Global warming, climate change, all these things are just a dream come true for politicians. I deal with evidence and not with frightening computer models because the seeker after truth does not put his faith in any consensus. The road to the truth is long and hard, but this is the road we must follow. People who describe the unprecedented comfort and ease of modern life as a climate disaster, in my opinion have no idea what a real problem is.
All flights at Luton Airport have been suspended until the afternoon after a huge fire ripped through a terminal car park.
Flights have been halted until 15:00 BST after the fire at the multi-storey caused the building to suffer a “significant structural collapse”.
About 1,500 vehicles may have been in the car park and subsequently damaged, the fire service said.
Four firefighters and an airport staff member were taken to hospital.
They had been suffering from the effects of breathing in smoke. Another patient was treated at the scene.
The airport said its priority was to support emergency services and the safety of passengers and staff, which is why flights had been suspended.
The fire, believed to have been accidental, would have started in a vehicle that arrived at about the time the fire started, shortly before 21:00 BST, the fire service said.
Footage shared online shows huge flames and billowing smoke from the top level of the car park after the fire broke out shortly before 21:00 on Tuesday.
Bedfordshire Police has asked people not to travel to the area.
Earlier, the ambulance service said a member of the public and six firefighters had suffered smoke inhalation.
Vehicle alarms and loud explosions were heard, with one witness describing the speed at which the blaze had torn through the upper floor of the car park as “incredible”.
We’ll have to wait for the facts to emerge in due course to find out what caused the fire in the first place.
But the explosions reported, the collapse of the floor and the speed at which the fire spread certainly raise the suspicion that one or more EVs were involved.
Even if not, we do know that a car park full of EVs, which will be the case in a few short years time, would be lethal in the event of a fire.
Just imagine an underground car park beneath a block of flats.
Until the full facts emerge, EVs should be banned immediately from all multi-storey car parks.
It’s all a big ‘conspiracy theory’ that by 2050 we shall be living in mud and grass huts, eating a meat-free diet and giving up most forms of personal transport. Maybe we might not believe it if global elites stopped writing copious reports detailing all these lifestyle changes, which are said to be needed to move to Net Zero. The latest such report comes from the United Nations, which sets out a collectivist global vision of primary building materials consisting of mud bricks, bamboo and forest “detritus”.
According to the UN, the world needs to move to “regenerative material practices” using “ethically produced” low carbon earth and bio-based building materials. Examples include mud bricks, timber, bamboo and agricultural and forest detritus. The report harks back to the middle of the last century when the vast majority of cultures built large buildings and cities out of indigenous earthen, stone and bio-based materials, including timber, cane, thatch and bamboo. Contrasting modern concrete, steel and glass buildings, it observes that “massive mud buildings have been maintained for centuries with their structures intact”.
The UN’s recently published report, ‘Building Materials and the Climate: Constructing a New Future‘, draws on a wide variety of international authors. Heavily involved are Yale University and the Global Alliance for Buildings and Construction, the latter operation drawing financial support from the green activist Laudes Foundation and the British Government. The report is one of a number that have appeared recently that have started to lay out the hard changes that will need to be made in less than 30 years if 80% of the world energy produced by fossil fuel is banned under Net Zero. The construction sector is said to account for 37% of human-caused emissions of gases such as carbon dioxide. Making progress on reducing this will require drastic measures with the report stating that materials such as concrete, steel and aluminium will be used only when “absolutely necessary”.
War on modern building materials has also been declared by U.K. FIRES, an academic collaboration funded with a £5 million state grant. It has called for a ruthless purge of traditional building supplies, to be replaced with materials such as “rammed earth”. In other reports, U.K. FIRES promotes a world with no flying and shipping by 2050, drastic cuts in home heating and bans on beef and lamb consumption. As we have noted in the Daily Sceptic, U.K. FIRES bases its recommendations on the brutal, and many would argue honest reality of Net Zero. It does not assume that technological processes still to be perfected, or even invented, will somehow lead to minimal disturbance in comfortable industrialised lifestyles.
The latest UN report, along with U.K. FIRES, gives a valuable insight into the fantasy thinking surrounding the belief that oil and gas can be removed from industrial society. Clever people can often be very stupid, especially when group-think takes hold and ‘high status’ opinions – in this case surrounding environmentalism – are required to join the club. Net Zero mandates the dismantling of modern industrial society and the discarding of many of the essentials of modern comfortable living. Using flawed, unproven science, these high-status elites have convinced themselves that the climate is collapsing. Those who know their religious history observe doomsday cults emerging in every era, demanding sins should be purged, and humans pleasures placed on strict, supervised ration.
It will hardly be a surprise that the UN buildings report is riven with demands for legislative action and the use of other people’s money to enforce its crackpot schemes. Government “incentives, awareness campaigns and legal and regulatory frameworks” are said to have been effective in previous recycling schemes. “Recycling systems for building materials tend to require similar kinds of support across countries,” the report states. It need hardly be noted that “far more investment” is required for measures that ensure cooperation across sectors and borders. Due to the complexity of what is being proposed, “regulation and synergistic enforcement is required across all phases of the building life cycle, from extraction through to end-of-use”.
Needless to say, when re-ordering the lifestyles of eight billion people around the world, it is important to tackle gender bias wherever it is found – in this case, “formal and informal building sectors”. Gender bias is said to be prevalent across the building trade and in emerging economies. Government programmes (quelle surprise) and policies are needed to expand women’s access to new technologies, marketing information and training to sustain their participation on the ground, the report states.
The biggest muddle however arises from the use of sustainable materials, most of which are grown in the ground. That would be the planned agriculture sector that another elite body is busy arguing should be cut back for re-wilding, another group of elite idiots arguing for nitrogen fertiliser to be banned leading to a 50% reduction in crop growth, another bunch of bright sparks demanding more land for bio-fuels and plant-based diets… to be continued.
Chris Morrison isthe Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
Australia goes to a Referendum on Saturday on whether to add an advisory committee or council of Aborigines to the two-chamber Upper and Lower Houses. This council, called “The Voice” would “make representations” on matters relating to Aborigines (i.e. from nuclear submarines to parking fines). All details of The Voice’s composition, scope, purpose etc would thereafter be legislated but currently are unknown. In particular, who might validly claim to be Aboriginal (e.g. 1/16th) is undefined. On polling results, Labor’s plan is heading for a crushing defeat.
I have written the piece below as an antidote to the prevailing pollyanna version of Aboriginal culture hawked by Yes proponents and more or less obligatory in education here from kindergarten to university.
Nationals Senator and “No” advocate Jacinta Nampijinpa Price created an inflexion point in the Voice debate when she said that Aborigines have benefited from colonial settlement. She was answering the Guardian’s Paul Sakkal during her address to the National Press Club in Canberra last month. She cited plentiful food and tap water, but could equally have cited ending of inter-tribal massacres and infanticide.[1]
The press gallery pack had a meltdown — as if she’d claimed the sun orbits the earth. Aboriginal big-wigs and wise academics lined up to blame any outback dysfunction and violence on inter-generational trauma. Jacinta speaks from family experience. Her mother Bess Nungarrayi Price has written,
My own body is scarred by domestic violence…We Aboriginal people have to acknowledge the truth. We can’t blame all of our problems on the white man… The Racial Discrimination Act was there to protect us from white racism and we needed that protection. But it has not protected our people from ourselves…the problem now is blackfellas killing blackfellas and killing themselves.[2]
The Guardian, along with Russell Skelton’s troubled ABC-RMIT unit, rushed out their “Fact Check” misinformation to nail Jacinta’s heresy.[3] Why such uproar? It’s because the Aboriginal Industry requires that remote Aborigines be victims of white oppression. Otherwise, all Aborigine-identifiers would become colour-blind Aussies enjoying normal needs-based welfare and services. Goodbye to peak, staffed-up Aboriginal bureaucracies thriving on the taxpayer dime. Goodbye to bespoke opera tickets discounted to $25, even for Aboriginal-identifying professors on $200,000.
Alleged Aboriginal trauma, we are told, explains outback health gaps, truancy, crime and extreme domestic violence. The traumatised are said to lack agency and accountability. They must be given special care, in perpetuity, by agencies led by the Voice. In a nutshell that’s the argument for voting YES.
