 years ago. Instead costs are up so much Ofgem has warned this could push around 12 million people into fuel poverty which is one in six people in Great Britain. The energy price cap is projected to hit around £3,200 (maximum annual tariff).
Apparently even newspapers are getting thinner. High energy costs make everything expensive.
Back to the dark ages? Now millions of Britons could be told to switch off the lights and turn down the thermostat to avoid blackouts this winter under emergency plans
Daily Mail, 24 July 2022
Households might have to turn down their thermostats and switch off lights to avoid blockouts under emergency plans.
To avoid rolling blackouts in the UK, the National Grid could also pay some large energy users to use less power to ease the pressure on the grid.
Britain’s next […]
Wokism is just another cycle of the bossy righteous social climber, and it will be defeated, not when we take them seriously, but when we laugh at them.
Nothing is funny any more, all jokes are microagressions. The world’s unctuous busybodies are humorless sods, telling everyone to eat bugs and arm themselves with solar-panel-shields to stop the tide. They pretend to care for the poor while they condemn them to poverty. They earn points in invisible beauty contests while they accidentally raze forests, kill bats, and slaughter birds in a quest to be holier than the guy next door. The only thing they care about is themselves.
Nick Cater reviews a new book by Noah Rothman that sounds like a good read. The point I appreciate the most is that humans have gone through these waves of righteous madness before and that there will be an end, and the more we mock them, the sooner it will come. As Nick Cater sublimely does with one performer at the Melbourne Comedy Festival who he describes as “.. an Indigenous woman who identifies as a comedian.”
The Rise of the New Puritans: Fighting Back Against Progressives’ War on Fun
July 26th, 2022 | Tags: Book, Religion | Category: Free Speech, Global Warming |  Print This Post | |
Shut Up, say Climate Alarmists trying to ban Fossil Fuel Ads
When science is not on your side you have to stop the other half speaking somehow. Obviously, these marketers are not going to win a science debate.
So 300 public relations geniuses who are dependent on fossil fuels want to deny the companies that feed, cloth, warm and move them — the right to even pay to make their case? Well, Over to you I say. When you switch off the grid, we’ll believe you are sincere, rather than status seeking junkies looking to earn fashionista points in a debate you haven’t done five minutes of real research in.
They, the physics dropouts of university, may protest that they have solar panels, and an EV, and timeshares in a windfarm near Ararat, but not one of them has the integrity to do this properly. All of them rely on power from coal plants in the dead of night to keep them warm, to stabilize the fifty hertz, and to be there when the wind don’t blow. Even in the unlikely event one of the 300 has bought the Super-Uber battery bank that charges their car and the fridge […]
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7.5 out of 10 based on 11 ratings
Do Australian Lives Matter?
Two families this week, one in Adelaide and one in Sydney, tried to heat their homes with charcoal barbecues. Thankfully no one died.
Four more people are rushed to hospital after burning COALS inside their home as the price of electricity soars
Sam McPhee, DailyMail Australia
A second Australian household have been rushed to hospital with carbon monoxide poisoning after attempting to warm their house with a charcoal burner – laying bare the reality of the country’s ongoing energy crisis.
Emergency services attended a home in Adelaide‘s Bedford Park on Friday morning after four people woke up feeling faint and suffering from nosebleeds. They had been attempting to warm their home overnight using a cooker. All four showed signs of carbon monoxide poisoning.
It comes after a family of six from Sydney’s west were also hospitalised this week after using a burner to warm their granny flat.
His father said it was a response to rising gas prices in Australia.
Energy poverty can be deadly.
Four people “lucky to be alive” after indoor fire leaches carbon monoxide
Twenty South Australians have been admitted […]
Natural immunity against Omicron from a previous Omicron infection is better than advertised (75%+) so far
Two new interesting studies out of Qatar in the last month show that natural immunity against Covid is better than recent headlines suggest, and also that (as expected) immunity created from a real infection lasts about three years whereas vaccine immunity may “last only one” (at best, and if that).*
Although people who caught early variants (up to Delta) are only 28% protected against catching the latest Omicron BA5, people who have caught some form of Omicron itself already may have 75 – 80% protection. And what really matters is that everyone who has caught any form of Covid has “robust” protection against severe disease.
Qatar is an interesting population to study — it has a youngish demographic and they can literally include everyone which removes a lot of selection biases. It’s a very diverse conglomerate: Nearly 90% of Qatar’s population are expatriates from over 150 countries, coming …because of employment.
The first study is one of the longest term research projects on Covid to date. Chemaitelly et al followed people who got Covid in Qatar from nearly the beginning of the […]
Just an update on South Africa: Blackouts continue, and the people are not happy:
These are being describes as the worst blackouts since the ANC came into power in 1994.
Residents block roads in Tembisa in South Africa against rising prices, high living costs and water and electricity cuts.#SouthAfrica #Tembisa #Protest #BreakingNews pic.twitter.com/GknLuNtGR8
— We Are Protestors (@WeAreProtestors) July 20, 2022
Some are so desperate for electricity they are rewiring substations and ending up in hospital:
Mini substation blows up in face of man trying to illegally reconnect it
Reeshni Chaslyn Chetty, The South African
A Johannesburg man who tried to illegally reconnect electricity faced injuries after he allegedly opened an electricity substation and it blew up in his face.
