[update - CM1] bumping because this deserves a second look even if it is a quick post.

China correspondent Stephen McDonell

The Chinese Government has described the view that climate change is not man-made as a marginal and "extreme" outlook.

According to Xie Zhenhua, a deputy director at China's powerful National Development and Reform Commission, climate change is a fact based on long-term observation in many countries.

At the annual session of China's National People's Congress, he said that those who advocate that climate change is not man-made are holding an extreme and marginal view.

He said that the majority of the world's scientists believed that climate change has been caused by burning fossil fuels.

He and other officials said that more work needed to be done to ensure that scientific data on climate change was watertight, but the world had no choice but to reduce its reliance on fossil fuels.

Mr Xie said climate change is not only something that ordinary Chinese people can feel and experience every day, but that it may soon have a huge impact on China's food security and even its economic stability.

They also stated that there is some differing of opinion on what is causing this, however that sensible policy is to recognize and begin to take steps to mitigate the risk.

Bumped and promoted. Posted 2010-02-06 05:52:18 -0500. -- GH

Arctic ice melt could cost $24tln by 2050: report

Arctic ice melting could cost global agriculture, real estate and insurance anywhere from $US2.4 trillion ($2.8 billion) to $US24 trillion by 2050 in damage from rising sea levels, floods and heat waves, according to a report released on Friday.

The research project involved more than 370 scientists from 27 countries who collectively spent 15 months, starting in June 2007, aboard a research vessel above the Arctic Circle. It marked the first time a ship has stayed mobile in Canada's high Arctic for an entire winter.

"It's happening much faster than our most pessimistic projections," said University of Manitoba Prof. David Barber, the lead investigator of the Circumpolar Flaw Lead study. A flaw lead is the term for open water between pack ice and coastal ice.

Promoted. Originally posted 2010-01-30 19:54:46 -0500. -- GH

There is a story up on the AP at the moment which has News Corp agreeing to settle an anti-trust case with a company called Valassis for $500 Million.

News Corp. to pay $500M settlement to Valassis

Just to put this in perspective, payouts of this amount usually receive much more scrutiny:

Exxon Valdez : In the case of Baker v. Exxon, an Anchorage jury awarded $287 million for actual damages and $5 billion for punitive damages.

OK Tedi : A negotiated settlement worth approximately $500 million in compensation and commitments to tailings containment was reached in June 1996.

James Hardie: compensation worth up to $4 billion over the next 40 years

LIVONIA, Mich. (AP) -- News Corp. subsidiary News America Marketing has agreed to pay rival Valassis Communications Inc. $500 million to settle antitrust charges.

Valassis accused News America of threatening customers with price hikes for not offering exclusivity in marketing deals.

In a statement Saturday, News Corp. said it did not want to risk presenting the case to a jury in Michigan federal court, where it was scheduled for trial Tuesday. "it was in the best interests of the company and its stockholders to agree to a settlement."

The Exxon Valdez spill compensation claim was vigorously fought in court of law as well as in the public sphere, with the figure being reduced when the Bush administration was in office.

The OK Tedi disaster was a long term dumping of mining tailings filled with toxic metals, and cyanide contaminants into a river in Papua New Guinea.

The James Hardie payout was for continuing to market and manufacture asbestos building materials and fail to limit exposure to this product even when it was known of the effects on human health.

All of these, and I am sure there are many more, were played out in the press, in the media over and over. I know for a fact that News Corp would have headlined these three, if not many more in their newspapers day after day.

Yesterday I wrote of a technology called concentrated photovoltaics, which if all goes well, may bring the retail cost of solar panels down from at present, $4.31 per watt, to 30c per watt.

Moore's Law for Solar - 30c watt in years to come

The technology I discussed was the concentration of the sun, using fresnel lens or mirrors like in a telescope, being able to reduce the area of active semi conductor material down to 1000th of that of Silicon to produce equivalent electricity.

Today I'd like to look at Silicon solar cells and what happens if we concentrate sunlight onto them.

"We have an economy where we steal the future, sell it in the present and call it GDP (Gross Domestic Product)" Paul Hawken

The United States as of 2007, had approximately 1,087 Gigawatts of electricity generating capacity.

China had around 624 Gigawatts of Electricity Generation capacity.

