Crookedness born of desperation

The sort of nonsense reported below never ceases.  It is cold weather (winter) that most sends people to hospital and kills them but there is a never-ending attempt from Warmists to "prove" that it is actually warm weather that is bad for you.  There may indeed be some conditions made worse by warm weather (e.g. mosquito-borne diseases) but the balance is clearly the other way

The funny bit about the study below, however, was that it claimed to cover temperature effects on health but their survey included only the months from May to September!  They left winter completely out of it!  What joke "research"!  There are few people more crooked than a Greenie

The journal article is:  "The Effect of Temperature on Hospital Admissions in Nine California Counties".  Check it for yourself

The risk of heading to the emergency room for certain conditions, such as heart disease, diabetes, stroke, kidney disease and low blood pressure rises slightly as temperature and humidity increase, according to a new study from California.

Researchers also found that for a few conditions, including aneurysm and high blood pressure, higher temperatures were tied to a drop in ER visits.

"What we know about climate change is that heat waves in California and throughout the world are going to become more severe and more intense," said Rupa Basu, the study's lead author and an epidemiologist at the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment. "With that, we're realizing this might implicate more health effects" from future temperatures.

That heat waves can lead to more deaths is already known, and one recent report predicts150,000 additional heat-related deaths will occur in U.S. cities by 2100 because of climate change (see Reuters story of May 24, 2012).

Basu and her colleagues looked at the relationship between heat and specific health conditions, rather than deaths, during the warm seasons in California from 2005 to 2008.

During this period there were 1.2 million visits to emergency rooms, the researchers report in the journal Epidemiology.

Basu's team divided the state into 16 climate zones and compared emergency room visits each day in a given area to local variations in temperature and humidity outside.

For each 10-degree increase in temperature, they saw increased ER visits for a variety of conditions - from a 1.7 percent rise in ER visits for heart disease to a 4.3 percent rise in diabetes visits to a 12.7 percent increase in visits for low blood pressure.

Conditions diagnosed as heat illness or heat stroke rose nearly four-fold for every 10-degree climb on the thermometer, and dehydration visits increased by 25 percent.

Although the study could not pinpoint why certain health conditions are more likely to send people to the ER on hotter days, Basu said it likely has to do with how our bodies adapt to heat.

SOURCE




America, Britain and Japan are the countries most sceptical that man is to blame for global warming

It appears that the existence of global warming, once such a hotly contested issue is now widely accepted, but the extent to which mankind is behind the changes still divides opinion.

A recent online poll found the percentage of people who believe global warming is happening is consistently high across the world, but belief that man is to blame is much lower, with the US, Britain and Japan being the most sceptical.

Of the 13,500 people surveyed from 13 countries the majority agree global warming is happening, basing this opinion on increased or excessive rainfall, rising average temperatures and droughts.

There was still some discrepancy across countries, with 98 per cent of those surveyed in Hong Kong and Mexico believing in climate change, compared to 72 per cent in the United States.

However there was far more of a divide between nations when it came to belief in the reason behind global warming.

Global warming, or the rise of the earth's atmosphere is believed in large part to be due to an increase of greenhouse gases, produced by industry emissions, the burning of fossil fuels and large scale farming, becoming trapped in the atmosphere.

The rate of increase is rising, with two thirds of the recorded 0.8°C rise early 20th century having occurred since 1980.

In response to the question of whether human activity was mainly responsible for climate change the U.S. Britain and Japan all revealed a fairly high level of skepticism.

In the United States 58 per cent agreed human activity was a contributing factor while in Britain it was 65 per cent and 78 per cent in Japan.

These scores were markedly lower than other nations. In Hong Kong 94 percent of citizens agreed, followed by 93 percent in Indonesia, 92 percent in Mexico and 87 percent in Germany.

The poll was conducted for the insurance firm Axa by opinion poll group Ipsos and questioned people in Belgium, Britain, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey and the United States.

Though no explanation was offered for the differing levels of acceptance of mankind’s role in global warming there seems to be a divide between those countries that are developing and those that are highly industrialized.

SOURCE




Britain 'to be hit by 70s-style blackouts withing three years' and EU rules may also force up bills, warns Ofgem

Green rules coming from the EU threaten to plunge Britain into 1970s-style blackouts in three years and lead to energy bills doubling.

Millions could be pushed into fuel poverty – having to choose between heating or eating – because Brussels diktats are closing power stations needlessly, the Government’s energy regulator warned yesterday.

The plants that remain in Britain will not be able to keep up with demand by winter 2015, a dire report from Ofgem predicted.

The chance of blackouts, similar to those seen during the three-day week crisis of the 1970s, is currently rated as one in 3,300 by the energy regulator. But it could drop to as low as one in 12 over the next three years, Ofgem said.

