Month: September 2017

Electricity “Bill Shock” in Australia is so bad it will push up inflation figures

Who knew it would cost a lot to change the climate?

It’s crisis time in Australia. Electricity bills have doubled, and the fallout is just starting to feed through to consumers. Not only does electricity cost more, but so will nearly everything else. Large businesses, economists, and miners are warning that Australians will be paying so much more it will push our inflation figures up.

Major packaging and brick makers, supermarkets, soft-drink bottlers and poultry producers said yesterday the bill shock would chip away further at profit margins and could push up consumer ­prices…

Economists, including Nat­ional Australia Bank chief economist Alan Oster, warned the power bill shock was expected to show up in national inflation figures as early as next month.

He predicted headline inflation would increase 0.6 per cent for the July-to-September quarter, purely from energy price rises.

Paul McArdle from WattClarity makes the point that for most of the last 16 years our electricity prices didn’t even rise with inflation. In this graph, since the start of the NEM (National Electricity Market) in 1998 the spot price of electricity was about $30 per MWh, barring major drought, carbon tax and the […]

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September 6, 2017 at 11:49PM

Claim: Climate Change is Going to Kill Off All the Parasites

Guest essay by Eric Worrall Back in 2013 I celebrated that Australia’s unusually hot, dry Summer meant a lower risk of deadly tick bites, but apparently this is now a bad thing. Climate change could wipe out a third of parasite species, study finds Parasites such as lice and fleas are crucial to ecosystems, scientists…

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September 6, 2017 at 08:47PM

International Space Station gets dramatic view of hurricane #Irma

The International Space Station’s external cameras captured another dramatic view of Hurricane Irma as it made landfall in the Caribbean Sept. 6. The powerful Category 5 storm with sustained winds of 185 mph made landfall on several islands while continuing on a westward track. Irma is expected to bring severe wind and rain to several…

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September 6, 2017 at 05:47PM

My team didn’t win, therefore democracy is broken – Part 1

A common view expressed by the arrogant, opinionated elite is that when things don’t go their way, and they know that their opinion is the correct one, this indicates that our democratic system is in crisis and needs to be fixed. This post is the first in a series on academics who have tried to employ … Continue reading

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September 6, 2017 at 04:09PM