Australia has approximately 48 Gigawatts of generating capacity.

India has 147 Gigawatts of electricity generation capacity.

Cheating a little here, but Stranded Wind describes three kinds of electricity Generation better than I could, they are:

Baseload is a word that is used to describe both the minimum level of power required to keep a system going and the type of generation that provides it. Coal and nuclear are the classic examples here – they're slow to warm up but once they're moving they're kept at a certain operating range for months on end. You may also hear 'spinning reserves' – this is a baseload type generating facility that is 'spun up' but unloaded, running in reserve for demand peaks. Hydroelectric can also be considered baseload generating capacity if it's got a steady flow of water behind it.

Dispatchable is a word used to describe generating sources that are quick to react to new requirements. Natural gas generating using 'peaker' plants is the classic example. These systems maybe only run for a week total out of ever year but electric rates are such that they're profitable when servicing demand spikes. Hydroelectric power is also counted as dispatchable – simply open the gate, the turbine spins up, and power begins to flow.

Intermittent sources produce irregularly (wind) or periodically (solar). Natural gas or hydroelectric dispatchable power coupled with these renewables can make for a smooth, trustworthy flow of power.

The need for electricity is not static as you would imagine. When there are more air conditioners turned on, more factories operating, power demand is higher, when people are sleeping, power demand drops right off.

2006-07 Australian bushfire season
The 2006-07 Australian bushfire season was one of the most extensive bushfire seasons in Australia's history. Victoria experienced the longest continuously burning bushfire complex in Australia's history, with fires in the Victorian Alps and Gippsland burning over 1 million hectares of land over the course of 69 days.

January 2009
The early 2009 southeastern Australia heat wave was a heat wave that commenced in late January and led to record-breaking prolonged high temperatures in the region. The heat wave is considered one of, if not the most, extreme in the region's history. During the heat wave, 50 separate locations set various records for consecutive, highest daytime and overnight temperatures.

According to a Monash University study of funeral notices, more than 200 people died as a result of the heat wave. A 45% increase in the death rate was noted during the time. A subsequent report by Victoria's chief health officer, Dr John Carnie, put the final figure at 374.

February 2009
As many as 400 individual fires were recorded on 7 February. Following the events of the 7th of February 2009, that date has since been referred to as Black Saturday.

173 people died as a result of the fires and 414 were injured.

November 2009
Senior climatologist Blair Trewin said 68 long-term weather stations recorded their highest November maximum temperature and 39 stations recorded their highest overnight minimum temperature.

''That represents 10.2 per cent of Australia recording record highs, including 41 per cent of NSW and 29 per cent of South Australia,'' Dr Trewin said.

In Adelaide, the eight consecutive days above 35 degrees doubled the previous November record. It also had a record high of 43.

So records are broken, two years later they are broken again. Not the kind of record you want to break though. When temperatures are causing multiple heat related deaths and bushfires causing loss of life and property, you'd think we'd realize something is up with that. And just as Australia is about to head into Summer, we see the same conditions occurring at the start of Summer which we just saw at the end of Summer immediately prior to the worst bushfires in Australia's history earlier this year.

Scary stuff hey?

Yesterday I wrote of my visit to a solar thermal power station in the Nevada Desert, at Boulder City, near Las Vegas. The plant produces 65 MW of electricity which, during the day, would be close to supplying the needs of 65,000 homes.

The accumulation of CO2 emissions we have been told for over 20 years would create conditions like those described above. So from a risk management point of view, seeking alternatives to where the source of those emissions comes from makes sense. In other words reducing or replacing the source of those emissions is the optimum outcome without eliminating the benefit of the plant itself.

What I would like to talk about is what I think Australia can do to meet energy generated from some of these types of means.

During a trip in August, across the United States, one of the things I had planned was to visit a number of solar installations. Just out from Las Vegas, not far from the airport at Boulder City which flies people to/from The Grand Canyon, there is a substantial solar trough power station. Its output is 65 Megawatts, which using rule of thumb of 1,000 people per MW, can supply enough power for 65,000 homes whilst the sun is shining.

Lord of the Flies is an allegorical novel by Nobel Prize-winning author William Golding. It discusses how culture created by man fails, using as an example a group of British schoolboys stuck on a deserted island who try to govern themselves, but with disastrous results.