The UK’s spare generating capacity, currently 14 per cent, could drop to 4 per cent or even shrink to nothing at the same time, it warned.

The ‘alarming’ findings have left senior figures in the energy industry desperately worried, sources say, as the vast scale of the challenges facing the UK’s energy future becomes clear.

If the report’s predictions come true, Britain could be left dependent on an unreliable undersea cable line with France for its emergency energy supply.

National Grid and the Government could order mothballed generating plants to fire up again to plug the energy gap. The battle to keep the lights on could then become a stand-off between British ministers trying to keep the country running and European bureaucrats trying to enforce rulings on the UK.

Ofgem said the UK faced ‘an unprecedented combination of the global financial crisis, tough environmental targets and the closure of ageing power stations that would increase the risk to consumers’ energy supplies and could lead to higher bills’.

The report warned that there ‘will be a significant reduction in electricity supplies from coal and oil plants over the period, primarily driven by closures required by European environmental legislation’.

It added: ‘The risk of electricity shortfalls is expected to be highest at the end of the period, in 2015-16 and 2016-17.’

The most damaging piece of EU ‘green tape’, industry insiders say, is a 2001 measure designed to limit emissions for older power stations. The Large Combustion Plant Directive forces all coal or oil-fired power plants built before 1987 to install expensive emissions-reducing equipment or face closure by 2015.

It was spawned out of the Brussels obsession with weaning all European countries off coal power. But because of Britain’s rich mining heritage, it is a measure that hits the UK harder than any other EU member.  Nine of the UK’s coal and oil-fired power stations are destined to shut by 2015. This represents about 15 per cent of the UK’s total generating capacity. This would leave Britain dependent on imported gas – which comes with a notoriously volatile price tag.

Respected energy analyst Peter Atherton said: ‘What’s difficult now is that there is legislation in place that will shut down plants deliberately. There are very good plants that are being ordered to shut before they should. The rest of the coal fleet is under a sentence of death.’

At the moment market energy prices are about £50 per megawatt hour – the unit used to measure power. Mr Atherton said prices could ‘easily’ hit £100 per megawatt hour in 2015. Energy Secretary Ed Davey said the Government would respond to the report before the end of the year. He said: ‘Security of electricity supply is of critical importance to the health of the economy and the smooth functioning of our daily lives.’

Consumer groups called on the Government to protect homeowners from ever-rising bills. Richard Lloyd, director of consumer group Which?, said: ‘It’s alarming to hear Ofgem predicting that we could be relying more on imported gas in a matter of years which could mean further price rises for hard-pressed consumers.’

SOURCE





The Limits of Wind Power

Very high wind penetrations are not achievable in practice due to the increased need for power storage, the decrease in grid reliability, and the increased operating costs

Environmentalists advocate wind power as one of the main alternatives to fossil fuels, claiming that it is both cost effective and low in carbon emissions. This study seeks to evaluate these claims.

Existing estimates of the life-cycle emissions from wind turbines range from 5 to 100 grams of CO2 equivalent per kilowatt hour of electricity produced. This very wide range is explained by differences in what was included in each analysis, and the proportion of electricity generated by wind. The low CO2 emissions estimates are only possible at low levels of installed wind capacity, and even then they typically ignore the large proportion of associated emissions that come from the need for backup power sources (“spinning reserves”).

Wind blows at speeds that vary considerably, leading to wide variations in power output at different times and in different locations. To address this variability, power supply companies must install backup capacity, which kicks in when demand exceeds supply from the wind turbines; failure to do so will adversely affect grid reliability. The need for this backup capacity significantly increases the cost of producing power from wind. Since backup power in most cases comes from fossil fuel generators, this effectively limits the carbon-reducing potential of new wind capacity.

The extent to which CO2 emissions can be reduced by using wind power ultimately depends on the specific characteristics of an existing power grid and the amount of additional wind-induced variability risk the grid operator will tolerate. A conservative grid operator can achieve CO2 emissions reduction via increased wind power of approximately 18g of CO2 equivalent/kWh, or about 3.6% of total emissions from electricity generation.

The analysis reported in this study indicates that 20% would be the extreme upper limit for wind penetration. At this level the CO2 emissions reduction is 90g of CO2 equivalent/kWh, or about 18% of total emissions from electricity generation. Using wind to reduce CO2 to this level costs $150 per metric ton (i.e. 1,000 kg, or 2,200 lbs) of CO2 reduced.

Very high wind penetrations are not achievable in practice due to the increased need for power storage, the decrease in grid reliability, and the increased operating costs. Given these constraints, this study concludes that a more practical upper limit for wind penetration is 10%. At 10% wind penetration, the CO2 emissions reduction due to wind is approximately 45g CO2 equivalent/kWh, or about 9% of total.