Northern Territory police stats throw light on the current dysfunction. Try Tennant Creek, where half the population of 3000 is Aboriginal. In the year to July, property-damage cases are up 69 per cent, housebreaking up 62 per cent and commercial break-ins up 21per cent. Common assaults and domestic assaults are each up by 31 per cent, and grog-fuelled assaults are up 41 per cent. Things are not just bad, they’re getting badder.
Where the stats get near-unbelievable is the offence totals per 100 population there, to create an offence rate. We get crimes against the person, 12.4 relative to 100 population, and crimes against property, 37. Keep in mind that one offender might generate ten or 20 break-ins or grog rampages. Other appalling figures: Assaults, 11.5; Domestic Violence 8.7; House Break-Ins, 7; and Property Damage, 16.6.
The figures are understated. They ignore women victims’ under-reporting to police, whether from shame, loyalty or fear of retribution.[4] The global Equality Institute estimates that more than 90 per cent, of domestic assaults go unreported. Likewise, the Robertson report in 1999 estimated nearly 90 per cent, of rapes in the Indigenous communities went unreported.[5]
Only half the Tennant Creek population is Aboriginal. And from NT prison and juvenile justice data, we know that locked-up offenders are overwhelmingly Aboriginal. If the police stats for Tennant Creek were divided into Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal offenders, would the Aboriginal offence rates be illuminating?
The Equality Institute’s study this year on NT domestic violence said it was among the worst in the world. In Central Australia, NPY Women’s Council has estimated that Aboriginal women are around 60 times more likely to be victims of domestic homicide than non-Aboriginal women. Domestic violence is said to cost the NT budget $600 million a year. It’s not surprising the territory has a Minister for Domestic Family and Sexual Violence, currently Kate Worden, who describes the violence as “horrific”.
Why has the plethora of well-funded Aboriginal councils not tackled the violence issue? They can’t solve the problem, they are the problem. Here’s two case studies:
The Voice’s predecessor, the Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) was created by Bob Hawke in 1990 with bipartisan political support. It was supposed to be “a radical shift towards self-determination”, to fund housing, infrastructure, jobs and legal aid, along with grants and loans to a myriad claimants. At its peak ATSIC was disbursing $1.1b a year. The bosses focused on land rights, treaties, self-determination and constitutional “reform”, as though Aboriginal women’s sufferings were irrelevant.
Indigenous legal expert Hannah McGlade took a job with ATSIC in 2001 on treaty work. She found the gamut of women’s affairs was handled by one junior staffer, part-time. A Women’s Office was first to be axed when Prime Minister Howard reduced funding. Domestic violence, child abuse and women’s rights were off-limits.[6]
In mid-2001 The Age ran an expose by Andrew Rule about the ATSIC chairman, headed “Geoff Clark: power and rape”, alleging him to be a serial perpetrator of sexual violence. Four women provided sworn allegations of assaults by Clark in the 1970s and 1980s. One woman was his child cousin at the time. Police said the evidence was not enough to secure conviction. Clark strongly denied the allegations, saying, ‘My only crime is that I am an Aboriginal and I have had the audacity to question the legitimacy of this country, to question the treatment of Aboriginal people … and I have called for a treaty.’ In 2007 he was found in a civil court proceeding to have raped one woman.
McGlade was outraged that, when the allegations arose, ATSIC women, “rights” supporters, Aboriginal big-shots and the Green Left Weekly closed ranks to denigrate the complaints as “bullshit” from the “capitalist media”. Other women stayed silent for fear of retribution. The ATSIC board, backing Clark, did not even require him to step down pending criminal investigation.
Journalist Margo Kingston, to her credit, ran a series on ATSIC failures and alleged other ATSIC leaders were suspect for sexual misconduct (Hannah McGlade agreed). The Howard government abolished ATSIC with Labor support in 2005.
A second example of black-on-black oppression involved the Swan Valley Nyungah Community (SVNC) in outer-east Perth.[7] The community was led for 40 years by an elder, Robert Bropho. A charismatic power broker, he led Aboriginal rights campaigns and became the 1990 NAIDOC “Person of the Year”.
Welfare authorities skirted around the enclave and police dumped wayward youths there. Glue-sniffing was rife among children who were sexually abused both by men and teens.[8]
In 1999 Bropho’s 15-year-old grandniece, after years of addiction and degradation, hanged herself in a derelict toilet block, the third SVNC suicide in five years. A year later a man in his 20s called Timothy Lenin Bropho (what a middle name!) and his 15-year-old cousin violently raped and injured their two-year-old niece. A child who witnessed the rape told police in 2001 that he and ten other children were also being abused. The welfare authorities gave the complaint irresolute treatment for two years. “At this particular point in Noongar history, the prosecution of Noongar male perpetrators of sexual assault was virtually unknown,” McGlade wrote. Timothy Bropho in 2002 got 12 years and the cousin four years.
Premier Gallop’s Labor government shut the settlement in 2003, whereupon a UN committee condemned the closure as racist. Robert Bropho in 2008 got three years – increased on appeal to six – on five counts of unlawful carnal knowledge of a girl under 13. Judge Nisbett described Bropho as “a bully and a repeat liar who had sexually abused the complainant from the ages of 11 to 22.” Bropho in turn likened himself to Martin Luther King and Gandhi. He died in prison. In 2014 the government flattened the derelict settlement.
For interest I’ve constructed an admittedly weird timeline about Aboriginal violence:
Prehistoric: Paleopathologist Stephen Webb in 1995 publishes his analysis of 4500 individuals’ bones from mainland Australia going back 50,000 years. Priceless bone collections at the time are being officially handed over to Aboriginal communities for re-burial, which stops any follow-up studies. Webb finds highly disproportionate rates of injuries and fractures to women’s skulls, with the injuries suggesting deliberate attack and often attacks from behind. His findings, according to anthropologist Peter Sutton, confirm that the clubbings of women have been common over thousands of years.
1788: First Fleeter Watkin Tench notices a young woman’s head “covered by contusions, and mangled by scars”. She also has a spear wound above the left knee caused by a man who dragged her from her home to rape her. Tench writes,
They are in all respects treated with savage barbarity; condemned not only to carry the children, but all other burthens, they meet in return for submission only with blows, kicks and every other mark of brutality. When an Indian [sic] is provoked by a woman, he either spears her, or knocks her down on the spot; on this occasion he always strikes on the head, using indiscriminately a hatchet, a club, or any other weapon, which may chance to be in his hand.
Marine Lt. William Collins writes, “We have seen some of these unfortunate beings with more scars upon their shorn heads, cut in every direction, than could be well distinguished or counted.”
1790: Governor Phillip’s indigenous confidant, Bennelong, takes a woman to Port Jackson to kill her for payback. He inflicts two severe wounds on the head and one on the shoulder. Phillip is appalled that an Eora woman within a few days of delivery has fresh club wounds on her head.
1802: An explorer in the Blue Mountains writes how, for a trivial reason, an Aboriginal called
Gogy took his club and struck his wife’s head such a blow that she fell to the ground unconscious. After dinner … he got infuriated and again struck his wife on the head with his club, and left her on the ground nearly dying.
1830s: George Robinson in Tasmania says that men court their women by stabbing them with sharp sticks and cutting them with knives prior to rape. They barter their women to brutal sealers for dogs and food; one woman voluntarily goes back to the sealers rather than face further tribal violence.
1841: Port Phillip’s assistant protector of Aborigines reports that a young Bolagher woman is speared twice in the face and eaten by Targurt people at Lake Terang. (Trigger warning: The account doesn’t square with schools’ Polyanna versions of pre-contact culture). He reports:
The bowels and entire viscera having been disengaged from the body, were at first portioned out; but from the impatience of some of the women to get at the liver, a general scramble took place for it, and it was snatched in pieces, and, without the slightest process of cooking, was devoured with an eagerness and avidity, a keen, fiendish expression of impatience for more, from which scene, a memory too tenacious upon this subject will not allow me to escape; the kidneys and heart were in like manner immediately consumed, and as a climax to these revolting orgies, when the whole viscera were removed, a quantity of blood and serum which had collected in the cavity of the chest was eagerly collected in handsful [sic], and drunk by the old man who had dissected the body.