The spokesperson revealed that there is a ‘serious problem’ of vandalism of infrastructure in the City. This includes incidents where residents attempt to illegally operate the electricity network – they are often aided by unqualified electricians and try to reconnect or make illegal connections.
We hope he is OK.
These are eight hour regular rolling blackouts. People have Apps on the phone to tell them when their next blackout starts. People […]
Another entirely unnecessary crisis. Everything about our energy system is running on the edge.
Despite sitting on a “lake of gas”, Victoria Australia is in danger of running out of usable gas midwinter. The AEMO is back in crisis mode (if it ever left). In Victoria gas supplies are so low, two gas power plants have been ordered to switch off to preserve some gas storage, and the AEMO is begging Queensland for extra gas supplies. There were even warnings yesterday that homes might run out of gas (though that doesn’t appear to have happened).
A bun-fight is breaking out between Australian states over gas supplies, with others grumpy that Victoria is buying their gas fired electricity, but is not exporting gas to make it. Notoriously, Victoria has also banned exploration for new gas wells, and most of its gas exports would come from offshore Commonwealth managed deposits, supposedly belonging to the whole nation, while Queensland and South Australia were digging up their own gas.
Homeowners are warned that if the gas storage underground (in a old reused gas field) falls too low, their home appliances might not work. Welcome to the first world!
When gas levels in […]
h/t to Eric Worrall
For people in Brisbane, don’t miss Peter Ridd & Jennifer Marohasy this Sunday at 2pm. They will attend a premiere viewing of their new film “A Coral Bleaching Tragedy”.
Tickets are available on Eventbrite.
Jen Marohasy and Peter Ridd
Dear All,
It is now nine months since the High Court decision (Ridd v JCU) was handed down and I thought donors to that legal action might be interested in what has happened in the meantime.
As you will recall, the HC ruled that JCU acted unlawfully in censuring me for my comments on the Quality Assurance of Great Barrier Reef (GBR) science, but was allowed to fire me for speaking about JCU’s unlawful behaviour. I have been working with Morgan Begg from the IPA on a new volume that will analyse the case in detail. Contributors include Chris Merritt, legal correspondent for The Australian, James Allan (Law Professor at the University of Queensland), and Aynsley Kellow (Emeritus Professor at U. Tasmania). The aim is to make sure as much as possible is learned and documented for future work to improve academic freedom of speech.
July 20th, 2022 | Tags: Marohasy (Jennifer), Ridd (Peter), Social Events for Skeptics | Category: Global Warming | Print This Post | |
No one silences experts because they have a great product ‘People are getting bad advice and we can’t say anything.’ Marty Makary M.D., M.P.H. and Tracy Beth Høeg M.D., Ph.D.
Photo by Colin Maynard
Right now, internal critics of these agencies are focused on one issue above all: Why did the FDA and the CDC issue strong blanket recommendations for Covid vaccines in children?
The calls and text messages are relentless. On the other end are doctors and scientists at the top levels of the NIH, FDA and CDC. They are variously frustrated, exasperated and alarmed about the direction of the agencies to which they have devoted their careers.
“It’s like a horror movie I’m being forced to watch and I can’t close my eyes,” one senior FDA official lamented. “People are getting bad advice and we can’t say anything.”
That particular FDA doctor was referring to two recent developments inside the agency. First, how, with no solid clinical data, the agency authorized Covid vaccines for infants and toddlers, including those who already had Covid. And second, the fact that just months before, the FDA bypassed their external experts to […]
This sounds ominous.
Deutsche Bank says Germans should use less gas any which way they can. Their new report suggests they use more hard coal and lignite for power stations, wood for home heating, and use oil in industry. That’s sparked a debate on the merits of using wood. (Nobody say the word “nuclear”.)
Germany drawing up plans to heat homes with WOOD this winter as gas crisis erupts
The Express
WOOD could be used to heat German homes this winter as the country grapples with a gas crisis.
Opinion is divided over the merits of using wood as a fuel with some saying doing so increases CO2 emissions and would unleash a logging boom, trashing biodiversity. Others argue wood is a renewable source of energy and expanding its use could prompt landowners to plant more trees, resulting in more carbon storage.
The Deutsche Bank analysis adds both savings and substitution have already led to a drop in German gas consumption by more than 14 percent year on year in the first five months of this year, largely driven by a mild winter.
Desperate: The European Commission suggests countries pay companies to […]
Even the Australian ABC was telling Australians with a straight face that the extreme heat in the UK was so dangerously bad that healthy young people might die in the heat. For most Australians, it’s not summer if it doesn’t hit 40. And for people with a sauna, it’s not fun if it’s not 60 degrees. People enjoy an hour at 60C all the time without dying. We are mammals, we just need to drink. (And make sure we never forget the kids in the car).