Right now a similar story is playing out with the current Australian political opposition party, our version of the Right Wing GOP, a COALition of Australia's Agricultural/Farmers party, The Nationals, and the party which claims it is for Big Business, The Australian Liberal Party.

This is the same party who, when in power from 1996-2007, in 1997, sent a delegation to Kyoto, negotiated a great deal for Australia on carbon emissions, then in 2002 reversed course reneging on this agreement and throwing its lot in with the climate change deniers.
So what has happened to bring about this comparison to the Lord of the Flies? Follow after the fold and I'll give you a bit of history.

On a daily basis there are louder and louder calls for us to begin to act on Climate disruption. With stories about sea-ice almost completely gone, Australia's food bowl continues to dersertify, temperature rise threatening the Barrier Reef one could get overwhelmed with the sheer scale of these challenges to even contemplate doing anything at all. Couple this up with the denialosphere and its easy to get paralyzed in fear.

I have a different idea.

For a few years now I have been following the development of a number of renewable energy technologies. This is a keen interest of mine as my background has been predominantly in the power industry, and I of course am very concerned about the release that millions of years of stored carbon is having on the climate.

Throughout 2009 I have visited a few Solar companies in Australia and in August I visited the United States and did likewise. My intent was to stop at a number of solar company installations, preferably unannounced, to see whether what they were telling people was going on with their business, did actually reflect the reality on the ground.

This is what I saw, and my interpretation of where solar technology could be headed.

In two articles I've written HERE and HERE I have laid out the importance of energy in our everyday lives and how where we obtain the primary energy we use, governments around the world do have an input in. I have also shown that decision making on how and what form of energy systems we will have has been kept behind closed doors without transparency for a number of years which has resulted in behavior which politicians ought not partake in if they truly have free market principles and public good at heart.

With the research I have conducted one of the things which I have often questioned is why countries such as Spain and Germany have such a strong renewables sector, when Australia with more wide open country, uninhabited sunny areas than almost any other, we have not developed a strong domestic solar industry. Equally strange is lack of offshore wind, geothermal or wave power resource utilization.

In a diary back in February, FishOutofWater wrote of the beginning of what would come to be known in Australia as the Black Saturday Bushfires.

Australia Fires Kill 128

Twenty-five people are confirmed to have died in fires north of Melbourne and this morning there are unconfirmed reports of bodies being found in cars overtaken by the fires in Gippsland in the state's east.

This morning Mr Brumby said 26 fires were still burning and up to a dozen of them are still very serious.

"Every effort is being thrown at the fires," he said.

"This is not over yet. Tragically I think there will be more bad news.

By the time the smoke had cleared, 173 people had perished in these fires. Two days ago I went to see some of the first responders, firefighters and police, who are currently sacrificing once again to raise funds for a good cause.

Back in February of this year in Victoria, Australia we had terrible heat waves taking the lives of many people, over taken in the news by the most destructive bushfire, wildfire in terms of lives and property, in Australia's history.

July 13, 2009

Navy intercepts Sri Lankan asylum seekers
MANY women and children are among more than 70 Sri Lankan asylum seekers now on Christmas Island after they were picked up at sea on Saturday.

A fishing boat carrying the group was spotted by a Customs and Border Protection aircraft about 80 nautical miles from Christmas Island and was intercepted by the navy patrol boat HMAS Armidale.

Read more

AAP - Australian Associated Press is owned by four Australian news organisations.

Fairfax and News Ltd both own 45%

Rupert Murdoch is on the Associated Press board

Rupert Murdoch joins Associated Press board

With such a relatively small population of 22 Million people versus the 300 million in the US where Newscorp has its Fox empire, the organization has an overwhelming, almost dictatorial hold over public opinion in Australia. Yahoo gets its feeds as do many online outlets from AAP.

Newscorp assets in Australia look like this:

On 21 August 2009, West Atlas oil rig owned and operated by Thai company PTTEP Australasia drilling in the Montara oil field offshore 200km from Broome, a West Australian town famous for its pearling and tourist industry, suffered a failure.

A blogger from another site wrote an article on 21 October detailing continuing failed attempts to stem the flow of oil from a rig in pristine marine area of the North West Coast of Australia.