The flesh was entirely cut off the ribs and back, the arms and legs were wrenched and twisted from the shoulder and hip joints, and their teeth employed to dissever the reeking tendons, when they would not immediately yield to their impatience. The limbs were now doubled up and put aside in their baskets; and on putting a portion of the flesh upon a fire which had previously been lit, they seemed to remember that I was of the party; something was said to one of the women, who cut off a foot from the leg she had in her possession, and offered it to me…
…During the day they brought another part, and some half-picked bones, and offered them to us. The head was struck off with a tomahawk and placed between hot stones in the hollow of a tree, where it has undergone a process of baking, and it is still left there otherwise untouched.[9]
1845: Explorer Edward John Eyre, who is very sympathetic towards Aborigines, nevertheless records:
Few women will be found, upon examination, to be free from frightful scars upon the head, or the marks of spear wounds about the body. I have seen a young woman, who, from the number of these marks, appeared to have been almost riddled with spear wounds.
1875: Anthropologist T.G.H. Strehlow describes a black-on-black massacre that year in the Finke River area of Central Australia:
The warriors turned their murderous attention to the women and older children and either clubbed or speared them to death. Finally, according to the grim custom of warriors and avengers they broke the limbs of the infants, leaving them to die ‘natural deaths’. The final number of the dead could well have reached the high figure of 80 to 100 men, women and children.” All up, the two tribes lost 20% of their members.[10]
1900 approx: Walter Roth (1861-1933) a doctor, anthropologist and Chief Protector in Queensland narrates that when a Pitta-Pitta girl first shows signs of puberty, “several men would drag her into the bush and forcibly enlarge the vaginal orifice by tearing it downwards with the first three fingers wound round and round with opossum string. Other men come forward from all directions, and the struggling victim has to submit in rotation to promiscuous coition with all the ‘bucks’ present.”
And around Glenormiston:
A group of men, with cooperation from old women, ambush a young woman, and pin her so an old man can slit up the shrieking girl’s perineum with a stone knife, followed by sweeping three fingers round the inside of the virginal orifice. She is next compelled to undergo copulation with all the bucks present; again the same night, and a third time, on the following morning.
1905: The local telegraph operator at Fitzroy River reports a five-year-old half-caste girl, Polly, “was out with the old woman, Mary Ann, when a bush black took her away for two nights during which time the blacks here said he made use of her. Such actions as that of Polly and the men are very common among the natives.”
1934: Anglican lay missionary Mary Bennett testifies,
The practice to which I refer is that of intercision of the girls at the age of puberty. The vagina is cut with glass by the old men, and that involves a great deal of suffering … I remember my old Aboriginal nurse speak with horror of the suffering which she had been made to undergo.[11]
If a Kimberley woman was thought to be ‘running around’, a group of men will take her into the bush, and so cut her genitals that she will be incapable of ever again having sexual intercourse.
1960s: In Warrabri, “old men looked upon their young wives ‘as their pension ticket’; it was also a matter of prestige to have a young wife.” In the 1970s bride prices were from $500 to $1000.
1970s: John Coldrey, later a Victorian judge, deals in Alice Springs with a traditional man who has inflicted 201 separate injuries on his crouching wife. She bleeds to death. Coldrey finds that the wounds are on traditional punishment areas of the body, and convicts him of manslaughter, not murder.
1978: A man at Ernabella still feels guilty because, when he was small 35 years earlier, he crept out to watch a corroboree. The next morning the group killed his mother over it and he was deposited by the group into the care of Ernabella Mission.[12]
1980: Ivan Imityja Panka is angry with his wife because she refuses to cook meat for him. Both are drunk. After thrashing her near-fatally, Panka forces a piece of rippled reinforcing steel up her vagina, killing her. [New Delhi’s “Braveheart” in 2012 died in a bus when thugs similarly used a jack handle]. Panka’s defence relies on a husband’s traditional rights of chastisement if provoked. In Numbulwar, NT, a drunk severs a sister’s limb, going at her with an axe as well as a spear.
1997: A man, his wife and her brother are drinking around their campfire. The husband says something out of place to his wife, and the brother, instead of punishing the husband, clubs his sister, massively fracturing her skull. An elder of the Ngukurr gives evidence this is a hangover from customary law: “That’s her punishment – you know. She got to take that…”
2002: At Maningrida, Jackie Pascoe Jamilmira, a 50-year-old wife killer, forces sex on a 15-year-old promised bride. Justice John Gallop of the NT Supreme Court sentences him to 24 hours jail for unlawful sex, saying the man was exercising his traditional rights. The girl ‘knew what was expected of her. It’s surprising to me [that the defendant] was charged at all’.
2003:Gerhardt Max Inkamala, 21, at Hermannsburg digitally penetrates a seven-month-old girl’s vagina, causing serious injury. His sentence is increased after appeal from five years to nine.
2004: Morgan Jabanardi Riley, 27, sexually assaults a two-year-old at Tennant Creek, digitally penetrating her vagina and anus as she screams in pain. He gets 4.5 years non-parole, later increased to 6.5 years.
2005: Louis Nowra writes his book, Bad Dreaming, after a spell in Alice Springs hospital, where he saw many girls and women severely injured from domestic violence.
Some of the women’s faces ended up looking as though an incompetent butcher had conducted plastic surgery with a hammer and saw. The fear in the women’s eyes reminded me of dogs whipped into cringing submission.
2006:The Aboriginal Child Sexual Assault Taskforce visits 29 NSW Aboriginal communities. It describes child sexual assault as a ‘huge issue’ in every one of those communities. Aboriginal witnesses tell the inquiry that the assaults on girls and boys are by grandfathers, fathers, stepfathers, uncles, cousins and brothers, often important men, including some non-Aboriginals.
2008:A husband stabs his wife multiple times with a steak knife, which is within traditional bounds — Yolngu wife punishments are deemed valid if they leave scars but do not kill. The husband gets a short sentence and this minor punishment is quashed by Southwood J.
2008: Nearly 400 men from the Central Australian Aboriginal Congress make this apology:
We acknowledge and say sorry for the hurt, pain and suffering caused by Aboriginal males to our wives, to our children, to our mothers, to our grandmothers, to our granddaughters, to our aunties, to our nieces and to our sisters
2009:Dave Price, non-Aboriginal husband of Bess Price, is shocked by elders’ open comments in 2009 that their women can and should be executed for sacrileges. The comments come after a policewoman unwittingly drove onto men’s ceremonial grounds. Lyndsay Bookie, chairman of the Central Land Council, tells ABC TV news:
It’s against our law for people like that breaking the law, they shouldn’t be there. Aboriginal ladies, they’re not allowed to go anywhere near that. If they had been caught, a woman, aboriginal lady got caught she [would] be killed. Simple as that.[13]
Dave Price complains that neither feminists nor human rights activists care about this variety of capital punishment.
2013: Veronica Hudson 42, is jailed for six years for manslaughter for stabbing her partner, Woody Heron, in the chest at Bendigo on December 26, 2011. Heron had earlier been gaoled for five years for assaulting her by kicking, biting and stomping on her head, breaking her jaw. He had also pulled her teeth out with pliers. Three days before she killed him, he slit her throat from ear to ear, though not deeply, and cut her arm and hand. She was released from a psychiatric hospital into Heron’s custody two days later. On sentencing, Ms Hudson sobs to Justice Betty King: “I just want to say I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.”
2017: Police dub Roebourne in the Pilbara “town of the damned” because of the child sexual abuse, seen as “staggering”, “a cancer” and “an almost unrecoverable crisis”. Children there are more prone to being raped than almost anywhere else on earth. Police Commissioner Karl O’Callaghan likens the district to a war zone for little kids, with about 130 men either suspects or accused. The town is also afflicted with drugs, violence, gambling, house break-ins and per capita alcohol consumption three times the WA average. Men use welfare payments not only buy grog but to bribe children for sex.
Present day: See my three essays of last June, here, here and here, particularly covering astonishing rates of removals by welfare officials of babies and children from Aboriginal mothers in households plagued by domestic violence.