More HERE




GREENIE ROUNDUP FROM AUSTRALIA

Three current articles below

An attempted Gore-fraud fails



AN Australian filmmaker refused to sell footage of a firestorm to former US vice-president Al Gore - to use in Mr Gore's climate presentations - because the event was unrelated to climate change.

Chris Tangey from Alice Springs Film and Television recorded the phenomenon on Curtin Springs Station, 360km south-west of Alice Springs, while scouting locations for a film.

The footage has been an international sensation reported widely in global media.

In an email exchange with Mr Gore's office, Mr Tangey said using the footage in a climate-change framework would be "deliberately deceptive", the Northern Territory News reports.

"I am aware that you may have missed the reporting on the very localised nature of this firestorm," Mr Tangey wrote.

"However, in any case, I am confused as to why you would offer to buy a licence to use it at all unless you had conducted even elementary research which might indicate that this Mt Conner event had direct linkage to global warming/climate change."

Joel Lisonbee, manager of the NT Climate Services Centre, agreed and said he would not link such an event to global warming.

"This event was better described as a dust devil within a fire. Most of us have seen dust devils and know they are not uncommon," Mr Lisonbee said.

"You need hot, dry conditions but you get those in desert-like conditions everywhere, regardless of global warming."

Jill Martin, from Mr Gore's office, said the famed American climate change advocate wanted to use the footage for up to five years in his PowerPoint presentations to live audiences worldwide.

"Mr Gore recently saw the amazing footage of the fire tornado taken on September 11, and is interested in showing it during some of the presentations he gives on environmental topics," she wrote.

But Mr Tangey said it was "difficult for me to imagine a fire event less relevant".

SOURCE

Queensland Premier Campbell Newman blocks "Green" energy rating system for new residential units

CAMPBELL Newman has pulled out of a tougher 6-star national energy rating for new residential units to slash an average $1200 from the cost of building an apartment.

The Premier has also scrapped a deal with the Federal Government for mandatory reporting of energy efficiency standards of new buildings in a move he describes as cutting red tape.

But the Federal Government has accused him of making it harder for people to cut their energy bills.

The deals were agreed between Anna Bligh and Julia Gillard as part of a national program of energy efficiency rules.

Mr Newman's decision to pull out is a blow to Ms Gillard's plans to streamline rules through the Council of Australian Governments.

The new 6-star rating would require better minimum levels of insulation and glazing in new apartment buildings to cut energy use for heating and cooling.

But the Premier warned the new rating would drive up the cost of new buildings without getting much return in lower power costs.

The tougher standards are estimated by Queensland to add an average $1200 per unit to construction costs but are only expected to reduce electricity costs by about $54 a year.

In a letter to the Prime Minister, Mr Newman said the higher 6-star rating was unnecessary in Queensland and suggested it was designed for the climate in other states.

"The Queensland Government cannot justify the cost of transitioning from 5-star to 6-star requirements, especially given that Queensland's climate makes our 5-star units generally more energy efficient than 6-star units in other states," Mr Newman said in the letter.

The Premier also hit out at plans for mandatory disclosure of energy, greenhouse gas and water performance in new units at the point of sale.

He said the scheme would breach his own election commitment to cut red tape and was "unlikely to increase consumer uptake of sustainability features in homes".

Federal Parliamentary Secretary for Climate Change Mark Dreyfus attacked the move.

"Energy efficiency means cheaper electricity bills," Mr Dreyfus said.

But the Premier was backed by the building and property industry.

Master Builders' director, housing Paul Bidwell said the Federal Government "had not proved the benefits outweigh the costs" of the 6-star system.

SOURCE

Greens lose, miners win, under new Qld. govt.

THE end of Queensland's Wild Rivers legislation has breathed new life into a planned Cape York mine which will deliver up to 1700 jobs and add $1.2 billion to the economy.

The State Government has granted Cape Alumina's Pisolite Hills significant project status, meaning it will have to develop an extensive environmental impact study before approval can be granted.

The project was frozen in 2010 when the Bligh Government imposed a 500 metre wide buffer zone around waterways near the project area as part of the declaration of the Wenlock River Basin as a wild river area.

Cape Alumina said this had the effect of reducing the bauxite resources available to the project "for no tangible environmental benefit".

The company said it will now restart negotiations with the traditional owners and expects to start development of the mine in 2014, should approvals be granted.

"The project will be a boon for the traditional land owners and Aboriginal people of Mapoon and other western Cape York communities and (will) provide them with a rare opportunity to gain social and economic independence and prosperity," the company's managing director, Graeme Sherlock said.

Cape Alumina's studies show that the project would boost economic activity by $1.2 billion and create or sustain more than 1700 jobs over the mines 15-year life.

The boost to the far north Queensland economy will be more than $600 million and 1300 jobs.

SOURCE

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