Toby Young at the Daily Sceptic found the perfect study released last week reminding us of how deadly UK heatwaves are:
There are Eighty Times More Excess Deaths Associated With Cold Each Year than Heat
According to a recent study in the Lancet Planetary Health, between 2000 and 2019, there were an average of 65,000 excess deaths per year in England and Wales associated with cold, but fewer than 800 a year associated with heat. In other words, roughly 80 times more deaths per year are associated with cold than heat.
London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
The eighty fold difference shows how serious a UK winter is, and […]
Lesson one: How to make a university into a PR wing of a multinational corporation
Start with lots of money
Big Pharma buys off the media critics with $15 billion a year, and they buy off the Government watchdog agencies too. But they also surround their Octopus tentacles around the academic towers as well. And it’s (mostly) all legal — indeed the companies can brag about the money they give for research…
Dr Peter Rost explains that the Big Multinational Corporations buy influence from every angle. Firstly they pay out grants for research. They help develop the research with academics. They also pay individuals directly — they pay them a speakers fee, $1,000 – $2,000 a day.
You establish friends. You make them beholden to you…
You give them money for programs, educational programs, ones they make a profit from.
They are supposed to be third party and independent from the company, but everyone knows that the institutions that Big Pharma is more generous with are the same institutions that happen to say the things the company is happy about.
Even if you can officially claim — this is at arms length — […]
The US will not be able to meet the 2030 targets without this legislation (and all those subsidies)
After seven months of negotiations, and the big plan being rejected then shaved and sliced and diced, Senator Manchin has rejected all climate and energy rules. Inflation is to high and too painful…
Manchin pulls plug on Biden’s climate plan The New York Times
WASHINGTON — Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, pulled the plug on Thursday on negotiations to salvage key pieces of President Biden’s agenda, informing his party’s leaders that he would not support funding for climate or energy programs…
Without action by Congress, it will be impossible to meet Mr. Biden’s goal of cutting U.S. emissions roughly in half by the end of this decade. That target was aimed at keeping the climate stable at about 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming compared to preindustrial levels.
“Political headlines are of no value to the millions of Americans struggling to afford groceries and gas as inflation soars to 9.1 percent,” said Sam Runyon, a spokeswoman for Mr. Manchin….
Because Democrats hold the Senate by a bare 50-50 majority, Mr. […]
It’s just an investment: Big Pharma spends twice as much on advertising as it does on developing cancer drugs.
Think about that. Most drugs are only prescribed by doctors so why advertise on TV at all? It’s not like patients are wandering through Walmart looking for a Pfizer. Should I get the Glaxo instead?
It turns out that the advertising money is not buying customers it’s buying the media. And it’s not paying to show the world something, but to hide it instead.
As Mark Steyn says, for the first time in history every person on Earth needs the same medicine, and four doses of it, no questions asked. The silence is complete: There are $15,000 million reasons why MSNBC, CNN, and all the rest didn’t ask the FDA or the TGA to “show us the data”, or even to explain why the data had to be hidden for 55 years or even 75 years. When politicians signed secret deals on our behalf the media didn’t demand to see the contracts, they wanted to know why it wasn’t done sooner. It’s the same reason they mock cheap drugs that reduce Covid by 63% but get excited about every new […]
It’s just another day in the global energy crisis: Years of climate goals are evaporating
When your currency is backed by renewables… | 1 year of Euro/USD
The threat of the Russians cutting off gas completely through Nord stream 1 has focused Europe on the blessings of coal and the reality of surviving winter with only windmills and solar panels to keep warm.
Germany, France, Austria, Netherlands, and the UK have already changed plans to shut coal plants or have plans to revive old ones. Poland is buying coal directly for homes. Hungary has now also declared a state of emergency and said it will boost gas production and stop exports. No sharing allowed now.
Only two years ago Greece was going green — phasing out brown coal but now the Greek power corporation has been told to stop the phase out of coal. Last year lignite provided only 5% of the electricity in Greece, now the aim is 20%.
Hungary declares ‘state of emergency’ over threat of energy shortages
Euronews
Budapest says it will boost its annual production of natural gas from 1.5 billion cubic metres to 2 billion cubic metres. The […]
Nearly every decision Joe Biden has made just happens to be the same as what President Xi would have preferred.
The keystone pipe, energy dependence, the Afghanistan debacle, the end of tariffs, jailing critics of China, and allowing Chinese companies strategic control and access. Then there’s the Hunter Biden laptop…
It’s excellent to see Tucker packaging this message so well.
Tucker Carlson rips the Biden family’s relationship with China and what it really means for global order
Partial transcript (full copy at the link above)
Last summer, a group of American intelligence analysts working for the U.S. government issued a report on the origins of COVID.These people work at CIA, NSA, a bunch of other agencies, and they concluded that the coronavirus may very well have been manufactured in a lab by the Chinese military.
America has been the dominant power in the world for more than 100 years, since the end of the First World War, when Europe destroyed itself. Empires destroying themselves always pave way for new empires, something we should keep in mind at the moment.
The coronavirus reshuffled the global order. It crushed the American economy. It […]
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