Meanwhile I can’t see how a constitutionally-endorsed but unelected Voice in Canberra would fix anything,
Tony Thomas’s new book from Connor Court is Anthem of the Unwoke – Yep! The other lot’s gone bonkers. $34.95 from Connor Court here
[1] Report of Father Nicholas, Parish Priest in Broome, in Royal Commission on the Condition of the Natives, 1905, Perth, WA.
“I regret to state that I know of 44 non-Christian infants who have been killed by their mothers at birth, and one child even of four years of age who was killed and eaten by its mother: now the latter is a Christian. I always let the blacks know when I visit their camps that I am fond of their children, and offer them so much rice and flour for any infant they do not want.”
[2] Jarret, Stephanie, Liberating Aboriginal People from Violence. Connor Court, p v, p291
[3] A UWA team quoted by Skelton adds a new twist to the “Stolen Generation” hype of Sir Roland Wilson by citing “the forced removal of children and elders from families and communities”. What elders? Did the state place their “stolen” elders in orphanages or farm them out to childless couples?
[4] Alice Springs Crown Prosecutor Nanette Rogers, who dealt with many rapes of infants, has said that witnesses were regularly intimidated and reports were not followed up for fear of further violence.
[5] Nowra, Louis: Bad Dreaming. Pluto Press, North Melbourne, 2007, p48
[6]Our Greatest Challenge Aboriginal: children and human rights. Hannah McGlade. Aboriginal Studies Press, 2012 P78-82
[8]Traditional Australian Aboriginal Culture: From Pioneering Sources. Monograph, Alistair Crooks. P171 2019.
[10] When Pauline Hanson, then member for Oxley, quoted this account in 1996, an Aboriginal woman elder replies, “Mrs Hanson should receive a traditional Urgarapul punishment: having her hands and feet crippled.”[27]
[11] Windschuttle, Keith, The Fabrication of Aboriginal History: The Stolen Generations. Macleay Press, Sydney 2009, p464
[12] Today he would be deemed a member of the “Stolen Generation”.
[13] Even children could be killed for real or imagined sacrileges.
“This seems a little crazy. During these negative price periods, suppliers are paying ERCOT to take their power…. You could … build a giant toaster in West Texas and be paid by generators to operate it.”
Some 15 years ago, Michael Giberson at Knowledge Problem commented on a strange phenomenon–negative pricing by wind power, where operators with very low marginal costs (the wind is free) were paying takers per KWh to gain big tax credits, mostly federal.
Giberson’s analysis (reposted below) identified the malinvestment and ‘big anti-conservation incentive’. But he did not focus on what cumulatively would result from this distortion: a wounded Texas grid from chronic low prices/margins knocking out thermal generation. The unreliables–via government privilege– knocking out the reliables (what Bill Peacock would call predatory pricing).
Also note the exchange (below) on this 2008 post between Lynne Kiesling and Giberson. Kiesling is slow to condemn wind and suggests more government involvement to address the problem. Her recipe? Build (uneconomic) transmission for wind. Add batteries (cost?). Regulate demand in the home via “smart meters” (Big Brother in the home?).
Back then, as today, she ignores a free market in electricity. [3] And she buys into climate alarmism and forced energy transformation, refusing to be politically incorrect for her rewards in a Statist environment (academic positions, etc.).
What is with all of the negative power prices in the West region of ERCOT?
In the first half of 2008, prices were below zero nearly 20 percent of the time. During March, when negative prices were most frequent, prices were below zero about 33 percent of the time. After mostly taking the summer off, negative power prices were back to near 10 percent in October.
This seems a little crazy. During these negative price periods, suppliers are paying ERCOT to take their power. Consumers (at least at the wholesale level) are getting paid for using power, and the more power consumers use the more they get paid. These prices are a big anti-conservation incentive. You could, as a correspondent put it to me, build a giant toaster in West Texas and be paid by generators to operate it.
In fact most of the regional power markets that are integrated into systems operations (so-called RTOs and ISOs in the U.S.) will produce a negative power price now and then. On the margin, a power supplier should offer power into the market at approximately the net marginal cost of supply, at least in a competitive market. These offers are typically at positive prices and the market will produce a positive price.
Infrequently, a power plant might choose to bid below the short term marginal price in order to stay in the market and avoid shutting down. It can be economically rational for operators of less responsive generation units to offer negative prices in order for it to avoid the costs of shutting down for just a few hours and then start up again when load increases – think coal-fueled or natural gas steam turbine. When energy load is very low, near zero or negative prices can result.
This isn’t the case in West Texas. Instead, the negative prices appear to be the result of the large installed capacity of wind generation. Wind generators face very small costs of shutting down and starting back up, but they do face another cost when shutting down: loss of the Production Tax Credit and state Renewable Energy Credit revenue which depend upon generator output. It is economically rational for wind power producers to operate as long as the subsidy exceeds their operating costs plus the negative price they have to pay the market. Even if the market value of the power is zero or negative, the subsidies encourage wind power producers to keep churning the megawatts out.
Evidence from market data suggests that wind power producers will accept prices down to about negative $35 MWh before they shut down, since marginal operating costs are very low for wind power we can conclude that the subsidies are worth about $35 – $40 for each MWh of wind output. [UPDATE: Chart now includes data through December 2008.]
Subsidies do this sort of thing – distort the market and lead to waste – and of course to some degree distorting the market is just what is intended when policymakers offer a subsidy. Only usually it isn’t so easy to see the evidence of the waste created by the subsidies. Wind turbines that operate more hours require more maintenance, so these hours spent producing negative-value electric power do consume real resources. At the same time, the conventionally-fueled generation that is forced offline temporarily will also face additional “wear-and-tear” and require additional maintenance because of the effects of shutting down and then restarting the machines. This extra wear-and-tear and extra maintenance also represents wasteful use of resources due to PTC- and REC-subsidized power production.
The subsidy for renewable power may be defended as compensation for avoiding the environmental costs associated with power produced by conventional means, but in this case the link between the payments and the possible reduced emissions effect is tenuous. In Texas the PTC is probably offsetting natural gas generation most of the time, perhaps a relatively efficient combined-cycle gas unit, but maybe an inefficient old steam generator. Sometimes the PTC will displace coal-fired generation. The environmental benefits will vary dramatically depending upon just which kind of unit is displaced by the subsidy, but the cost of the policy is the same. Surely there are more targeted and effective ways of achieving environmental goals.
A second possible defense for the renewable power PTC is that it will spur enough growth in the industry to allow progress in research and development and economies of scale to reduce costs in the future. I think these learning and economies of scale arguments are much abused in renewable policy discussions – treated as if they are somehow automatic if we only spend enough resources now. If learning by doing and economies of scale were automatic, the U.S. auto industry would now be a paragon of efficiency. (A paper on “Learning Curves For Energy Technology and Policy Analysis“, by Tooraj Jamasb and Jonathan Khler is on my “to read” list, but I haven’t read it yet.) In the wind energy case, the industry is led by huge international corporations like General Electric, Siemens, and Gamesa. These companies and many others have been in the business for years, and in some cases decades. This is hardly a case of an “infant industry” that needs a handout to grow to maturity.
Maybe there is a public good argument buried in this line of thinking, but like the externality argument my sense here is that some alternative approach would more effectively achieve the desired public policy goals.
I don’t see any easy approaches for Texas. The federal PTC is the main subsidy, and localized evidence of waste due to the PTC in part of Texas is unlikely to derail U.S. Congressional support. Even if more detailed examples of widespread waste could be produced, I’m not sure it would overcome the coming Congress’s warm fuzzy feelings for renewable power. Possibly Texas could take-away the Renewable Energy Credit for wind power generated at negative prices, and that would slightly reduce the waste. But the boom in wind power construction in Texas has already greatly reduced the value associated with a REC in Texas, so taking it away altogether wouldn’t do much. And really, the negative prices in ERCOT’s energy markets are only an especially visible indicator of the waste created by PTC-based distortions, any excessive investment in renewable power or production from existing wind power units at below-cost prices is wasteful.
To be clear, I’m not arguing that wind power or other renewable power projects are inherently wasteful. The policy design is at fault, not the technology. It is the policy that needs repair. Also, I don’t have an estimate of how significant this problem is. Maybe the waste is in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, but could be higher or lower. There may be more significant problems to work on. But the PTC is a key element of renewable power policy, and it is troubling that it causes waste.
Economics provides some guides for fixing the policy: if an externality is the problem, then tax the externality and compensate the harmed parties; if the goal is additional learning, don’t tie the payment to per unit output, tie the payment to progress toward the learning goal.
Renewable power industries are pushing for further expansion of the PTC. Before Congress agrees, it ought to try to find less wasteful ways to achieve intended public policy goals.
Kiesling (11-24-2008) There are two other factors that matter in this story:
1. Time required to build transmission 2. ERCOT’s transition from zonal to nodal wholesale market design
As these two factors take effect, those negative prices will change/diminish.
Is this really such a wasteful way to induce more investment in wind generation capacity? Yes, as we have more smart grid capabilities, and hopefully as storage evolves, these negative prices will change.
Giberson: Lynne, you are right that building transmission and improving congestion management (which comes as part of the value of moving from zonal to nodal pricing in ERCOT, sometime next year) will both reduce the frequency of negative prices.
In fact, ERCOT’s change in congestion management policy adopted approximately June 9 was associated with a fairly dramatic decrease in the frequency of negative prices. It would take a little more data than I have available at present on wind power output to sort out the value of the congestion management change vs. the usual tendency of wind power output to fall during the summer (and other seasonal factors) to sort out the relative impact of the congestion management change. The move to nodal should further improve congestion management and reduce the amount of time excess wind power is, in effect, shut-in in the west region.
But perhaps related is the fact that in September and October negative prices reached as far as the Houston zone in eighty-five 15 minute pricing intervals, whereas in the Spring there were only two 15 minute intervals of negative prices.
At least the subsidy is being passed along to more Texas consumers with better congestion management.
Smart grid & storage can both help overcome related problems. I’m not sure that these negative prices directly provide an incentive for storage, because I don’t anticipate that they will last beyond that transmission build-out and change to nodal congestion management. But even if the negative prices don’t persist, to some extent wind power in West Texas will remain out-of-sync with summer power demands and so smart grids, real time pricing, and storage can provide complementary value (at least given the wind patterns in West Texas, off shore winds tend to have different diurnal patterns).
While none of this – transmission, congestion management, smart grid, or storage – erases the allocative inefficiency due to the subsidy, they can all diminish the ‘collateral damage’ and thereby reduce the costs of the policy while maintaining the expected benefits.
And, like I say, I don’t estimate the amount of waste, so don’t claim this is the biggest problem. Maybe this is the best “second best” policy available, but I want to raise a point of information suggesting improvements are possible.
Comment: Giberson goes soft, very soft, on a major distortion that would lead Texas into “planned chaos,” to use a term of Ludwig von Mises. Instead, he reported on “collateral damage” of the day. To use a phrase of Milton Friedman, such is the tyranny of the status quo.
[2] Record cold temperatures disabling natural gas infrastructure was the official narrative of the debacle. But wind and solar predictably fell off, representing tens of billions of dollars of immobilized investment when needed most. Regarding natural gas, off-the-shelf technology existed for weatherization, and a dress rehearsal occurred a decade before with wellhead freeze-offs. The unprecedented supply-side failure also reflected central planning errors by (PUCT/ERCOT) and demoted utility responsibility for the “obligation to serve.” EPA regulation of gas compressor stations and the “warmer winter” narrative from NOAA/climate models also played a role in the Texas debacle. For more analysis from a classical liberal perspective, see here and here.
[3] Free-market electricity policy would 1) abolish state and federal tax preferences and preferential take provisions for wind, solar, and other qualifying renewables (or thermal); 2) avoid/terminate mandatory open access transmission, a violation of property rights of asset owners; and 3) end franchise protection and rate-and-service regulation on electric utilities.
All flights are currently suspended at Luton Airport, London after a major fire broke out last night at 9pm. No one at the BBC, apparently, can explain why it spread so fast (the mystery!). But everyone is grateful this was not an underground carpark below, say, a 20 story apartment building with babies sleeping upstairs, especially since part of the top floor of the carpark has collapsed.
The fire has, unfortunately demolished some dreams of carbon reduction.
UPDATE: Apparently the word is that it was a diesel car that started the fire. The question is then, if there were no EV’s on that floor, would it have spread just as fast, would the floor have collapsed, and would cars have exploded like popcorn in the microwave? Awaiting the BBC gurus…
UPDATE #2: Allegedly there were no sprinklers (which wouldn’t put out an EV battery fire anyway). Let’s try to imagine what kind of sprinkler system would contain those EV Fires — like drop-down glass-fibre spray that solidifies on contact or like jet sprayed asbestos?
Leah Stokes is the senior author of a new paper in PNAS, Prevalence and predictors of wind energy opposition in North America, in which she blames White people for opposing wind projects. She goes on to say that “…wealthier, Whiter communities [opposition] leads to continued pollution in poorer communities, and communities of color.”
There is evidence that offshore wind projects, or at least the geophysical site surveys required for building them, harm whales. The fact that these geophysical surveys can harm whales is well known and regulations prohibit the surveys, but numerous authorizations for surveys [waiving the rules] for renewable wind projects have been granted anyway. There is also evidence that wind turbines can harm our health, due to the low frequency sounds they produce. Thus, there are good reasons to protest wind turbine development, whether the protestor is White or not.
Stokes claims in her paper that she has “no competing interest.” This was accepted by the editor of the paper, Michael Mann. Yet her podcast, “A Matter of Degrees,” has received the following donations from organizations that support wind power:
“A connection to the renewable industry is OK and not biased, but to the fossil fuel industry it is. This seems to be bias.”
This forced Google Bard to admit that:
“Both the renewable energy industry and the fossil fuel industry have a vested interest in the climate change debate.”
Thus, Stokes appears to have a competing interest, that could lead to bias in her paper. Advocates of wind are financially supporting her podcast. According to the PNAS rules, a financial interest may include:
“…membership on a standing advisory council or committee, service on the board of directors, public association with the company or its products, … compensation as a spokesperson, … or financial support.”
Do I need to ask why she left out her competing interests, or why Michael Mann accepted the paper with the “no conflict of interest” statement?
We can’t even run a cement factory all day anymore
Get your candles for summer! Unlike the last three years the Australian national grid won’t be rescued by another cooler La Nina this year. Fears of rolling blackouts are fraying nerves at The Australian Financial Review Energy & Climate Summit. The transition is described as stuttering, gridlocked, faltering, and the government as “desperate”.
Things are so bad, former CEO’s of major generators are warning that “the lights are going to go out” and accusing one Energy Minister of speaking “complete and utter horseshit” because they don’t think we need reliable peaking gas plants to replace coal power. Said Energy Minister has responded by refusing to even take his calls. That’s really going to work. Meanwhile Japan is getting nervous just watching us, afraid we have screwed things up so badly we can’t be relied on to keep sending them gas.
Not only is summer nerve-wracking, but things are already so bad, one of our largest cement producers is shutting down nearly every day because it can’t afford to pay for the peak electricity spikes even in springtime. Here in Renewable World it’s cheaper to let 5,500 workers sit around for 30 minutes than pay for electricity. The company was paying 54% more for electricity than the year before.
Riding the Express Train to the Renewable Faraway Tree
The numbers are staggering. Australia is racing headlong to the glorious 82 per cent renewables target by 2030. The catch is that the national grid at the moment uses coal for 62% of its electricity. The opposition energy spokesman is calling it “lunacy”, which it is. To reach the land of sunshine and breezes, our grid manager, the AEMO, is theoretically going to close two-thirds of the country’s existing coal power generation in the next ten years.
To put this in perspective, since the last hot summer we’ve shut down Liddell Coal plant, and still haven’t fixed the coal turbine that blew up in Queensland two years ago. New renewable investment has ground to a halt when it clearly should be going gangbusters. No one wants to build new wind and solar plants until someone builds the 10,000 kilometers of high voltage lines to reach distant cheap windy real estate, and no one wants to live or farm next to those transmission towers, so the protests are fierce.
Decarbonising Australia’s fossil-fuelled electricity grid is proving slower and more costly than previously advertised, with reliability risks increasing as the exits of coal-fired power plants run ahead of cleaner and reliable replacement generation.
Nerves are frayed “We’re not having an honest conversation”:
Angela MacDonald-Smith, Australian Financial Review
Former Snowy Hydro CEO Paul Broad said, “the lights are going to go out” in a return to normal conditions after three mild summers and said politicians were not listening to the warnings about the risks around supply, while the industry was not speaking up enough.
“That’s our problem,” he said. “We’re not having the honest conversations and us in the industry we’re not speaking up.”
Mr Broad, who abruptly exited Snowy Hydro last year after a run-in with Mr Bowen, accused Victorian Energy Minister Lily D’Ambrosio of speaking “complete and utter horseshit” in her refusal to recognise the need for peaking gas power plants in Victoria as coal power exits the system.
He listed Ms D’Ambrosio among energy sector figures who would no longer take his calls as he tried to get the message through, including former Australian Energy Market Operator Audrey Zibelman.
We can’t even run a cement factory all day anymore:
Mr Bansal [the chief executive of Boral] told the Summit that Boral’s electricity price rose by 54 per cent in the 12 months to the second half of last year, and have not retreated, counter to expectations.
He said Boral had about 5500 “blue collar” workers who were being told to stand aside and do nothing for 30 minutes at a time when power prices made it too expensive to operate.
“At a certain price during the day, when the price goes up [to] a certain level, our manufacturing stops because we’ve worked out economically it’s actually better to have thousands of people waiting idle for the prices to come down then actually do the work,” he said.
“That’s a real issue we are facing every single day on 300 manufacturing sites across the country. So we are extremely nervous what that means.”
The chief at Boral pointed out that he’s not willing to sign up to 20 year electricity contracts because everything is so uncertain.
They still don’t understand the difference between reliable and unreliable power
It’s OK, the believers protest, Australia has added 20 gigawatts of solar.
“Australia has three-and-a-half-million solar systems installed and that represents around 20 gigawatts of potential output,” Westerman says.
“That’s more than seven Eraring power stations at full output and capable of meeting almost half the energy demand in the day when the sun is shining at its brightest.”
As if solar panels can be measured on the same page as a coal plant. For half an hour a day, on a good day, only in summer, and as long as the clouds don’t roll over, the peak output might be like seven coal plants. These people are crazy.
Australians should protest and shout, Leaving those in control in no doubt, Of the wrong that they did, In wrecking the grid, When the lights all start to go out.
UNICEF should stop blaming a fabricated climate crisis and starting to solve the people’s real problems.
From Jim Steele
United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund, responsible for providing humanitarian and developmental aid to children worldwide, is covering-up its abject failures by telling “heart-wrenching stories” that support the UN’s climate crisis propaganda. For example, a UNICEF study recently and deceptively announced from 2016 to 2021, “Weather disasters caused by climate change displaced 43 million children.”
UNICEF’s study focused on 4 climate related disasters finding “ninety-five percent of those displacements were caused by floods and storms.” They further paved the way for future cover-ups by projecting, “Floods linked to overflowing rivers could spark 96 million child displacements in the next 30 years.”
But climate changed has not caused more flooding! In fact overall, flooding has decreased!
Wasko (2019) reported, “Despite more sites around the world presenting increases in rainfall extremes than decreases, the opposite is true for flood magnitudes, with more sites exhibiting decreases rather than increases in flooding.” From the attached illustration, graphic (C) reveals the total area inundated by flooding has decreased over the past 2 decades despite rising CO2. Based on that and other contradictory statistics Wasko concluded, “changes in rainfall may not be very well related to changes in flooding.”
While floods are the largest threat to human habitat around the world, exposure to floods is not evenly distributed. From the attached illustration, graphic (A) shows the people of China, India and southeast Asia are the most vulnerable to flooding, in part due to their extremely large populations. China, India and the Philippines alone experienced nearly 23 million displacements in six years. Furthermore, when we examine the locations where people are most exposed to flood danger and compare the locations experiencing precipitation trends, graphic (B), most of the children being displaced are not living in regions of increased precipitation.
So, the first question any critical thinker must ask is, why are there 43 million displaced children where rains and floods are less common?
One reason is poorer populations are more likely to move into flood prone habitat because that land is less coveted by the wealthy who don’t want their infrastructure exposed to natural flooding. Furthermore, the fertility of natural flood plains is advantageous for marginal farmers and fresh water is also more accessible. However, poorer populations are less likely to afford the costs of building adequate drainage and flood control infrastructure. Thus, people in flood plains are most susceptible to disaster when the inevitable flooding recurs. But such inevitable flooding has not deterred a growing population forced to live neared to natural danger.
While the total global population increased by 18.6% from 2000 to 2015, the number of people living in observed inundated areas increased by 34.1%. Between 2000 and 2015, 58–86 million people, (or 23%–30% of the total flood-exposed population) were newly residing in inundated areas. Yet only 13% of international disaster funds are allocated to flood preparedness, mitigation and adaptation.
If UNICEF truly wants to protect the world’s children from the tragedies of flooding displacement, then UNICEF should be working to alleviate families from being forced to live in natural flood plains, or help them build the needed infrastructure to adapt. And UNICEF must stop trying to cover-up their failures by blaming a fabricated climate crisis. But it seems most governments are blaming a non-existent climate crisis on their worthless global policies that do very little to solve the people’s real problems.
Globally, democratic politics are under attack from Electorally Legitimated Misogynist Authoritarian (ELMA) leaders who successfully use misogyny as a political strategy and present environmental concern in feminine and inferior terms. The ascendancy of such projects raise questions involving socioeconomic structures, political communication, and the psychological underpinnings of people’s attitudes. We offer misogyny, conceptualized in a specific way – not simply as hatred or disgust for women, but as a way of accessing a gendered hierarchy whereby that which is labeled “feminine” is perceived as inferior, devalued, and amenable to be attacked – as a relevant transmission mechanism in how ELMAs like Trump may connect with public opinion by systematically investigating the interplay between misogyny, authoritarianism, and climate change in the context of the United States. Using a survey methodology (N = 314) and up-to-date questionnaires, we provide a concrete empirical underpinning for recent analytical and theoretical work on the complexity of misogyny. We analyze how misogynist and authoritarian attitudes correlate with climate change, adding to the literature on opposition to climate change policy. An additional exploratory aspect of our study concerning US voter preferences clearly indicates that Trump supporters are more misogynist, more authoritarian, and less concerned with the environment.
And so, it is 100% clear that there is this toxic package or bundle of right-wing ideology, nationalism, exceptionalism, racism, sexism, anti-immigrantism, and anti-climate-change that goes with it. That is what drives many of them.
[Katharine Hayhoe, interviewed by Bjork-James & Barla, 2021, p. 389]
Gender is a game-changer, like the Archimedean fulcrum, with the potential to shift economic logics from profit-exploiting systems of injustice to functional praxes of life-affirming care for ecosystems, human others, and planetary co-habitants.
The study authors have a problem with climate skeptics “targeting” female leaders like AOC and Greta, arguing the motivation is misogyny.
… The most upfront manifestation of this is the ways in which outspoken female advocates of addressing climate change in substantive ways are targeted. Gelin (2019) referred to the “gender reactionaries to climate-denialism” with reference to the attack on figures such as Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez and Greta Thunberg. …Read more: same link as above
The study is based on a sample of 400 people, whom after deleting a bunch of answers was whittled down to 314. They claim most of the discarded answers had zero variation on answers – but given the in my opinion poor quality questions, the lack of variation could have been an artefact of the survey rather than a conspiracy to rig the result.
The study authors draw inferences based on their misogyny theory, like blaming Hillary Clinton’s loss in 2016 on sexism amplified by climate denial.
The authors redefine “misogyny” as being something other than hatred and / or disdain for women – crypto misogyny? – which makes you wonder why they tried to shoehorn everything into the label “misogyny”, instead of using a different word. “… We depart from the typical understanding of misogyny as hatred and disgust toward women by men, it is far from straightforward in how it functions as part of psycho-political processes. …“.
My favourite paragraph though is this one;
… In a similar vein, Stanley et al. (2019), in their 5-year cross-lagged analysis of the influence of SDO and RWA on environmentalism conclude that, “the relationship between ideology and environmentalism across time could be explained by a third variable. Specifically, it is possible that something related both to ideological and environmental attitudes could drive changes in each variable independently, hence explaining the apparent causal relations” (p. 7). They invite future research to explore the potentially causal nature of the ideology-environmentalism association. We surmise that misogyny could be that third variable. …Read more: same link as above
If there is such a hidden third variable, why do the authors automatically assume the hidden variable is affecting the judgement of climate skeptics? Why are they so sure they are the objective party?
Because there is a much more obvious candidate for a hidden variable which biases belief in climate change: enthusiastic political support for socialism.
Is it a coincidence that most climate activists (though not all) also seem to have very left wing political views?
Why is climate activism be so attractive to socialists?
A fervent communist who used to be a friend once explained to me it doesn’t matter if climate science is wrong, because restraining capitalism with more regulation is socially desirable, even if the climate science rationale for advancing green restraints on capitalism turns out to be wrong.
I don’t think my former friend was deliberately lying about his climate beliefs, but in my opinion my former friend pretty much admitted he had no incentive to rigorously review the supporting evidence for his climate alarmism.
Left wing biases clouding the judgement of climate alarmists might also explain why most greens reject nuclear energy. Nuclear energy should be the obvious zero carbon compromise – a scalable zero carbon energy solution which the Right would accept.
We have unequivocal proof nuclear is affordable and safe, once you cut the red tape – France decarbonised most of their electricity generation with affordable nuclear power in the 1970s. Yet greens consistently choose endless political conflict instead of accepting a viable nuclear powered path to reducing CO2 emissions. They choose endless energy stalemate instead of embracing a solution to their alleged climate crisis which would leave Capitalism intact.
A simple constructal model of the operation of the climate system was created by Dr. Adrian Bejan and several others. It posits that the climate system can be modeled very accurately by considering the climate as a giant heat engine turning solar power into mechanical motion. Further, it says that following the constructal law, the heat engine constantly evolves to maximize the heat flow from the tropics to the poles. In this analysis, I examine the inner workings of the model, implement a couple of improvements, and test it against the CERES satellite dataset. Sorry, no spoilers.
CONSTRUCTAL LAW
The Constructal Law, formulated by Professor Adrian Bejan in 1996, is a fundamental principle in physics and engineering that describes the natural tendency of all flow systems, whether inanimate or animate, to evolve and organize in a way that maximizes the flow of matter, energy, or information. This law recognizes that patterns and structures in nature, such as river networks, tree branches, and biological organisms, emerge and evolve to enhance their efficiency in the movement of resources. The constructal law explains things like the endlessly meandering nature of rivers seen in the image above. My previous posts on the Constructal Law are here.
In essence, the Constructal Law states that the design and development of flow systems, whether the branching of blood vessels in the human body, the structure of transportation networks, or even the layout of technology and information networks, are governed by the imperative to reduce flow resistance and facilitate the transfer of resources.
The Constructal Law, as applied to climate, says that natural climate systems, such as atmospheric and oceanic circulation patterns, evolve and organize in a way that maximizes the efficiency of heat and energy flow on Earth. This principle emphasizes that climate systems, like other flow systems, tend to develop structures and patterns that reduce flow resistance and promote the transfer of heat and energy.
“In conclusion, the maximization of the mechanical power output is equivalent to the maximization of the heat current from the hot region to the cold region.”
I got to re-reading the final of those three papers the other day, and I realized that I could set up their model on my computer. Let me start with an overview of their model.
Figure 1. The conceptual model.
The top part shows the warm (tropical) and cold (poleward) areas of the global climate heat engine. These areas are marked AH and AL. for “Area High” and “Area Low” temperatures. They each have a corresponding temperature TH (temperature high) and TL (temperature low).
The lower part of the diagram shows the various heat currents. The far left downward pointing arrow is heat from the sun to the hot zone. The next arrow, pointing up, is heat radiated from the hot zone to space.
Then we have the horizontal arrow “q”, the heat current from the hot zone to the cold zone.
Finally, in the cold zone on the right, we have a downward-pointing solar arrow showing heat from the sun to the cold zone, and an upward-pointing radiation arrow showing heat radiated to space.
In short, the hot zone gets heat from the sun. Some is radiated back to space. The rest, the flow “q”, is transported to the cold zone. There, the flow “q” gets radiated back to space along with the heat that the cold zone gets from the sun.
And most important, the Constructal Law says that the system will constantly reorganize itself to maximize the heat flow “q”.
Next, here’s the math of the model, from the third of the papers linked above. Recall from Figure 1 above that “x” is the area fraction, the fraction of the globe occupied by the hot zone.
Daunting … so let me translate for those who like math. For those who don’t, no worries—just skip down to where it says “THEIR MODEL RESULTS“.
And for the three folks still reading this section, ignore equation (26) for now. Next, in the above set of equations, rho (ρ) is the albedo, and gamma (γ) is the “greenhouse factor”, the fraction of upwelling surface longwave radiation that is absorbed by the atmosphere. And at steady-state, the left-hand side of equations 24 and 25 is zero—there is no change of temperature with time.
With those as prologue, the first equation (23) describes the hot zone. It says that the hot zone gets heat from the sun. Some is radiated back to space. The rest, the flow “q”, is transported to the cold zone. So “q” is equal to hot zone solar heat input minus hot zone radiation to space. In short, it’s just a mathematical description of the bottom left part of Figure 1 above. Simple
The second equation (24) describes the cold zone. It says the cold zone gets heat from the sun, plus the flow “q” from the hot zone, and radiates it all to space. So “q” is equal to the cold zone output to space minus the cold zone solar input. This equation is a mathematical description of the bottom right-hand part of Figure 1 above.
The third equation (25) says that the flow “q” is equal to some constant “C” times the 3/2 power of the difference in temperature between the hot and cold zones.
The final equation (27) specifies that “q” is maximized.
There are four unknowns in the equations—temperatures of the hot and cold zones “TH” and “TL“, the heat flow “q”, and the area fraction “x”. Now, my math-fu is not strong enough to solve those four equations to determine the four unknowns. And unfortunately, the authors of the paper didn’t include the solution. Grrrr.
However, I’m a determined fellow. After some reflection, I realized that I could use a double optimization process to get the answers.
I wanted to determine the value of x (the size of the hot zone) which gives the largest value for “q”, the heat flow from the hot zone to the cold zone. But I only had three equations with four unknowns.
So I divided the problem up by assuming that I knew what “x” was. Using that, I could then use an optimization program to give me the values of TH, TL, and q for any given value of x.
And with that, I could use a second optimization program to give me the value of x that maximized q, the heat flow from the hot zone to the cold zone. See the Appendix below for the R code.
THEIR MODEL RESULTS
Here is their report of the first of their calculations. Using their same numbers, I get the same results that they show below.
Using their values, I was able to reproduce their results very accurately.
PROBLEMS WITH THEIR MODEL
However, there are a couple of issues with their values. First, as they note, their value for “x” puts the limits of the hot zone at about 57°N/S. But that’s not the case in the real world. Here’s the real-world data regarding the heat flow “q”.
Figure 2. How much heat is moved from the tropics to the poles (positive values), and how much heat is absorbed in the polar regions (negative values). The hot zone is the red to yellow part bordered by the black/white lines. The cold zone is shown in green to blue, outside the black/white lines.
You can see the similarity of this graphic with the model shown in Figure 1 above. However, in the real world, the hot zone fraction “x” is about 0.55 of the total surface. This corresponds with a hot zone extending to about 34°N/S. So that was the first problem—the hot zone extends to about 34°N/S, not 57°N/S.
The second problem is that their equation gives far too cold a result for the cold zone. They say it averages 258.4K, which is -14.75°C. But in the real world, the cold zone poleward of 57°N/S actually has an average temperature of about – 3°C, far from the minus 14°C they claim.
IMPROVING THEIR MODEL
So of course, being the eternal tinkerer, I had to see whether I could improve their model. The first thing I noticed was that they are using the same albedo and the same greenhouse factor for both the cold and hot zones. But in the real world, both the albedo and the greenhouse factor are very different for the two areas. As a result, their model is giving inaccurate results
Using individual albedo and greenhouse factors for the two areas made the model far more accurate. But there was still a problem. The hot temperatures it calculated were too hot and the cold temperatures were too cold to match the real world. Looking at the equations, I realized that this inter-temperature distance is controlled by the constant “C” in Equation (25). This is the “conductance”, a measure of how much heat flow is generated by a given temperature difference between the hot and cold zones. The value they were using for “C” was far too small, which meant it required a much greater temperature difference to get the same flow, resulting in a hot zone that’s too hot and a cold zone that’s too cold.
Once the factor “C” was increased, the results looked very good.
GROUND-TRUTHING THE MODEL
With that model up and running on my computer, I figured that I could test whether in fact, the climate system actually does operate as a gigantic heat engine that is continually evolving to maximize the tropical-polar heat flow. Here was my plan.
The constructal model says that given the albedo and greenhouse factors, for each value of “x” (the area of the hot zone) there will be a preferred temperature for the hot and cold zones. Further, the model says that the average final temperatures will be the ones that maximize “q”, the heat flow from the hot zone to the cold zone. I realized we could test those claims using the CERES data.
For each year, the average top of atmosphere net radiation CERES data gives us the observed value of “x” in the constructal model. As mentioned above, x is the fraction of the globe that is exporting heat on average. The CERES data also gives us the information needed to calculate rho (ρ), which is the albedo, and gamma (γ) which is the “greenhouse factor”.
The model says that if we know the albedo ρ, the greenhouse factor γ, and the hot zone area x, given those physical constraints the resulting hot and cold temperatures will be the ones that maximize the heat flow “q” from the hot zone to the cold zone.
Here is the performance of the constructal model. Recall that it has only one tuned parameter, C, that regulates how easily the heat flows from the hot zone to the cold zone. I’ll get back in a bit to why I think their value for C (.181) is far too low. In the meantime, these are the actual (blue/cyan) and modeled (red/orange) temperatures for the hot and cold zones of the planet.
Figure 3. Modeled and actual temperatures of the world’s hot and cold zones
I found this result to be most encouraging. Those model temperatures are calculated based solely on maximizing the heat “q” flowing from the hot zone to the cold zone, subject to the physical constraints of the albedo and the greenhouse factor. And although the conductance C is tuned, all that tunes is the temperature difference between the hot and cold zones. It does not tune the temperatures themselves. There was no guarantee that tuning the conductance would match the absolute temperatures of the hot and cold zones … but in the event, the match is excellent. I would say that that is very convincing evidence that the constructal model accurately portrays how the climate flow system actually works.
A SECOND TEST
But wait, as they say on TV, there’s more. Here are closeups of the actual and modeled variations in the yearly average temperatures of the hot and cold zones.
Figure 4. Modeled and actual annual average temperatures of the world’s hot and cold zones.
Not perfect, but not bad either. So not only does the constructal model give good long-term average temperatures. It also does a decent job of replicating the year-by-year variations in temperature.
And it’s doing all that using nothing more than the hot zone area “x”, the albedo “rho”, and the greenhouse factor “gamma” to calculate the temperatures that maximize “q”.
That’s very clear evidence that in the real world, various physical processes constantly evolve and act to increase the flow of heat from the tropics to the polar regions.
A FINAL TEST
Further evidence that the model is an accurate representation of how the climate heat engine really works is visible in both the size and the stability of the area of the hot zone. The model calculates the average of x, the hot zone fraction of the surface, as being 0.564. The actual CERES 22-year average value for x is 0.556. That’s less than a hundredth difference. Once again, the model is accurate.
Regarding stability, remember that x, the hot zone area fraction, is calculated by the model as the hot zone area that maximizes the heat flow “q”. Bear in mind that the hot zone fraction could vary from ~0.1 to ~0.9. And there’s no reason to assume ex-ante that it would remain stable over time.
However, under the constructal model, since the underlying constraints (annual average albedo and greenhouse fraction) are relatively stable we’d expect the hot zone fraction “x” to be pretty stable as well. In any case, here’s the actual record of the CERES data for “x”, the hot area fraction, along with the constructal model output of the same variable.
Figure 5. The “x” fraction, the amount of the earth’s surface that makes up the hot zone.
Clearly, the model is doing an excellent job of representing the real world.
In Figure 5, as in Figs. 3 and 4 above, it’s important to remember that the output (e.g. the modeled x fraction in Fig. 5 above) is not calculated directly from the input. In Figure 5, for example, the x fraction shown in red is not directly calculated from the albedo and greenhouse fraction figures.
Instead, it is the result of a maximization procedure. The x fraction shown in red in Figure 5 is the value of x that, given the physical constraints of albedo and greenhouse fraction, gives the greatest flow “q” from the hot zone to the cold zone.
TEMPERATURES
For temperatures, I’ve used the CERES surface upwelling longwave data converted using the Stefan-Boltzmann constant and monthly gridded emissivity values. I’ve checked the results and they are extremely similar to both the Berkeley Earth and the HadCRUT datasets. I use it because it is energy-balanced with the rest of the CERES energy flows.
CONDUCTANCE
I mentioned above that I’d explain why I think their value for “C”, the “conductance”, is too low. This conductance is a measure of how much heat flows between the two zones for some given temperature difference between the zones. In their model, they’ve modeled the heat transport via the atmosphere. And they’ve modeled the atmospheric heat transport as being driven by the buoyancy of the warmer, lighter tropical air.
And that is good as far as it goes. But it leaves out a couple of things. One is a main power source driving the Hadley cell circulation—the perennial line of thunderstorms along the inter-tropical convergence zone (ITCZ). These drive air vertically from the surface up to the upper troposphere, and occasionally even into the stratosphere. These thunderstorms turbocharge the Hadley cell circulation, allowing it to move much more heat polewards than if it were driven solely by the general tropical-extratropical temperature differences as the authors’ analysis assumes. Here’s a map of where the thunderstorms live.
Figure 6. The altitude of the cloud tops, day/night. High altitude cloud tops are the sign of the tropical thunderstorms driving deep tropical convection. The Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ), where the two atmospheric hemispheres converge, is marked by the band of thunderstorms around the world at 5°-10° north of the equator.
The second reason that I think their conductance value is too small is that a large amount of heat is physically moved polewards by the ocean currents. The Agulhas Current in the Indian Ocean and the Gulf Stream in the Atlantic Ocean are constantly transporting warm tropical waters polewards.
In the Pacific, the El Nino/La Nina pumping action periodically strips off the warm top layer of vast areas of the tropical Pacific Ocean and moves that warm water first eastwards and then towards both poles.
Because their model doesn’t include either thunderstorms or ocean currents, their estimate of the conductance is an order of magnitude too small.
CLIMATE SENSITIVITY
This constructal model points out some interesting things about climate sensitivity.
First, sensitivity is a function of changes in rho (albedo) and gamma (greenhouse fraction). But not a direct function. It is the result of physical processes that maximize “q” given the constraints of rho and gamma.
Next, the sensitivity is slightly different depending on whether the changes in albedo and greenhouse fraction are occurring in the hot zone, the cold zone, or both.
Finally, assuming that there is a uniform pole-to-pole increase of 3.7 W/m2 in downwelling radiation from changes in either albedo or greenhouse fraction, the constructal model shows a temperature increase of ~1.1°C. (3.7 W/m2 is the amount of radiation increase predicted to occur from a doubling of CO2.)
CONCLUSIONS
The CERES data shows that the constructal model of the climate system is very consistent with real-world observations. This model views the climate system as a heat engine that, following the constructal law, constantly acts and evolves to maximize the flow of heat from the warm zone of the planet to the cold zone.
This simple three-equation constructal climate model, given only information about the earth’s hot zone area and the albedo and greenhouse fractions in the earth’s hot and cold zones, is able to calculate the absolute temperatures of the earth’s hot and cold zones to within a degree or so … a result that I found quite surprising.
Anyhow, that’s what I did with my weekend. And meanwhile, back in the real world, the past climate is being rewritten so fast that we literally don’t know what will happen yesterday …
Best to all,
w.
APPENDIX
Here is the R code for the optimization programs. Read the linked paper for the full description of their method.
First, the inner optimization program that calculates TH, TL, and q when given x.
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